...SUMMER ROAD TRIP (PART 2 of 4)In my last post, I wrote about my recent road-trip slash odyssey to Brooklyn. How I usually tour Manhattan proper, but this trip found me exploring Brooklyn streets, Brooklyn food. My memories are broken up into vignettes, all of them about what I ate. This is the 2nd of 4 stories. Hopefully you'll find it delicious, or at the very least, edible.
Vignette #2 - Restaurant 101
Our second night in Bay Ridge, my friend Laura ("BB" to her friends*) decides to take us to her favorite restaurant, 101. Named because it lies at 101st Street and 4th Avenue, at the southwest tip of Brooklyn. We walk, and once again the night is unbelievably humid. It feels like treading through soup or swimming the streets of Saigon, not a quiet section of a New York borough. I keep telling myself this is JUNE, not mid-August.
Little did I know how much my mind would spin that night, like it had with my very first bite of Nino's pizza. Rather than being catapulted into movies, tonight my head would hurl into books. Into my favorite books. I would see one of my favorite literary characters brought to life in the form of a young restaurant manager named Artie.
We walk into Restaurant 101 and grab a booth. New York Magazine called this place "Roxbury: The Restaurant" in a review, which makes me grimace. That's harsh and judgmental. Jeez, lighten up! Yes, on a Thursday night the restaurant is full of 20-somethings in high heels accompanied by enormous guys with ham hock arms, most covered with tattoos, some with shaved heads. I dunno. To me it just looks like a young crowd blowing off steam after a long day at work, hoping to be fed a good meal and cocktails. Should a place be labeled just because its customers don't live up to a reviewer's "coolness" standards? Whatever. But then I've never been called cool. Who'd wanna be? Always worried what you're doing or wearing isn't "cool" enough, always trying to prove something. It's tiring, right? Who needs it?
I love the restaurant immediately. Everybody looks down to earth, easy to talk to. The music is loud, the lights are dim, the booths are large and comfortable. It's a place where you can tuck in for a long, long while to eat and drink and drink and eat until you stumble home fat and happy. A "leave your snobby ass at the door" kind of place. MY kind of place. We order drinks (I'm sticking with vodka and club soda to keep my girlish figure hardee-har-har) and look over the menu. I decide on the house-made pappardelle with shrimp and shiitake mushrooms. One, because I freaking ADORE house-made pappardelle and can never get it, and two, the combination of shrimp and shiitake intrigues me. It is a good choice. Oddly, they work very well together. The shrimp are cooked perfectly, sliced lengthwise, so they form curly-cues of deliciousness in the bowl. The shiitake mushrooms bring an earthiness, and help create a sauce that's amazing. It tastes like something I'd make at home if I needed comfort. I love it.
This is when we meet Artie, who comes by to check on us. Artie is the manager of this joint. Excuse the slang, but I swear from looking at him my mind starts to reel and spin, and immediately I know I'm looking into the face of Billy Phelan. "This joint" is something Billy would say. And here he is. In the flesh. At the risk of slowing down the action of this essay, I find I must step aside and explain what the hell I'm talking about. For you dear readers who have absolutely NO IDEA who Billy Phelan is, I invite you to read William Kennedy's Albany Cycle, which starts with the novel "Legs" and ends with "Roscoe". Kennedy's seven novels are a saga involving gangsters, card sharks, bootleggers, politicians, and vagrants. Most of them Irish, most of them from the same family, and all of them from Albany. He won the Pulitzer for Ironweed, but it's the story of Billy that remains stuck in my craw.
Billy Phelan is "...a great pool shooter, decent poker player, half-ass bookie, and lovely raconteur. He takes the world as it comes and dives in to any and all of it with gusto and guts."** He's a guy my Granddaddy would've loved. My Granddaddy was a hard drinker who drove fast, knew everybody, loved most of them, and had a tale to tell about everything you could name. A dyed-in-the-wool storyteller whose favorite pastime was to have a crowd of people around him just so he could regale you with where he'd been and who he'd seen.
When restaurant manager Artie comes by our table in a bright blue oxford shirt with a mammoth platinum watch hanging off one wrist to ask how our meal is, in the HEAVIEST Brooklyn "gargling with rocks" accent I've ever heard, I know I am looking at Billy Phelan. Twenty-something, slim and blond, with a look in the eyes that tells you he is a mover, a shaker with a story to tell and up to no good. But in a good way. With a wink in his eye. This guy could charm the pants off a nun. Not handsome, but good-looking in an Ed Norton by way of Ken Cosgrove sort of way. Exactly how I'd pictured Billy would look. And when Artie begins to tell *ALL* his stories, I know my little pretend casting couch is correct. This guy is a living, breathing, 21st century version of that book character.
It's all I can do to not drop my mouth open in astonishment. He asks about our food, and if he can bring us lovely ladies anything else off the menu. We chat and BB attempts to guess what neighborhood he's from. He will not tell, he wants her to guess. They're conversing the longest time, and the whole time I'm thinking, "Someone has put me in my favorite novel, only not in the 1930's, but in 2010." So WEIRD. It's not like I walk around casting books in my head all day long, so this is unexpected. Which I guess makes me a storyteller right now, in this very moment, right? Carrying on Granddaddy's legacy. But there I go, digressing again.
He offers us a shot of something, on the house. BB opts for a Captain Morgan with lime, and Melissa wants a Jagerbomb, but he's never heard of it. This prompts him to vault into a story about the time he offered sake bombs to 3 Japanese businessmen who'd never had them. They agreed, but the group next to them overheard and wanted one too. In the end, there were 40 people in all, standing down the entire length of the bar, downing sake bombs for the first time. We howl with laughter, then Artie turns to me and asks what I want. "Vodka," I say.
"Seriously? Just vodka? With no flavor?" he asks, his shoulders shrugging and his hands turning toward the sky in disbelief. In that lovely, heavy, gargling-with-rocks Brooklynese.
"Nope, just vodka."
"You sure? Nothing else?"
"Yep." I smile sweetly. I'm not a hardcore drinker (most of the time wink wink), just a broad who can't handle sugary-sweet ANYTHING on top of heavy pasta paired with vodka and club soda. What's that old saying? Jagerbomb after vodka you'll be regretting a-lodka?
This whole time he's been conversing with my two friends while I've been casting the Billy Phelan film in my head, silent. But this request causes him to notice me. "Where you from anyway?" he asks.
"Virginia," I reply.
"Really?" he asks, incredulous. I nod.
Now he's completely perplexed. It's like he stepped back, paused and asked himself, "Who IS this broad?" He leaves shaking his head.
Later I find out why. He's brings us the shots, then launches into a story about a party he organized in Punta Cana with only his iPOD and a bottle of Patron. "They told me I couldn't have a party on the beach, but I threw some paper at these two security guards. One stood on one side, and one stood on the other, and the entire night nobody bothered us. Must've been 100 people on that beach. Woke up at dawn covered in sand......and bruises. Not sure what the hell happened, but it must've been fun!" he smiles and shrugs as if to say, "Ain't I a stinka?"
Then BB asks, "Are you from Brighton Beach?" still guessing his neighborhood.
"Naaaaah. Bensonhurst," he corrects her.
"But I hear Russian under that accent," she insists. Huh? All I could hear was lovely Brooklynese, pure New YAWK, but BB detects something more.
"Weeellll, I immigrated here from Moscow when I was five, but grew up in Bensonhurst," he says, grinning. It occurs to me why he'd given me that look. It wasn't a perplexed look at all. It was a look of appreciation. Because I had ordered straight vodka.
More stories follow, then Artie leaves suddenly to bring us another shot. There is sits, clear in the glass, taunting us. A shot of scary-looking battery acid sitting in a tiny goblet on a thin, fragile stem. Artie refuses to tell us what it is until we down it. With trepidation, we make a toast and plunge forth.
Bracing myself, expecting the worst, instead what I taste is ice cold coffee-flavored liquor, a deep, dark-roasted flavor with a liquor-burn, but a warmth and sweetness there too. It's lovely. It tastes like it has about 100 ingredients, so we're shocked when he tells us it's espresso vodka. Nothing else. And on the house, of course.
He leaves to check on other customers. We finish dinner some time later, then get up to leave. We want to thank Artie for his generosity, his kindness, but can't seem to find him anywhere. It's only when we're actually walking out the door that he comes flying out of the kitchen to give us hugs. "How long are you in New York? You must come back. Did you enjoy your meal? Thank you so much for coming by. I hope you lovely ladies enjoy the rest of your evening," each statement and question accented with either a hug or a kiss on both cheeks. We stroll home, the full moon guiding us, once again feeling fat and happy. Like we'd just had the time of our lives. Because we had.
So why is Artie one of the highlights of this trip? The food at the restaurant was good, and sure it helps to get a couple of free cocktails on the house, but Artie made the evening. I read another review of 101 which mentions Artie, and how he went above and beyond to make sure things were made right when a customer's meal wasn't up to standard. Maybe that crappy reviewer was there on Artie's night off, because seriously, I don't know how you could miss him! Artie was all over that restaurant, making sure people had a good time, and if they weren't, he fixed it quick.
He's a lot like Toots Shor, that famous restaurateur. Toots always made sure even if it was your first time visiting, it wouldn't be your last. You were never a tourist at Toots Shor's place, always a regular. I've heard many legends about Toots, how when you dined at his place he made you feel exclusive and special. I've just never experienced anything like that first-hand. Until that night at Restaurant 101.
Artie made me feel like I knew the secret pass code, like he was a friend, not a manager. Like he knew the skeletons in my closet but liked me anyway. Like what I had to say was the most fascinating shit he'd ever heard. Artie made me and everyone there feel like we were a part of something, something secret and special only allowed to a certain few. God help me, Artie made me feel cool. Really fucking cool.
*stands for "Brooklyn Belle" and how she got that nickname is a WHOLE other story entirely...
**Taken directly from some called "A Customer" at the Amazon.com site. Was gonna write my own description, but this one is so damn spot-on I find I must use it. They wrote it better than I ever could have... Tweet
