Author: JWF

West Village: Eating Ethnically

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ETHNIC EATS.  We like to eat and we like variety.  We’ve returned to some of our favorite dining spots, but have also been on a quest to try new places.  Here’s a round-up of some recent meals in the West Village.  Bon appetit!

Nisi  

On Bleecker Street, Nisi’s front window has a view of an attractive round table set with a white and blue patterned teapot. Inside, one wall is lined with shallow bowls facing out and the other is a lattice of clear blue bottles. The cuisine is Greek and we shared a green salad to start along with some very tasty large shrimps in a tomatoey sauce. They were listed as shrimp, but I’d call them langoustine, given their size and the presentation head and all. Following that, we dove into the lamb kebab and the half chicken with lemon. Portions were generous and both came with Greek fries. Plenty to eat in a most pleasant atmosphere.

Surya  

Also on Bleecker Street farther down is this delightful Indian restaurant. Here the Chief Penguin and I enjoyed a mix of old favorites and new dishes. The vegetable samosas were sizable and quite good. Even better was the spicy cauliflower in a rich tomato sauce. Next up, he sampled a special chicken dish while I loved the shrimp in a coconut curry sauce with strips of red and yellow peppers. All served with oodles of steamed rice. He had to have their garlic naan and I found the pappadum irresistible. Definitely worth a return trip!

Mole  

This West Village Mexican place has some of the best guacamole around! It’s chunky and fresh and you can even order it spicy with bits of jalapeno. Served in a wide stone bowl, it’s so good it’s hard to save room for anything else. But we did! The Chief Penguin had his standard, a quesadilla, and I tucked into the chicken enchiladas with red and green sauces. The red was rich and complex; the green piquant with some sourish high notes. They came with rice and refried beans, but the enchiladas themselves were enough for me.

Hudson Hound

Situated on Hudson Street with outdoor seating, the Irish Hound is rustic wood inside—old style wooden booths and a few tables with shelves of metal implements and wavy glass bottles lining the wall. It feels cozy. We sampled the excellent homemade hummus along with the grilled Caesar salad. The salad was perfect for sharing and attractively presented on a large square plate. We each ordered the half chicken with two sides. The roast chicken was some of the best I’ve eaten, adobe spiced with thimbles of three sauces—gravy, a green salsa, and their creamy yum-yum sauce. Lots of choices of sides, but I opted for the grilled asparagus and the sautéed spinach. Plenty of food and not for the faint of appetite.

Highlands  

Continuing our international culinary tour, we next visited Highlands, a Scottish gastropub on Christopher Street. It’s always been crowded when we’ve passed. Using Open Table, we were forced to book an early time and were the only ones in the dining room for a short while until another group of seniors arrived. Our waiter was a wiry young man with a wry sense of humor.

Being a traditionalist, C.P. ordered the sausage roll to start while I was intrigued by the description of the short rib crostini. It was sublime comfort fare—cubes of short rib on top of melted cheese and horseradish on toothy toasted bread.  Added to that was a mini cup of jus flavored with crumbles of blue cheese—heavenly! For mains, we sampled the gnocchi with wild mushroom sauce and the chicken Parmesan salad. The latter was more chicken than greens, the chicken having been breaded and fried just a bit. Another restaurant worth a return visit!

Niu Noodle House  

For a change of pace, we decided to go Chinese, and Niu on Greenwich Ave. was most satisfying. The panfried chicken, shrimp and chive dumplings were served straight from the stove while the pork buns were appropriately soft and tasty. For an entrée, we shared the spicy beef with mixed vegetables (green pepper and onions). We went for medium spicy rather than extra spicy and it was spicy enough for our palates.

Note: All photos from the web except for the Nisi table (JWFarrington).

Women of Note: Film & Theater

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WOMEN OF NOTE.  By happenstance, not by planning, we’ve seen and heard about some notable women in our recent film and theater-going adventures.   Founder Thomas Sung’s legacy to his children, all daughters, was his bank, Abacus Bank. Three of them work there; one, Jill, as the CEO, which is both significant and important.  Jane Jacobs was an activist back in the day when women were housewives and not supposed to be involved in politics. Not to mention that she was a working journalist.

Lastly, Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, real women, not just names of cosmetics, were founders and heads of their own very successful companies. This was in the 1930’s. Their story is told in the delightful musical, War Paint.

FILM FARE

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail.   We missed seeing this at the Sarasota Film Festival so were pleased it was playing here at the IFC Center. I had high expectations, based on what I knew about it and some overheard comments, and was not disappointed. A documentary about the banking industry, fallout from the crisis of 2008, and the fate of one small bank in Chinatown, New York, it’s also a portrayal of a strong and loving Chinese family. Thomas Sung, a lawyer, founded and ran Abacus Federal Savings Bank for many years until two of his daughters, Jill and Vera, succeeded him as CEO and director. What Cyrus Vance wrought when he brought charges against the bank unfolds over a five-year legal battle and a nine week trial. Simply excellent!

Personal note: I learned, after I’d seen the film and told him about it, that our son’s father-in-law knows the Sung family. They were friends of his aunt and he first visited them when he was a student.

      Citizen Jane: Battle for the City. Author of the groundbreaking work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, writer Jane Jacobs became an activist who fought against urban development that threatened communities at their core. This documentary is a wonderful depiction of the rise of Postwar modernism (think Le Corbusier) and the building of large scale low income high rises meant to solve the problems of slum neighborhoods. In fact, this form of urban renewal was a failure; decades later these buildings in cities across the country were all leveled.

Jacobs looked at cities from the perspective of the people and what happens on the street. A New Yorker and a resident of Greenwich Village, she mobilized neighbors to oppose extending 5th Avenue through Washington Square Park. They won against the powerful Robert Moses, the “villain” in this piece. Later they successfully fought a proposed expressway through lower Manhattan, another project Moses was attempting to ram through. This is a superb film, especially for city lovers.

War Paint. This new musical, staring Patti Lupone and Christine Ebersole, profiles roughly 30 years in the careers of Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden from the 1930’s to the 1960’s. Strong women both, they were vicious competitors and probably kept each other on their toes. Lupone and Ebersole are stellar stars in their own right and each gets her due in alternating scenes and songs showcasing their triumphs and woes and their somewhat lonely personal lives.

They came from poor backgrounds and each reinvented herself and then offered women the opportunity, found in a jar, to become beautiful, to “Put Your Best Face Forward.” The two male leads also have substantial parts, one as a husband and the other a gay devotee.  Each takes on marketing and sales responsibilities for his female boss. They have some juicy lines and are paired in a couple of rollicking songs.

Arden’s and Rubinstein’s clientele was primarily wealthy women of a certain age. Eschewing early television advertising, they are soon eclipsed by upstart Charles Revson with Revlon’s Fire & Ice lipstick. This musical was a lot of fun and I’d love to see it a second time!     

Personal note: We first saw Patti Lupone as a young actor in The Acting Company (founded by John Houseman) in Saratoga Springs in the 1970’s. More recently, we saw Christine Ebersole in performance twice in San Francisco as part of the Bay Area Cabaret series.

Note:  Images of Jane Jacobs, Helena Rubinstein (Daily Mail), and Elizabeth Arden (Lifestyle Lounge) are all from the web.  Header photo is the curtain for War Paint at the Nederlander Theatre.

Art at the Whitney

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WHITNEY BIENNIAL.

The Whitney Biennial brings together works of art by a wide variety of artists (60+ this year, I believe), many of them young.  Most of the art is recent or new works and includes paintings, sculpture, and video.  Overall the art is strange, provocative, disturbing, and sometimes even realistic.  We did just one floor of this extensive exhibit and will have to return to see the rest.  Here are some samples of what we saw.

One section of a cube by Pope. L, you could walk into whose interior and exterior walls were all covered with these slices of bologna each one with the face of one individual Jew in New York.  Almost 2,800 of these slices representing a fraction of a percent of the Jews in the city.    Odd and slightly disturbing.

  Work by Jon Kessler

La Talaverita, Sunday Morning NY Times, 2016 by Aliza Nisenbaum

One of John Divola’s series of Abandoned Paintings.

Section of stained glass wall by Raul de Nieves.  In front of it were several life sized figures made of yard, fabric, beads and the like.

  Glimmer Glass, 2016 by Carrie Moyer

Rug, 2015 by Ulrike Muller

 

The Whitney’s outdoor terraces are a wonderful venue for large scale sculpture.  I was particularly taken with the series of red cubes within cubes graduated in the degree of transparency.  The sculptor is Larry Bell.  The header photo is another view of this captivating work.

Note:  All photos by JWFarrington.

Manhattan Musings

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MANHATTAN MUSINGS. It’s been a week for rainy weather, TV, a fine film, and re-visiting some favorite West Village restaurants.  

After what seems like months of no rain in Florida, we are getting re-acquainted with the wet. Toting umbrellas and slogging through the puddles, we endured or enjoyed, depending on your perspective, two solid days of serious rain, gray skies, and temperatures scraping sixty. The day in between the soggy ones was cloudy with a brief showing of sun and somewhat warmer. It’s perfect for quiet hours reading or catching the latest film—that’s when we are not with the bundles of energy known as our granddaughters!

COMPASSIONATE CONFLICTED VICAR

We’ve been watching some recent episodes of Grantchester, and I’m continually impressed by the depth and complexity of this series. Yes, Sidney inserts himself into police business with his friend Geordie, the detective, and is seen as helpful by the crime victims’ families and as a hindrance by the local constabulary. He seems to have an inordinate amount of free time to devote to solving murders and to dancing attendance on one woman or another, be it his current love interest Hildegarde, or his longtime friend, wish-she-was-my-flame, Amanda.

Cosseted, cared for, and fussed over by his junior curate, Leonard, and by the bossy, but soft-hearted, Mrs. M., Sidney’s strongest relationship is really his deep friendship with Geordie. Older than Sidney, Geordie also served in the war, and, like Sidney, has memories of it he’d rather not recall. Although their approaches to daily life are quite different, the two men spar and josh, but when it matters most are each other’s staunchest supporter. First rate viewing!

FILM FARE

Their Finest is both a film about war and a love story. I found it moving and witty. Making a film that includes the making of a film is a challenge often not successfully met. Their Finest (with a title that is hard to remember and seems to ask “finest what?”) is a delightful exception. Here you have the Ministry of Information in 1940 London trying to bolster the morale of its citizens and simultaneously encourage the Americans to join the war. Their documentary assignment must be accurate and yet lively and thus you have the making of a film about the supposed actions of twin sisters helping evacuate soldiers at Dunkirk. The two male writers are joined by Mrs. Cole, a former secretary, who gets to write “slop” (dialogue for the women characters). As a backdrop to the levity of film production is the ongoing destruction and death wrought by the Blitz.

The cast is excellent: Bill Nighy as the consummately egocentric aging actor, Ambrose Hilliard; Gemma Arterton as Mrs. Cole, a quiet young woman with backbone and determination; and Sam Clafin as Buckley, her co-writer and an ordinary looking guy with a steadfast presence. Jeremy Irons has a cameo appearance as the Secretary of War. These are hard times and emotions are mostly kept in check. Besides Mrs. Cole, other women show up in the work place in expanded roles and one person questions what will happen when the war is over. Definitely worth seeing!

FAVORITE DISHES

We have been returning to some of our West Village favorite restaurants and ordering both new and old dishes from the menu. Last evening we got the last table at Meme Mediterranean (pronounced “may, may”), a cozy Middle Eastern eatery on Hudson Street. It had rained all day long and was still drizzling so the outside seating was not available. Midst a general din, we were squeezed in between two tables each with a pair of boisterous young women.

Despite the cacophony, our palates perked up at the tasty offerings. The Chief Penguin ordered the fried artichokes, always a pleaser, which come with two dipping sauces. My new favorite dish was four large spiced (not spicy) shrimp each one atop a cool cube of watermelon served on a narrow rectangular plate. It was the perfect marriage of piquant and cooling and, in its pinkness, oh, so pretty!

Credits:  Header photo and wet sidewalk JWFarrington (some rights reserved); Grantchester characters copyright ITV, Meme interior from their website.