Crumbs
Dessert
Manhattan : Greenwich Village : University Place & East 13th St.
Crumbs is a cupcake shop that first opened in 2003 in the Upper West Side; it now has a number of locations in Manhattan (and one in Brooklyn) as well as a handful outside New York. It’s not the kind of place I would go of my own accord, but Brokelyn alerted me to this free cupcake offer—You still have time to snag one yourself; the vouchers are good through April. Anyway, though I’m not the kind of guy who’d buy a cupcake, I’m not the kind of guy who’d turn down a free cupcake either, so I headed to Crumbs’ Union Square location, voucher in hand.
Crumbs makes a number of cupcake varieties daily, including something they call Colossal Cupcakes which are made to be brought home and shared. Which is just a cake, right? I’m pretty sure we have giant cupcakes already; they’re called cakes.
Here’s some of the flavors I remember seeing there: Cookie Dough, S’Mores, Margarita (I don’t know; the frosting, I guess?), Oreo-Something-or-Other, Chocolate Mint and, of course, Red Velvet. Bitches love a Red Velvet—which, by the way, is just chocolate cake with a ton of red food coloring in it. That’s what they’re losing their shit over.
Okay, anyway: I settled on Chocolate Pecan Pie, which was a chocolate cupcake topped with pecans and some caramel frosting. It was okay, but here’s my problem with the gourmet cupcake thing: If I had paid for that cupcake, it would have been $4. That seems pretty insane, especially because the differences separating a “gourmet” cupcake and a regular, child’s birthday party cupcake are minimal to say the least.
This is the rich white lady version of gorging on a box of Oreos. There’s no difference, not only in that they are both completely empty foods, but also in that they taste essentially the same. No matter what flavor your cupcake is, it’ll always just mostly taste like sugar. And you’ll eat it and you’ll like it because our dumb brains have evolved over time to like sugar and want more of it, originally because nutrition typically came along with it, although that’s not the case anymore.
But eating cake, as with the bag of Oreos, doesn’t really taste like anything aside from the generic sensation of “sweet.” Eating cake is not like eating a great meal or even a great pie or a great cookie, where the flavors can be complex and satisfying. Eating cake is just a few steps removed from poring sugar directly into your mouth. There’s not much else going on there.
So that’s my beef with the so-called “cupcake craze” of the 2000s. It’s just a slightly more bourgeois version of the processed, empty substances food science has been pushing on us for decades. But the cupcake craze may finally be coming to an end, at least according to Gothamist, who reports Crumbs’ sales and stocks are steadily falling. I don’t think cupcakes are going anywhere for now, because I’ve never walked by Magnolia in the West Village and not seen it absolutely packed with middle aged white women. But If all the Crumbs in the city disappeared overnight, I certainly wouldn’t miss them. Those locations would be better served by just about anything else.
I guess that explains the free cupcake voucher in the first place. The idea, I suppose, being that you’d get a free cupcake and like it so much you’d keep coming back. But who needs cupcakes on any regular basis? I can’t imagine stopping off for a cupcake after work. It seems absurd to me—I’m not a child. I think I probably eat a cupcake once every three or four years, and that’s plenty. If there were enough people eating cupcakes every week to make Crumbs expand to close to 70 locations in ten years, I’m not disappointed to see their numbers diminishing.
Wacky Wok
Chinese
Manhattan : Alphabet City : D & 9th
All neighborhoods in New York go through changes, but I don’t think any has changed quite as dramatically as Alphabet City. The little area east of the East Village, identified by its lettered avenues extending past 1st Avenue, used to be notorious for being the de facto home of Manhattan junkies and other criminal types. The neighborhood, and its central Tompkins Square Park, were known as a needle-strewn no man’s land no respectable person ever ventured into even in the middle of the day, nevermind at night.
In fact, there’s an old joke that the letters of the avenues in Alphabet City stand for the kind of person that would visit them. Avenue A is for the Adventurous. Avenue B is for the Brave. Avenue C is for the Crazy and Avenue D is for the Dead.
Of course, Alphabet City isn’t what it used to be. Avenue A now has new (and undoubtedly very expensive) apartment buildings. Avenue B has gourmet coffee shops. Avenue C has art galleries and Avenue D has Wacky Wok.
A bourgeoise Chinese take-out specializing in organic vegetables, home made sauces and free-range meats, Wacky Wok allows you to create your own wok by selecting each individual ingredient. I hate the name, but I liked the custom wok idea enough to walk over to Avenue D one night to risk life and limb (totally kidding) and give it a try.
It works like this: First you pick a protein. I went with the chicken but you can also get pork, beef, tofu, shrimp or the market fish of the day. Then you pick your vegetables. I got baby corn, pea pods, eggplant and carrots. Next, you pick your sauce. Mine was a coconut milk based curry. Finally, you choose your rice or noodles. I went with rainbow rice–white, wild and long grain–but there are a lot of options for noodle fans as well.
I decided on the large size wok for $9.75 which ended up being so much food I kept a good third of it for lunch the next day at the office. And there was plenty of chicken left over–they’re not skimping on the meat, that’s for sure. The regular size is only $6.75, so either way, you’re getting a really good deal. The organic and free-range aspect of the ingredients is definitely a welcome addition and the vegetables are clearly much fresher and nicer than an average Chinese place. I guess that’s not saying much, but what I’m trying to convey is that Wacky Wok seems serious about using quality ingredients.
I read some complaints online that they don’t include enough sauce with the woks and I think those complaints are valid. You could barely even tell the curry was there, but I will say the rice, vegetables and chicken were tasty enough on their own that I didn’t have to cover them up with anything. Still, I’m sure those home made sauces are very good if there was enough on the wok to tell. When I did get a good forkful of it it seemed very nice, so I wouldn’t have minded a bit more.
But overall, this was a very good and very inexpensive meal–for the quality as well as quantity of food. The only real knock I have against this place is that the Thai iced tea I had, while also clearly home made, just wasn’t up to snuff. It tasted almost bitter, which is sort of the opposite of the ideal. But the quality food, the customizable dishes and the generous portions all make Wacky Wok something of a hidden gem, tucked away, as it is, all the way out there on Avenue D. This place would undoubtedly be a huge hit for the lunch hour set in Midtown; hopefully this location will be successful enough that a franchise could become a reality.
I think even 10 years ago, if you were to tell someone there’d be an organic, eco-friendly wok shop opening on Avenue D, they’d think you were out of your mind. But one of the great pleasures of this city is that it never stops changing. Sometimes for the worse, as anyone who has to pay rent to live or operate a business here can tell you. But often, in this case and so many others, it changes for the better.
Mamoun’s
Falafel
Manhattan : Greenwich Village : MacDougal St. & Minetta Ln.
I’ve been going to the IFC Center in the Village a lot lately. First because they were having a Stanley Kubrick revue, so I needed to see Spartacus, 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining. I wouldn’t have minded seeing all of them, honestly, but three out of thirteen isn’t bad.
Then I went back to see Share Carruth’s new film, Upstream Color. Carruth’s first film, Primer, is one of my absolute favorite films ever made. It’s one of the few movies I truly get something new out of every time I watch it and it’s also the only time I can remember wanting to immediately watch a film again right after I saw it.
Because I love Primer so much, I was both excited to see what Carruth has been doing for the past nine years and also kind of scared that whatever it was couldn’t possibly live up to his debut. I still think this is true, based on the one viewing I had of Upstream Color. It’s a very pretty film and I like that there’s a lot of tangled threads that need to be teased out, but it’s nothing like the impossibly intricate Primer, a film so dense it makes every subsequent viewing revelatory.
Still, I’m just glad Carruth is making more films. He’s far too talented not to be. He also gave a brief Q&A after the film that revealed a little about how he writes his films (and then eventually does everything else as well, from acting, directing, editing and composing). It also revealed that he seems like a really sweet and nice guy. I hope we don’t have to wait nearly a decade to see him again.
After that screening, I walked over to Mamoun’s on Bleecker to get a falafel. There was a line out the door at Mamoun’s when I visited while a falafel place literally across the street was empty. I took this to be a good sign (and also vastly preferred Mamoun’s signage, which is how I make most of my food-related decisions, to be honest) so I stood in line with the rest.
The sandwich was good. The falafel was moist and the vegetables were fresh and it was a good dinner/snack for $3.50. I also spotted an inexplicable Terrible One sticker inside. That’s my brother’s old Austin-based BMX company. What was it doing there? I don’t know — I certainly didn’t put it there — but I feel it adds to Mamoun’s cachet.
Pink Pony
French
Manhattan : Lower East Side : Ludlow & Houston
Pink Pony opened in the Lower East Side a full two decades ago and, in the ensuing years, has earned a reputation as a classy eatery that nonetheless retains some of the old LES’ eccentricities. Unfortunately, last month the Pink Pony closed its doors when the landlord raised rent by $6,000(!), from $14k to $20k.
I visited Pink Pony sometime in the autumn of last year, I believe. I was walking around the Lower East Side and craving french toast, as is often the case, when I saw the Pony and decided to give theirs a try. Honestly, it wasn’t what I was looking for – their french toast wasn’t made with the fluffy white bread I was craving but with a crunchy baguette instead. It certainly wasn’t bad, and the price was pretty reasonable, but you know. When you’re craving something specific, you don’t really have any patience with inventiveness.
Still, the Pink Pony was undeniably a beautiful little place. It’s walls were covered with old bottles, books and paintings, and everything from the ceiling tile to the walls themselves looked appropriately vintage. It’s always sad when a restaurant goes out of business, especially one as much a part of the neighborhood as this. The Lower East Side – the city in general – is worse off without it.
Little Italy Pizza
Pizzeria
Manhattan : Midtown : 45th & 6th
Hello, friends and fellow countrymen. I have returned to New York after a couple weeks in Rio de Janeiro, which is a beautiful city filled with gorgeous beaches and attractive Art Deco architecture. It’s also filled with a lot of graffiti and some unfortunate pollution, which was somewhat surprising, but even the shadier, dirtier areas were really lovely, all things considered.
I went to most of the famous neighborhoods. Copacabana is pretty but the beaches in Ipanema have even better views of the surrounding mountains. Cinelândia is interesting and has some of the best buildings, even though very few of those buildings are cinemas anymore. (And the ones that are mostly show pornographic films.)
Flamengo and Botafogo have their charms, and Lapa is interesting but a bit crazy for me, really. My favorite neighborhood, in fact, was the veritably sleepy Santa Teresa, with its narrow, hilly roads and gorgeous, brightly colored pastel houses. My friend told me there even used to be trolley cars as recently as two years ago. An at a party at one of the houses there, I looked out over the balcony and could see a huge part of the city lit up by the beaches below. Delightful.
The food was a bit of a disappointment, really. A lot of it was sort of junk food – lots of pastries and cheeses and things. There was also a lot of pizza around, but Brazil’s disregard for proper pizza etiquette is pretty horrifying. Not only do they use forks and knives, which is enough to warrant dirty looks from New Yorkers, they also frequently put catsup and mustard on their slice. Catsup and mustard! That’s real!
The most common eatery in Rio by far are the juice bars which also serve the aforementioned pastries. You can find one on almost every corner and they have a wide selection of juices, mostly from fruits I didn’t recognize in any way. These juices were not often very sweet and the flavors seemed odd to my American palette, but they were interesting, I suppose. And juice bars on every corner is probably much healthier than the coffee shops (well, let’s be honest: Starbucks) we have on our every corner.
One juice I liked quite a bit was made from sugar cane. It wasn’t as sweet as you’d think, but it was strong. It was sea green in color, completely opaque and kind of frothy. Incidentally, the most popular alcoholic drink by far is cachaça, made from sugar cane juice allowed to ferment. It ranges from fairly sweet to paint-thinner strong and comes in seemingly infinite varieties. Some of it is quite nice, which is lucky because it’s next to impossible to get any good beer in Rio.
So maybe don’t visit Rio for the food, but do visit, if you have the chance. It’s a really pretty, interesting city with plenty to recommend it. And even the ocean water is super warm, which was a nice break from New York’s interminable winter.
Speaking of pizza, back in the city there’s a place called Little Italy Pizzeria which is not located in Little Italy at all, but rather the lunchtime metropolis that is Midtown, Manhattan. It’s not a great slice, but it isn’t terrible either. I wouldn’t recommend it, but at the very least, there’s no catsup and mustard involved.
