paris postcard: the nameless (17th)

"why & what is sweetness all alone?" - jack collom

in the 17th arrondissement

may 26, 2011

© anita aguilar

read a good poem: depression glass

photo © anita aguilar

Depression Glass

It seemed those rose-pink dishes
she kept for special company
were always cold, brought down
from the shelf in jingling stacks,
the plates like the panes of ice
she broke from the water bucket
winter mornings, the flaring cups
like tulips that opened too early
and got bitten by frost. They chilled
the coffee no matter how quickly
you drank, while a heavy
everyday mug would have kept
a splash hot for the better
part of a conversation. It was hard
to hold up your end of the gossip
with your coffee cold, but it was
a special occasion, just the same,
to sit at her kitchen table
and sip the bitter percolation
of the past week’s rumors from cups
it had taken a year to collect
at the grocery, with one piece free
for each five pounds of flour.

--by Ted Kooser via the poetry foundation

morandi (let's move)

latte. photo © anita aguilar

more photos, etc. here

i want to move.

i want to move to morandi.

yes, morandi, the restaurant.

it’s a perfect plan—pretty west village spot, right there on waverly and 7th avenue south. (i used to live a few blocks away, i know it will be easy to fall back into a routine...reunite with the dry cleaners on 8th, the guys at the magazine store on hudson. i could start running again, by the water…)

if I lived at morandi, when the weather is nice, i could start the day with breakfast at 8--or ease into the brunch hour-- at a table outside.

i could have a skim latte and something simple—a selection from the basket of sweet breads. everything in it has a distinct and delicious ring, and indeed there are enough for each day of the week: brioche with chocolate and hazelnuts to make the monday less mopey; cherry spirals on tuesday; a simple cornetti, midweek; sweet pistachio bread on thursday; the panetti al forno-–a bit more savory, with prosciutto and raisins--for the friday morning after the night before; bombolini –little italian donuts!--as the precursor to a more luxurious weekend brunch; and, ricotta fritters to celebrate the 7th day.

is it working for you?

there are eggs, served with salt cod or skirt steak or more simply, with grilled tomatoes and country bread.

there’s salad: arugula or escarole, seafood, or spelt.

a more serious commitment can be made--meatballs with pine nuts and raisins, or an egg pasta with a classic meat sauce. (i’m not sure i could make that my first meal of the day—but i wouldn’t dream of messing with you, if you could. in fact, you could wind up being...my hero.)

but that is how a day could start at morandi. imagine where we could go from there?

sounds like a nice little life, ay?

ok, then.

let’s move.

AMO the ARG: food (mark's deli, palermo soho)

this "deli" at el salvador 4701 has a beautiful side courtyard...

mantecado...a butter cake with snowdrifts of confectioner's sugar...

little girl likes big coffee

AMO the ARG: on the street where you "live" (day 1)

the bumpy flight from bogota to buenos aires left me sick--incapacitated, really--for a few hours after our arrival. z went off exploring on her own, while i took a recovery nap. by the early afternoon, i was able to hit the streets outside of our rented apartment in search of something light and argentinian to eat.

we stayed a two-bedroom, duplex apartment in a recoleta, not in the section of town where tourists would typically stay, but in a residential neighborhood off a busy main street, avenida pueyrredon. i loved watching people go through their every day lives, going to and from work, picking up their kids from school, walking their dogs, meeting for coffee...

these photos will not be the best of the bunch-- i struggled to take photos at first, i hadn't adjusted to the tight, busy corners and the bright sun-- but i'm sentimental about them as they mark the very first things i saw and loved and would sort of set the stage for the rest of the week.

a cafe on "our" corner, avenues berruti and pueyrredon...

the festive buses...i soon found out that each line has its own design....

portenos, waiting for the bus...

i loved the architecture...and the power lines that cut across the streets...

and duero, the euro-style coffee shop where i had my first meal, on the corner of avenidas pueyrredon and santa fe.

since i was still recovering, i had tea with milk (te con leche) and toast with dulce de leche.
duero would become our regular breakfast stop, with only a couple of exceptions.
and i basically always ordered this (but with coffee...good, strong coffee)

two of the fine staffers at duero...


all photos © anita aguilar

hip hip broadway

one-triple zero-one, nyc.

opening ceremony. from the breslin entrance...

i had no idea the OC was coming to midtown.

even the garment bags are hot (pink)...

i love the packaging -- romika vintage 70s tennies, from germany, at project 8a.

project 8a has all the stock that's left, and they're going fast...(though maybe you can find them on ebay?)

but this is where it all happens for me...stumptown coffee...

love...

photos © anita aguilar

read a good poem: the diner

11am at joseph leonard. nyc.

The Diner, by Richard Jones

The short-order cook and the dishwasher

argue the relative merits

of Rilke’s Elegies

against Eliot’s Four Quartets,

but the delivery man who brings eggs

suggests they have forgotten Les fleurs

du mal and Baudelaire. The waitress

carrying three plates and a coffeepot

can’t decide whom she loves more—

Rimbaud or Verlaine,

William Blake or William Wordsworth.

She refills the rabbi’s cup

(he’s reading Rumi),

asks what he thinks of Arthur Waley.

In the booth behind them, a fat woman

feeds a small white poodle in her lap,

with whom she shares her spoon.

“It’s Rexroth’s translations of the Japanese,”

she says, “that one can’t live without:

May those who are born after me

Never travel such roads of love.”

The revolving door proffers

a stranger in a long black coat,

lost in the madhouse poems of John Clare.

As he waits to be seated,

the woman who owns the place

hands him a menu

in which he finds several handwritten poems

by Hafiz, Gibran, and Rabindranath Tagore.

The lunch hour’s crowded—

the owner wonders

if the stranger might share

my table. As he sits,

I put a finger to my lips,

and with my eyes ask him

to listen with me

to the young boy and the young girl

two tables away

taking turns reading aloud

the love poems of Pablo Neruda.

(via the poetry foundation)

photo © anita aguilar

saturday, at saturdays

saturdays, on crosby street. photo © anita aguilar

more boards...photo © anita aguilar

i spent saturday afternoon down in my former neighborhood, walking around in the sunshine (with a scarf, but sans coat!), brunching on spring street and checking out the very handsome goods at the pop up flea. (oh, give me money and a man to shop for and i know where to go and do some damage.)

but my favorite part of the day, not surprisingly, revolved around the discovery of a new coffee place.

saturdays, on crosby street, is a small coffee bar attached to a small surf shop, and it appears to cater exclusively to men and the women who love to see them in only the finest surf gear. among their offerings: hullabaloo boards, alex knost wetsuits and lightning bolt shorts, select dry-land goods (i especially like their ties) and surfing-related miscellany (wax, books, dvds, best made axes - not sure what the axes are for? but i like them). some of the brands are a mystery to me (a non-surfer) but my friend (a surfer in his soul) was agog. he took a careful, admiring eye to and for pretty much every single piece in there.

i fancied the lattes, made artfully and strong by josh, one of the owners.

as we sat with our lattes on the wooden bench in the front of the store, across from a row of surfboards and i talked about my week, it was impossible not to notice my friend's eyes widen and gleam--he was mesmerized by the surfing movie that was being projected on the wall behind me. i knew that he was dreaming about the next time he could hop on a train to long island to see if the surfing would be as perfect as josh had described it minutes before, that he was longing not to be in that very cool shop, drinking perfectly nice coffee with a perfectly nice girl, but out on the ocean, alone and at peace on his board.

and i laughed to myself because i found it impossible to blame him.

***
saturdays is every day at 31 crosby st (between grand and broome streets), nyc.
m-f: 8am-8pm
sat: 10am-5pm
sun: 11am-6pm

iced coffee and tequila

vietnamese iced coffee. april 23, 2009.

i have a couple of friends who are yearning for "iced coffee" weather. and while i, too, am wondering where the hell spring is (but steadfastly refusing to pull out my winter coat again), i almost never drink iced coffee, certainly not in the morning. oh, i like it fine enough, but it's too easy to drink. and really, it has to be consumed pretty quickly lest it get depressingly watered down, like a yoo-hoo.

but vietnamese iced coffee stands apart from this phenomenon. the first few sips are shocking--it is so wonderfully, toxically thick with sweet condensed milk and that too-roasted coffee bean flavor--try to drink it too quickly, and it will send you reeling. at the very least, it could ruin your interest the meal that awaits you. you have to sip it throughout the meal, let the ice mellow it out. it seems never to get too sadly diluted.

and it knows no season. yesterday, my friend/boss for a freelance project took us out for a sort of celebratory lunch, and even though i was under-dressed for the weather (cold, cold hands!) and (probably) over-caffeinated, i ordered a vietnamese iced coffee without a second thought. i knew every leisurely sip would hit the spot.

***
do we think it wise to agree to have one's hair cut by a woman named tequila?

i'm about to find out.

enjoy the afternoon.