By Caitlin Hawke

Ma La. If you've ever tasted a sichuan peppercorn you know of what I speak. And Ma La is what you'll get, in literal varying degrees, at 108 Food Dried Hot Pot. How to describe this very specific taste? Ma La is to Sichuan cuisine what umami is to Japanese cooking. Indispensable. At its mildest, Ma La is the sensation of a peppery spice that tingles on your tongue. At its strongest, it's a three-alarm fire.

But let me assure you that I don't have a high tolerance for spicy, and 108 Food Dried Hot Pot has just the right level for me.

In what was Cannon's Pub on the southeast corner of Broadway and W. 108th Street in a cheery, cherry red storefront sits 108 Food Dried Hot Pot. It's a humble spot that looks more like a cafeteria or a food court than a mecca for thrill seekers. When Columbia is in session, watch out because the turnover and traffic is prodigious. I even know a colleague who travels 3.5 miles down to this spot when the urge hits.  He's Taiwanese and claims it's the closest he's come to the food he grew up on. I wouldn't be surprised if Tony Bourdain ate there. It's just his kind of place.

I've warmed progressively to this temple of spice. And here now is an ode to the thing on the menu that people come from all points to devour: the dry hot pot.

First keep in mind that you'll have to choose your spice level. The four-point scale goes from non-spicy, to spicy, then medium spicy and finally to very spicy. You'll actually have to choose everything. But be thinking about how brave you plan to be. You might want to be incremental and start on the low end of the Sichuan Richter scale.

That will be the last thing you tell the cashier. And she'll repeat the scale at least twice before you make a stab at the level you want. So think on it. Now.

Before you get to that, you are going to be under a little pressure to choose your stir-fry ingredients. Here, too, I advise prudence. It's priced per pound. Meat, fish and shellfish are weighed separately from the veggies and tofu you'll choose. And you want the person who is choosing your ingredients to not have too heavy a hand if you want variety of ingredients. Again, it's priced per pound.

So you could go surf and turf with sole and chicken, shrimp and pork, or focus on the more exotic meat choices like beef tripe and chicken gizzards. But in between, there are many other delicacies to choose from like squid, shrimp balls, and paper thin slices of fatty beef.

Once you've conquered the meats, turn to the body of your dish. Stoke it with bok choy, cabbage, string beans, enokis, three or four sorts of tofu, eggplant, bean threads, lotus, cellophane noodles and much more.

Then it's on to the weighing and paying. It's by the pound so make sure what you see is what you can eat! A very filling bowl will run you roughly $12-14. After you pay, your selections are whisked back into the kitchen and in 7 minutes later: Behold the Bowl!

Glistening with the spicy oil -- at the heat level you pre-selected -- your hot pot arrives with a side of rice. One bite of the fillet of sole -- slightly crunchy perhaps because it was dusted in flour on its way to a sizzling hot skillet -- and you know there's a master chef in the back. Then a bit of chicken: moist and delicious, again. And the supporting cast of vegetables? All have their crunchy snap. Each element is cooked to perfection and all together make up a meal, bespoke for you and you alone.

You can share a hot pot or create your individual dish.

People are trekking here because the hot pot spot has drawn raves. And you've been walking by it each week wondering what's going on in there.  Wander and wonder no more. Go in. Take your time. Ask for help. And enjoy your creation.

It's not glamorous. And when it's a full house, there can be some bustle. But if you choose your season and the right hour, you are in for one very satisfying, chowhounding meal in the neighborhood.

Just remember to spice it right.

By Caitlin Hawke

If you are a regular or long-time reader of this blog and know one culinary thing about me, it's my fondness for Sun-Chan. That fondness is hard to dissociate from the late co-owner, Kumiko Imamura, who died suddenly just a couple of weeks ago. It makes me terribly sad that I don't have a decent picture of her, except for in my mind where she is alive and vibrant as ever. But the picture above captures her in context and in motion, as she aways was. And the picture below shows her at far left beside Tokishige, her co-owner and husband, at work in the kitchen.

If you want to know why I was a hugely appreciative fan, you could have a look at this post or this one. And I wrote this one, stunned by the news of her loss.

On Sunday, May 20, from 2 to 6 p.m. at the restaurant on the west side of Broadway between W. 103rd and 104th Streets, Tokishige and the Sun-Chan family will hold a remembrance. If you appreciate all that is authentic, slow, down to earth, communal, and kind, you join me in mourning her.

By Caitlin Hawke

A little more than three years ago, I wrote about a beautiful neighbor on this blog: Kumiko Imamura. A woman who worked as hard as anyone I've known, and always had a warm hello or good-bye and a smile.

Really, her smile started in her eyes - the smize - and then made its way across her whole face, like sun up at Sun-Chan. 

The quintessence of a hostess, she and her husband Tokishige own Sun-Chan, and Kumiko's way is to welcome you in, tuck you into her apron, make sure you have a hot cup of green tea, and take care of you while you were "hers" -- in her care at her hearth. 

If you've been to Sun-Chan, you know her hearth was, in fact, an inferno.  So this genuine hospitality was all in spite of standing long hours in the yakitori's scorching heat with constant motion around her coming from her loyal staff in a very tight space.

I wrote about her robata here and it's all still true, except it's not:

It's not true any more because tonight, I learned that we've lost this beautiful woman.

In Japanese, depending on how it's written, her name means beauty, forever, child.... To paraphrase James Joyce: She was Kumiko by name and kumiko by nature. And her loss is immense.

She weathered a terrible bout last year with the restaurant losing its gas, and she rebounded from the anguish of the saga with her arms spread wide to welcome her customers back. It's too cruel a twist that she's now gone.

In mourning, the staff and her husband Tokishige have closed the restaurant this week to bid her farewell. I understand there may be a service at the New York Buddhist Church in roughly six or seven days. If you would like details should I learn them, please leave a comment below and I'll be in touch.

I hope Tokishige and Rie and all the Sun-Chan extended restaurant family know that Kumiko is a neighbor who will be missed dearly and that Sun-Chan's community mourns alongside them all.

I won't soon forget this Queen of Queens.

With warmest thoughts of Kumiko and deep sympathies to her loved ones.

By Caitlin Hawke

As an antidote to recent posts that I titled "Empty Storefronts and the Changing Streetscape," which you can read here and here, here now is a feature that celebrates those Mom & Pop businesses, whether old or new, that are in the trenches making it work in Bloomingdale.  Like this week's little juiceteria, a business needs to maximize the output of its square footage to make a dent in the monthly commercial rent. And this is one explanation for all the food and alcohol that's being purveyed around town.  Volume is another must.  That makes Mom & Pop gun shy to say the least. It's hostile terrain for them.

coming out of the ovens and what's in the planning for upcoming feast days and holidays of all denominations.  Just like she was your next-door neighbor.  Because she is.  She is a Bloomingdaler of longstanding.  And now she's the owner of one of the oldest Mom & Pop purveyors around, though many still think of her as the new kid on the block.  But she's endured.  And that's not nothing!

In one of the earliest posts in the "Hyper-Local Eats" blog feature, Judith Norell's Silver Moon Bakery was a first stop.  You can read that old post here, an ode to her ginger blueberry muffin.

Since I have long admired Judith as an entrepreneur, a businesswoman, a second-careerist, a neighborhood champion and an emblem of the Mom & Pop potential to rebound on our avenues, I wanted to feature her again.  

SMB anchors the charming, unchanged historic building, that is captured over the years in these shots below. Judith was able to open SMB because her then landlord, Georgia Stamoulis, became her partner.  To this day, Georgia remains Judith's partner, but Georgia's brother, Michael Rose (who owns Broadway Cellar) is the current SMB landlord. To Georgia and Michael, we owe a word of thanks for keeping this vibrant bakery right where it belongs, bespoke for their special, low-lying corner of Broadway.

So, in 2018, my wish for us all?  Honor thy Mom & Pop.

If we let down our guard, they'll pave paradise and put up a parking lot (under a modern luxe condo).


Q&A with Judith Norell, proprietor of Silver Moon Bakery

Caitlin: Where does the name come from?
Judith: My original thought was to call it Silent Moon Bakery after a Zen poem about the Buddha who, like the moon in the sky, silently illuminates everything.

Caitlin: Artisanal bread baking is a second and illustrious career for you after your work as a professional harpsichordist that I read about here, here and here.  How long did you think you'd be in the baking game when you started SMB?
Judith: I never calculated.  My choices have usually been approached as “an adventure” -- I do it with my full heart, but, like an adventure, it may succeed and may not.

Caitlin: How has business evolved for you as your reputation has been more and more burnished over the years?
Judith: I don’t really know how to answer that question. We opened, and still are, an artisanal neighborhood bakery, and in spite of any publicity we have received, we rely on our immediate neighbors to keep us open. Personally, being an Upper West Sider for many years, I am familiar and comfortable with the political and social attitude in our neighborhood.  This means – at least in my experience – open criticism when things are not perfect, complaints about “high prices” (although in 17 years, our prices have increased much less than most other food items have. Check out our local supermarkets and compare their prices with those of 15 years ago). I personally have not profited financially from our increased reputation, but have tried to benefit our employees whenever things got a bit better.

Caitlin: What is important to you in business as part of your life view?  
Judith: To try to create a harmonious work atmosphere, and to realize that the most genius person can't do it alone, but relies on everyone working with him or her to be successful. People spend at least a third of their day at work, and it should be as pleasurable or at least benign as possible.  I speak from experience; during my apprenticeship in a bakery, the owner didn't know how to talk to those working for him; he was not a mean man, but like many of his generation, started as an apprentice, which meant abuse by his boss, and that he passed on to others when he had power.  He would never praise, only denigrate or criticize; the first time he did this to me, I was sure I would be fired, but, no, it was just his way. If he didn't say anything, you knew it was great.  He also talked down to many of the immigrants from other societies who worked for him, many of them former teachers, doctors, etc., with more education than he had.  So when I started SMB I vowed that it would be different, no fighting, no shouting or screaming.  (We've had a few incidents but they basically resolved peacefully.)  

Caitlin: What is the main challenge you face as a small business on Broadway?
Judith: Rent, rent, rent.
There is absolutely no protection for businesses from the whims of a landlord regarding commercial property.  In our case, when Silver Moon opened, our neighborhood between W. 96th and W. 110 Streets was a neglected area.  Below 96th Street were many co-ops, and fancier stores.  Above 110th Street was Columbia University and all its potential customers.  Our neighborhood was the black sheep, drug-infested side streets, etc.  Now that has all changed, and the landlords are often doubling the rent. Academy Florist, in the neighborhood for over 100 years, had to move because rent was doubled.  Bank Street Bookstore took over.  Henry’s swallowed an enormous rent increase.

Caitlin: So what is the key to SMB’s sustainability?
Judith: I have always believed in “mom & pop” shops, i.e., small, personal stores where the customers are known and catered to.  Too many business in our society care only about the bottom line.  I started Silver Moon Bakery because I love to bake, and also love to communicate with people.  Our counter staff, our bakers, almost everyone knows our customers, many by name, many by their favorite items, coffees, teas or sweets.  I think that, plus my passion for searching out new products, rather than just being another business, is the main key to our sustainability.  In fact, SMB is my culinary playground.

Caitlin: We are living a period of ever-widening economic disparity. Much has been made of this topic in the context of housing in New York.  And one hears more and more about the loss of Mom & Pop businesses.  You are one of the most successful examples -- and I think of you as a relative newcomer (despite that you've already been here for 17 years!) who seems to have the key to Mom & Pop success. Is that true?
Judith: No! See your question about main challenges.  There are many people who would love to live and work in their own community, even here, on the UWS.  But rents are prohibitively high.  Look at the many vacant stores on Broadway – the landlords are waiting for a bank or a chain drugstore who can afford to amortize by having many branches, little labor or production costs, and a high profit margin.

Caitlin: Could you give readers an insight into how commercial rents work in this city?
Judith: There is no limit to what can be charged on commercial property.  At one period, there was a form of commercial rent control, which expired in 1963. An article in the Fordham University Urban Law Journal discusses this:

Caitlin: Do you have any protection from lease to lease?
Judith: No, there is no protection.

Caitlin: How long is a typical lease?
Judith: It can be anywhere from 8 to 15 years.  Ours was originally 10 years, with a 5 year extension. The current lease is for 7 years.

Caitlin: If your rent were to double from one lease to the next, what would your next move be?
Judith: I don’t know. We cannot afford higher rent, since our profit margin is quite low and the two ways to reduce costs are not acceptable:  I will not reduce the quality of our ingredients, or the pay scale of our employees.  We would probably look for another space, but the cost of moving our ovens and equipment might be so high, it would be unrealistic to move.  In that case, we would have to close.

Caitlin: In addition to being a business owner, you are a longtime neighborhood resident.  What do you think about the climate on Broadway?
Judith: It’s terrible.  Chains typically charge more and pay employees less than neighborhood stores. Compare Suba’s prices with Duane Reade’s -- and Mr. Suba’s employees know their customers. The quality of neighborhood life decreases, becomes more impersonal.  Empty storefronts are depressing and destroy neighborhoods.  

Caitlin: Are there still commercial deals to be had on Amsterdam or above 96th Street?  
Judith: I have noticed the new dining corridor, and hope the small restaurants succeed. So I think Amsterdam Avenue will attract diners, but I don’t think residents west of Amsterdam will readily go there to shop.  When I first looked for a place to have a bakery, the manager of the old Gourmet Garage at 96th and Broadway told me: “people will not travel more than a few blocks at most to shop. But to dine is another matter.”  I never forgot that.

Caitlin: What is your understanding of the term gentrification?  Was Silver Moon’s appearance the product of gentrification?  Will gentrification be the demise of businesses like Silver Moon?
Judith: When I moved to 105th Street and West End Avenue, the neighborhood was considered dangerous -- not West End, but the side streets. I actually took a few self-defense lessons before moving in, and learned to walk in the middle of the road when coming home at night.  At that time I shopped at a used childrens’ clothing store on Broadway, bought sashimi from the little Japanese grocery shop on 105th off Broadway, drank café con leche at the Latino restaurant on Broadway & 108th Street [La Rosita], got my videos and dvds from Gary’s Movie Place, and my vegetables from the Korean greengrocer between 105th and 106th Street.  All were small, neighborhood places.  What became SMB was Loretta’s Lingerie, which had red flocked carpeting in the windows.  I moved in because I was a musician, the rents were low and the walls were thick enough so that my practicing wouldn’t disturb others.  Most of the musicians in my building who became successful moved out to more “gentrified” neighborhoods.  

Now, with many old buildings co-oped by the landlords and newer buildings being offered as condominiums, median income has shot up as new tenants came in.  Even rentals are now called, “luxury rental residences” in some cases.  This is my understanding of gentrification – more money flowing into the neighborhood, the quality of life changing, goods becoming more expensive. The mix of working class, artists and middle class which existed when I first moved here, has totally changed.  The druggy side street tenement apartments are now being rented to young, professional couples, and what was once a multi-cultural mix of Latino, Black and Caucasian has disappeared.

Caitlin: What would you like to be doing in five years?
Judith: I would like to travel more, explore the world -- and visit bakers and learn their ways of baking! Listen to music, hike, be with my grandchildren, meditate more and relax.

Caitlin: In 10 years?
Judith: The same!

To join the SMB mailing list, send Judith an email and she'll add you: info@silvermoonbakery.com. 

Normalized by tv (hello "Mad Men"), promoted by the restaurant industry, essential to covering vertiginous commercial rents, and induced by current world events: drinking is plainly on the rise, and it's not just in Britain.

The 'French paradox' pointing to the potential benefits of red wine notwithstanding, alcohol is probably best used in more moderate ways -- and definitely more moderately than the year-end dictates.  That's why today, I wanted to celebrate not a hyper-local eat.  But a hyper-local drink.

What I dip in there for is the following hyper-local eat of the day: a kale-apple-carrot-lemon juice.

Oooh wee!  Does this hit the spot.  I tell them to go easy on the lemon, but a little citrus foils the sweet of the apple and carrot and sets off the herby kale. I know that people love to throw shade on this leafy green. A friend, let's call him Herr Doktor T, likes to harsh on kale the way Graham Chapman harshed on Spam. That just means more kale for me.  Honest to goodness, there's only one way I don't like to eat it and that's sautéed.

Chop it to eat raw like Henry's does for its best salad (that link includes the recipe).  Throw it in a fritatta.  Or juice it to detox.  Kale is scrumptious. Oh, no, you won't hear me rag on kale. And while this juice treat probably clocks in at a small meal's worth of calories, at least it beats the nutritive value of a Unicorn Frappuccino.

Yes, you heard me. That's a thing. Or at least was a thing for a brief hallucinatory moment.  Its full name (trademarked, bien sûr) is Unicorm Frappuccino Blended Crème.  (I'm guessing that its purveyors cannot legally use the word "cream" when advertising it.) While I am not sure it qualifies as a beverage, it may qualify as entertainment since most of what I know I overheard in a surreal conversation about the Unicornuccino. 'It changes colors!'  'It's sprinkled with pink and blue fairy powders.'  Apparently it doubles as a fidget spinner-lava lamp.

OMG. Such is "food" in our day and age. It's enough to drive you to drink!

And drink you should:  at Cool Fresh Juice Bar.  Stop in and let me know what you order. It's the perfect hyper-local eat to kick off 2018.  You can't go wrong with a kale-carrot-apple-lemon juice.  It's what the gods drink when they run out of mead.  I swear.  And if you are attentive, you might even see it change colors.

Happy New Year!

P.S. Cool Fresh Juice Bar is supposedly open 8:30 am til 9 pm for when that hankering hits.  It'll set you back $6 for the smaller size, and while less entertaining than a Unicornuccino, it is less than half the price of an aperol grapefruit spritz with smoked jalapeño salt at some wannabe bar.  And much more delicious.

Remember: December is "Spread the Blove" month.  If you enjoy these blog posts, won't you share this with a nearby friend, family member or neighbor? It's a great way to stay in touch between newsletters of the W. 102nd & 103rd Streets Block Association. So tip off a neighbor who can then receive local news directly to his or her email by just filling in an email address at the bottom of each post.

Love the Blog?  Spread the Blove!

By Caitlin Hawke

When the words famous and Xi'an are used in the same sentence, most people think of Emperor Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum and the awesome 2,200 year-old terracotta army that ferried this first Chinese Emperor to the big unknown.

In other words, food is not the first famous association that springs forth.  But Xi'an Famous Foods (XFF) is out to change that in NYC, taking the city by storm with a "chain-let" of nine shops.

At present, the XFF just south of W. 102nd on the west side of Broadway is the northernmost outpost of the lot.

I knew about their original store, a slice of a shop on St. Mark's Place back in the day when hipster food options weren't encroaching this far up.  Hard to believe that was 12+ years ago.  A couple of times, I dropped in for some hand-pulled and scrumptiously chewy noodles.  The ones I liked were knobbly and drenched in spicy oil, tossed with ground lamb.  The noodles were a great once-in-a-while treat, but you gotta wanna ingest all that spice, sit on a stool, and get tossed all around by the hubbub.  The thrill wore off quickly.

Then, a new XFF opened exactly four years ago on December 7, 2013, in Bloomingdale.

Gratuitously, the XFF website disparages the neighborhood it moved into claiming the stretch of Broadway was "not so happening."  And, golly, thanks to all those followers who came crawling from four corners to support them here in lil' ol' Bloomingdale.

The French have an expression for this perfect inelegance: "cracher dans la soupe" -- literally to spit in one's soup and figuratively to express contempt for something from which you derive a benefit.  The site reads like an apologia for their cost-benefit analysis that this affordable rent district (albeit deathy, deathly unhip) was cheap enough to make it worth impinging on its clientele's comfort zone and profitable enough to take the space.   I've seen trash talk of gentrifiers all over the city, and it is cringe producing.

I remember moving to Bloomingdale in the 90s after falling in love with the community and admiring the quiet stretch of Broadway only to have a friend tell me she got a nosebleed over 96th Street, or was it 86th Street. She lives near DC now -- outside the Beltway -- in altitudes that are favorable to her fragile nasal condition.

So to Xi'an, I say: embrace your community and blunt the "edgy" a little.

Whether Xi'an in fact moved north due four years ago due to the city's commercial rent climate or whether it led the nouvelle noodle vague, it has since been besieged by newcomers, many nipping at its heels for best cheap eats. Around B'dale today, if you throw a stone, you'll hit a stone hotpot.  Each new eatery on the stretch between 96th and 116th seems to have an Asian flair, an upscale price point, a chowhoundy vibe.  With Columbia reaching ever further southward, appealing to masses of undergraduates is now a must to stay alive if you are slinging fast slowfood.

But I digress.  Let's get back to why XFF has made it to the neighborhood food feature I call "Hyper-Local Eats."

Years back, I thrilled at the idea of having XFF's handmade noodles on my home turf.  We ordered in a couple of times, ate there once or twice.  All good.  Still somehow Xi'an didn't become a go-to spot.  Yet they've endured.  So today I turn the other cheek despite how bossy they can come off in their pursuit of converting us all to the pleasures of noodlehood:

After visits to Szechuan Garden and their delectable cumin lamb dish (which I should say is not the dish it was when I wrote about it), I found that its combo of heat + lamb + cumin is something I love.  And I recalled that Xi'an has another contender along the same lines. 

So I write in celebration of a very special Hyper-Local Eat: Xi'an's spicy cumin lamb burger.  A nosh under $6 that is truly, maddenly, deeply satisfying.

Caveat emptor: it is fiery.  But if you tried and liked Szechuan Garden's cumin lamb (an earlier Hyper-Local Eats feature), the Xi'an burger clocks in at approximately the same heat.

This burger is, in fact, not a patty, but it does have a bun, which I'll get to shortly. The sandwich is a hill of shaved slices of tender lamb roughly chopped into a coarse picadillo-like or sloppy joe-ish filling that is then spooned into the bread pocket.

How does it taste?  First salty. Then tangy. Then a rage of cumin and fire mix with the gamey lamb.  Melted onions and snappy jalapeños round out the chewy hash to which an accelerant of chili oil is added just to make it pop.

Not even an ice-cold Coca-Cola can tame the tongue when this hits.

Enter the bun. It sops up the spicy drippings and provides a firewall to your tastebuds.  The bread is not a bun you know.  It's a denser cousin of an English muffin whose nooks and crannies went missing or seized up. Without a hint of richness, the bun stands bravely by to foil the oil.

If you think you can tolerate this degree of hipness mixed with this degree of heat, the spicy cumin lamb burger is a fine, fine eat in the neighborhood.

Now XFF, if you would just drop the pretense and lean into the fact that this wonderful community existed before you and will continue long after you are gone, in the interim we could all live together in umami harmony.

So why when I see "Serafina" -- which in its very name assures me that all will be fine, if not angelic -- do I fret?  

But fret I do.  The idea of it sends me running back to the comfort of Sun-Chan, a one-off homey joint that in decor is all about its plain-janeness and in its food is umami-central.

So as late summer's bounty comes in fast and furious, today is another ode to Sun-Chan and specifically to Kumiko's tomato salad.

Five round leaves of spinach to line the plate.  One perfect tomato peeled and wedged.  A sprinkling of sweet onion bits strewn like daisy petals over the tomato.  All "napped" as the French say, or coated in a gingery soy dressing. It's not just scrumptious, it's also beautiful, arranged on the plate like a juicy rose.

The naked truth about a peeled tomato?  It's an entirely different beast.  Make it a perfectly ripe one and dash it with salt.  Then you're talking heaven on a plate.

If I go to Sun Chan with someone, I order it, insisting it's a must try. But then I secretly sit and stew that I have to share it.  

You'll have to go yourself and with luck you'll be all alone. And with more luck the naked tomato will be on the specials board.  If Lady Luck smiles, all eight wedges will be yours.

By Caitlin Hawke
​
Reading the mouthwatering piece by Dayle Vander Sande in the last Block Association newsletter, I was tantalized to learn about Las Palomas, a modest storefront I've passed by many times with the thought that I need to check it out.  If you haven't yet read Dayle's review, you'll find that it features a gem of a business that enriches our neighborhood. Even Florence Fabricant got into the act and reviewed it for the New York Times back in 2010.

You might go there to graze, but Las Palomas is a grocery store with makings for tortillas, tamales and so much more.  Queso fresco? Check.  In fact, Las Palomas has got four varieties. Chorizo? Also four kinds. Chiles? ¡Sí Señor, just say which kind you are after.

Putting the bodacious back in the bodega.

One bite and you are transported to a sunny beachside resort with mariachi music floating in. Breakfast shouldn't be boring, and this inexpensive bargain certainly is not. Each order is made from scratch, so be patient, as it takes a few minutes to make these as delicious as they are."

Two Mexican sanctuaries in our city to be celebrated.  If you haven't tried them, I say to you and me both: Más vale tarde que nunca.

By Caitlin Hawke

The "Hyper Local Eats" feature is not intended as a place for restaurant reviews, per se.  Our quarterly newsletter does a great job of that (see here and here for examples).

But rather, it's meant to sing praise to one special dish or delicacy found nearby.  Writing this, I realize that one day, I should sing a Proustian song to delicacies lost to time:  the cucumber salad once sold at PicNic's market, or Jean-Luc and Jennifer's peppery celery remoulade for that matter, would top the list.  But so would the normal-sized buttery blueberry muffin with a lacy, crunchy edge from Positively 104th Street (now Café du Soleil), or the café con leche from La Casita with flattened toast when that restaurant sat at the corner of Broadway and West 106th Street (now a KFC).  Maybe someone around here remembers the deliciousness that was Hudes deli going back 70 years? But probably not the even older "Old Vienna" and the "New Vienna" featured in the photo of a prior Throwback Thursday post?

So what's so good about this place?  Let me encapsulate that in one special dish for you: crispy lamb filets with chili cumin.  You'll find thin slices of lamb dredged in a flour, cumin, salt mixture and flash fried and tossed with dry scallions and an equal volume of chili peppers, which you'll literally have to eat around.  Add mala-making sichuan peppercorns and you've got yourself a scrumptious main course.  Mala (numbingly spicy or spicily numbing -- I never know which) is a sort of tongue-taming, almost paralyzing, flavor-sensation that when first experienced can be disconcerting.  Think of it as white-hot versus red-hot, if that makes any sense.  Once your tongue recovers, your brain converts the experience into a pleasure center.

But I don't want to scare you away with all this talk of spicy. It's not mild, don't get me wrong. But there is umami aplenty in this dish.  That juicy lamb, crispy on the outside, squirts its savory flavor through the cumin-salt coating.  They also make a beef version of this traditional Sichuanese dish. However, the lamb meat must be less moist because it crisps up better.  The beef tends to be softer and is good in its own way.

Top this off with a plate of garlic-sauteed greens or spicy cucumber salad and it's a perfect meal.

There must be a dozen other great eats here -- mostly spicy.  But you'll come back to the lamb time and again.  Also, it seems best to stay away from the Americanized versions and go for the authentic dishes.

I am determined to have the mapo tofu in the new year.  King of mala.  It will be another barometer of how good it gets here on W. 105th Street.  I'll let you know if it is post-worthy!

When I go there, I go all the way, which is to say: Everything bagels.  Another person in my household is all about the Pumpernickel.  It has its place, yes.  But Absolute's Everything has no rival in this city.  Crunchy seeds on the outside, always fresh, and fully enrobing.  Like they couldn't put one more poppy on it. The cincher is its balance of salt to onion -- the main battle of flavors on the crust.  Neither overpowers.  Both adequately represented.  And room for all the other bits.

Once you get past the seeds, you have that feather-light touch of sweetness to the dough. Yum.

And then there is the crux of the matter -- the whole bread part.  Just past the crust's chew -- toothsome and snappy -- you have an interior with a hint of sticky.  This is the holy grail of bagelmongers.  No one who reads this will agree with me, I am sure, but my go-to is their mini-Everything.  I just think the surface-area-to-volume ratio on it makes it all work.  If anything, the regular-sized version is just a shade too big. But nothing approaching those tires that H&H used to peddle.

There's only one competitor nearby and an ode to one particular bagel there will follow shortly.  But for now, let me bask in the absolute glory of everything I know to be right in the world of bagels.  Hit it with a schmear of whitefish salad, probably from Acme, and you got yourself a perfect Sunday in the neighborhood.  And that is what I love about this hyper local eat.

By Caitlin Hawke

The last weeks have been a harsh blow indeed for several of our restaurant owners and their staffs, closed by ConEd.  But rumor is on that the gas is back! 

As you have noticed, several neighboring Broadway restaurants north of W. 103rd Street have been struck in the past two months by a ConEd shutdown of their gas.  These small businesses with tight margins and painfully high rents live or die with the slightest blip.  And I have been watching as the days have turned into weeks and now months due to an unattended gas leak.  And the restaurants fell victim to this.

Thank goodness our area didn't become yet another story in the paper about some conflagration.

But so it went.  First Ollie's. Then Aangan. Then Sun-chan and Broadway Pizza.  All shuttered.  Food wasted.  Staff benched.  Tables and chairs mothballed.  It's a devastation to them all.

So this is a call to arms -- or to mouths.  Show your solidarity and do something for mom and pop:  have a meal there one night soon and tell them good times are back in B'dale.  That we are their neighbors.  And that we all will erase this bad memory together!

I have the news straight from the windows of Aangan and Ollie's: as of tonight, Aangan is back and look for Ollie's to open tomorrow.  Let's hope it's true.

Pappadums and dumplings, here we come!

So it's all right now, in fact in celebration, I am appending a little vintage ditty from the Rolling Stones.

By Caitlin Hawke

In order to get to my purpose, I need to go the long way today. This might, in fact, be two posts mashed up, but I am willing to risk it.

Readers may have sensed my appreciation for a New York that no longer exists except as a state of mind. Before anyone jumps on me for being against progress or worse, let me conjure that old-time feeling, if I am able. Perhaps my latest attack of spleen came from the closing of Café Edison. Or maybe it comes from these past few free-from-work, freewheeling days walking up and down a relatively deserted Broadway and seeing friendly ghosts of vanished places that were so comforting but are now long gone.

An UWS spot I loved was Cinema Studio 1 & 2.  Can you still see the logo painted as a mural on the brick wall high above the low-lying building?  Cinema Studio was a film house so well-curated that you could go into it on a whim, choose anything and come out a winner. I think Cinema Paradisio or Shoah was the last film I saw at Cinema Studio before the building was demolished to make way for the "Lincoln Square" Barnes & Noble, which itself ceded to Century 21. Which will cede to something else. Which will just reinforce in my mind that for three decades there stood a great – and yet now lost – element of my city.

Right next to the cinema – and you can see it here so you, too, may share my nostalgia – was a classic, hole-in-the-wall Greek diner, John's Coffee Shop.  You know, a quick, piping hot cup of coffee in a blue and white Anthora coffee cup kind of place.  I loved it because you could spirit your hot cuppa in to the film right next door. The only dialogue was light or dark and how many sugars. This was a place lacking pretension. Square meal, fair deal sort of joint. It wasn't old, and it wasn't modern. It was of its era. In its moment. Until time steamrolled over it.  And I miss it, dagnabbit.

So why am I telling you this?  Why the paean to a Broadway that served its residents. A neighborhood fixture that had no pretense. An aversion to glitz and sleek in a desert of chains and anonymity that was once a patchwork of real neighborhoods? Because in our little ray of Sun-Chan, we have the old Broadway!

Step through the door into this oasis and you travel through time – not that Sun-Chan has even been there that long. But come to think of it, ten years is a Broadway eternity these days. The Barnes & Noble in Lincoln Square didn't last much longer. Anyway, Sun-Chan (2707 Broadway near W. 103rd Street), replaced Jo-An, a similar restaurant named for its American proprietress whose Japanese was pretty darn good; but her peppy restaurant didn't last. I cannot remember what was there before Jo-An. But Sun-Chan feels like it's been there forever. And I hope it will never change. On a bad day, the vacant deli next door gives me pause.

The "Hyper Local Eats" blog feature was meant to single out one special dish, one unique treat at a time, from one of our neighborhood food purveyors.  But with Sun-Chan, that's like asking a mother of ten to hold out just one favorite child. Cannot be done. But I wanted to write about Sun-Chan not just to tip my hat to their wonderful comfort food but also to make a point about the ambiance. Not a whit of pretension. You walk in to a chorus of traditional Japanese greetings, and a team of waitresses -- almost always female personnel -- greet and seat you. The fact that it is always the same faces, with a new employee coming aboard from time to time and an alumna returning every so often, tells you something about the tight-knit restaurant family. The women up front work in the closest of quarters, dancing around each other gracefully, cheerfully communicating about orders and, probably, their lives. When the waitresses seat you, for the love of Pete, order a sake. You will receive a short juice glass nested in a square lacquer cup. Then comes the treat of seeing your waitress pour until the cloudless drink flows over the glass's rim to fill your outer lacquer box. This opening gesture has the clearest of messages: "Welcome to our place. You are now in our hands, and we will be good to you." It's the Japanese version of "abbondanza."

The front is run by the loveliest of lovelies, owner Kumiko Imamura (above), who daintily helms the robata. An inferno. Unflappable come long lines or relentless heat, Kumiko is the Goddess of Umami.  She churns out caramelized rice balls packing salty salmon or spicy cod roe. If her yakitori menu were an LP, it would be my desert island disc because I never get tired of any of it: chicken meatballs with a sweet-salty glaze, toro salmon and scallion skewers, roasted ginkgo nuts, scrumptiously salted yellow tail collar, smoky mackerel. Each morsel comes off her iron grill in the requisite, slow-food time it takes to make something this authentic.

Her husband Tokishige mans the kitchen in back…but he might also show up at your door with a delivery. How? I do not know!  But if Kumiko is Queen, Tokishige is surely King of Sun-Chan. With him, you can go cold or hot and not go wrong: cool, crisp daikon radish sticks with spicy cod dip, still-warm braised pumpkin in a savory slightly fishy broth, unctious sweet-and-sour tinged barbecued eel over rice, cabbage stir fries, donburis, crunchy light tempura. And sushi.

Queen of Queens and King of Kings, may you reign forever and ever.

So why the long prelude about nostalgia?  It's because the mere fact that a Sun-Chan can arrive, continue to exist, and thrive without being a hipster emporium or crazy clamoring hotspot is an epiphany to me. It gives me hope that the rooted and real New York I have such fondness for is still attainable. It's not just the wonderful food and the care with which it is prepared. It is that they make people feel like individuals as they walk through to the dining room.  They remember you when you come back. And they cook their hearts out for you. And if you are really lucky, one day I'll tell you about what happens there after 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Lincoln Square may keep its Bar Boulud. Its Nick and Toni's. Its The Smith. And I will continue to see John's Coffee Shop and Cinema Studio when I look through the plate glass of Century 21.  Because I have Sun-Chan.  And Sun-Chan on my corner makes me happy.