Stone Park Cafe
Source: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/03/30/dining/30rest.390.jpgOkay, so here it is: bicoastal episode in all its glory.
Just yesterday I was feeling giddy about living in California (7/25 post), and today I am wishing I lived 5,000 miles away, in the Meatpacking District...or Park Slope.
I am going to NYC in a couple weeks to get my fix.
V, a girlfriend from high school and culinary-school trained foodie, is arranging a little dinner reunion for my visit. She has emailed me the names of four restaurants in Brooklyn that she recommends.
Charno4 - her favorite; "super, super yummy with GREAT cocktails"
Stone Park Cafe - her favorite in Park Slope
Moim - a Korean restaurant where "you don't smell like food" upon leaving
Toby's - "great pizza and great atmosphere"
In checking out the first two, depression sank in. I was already feeling homesick (for New York, that is) just thinking about the post-travel gloom which will start to settle in on my last day in the city...or sooner...
That's right. The trip hasn't even happened yet.
The photos for Char No.4 show a gorgeous wood-paneled restaurant bathing in warm lighting the color of Johnny Walker Red. Pics of Stone Park Cafe' reveal a cozy brick interior with hardwood floors... I could smell the hot cider and cinnamon from the computer screen. No fair no fair no fair.
I couldn't take it anymore.
Ok. Let me rant some more:
California doesn't have cute little restaurants like Stone Park Cafe with real brick interiors and hardwood floors. Plain and simple. California architecture is plain UGLY and charmless compared to the average building on the Northeast. You have to be a fricking muti-millionaire to have a pad with creaky flooring and nooks and crannies etched in the wall. Usually, if you find a place like that, it is so dilapidated that you have to throw in a few hundred-thousand dollars more to get it to livable condition.
In Manhattan or other parts of the city, I could have a place with hardwood floors that has wedding cake detailing around the thresholds for the same money that would get me a modern (read: charmless) looking apartment here.
I am not being fair. I haven't looked. I know that San Francisco and even Palo Alto have gorgeous places...but well, I am biased, okay?
Sigh.
I had a similar nagging ache two years ago after visiting NYC; I experience it every blue moon. My condition gets worse during Thanksgiving, Christmas, the beginning of baseball season (I used to be a huge Yankees' fan), and Fashion Week.
My favorite places in the world are too far apart from each other. Booooo. Hisssss.
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