{"id":974,"date":"2015-06-12T14:06:04","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T18:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/?p=974"},"modified":"2015-06-12T14:06:04","modified_gmt":"2015-06-12T18:06:04","slug":"working-backward-indeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/2015\/06\/working-backward-indeed\/","title":{"rendered":"Working backward, indeed"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have looked at the naked backsides of three women at the bar on the Cafe Luxembourg<\/a> card\/ad for as long as I\u2019ve been eating for a living, but I only just learned what the damned image meant. Suffice it to say that a single guy did the explaining, which involved how mens see ladies. And that was on my third meal in the last half-year in that seductively faux-Parisian space, where the charm has held up for as long as I\u2019ve been eating for a living despite the fact that the cooking has never really been transporting.<\/p>\n

I thought I had figured out how to ace the menu after the first of the three meals, when another host and I made the mistake of ordering specials, which were overwrought, overpriced and underwhelming (it\u2019s been half a year, at least, so no deets). From then on, I swore, I would only order the fish and chips. And on my second meal I was rewarded with perfection: fresh pollack, crisply fried and teamed with excellent tartar sauce, textbook frites and a little side of fresh pea pur\u00e9e to approximate mushy peas. The Cat was one happy cat when I kittybagged what was left of the ample portion.<\/p>\n

Then I had to go and ruin everything by calculating how to order safely while not giving my host the impression I was a boring orderer and queering a potential deal. So I decided on a cheeseburger. Which turned out to be everything you would want in a cheeseburger — good bun, good lettuce and tomato, great frites, ramekins of not just ketchup but mustard and mayonnaise, proper rareness — but lacked that little essential. Flavor. The meat had no char or tang. Still, WIGB? Absolutely, especially if someone else is paying. You can eat the scenery.<\/p>\n

And I guess the burger was not that lame because I trotted to the 3 train afterward to get to the Tribeca Film Festival and was feeling pretty light, having left most of my food on the plate. For my next eating experience I spotted a happy-hour sign on a new-to-me restaurant on West Broadway after exiting at Chambers, and I remembered it when my consort and I had an hour and a half to kill between shorts programs. So we walked away from the wind back to Saleya<\/a> to settle onto stools for $6 glasses of wine, chardonnay from the Languedoc for me and garnacha for Bob.<\/p>\n

Bob also wisely suggested we order a couple of small plates rather than making dinner later of a sachet of popcorn for $6.50, so we split a seriously good pizzetta topped with bacon, Gruyere and onions (tarte flambee by another name) and adequate hummus with exceptional pita (charred and perfectly salted). Bob\u2019s no fan of chickpeas, so I got all those topping both the hummus and the little salad that came with the $14 snack.<\/p>\n

WIGB? Definitely, if I were in the neighborhood and wanting to avoid the no-discount drinking in all the swankola restaurants near the Regal Cinemas. And not least because the design of the two-level bar is so savvy it reminded me of the restaurateur we met eons ago in Estonia who said \u201crestaurants serve air\u201d — theatricality is half the experience.<\/p>\n

Also, too, it\u2019s a good thing I never got around to writing about how negative my pals felt a couple of months back after choosing Mighty Quinn\u2019s<\/a> brisket before the Jim Jarmusch\/John Schaeffer silent-film-with-music presentation down in the old Winter Garden under the new World Trade Center. All but Mr. Pulled Pork dispiritedly forked through leathery meat and agreed: Romance. Over. But then Bob and I had half an hour to forage between documentaries at the film festival and went upstairs rather than back to Le District and, at my instigation, circled back to the Mighty. All dryness was forgiven. For $9.25, that mound of meat on a bun paired with coleslaw (half-creamy, half-vinegary as the accommodating counter server provided) plus pickled celery, cucumbers, jalapen\u00f5s and red onions was easily the best deal in a food court where a grilled cheese is just a grilled cheese. To think for only $2.75 less, we could have been feasting on popcorn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have looked at the naked backsides of three women at the bar on the Cafe Luxembourg card\/ad for as long as I\u2019ve been eating for a living, but I only just learned what the damned image meant. Suffice it to say that a single guy did the explaining, which involved how mens see ladies…. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,123,80,75,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american","category-barbecue","category-burgers","category-tribeca","category-upper-west-side"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=974"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":976,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974\/revisions\/976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/trails\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}