St. Patrick’s Day.Well, lunch was a disappointment. In fact, lunch tasted like a--. I hate it when I have a bad lunch. I met my friends Vanessa and Elisabeth in the Village, at the Elephant and Castle. The E & C has been on Greenwich Avenue since before God was born, but I’ve never eaten there. It’s just one of those places, one of those places very close to where both Vanessa and Elisabeth work.
Normally, in a place like this, I would order a burger, but since that beef debacle, I don’t eat beef anymore. Certainly not ground beef. I ended up ordering a salad, because bacon and avocado sounded good. I asked the waitress to throw some chicken on my salad.
I got a bowl of iceberg lettuce soaking in a cream sauce. Somehow, I was confused, because there was no avocado. I ate the bacon, the two gumballs of chicken, a couple of slimy cherry tomatoes and an unfortunate slice of pear.
Once this petty crime was over, while we were waiting for Elisabeth to show, we ordered dessert. What I wanted was carrot cake, but you know how bad carrot cake can be when it’s bad and I had a feeling the E & C had no pastry pride.
If I can pause here to whine, this is the lament of the baker. You absolutely cannot eat a baked good, any sort of dessert, really, outside of the confines of your own home. Why? Because it all sucks. It is not made with organic flour, butter, eggs and milk like it is in my house. It’s not made in a small, careful batch. I admit, sometimes the desserts are divine, but mostly, I could do much, much better.
So, what do I do? I order the Viennese crepe! I kid you not. I’m thinking chocolate, hazelnuts, okay, that will take the taste of the salad bowl out of my mouth.
WRONG.
Just look at it. It doesn’t even look like a crepe, it looks like a burrito. Well, it was a burrito. Stuffed with Hersey’s syrup interrupted by two or three chewable pieces that were likely the hazelnuts. Enough said.
After that, I had time to kill before my next meal. I checked the movie schedules, and nothing within walking distance was of interest, so I wandered around. I wandered up town and of course, I wandered into Williams Sonoma. It’s sad, and yet a relief that I’ve gotten to that point where there’s nothing I want from a kitchen store. And Williams Sonoma has gone down hill, hasn’t it? They’ve gotten way too far into holidays and packaged foods.
I continued my wanderings and wandered right into New York Cake and Baking. I like NYCB, I find it a peaceful place to poke around, and I thought you might like to see it. It’s an enormous baking supply store. They have a huge stock of baking pans, cookie cutters, flavors, sanding sugars, paste flowers, you name it.
This is the store window, inviting you to come inside and revel in the wonders of sugar.
This is Oz for you bakers.
Close up on some of the merch – bulk chocolate and paste flowers:
It was tough for me to be idle. I went to Barnes and Noble for a while and looked through Martha Stewart Living. Nothing there, really. But I’m not making this up. I am really thinking about food all the time.
So, I’m off to Peter McManus, an Irish bar in Chelsea where they have a pretty good corned beef sandwich. I eat a corned beef sandwich once a year, and for a very long time this single corned beef sandwich was consumed in a Jewish deli somewhere downtown, usually the Second Avenue Deli. (Which recently got chased out of the space they’d had since before God was born and are now up on 33rd Street.) Then one year, just for the heck of it, I decided to try the Irish version for a change, oafish clientele in the bar or not.
This particular St. Paddy’s day was on a Saturday, and the folks in the bar had been in there drinking all day, or, at least since the parade was over. And it was kind of fun. I inquired, and was invited to look under a police officer’s kilt. I decked a guy. And then I decided that it was sort of more fun than the Second Avenue Deli.
This is the supply of liquor ready and waiting.
This one of New York’s finest. Many Irish police officers are members of the Emerald Society, and have their own bagpipe band that plays in parades and at the funerals of fallen officers. On St. Paddy’s day they march down Fifth Avenue and into various places like McManus. Here, they add a lot of color to the old watering hole and now and again get behind the bar to play some welcome music to the pleasure of the patrons.
I’m including this shot because it shows you the beautiful tartan. The material is very fine, and the colors are exquisite.
We flagged down a nice waitress with a shamrock stuck on her face and asked for our corned beef. It was a mighty fine corned beef sandwich, well worth waiting a year for, just enough fat on rye bread. Washed down with warming Irish whiskey. There is a god.
Come here, baby, kiss me on the lips!
When we left, it was still light out, and this guy was looking for a cab.
I like to bake nice things. And then I eat them. Then I can bake some more.
This topic is locked
