Back to Brooklyn

Tonight I decided to play the up-on-shit socialite.  I wanted to make my dining experience at one of Tribeca’s new restaurants a conversational ice-breaker for social situations over the next few months, whether I had a good time, (“restaurants are learning to cater to a more budget-savvy crowd”) or a bad time (“how can they charge that much for X”).  From the blog reviews I had been reading hours before on said restaurant, it seemed like acceptable food at acceptable prices, and that it could go either way.

Fortunately, it went the way of giving up on the place entirely. Because like many dining destinations in Manhattan– or non-destinations– the restaurant was packed, overwhelmingly loud and full of, what we would have called them in middle school, preppies. Preppies making too much money and drinking too many fancy cocktails.  I walked in and right back out, pissed at the food blogs for making me want to go there, the people who got there before I did, and at myself for caring at all.

In the netherworld close to Manhattan’s west coast there isn’t much between bad sushi and very upscale dining.  The prospect of hiking back to Chinatown seemed like a waste of time.  Going anywhere else in Manhattan seemed like an even bigger waste of time.  I was beginning to think of my 2009 stand-by Motorino, an honest pizza place where I’ve never been let down.  I started to whine about getting let down in Manhattan, with no end of the let-downs in sight.

Then we took the train back to Brooklyn, resorting to a safer, more comfortable and affordable Plan B.

Plan B(rooklyn): A quiet back patio of a neighborhood restaurant still waiting for its liquor license.  A $10 bottle from the local wine store, a Zweigelt rosé from Austria.  Simple food, reasonable prices, friendly service, noise-level contained.  Two hours later I have nothing to complain about, and I start to think that Plan B is a secret that I probably shouldn’t tell anyone about.  Well, at the least not the preppies.

The real deal at Fette Sau