![]() Jesse Green has a theater review today that I want to finish, so I go back for an extra pickle. ![]() Someone said to me when I started at the paper in the late 1990s, “You can either work at the Times or read the Times, but no one has time to do both,” which has turned out to be untrue. I read the Times in print while I polish this mess off. I compile what I think of as the dumb guy’s version of a “girl dinner”: a pile of good cold cuts, Westphalian ham and head cheese from Schaller & Weber on the Upper East Side, on a plate with Kosciusko mustard, little piles of coarse salt and pepper, and a big, honking pickle. Best of all, the people behind the counter are always ultracheerful and mellow, as if they’ve all popped ideal gummies 45 minutes ago.īecause I need to read for hours and hours - book critics live like grad students - I don’t get comfortable. I like everything about the Chipped Cup: The coffee is sensitive yet macho - the Austin Butler of coffee the music is well chosen and unobtrusive there’s a lot of seating inside and out. I live in Hamilton Heights, in Harlem, and I do much of this work at my local coffee shop, the Chipped Cup. I’m reviewing a writer’s sixth novel, and I feel the need to reread, and in some cases read for the first time, nearly everything she’s previously written. Maybe you’re reviewing a slim first novel, or a book of poems. When you’re a working book critic, some weeks are relatively painless. I have a landslide of reading to do today. I can tell because the face she gives me afterward is especially soulful, as if I’ve said something beautiful and true. I let our dog, Mae, have the yolky plate when I finish. Being Amanda Hesser, she made up a name on the spot: smoggy-side up. Does this method have a name? I couldn’t think of one, so emailed my old Times colleague Amanda Hesser. The whites should be slightly crispy, and the yolks just beginning to cloud. ![]() After three or four minutes, I begin to peek underneath. I warm a small amount of olive oil in a nonstick pan over medium-low heat, then I crack two good eggs into the pan and cover it with a lid. The logo began to come off after one trip through the dishwasher.Īlmost every morning, I eat the same simple breakfast because I like it so much. It has a small upside-down crown on the front and the tagline: “My other mug supports the abolition of the monarchy.” My least favorite is from The New Republic. I bought it in 2011, the year Prince William and Kate Middleton married. My first decision every morning is which one to use. I have dozens, and they crowd our apartment’s kitchen shelves. I’ve collected them, too, from nearly every magazine, newspaper, or website I’ve written for, as well as a few (the Detroit Free Press, Foreign Affairs) for which I haven’t. I’ve bought a branded mug in nearly every bookstore I’ve ever entered, in America and abroad. My coffee-mug situation, I’m embarrassed to admit, has slipped from my control. You taste your first blue crab, a bialy, or you taste, like, a perfect tomato, and there’s a whole other world out there and you just go out and search.” And this idea is the basis of his new book, The Upstairs Delicatessen, a memoir that’s about, as the subtitle clarifies, “eating, reading, reading about eating, and eating while reading.” Garner wrote the book, which will publish next month, because, he says, “I didn’t think there was one quite like it, and I felt like I had things to say about food that I haven’t been able to say.” “You grow up and you start finding one writer and this writer leads you to a slightly better writer, who leads you to the next writer,” says the author and New York Times book critic. Some favorites of our group of twenty included har gow (translucent dumplings stuffed with shrimp), shumai (traditional Chinese dumpling), char shu bao (BBQ pork buns) and many of their Cantonese stir-fry dishes.For Dwight Garner, hunger is a part of curiosity, and it’s not unlike the pursuit of great literature. He took us through its sweeping history, from the synagogue as a cultural hotspot in the bustling Jewish Lower East Side to decades of decay to its miraculous rebirth as a 21st-century museum.Īlways grabbing a bite after one of our outings, we walked around the corner to the new (opened in December) Dim Sum Palace, offering made-to-order dim sum and traditional Cantonese cuisine. We had arranged for a knowledgeable docent to guide us. Our ex.expat group explored the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue, the first great house of worship by Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the United States.
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