Englishman in New York

I don’t often blog about food, probably because Sofie and I tend to go to the same half dozen or so places all the time. But the other week we visited one of New York’s better known restaurants, Prune, in the East Village.

Our party of four arrived before the sun set and the ambiance of the small restaurant, with its wooden chairs and simple decor, was very relaxing and homely. We had a lovely meal, chatting, laughing and enjoying the delicious food. In fact, we had such a good evening that we took our time ordering and eating each of our three courses, which is just as well considering Prune is one of New York’s more expensive restaurants.

When we had been in the restaurant for a little over two hours, and were about halfway through two desserts that we were sharing in the middle of the table, the waitress came over and politely asked if we wouldn’t mind finishing up soon because she had a table for four who had been waiting for half an hour and she didn’t want to keep them waiting any longer.

Being hurried away from our table didn’t ruin the evening. But it did leave a bad taste in my mouth. I understand it’s not fair to keep other people waiting. But isn’t it equally unfair to throw people off a table when the whole idea of eating out is that it is an evening in and of itself, especially when they haven’t even finished eating?

On a related note, my Blogarithms story for Metro today is about food blogger Restaurant Girl.

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Sometimes the news coming out of Iran reminds me of a sketch from Monty Python. Here’s a recent BBC report on the latest Islamic dress code crackdown:

The focus of the new campaign is to stop women wearing tight overcoats that reveal the shape of their bodies or showing too much hair from beneath their headscarves.

[…]It is not just the young and very fashionable who are being harassed this year, middle aged women and even foreign tourists are being cautioned.

One foreign journalist was stopped and the police complained the photograph in her press card was indecent, even though it was taken by the Ministry of Islamic Guidance.

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Michael Chabon’s latest book The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was in the news recently over claims that it is Antisemitic.

The New York Post’s Page Six reported that the book “depicts Jews as constantly in conflict with one another, and its villains are a ruthless, ultra-Orthodox sect that resembles the Lubavitchers.” Which reminded me a little of my mum’s take on the Jewish community of Manchester, England, where she was born.

Nevermind, as Gawker points out, the book has received glowing reviews from both The Forward and the New York Sun, two newspapers that would be extremely quick to highlight any Antisemitism if indeed there were any to be found. Which makes you wonder where the Post got the idea that the book was Antisemitic?

By chance, I recently finished Chabon’s most well-known work, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a lengthy but highly enjoyable Pulitzer Prize winning story about a young Jew who flees Nazi-occupied Prague and joins his cousin in New York where they become famous comic book artists.

Chabon’s research and attention to detail alone are worthy of the prize. But I have to say that in all my years of reading, I have never come across a novel with so many unfamiliar words. At the risk of appearing ignorant, a few of the words I tripped over are italicized below:

“His habit of youthful stoicism kept him cool in the lachrymose embrace of his grandfather that morning at the Bahnhof.”

“…he would invariably finish, with a sweeping gesture that, in the dusk of a Brooklyn July, was limned by the luminous arc of his cigar.”

“It was very hard to see but from time to time a rogue current of air, or the vagaries of the invisible, wheezing, steam-producing, machinery, would produce a break in the cover, and he could see that they were indeed inside a grand space, ribbed with porcelain groins, set with white and blue faience that was cracked in places, sweating and yellowed with age.”

“The storefronts were narrow, clad in clapboard, their cornices a ragged mess of telephone wires and power lines overgrown with Virginia creeper. Tommy wanted to say something about all of this to cousin Joe. He wished he could tell him how the churned-up sidewalk, the hectoring crows on the bare Virginia creeper, and the irritable buzzing of Mr Spiegelman’s neon sign made him feel a kind of premonitory sadness for adult life, as if Bloomtown, with its swimming pools, jungle gyms, lawns and dazzling sidewalks, were the various and uniform sea of childhood itself, from which this senescent hunk of the village of Manticock protruded like a wayward dark island.”

Yup, “porcelain groins.” I love it!

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A writer should be like a playwright — putting people on stage, putting ideas on stage, making the reader become the audience.

David Halberstam, 73, Reporter and Author, Dies, New York Times.

The job of the reporters in Vietnam was to report the news, whether or not the news was good for America. To the ambassadors and generals, on the other hand, it was crucial that the news be good, and they regarded any other interpretation as defeatist and irresponsible.

David Halberstam: Witness to War, Poynter Online.

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He may not have been much cop at running a country, but Boris Yeltsin (who died today) sure could dance.

Here’s a snippet from Russian television showing how Boris defeated the evil Gennady Zyuganov, of the Communist Party, in a post Perestroika dance dance revolution face off otherwise known as the 1996 Presidential election.

Is that a future President Vladimir Putin I spy at the end of the video with a full head of hair?

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Rio surpassed all my expectations and has given me a great desire to explore more of Brazil. The location of the city, set among the mountains and looking out to sea, is spectacular. Cariocas are genuinely warm and friendly. The food is delicious. The music is great.

But it is uncomfortable to be in a city where you never quite feel safe. The gated apartment blocks, the constant anecdotes of tourists being robbed and of Cariocas being shot and killed mitigate so much of what makes Rio so great. Just one day after we left Rio 19 people were killed in gun battles between drug dealers and police that spilled over into the heart of the city.

It seems strange that a gigantic statue of Jesus Christ looks out over a city where there is so much violence and poverty, and where sex, in the form of Cariocas’ skimpy bathing outfits and the passionate rhythms of Samba and Forro, is never far from the surface.

As for the lawlessness, we were lucky that our hotel in Ipanema had a rooftop pool. I don’t know how I would have felt if I had to spend an afternoon trying to relax on the beach never trusting when I went into the sea that I would return to find my things where I left them.

In fact, I think it was Ilha Grande that really cemented my love for Brazil. It was the only part of our holiday when we could truly relax. And when we returned to Rio afterwards, what had once seemed an exotic, bustling city, became a humid, dirty, smelly metropolis.

It was the music that made Rio so special. If you want to really enjoy Brazil’s beaches and natural beauty you’ve got to get out of the city.

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Did I mention that Ilha Grande was one of the most perfect places I have ever seen? Our final day on the island we decided to put our previous day’s nightmare behind us and we headed out early for a 40-minute boat ride to nearby Las Palmas Cove.

We stopped in the cove (above) for a quick swim before gathering our things and heading off on a 30-minute walk along hilly jungle paths that took us to another side of the island and to Ilha Grande’s most famous beach, Lopes Mendes.

This is the view of the busier side of Lopes Mendes. Behind the camera, stretching for about a mile is a slowly curving coastline and beach that must have been populated by less than 30 people. The sand is so soft and fine that it actually squeaks underfoot, a little like freshly fallen snow.

After a relaxing few hours that included much splashing around in the sea and a quick game of Frisbee we headed back through the forest to Las Palmas Cove. On the way, we heard some rustling in the trees about 15 feet away to our right and saw a troop of medium-sized monkeys, possibly about two feet tall, making their way slowly along the branches.

Back at Las Palmas Cove we had 25 minutes to spare before the departure of a boat that would take us back to the main port, so we took advantage of the cove’s floating bar. To save us having to rush our beers, the barman signaled for the boat to pull up alongside the bar to pick us up. A couple of hours later we were on a ferry heading back to the mainland. If you ever go to Rio do not miss the opportunity of visiting Ilha Grande. I promise, you won’t regret it.

Tomorrow: Final thoughts.

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