Ninth Avenue and 13th Street

I’m off for a bit of traveling; back again in a couple of weeks. (And  here are, apparently, the best trips to take if you want to see some street art on your next vacation.)

52nd Street and Ninth Avenue

Don’t worry: there’s plenty of time to read the menu while waiting to slip into the underground sliver of a restaurant that is Totto Ramen (with seats for only 20 at a time). I’ve eaten only one thing here, the spicy ramen, and it seemed to me a perfectly balanced bowl of tender, springy noodles, smoky char siu pork, and chili oil—spicy enough to make me sweat but not overwhelmingly. (I had the regular spicy ramen, marked with two hot peppers on the menu, and not the “extreme” spicy, marked with nine peppers.) Here’s the Time Out review, which goes into a bit more detail about the whole experience.

Battery Park

One of the two Pylons sculptures on the waterfront, marking the island’s edge. An abstraction of a lighthouse, perhaps. (That’s a tiny Statue of Liberty in the background.)

Bleecker Street and Carmine Street

A kiss good-bye to summer: melting bacio gelato at Grom.

Lexington Avenue and 44th Street

This bas-relief panel (showing some sort of ancient figure holding a truck) is just one of the Art Deco ornaments, among an odd assortment, decorating the Graybar Building. I didn’t get a shot of the iron rats, climbing up the mooring lines, but here’s a good one. There’s not much information online about this building (not even a Wikipedia entry), though I did find a few nuggets of explanation in this New Yorker piece from 1933, which begins, “We feel morally obliged to look into all the odd little mysteries of the city.” From it, I learned that the Graybar’s “whole façade is somewhat Assyrian,” that “the entrance hall is Moorish,” that albatrosses and bulls also appear on the building, and that the rats are the result of the architects’ decision “to strike the maritime note somewhere in the decorations” (what with New York being a seaport and center of transportation).

Hudson Street and Franklin Street

The first time I went to the glassy and glamorous Tamarind Tribeca, soon after it opened, I was disappointed (watery cocktails, odd-tasting lamb) and longed for the Indian food in London. But then I read Sam Sifton’s review in the New York Times and decided to try it again, and: pure pleasure (especially the Dover sole layered with spices and cooked in a clay pot). Next time: sea bass from the tandoor.

West Broadway and Park Place

A sign from yesterday’s demonstrations against the building of the “Ground Zero Mosque.” As anyone who lives near here can tell you, the site of the proposed construction isn’t exactly Ground Zero, certainly isn’t lovely, and could use some sprucing up, frankly, in the form of any kind of new construction.

Washington Street and Little West 12th Street

Composition in yellow and gray, outside the Standard Hotel. (“New York City is a great apartment hotel in which everyone lives and no one is at home.”— Glenway Wescott)

Clinton Street and Stanton Street

This is the deconstructed cheesecake at wd-50 (the cubes are the cheesecake, encased in blueberry glaze). What more can I say? (Delicious.)

14th Street and High Line

There’s not much to see at a sound installation But in this passageway, A Bell for Every Minute makes you slow down and look around while a different bell sound from somewhere in the city plays (every minute). Go at the start of an hour and hear all the bells at once.

Seventh Avenue and 58th Street

I rarely go inside Petrossian (even though the café does serve up an excellent chocolate croissant), but I always like to stop in front and look at it for a while and feel like I’m in Paris. (There’s a more low-key vision of France across the street, in the form of Le Pain Quotidien.)

Bleecker Street and Morton Street

Bookbook on Bleecker is the new incarnation (and location) of the old Biography Bookshop, which always had the best assortment of sale books on the sidewalk. It still does, apparently. This is just a glimpse of the poetic arrangement of an eclectic selection about the Bronx burning, brief lives, gone tomorrow, New York writing, fear and loathing, and then at the center, the best book I’ve read in a long time: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

West Broadway and Murray Street

Mangez Avec Moi (which isn’t French) is probably my favorite neighborhood take-out place. Other oddities to ponder about this restaurant: the large wooden bear sculpture out front and a menu that says, intriguingly, “elephant delivery.” (In any case, the mango chicken is delicious.)

Church Street and Cortlandt Street

Made me laugh as I passed by: Century 21’s NY style.

Broad Street and Exchange Place

After reading the reviews (such as this entertaining one in New York Magazine a while back), I expected SHO Shaun Hergatt to be stuffy and rich (in food and people). But the vibe was kind of low-key and beautiful (red lights, Asian accents). And the food was delicious: summery crab and corn soup, a tail of lobster in butter and ginger cream, chocolate disk with dried apricot and thyme ice cream: that sort of thing. (Plus, the most perfect oblong of foie gras with strawberry and pistachios. And truffle butter for spreading on your bread.)
      Here’s the chef’s recipe for slow-poached egg with caulilower puree, which I was really hoping was on the menu when I was there. Even so, I still kind of wanted to move in to this place (the restaurant is on the second floor of a new condo building, the Setai).

Houston Street and Varick Street

Part of the Platform Diving glass mosaic artworks (featuring sea creatures in a flooded subway) at the 1 train subway station. (I also like this quick virtual tour of some other lovely subway art—and architecture.)

West Broadway and Duane Street

A bit of old perched on top of the new: those flower window boxes are on the second level of the latest Bouley restaurant/bakery experiment, called Bouley Studio. I haven’t eaten there yet, but the ground floor certainly doesn't seem as welcoming as before (with only a small bread and sandwich selection available). We’ll take whatever Bouley dishes up, however. (I miss Upstairs at Bouley already.) In any case, here’s a nice summary, from Tribeca Citizen, of what’s going on with all things Bouley.

World Financial Center

Lobster rolls by the river: lovely—and expensive. (This size was $15; there’s a larger one for $27.) I thought this one was pretty good, but Midtown Lunch didn’t love it. In addition to Ed’s Lobster Bar, there are a couple of other food kiosk options currently out here at the marina—until October 31 (when I’m pretty sure eating seafood outdoors won’t seem so wonderful).

Warren Street and Broadway

The Fountain Pen Hospital, conveniently located next door to the Wall Street Humidor (not on Wall Street), still appears to be in business, despite the decline in letter writing (even among oldish people). I always think that this block of last-century Tribeca won’t be around for long, but so far I’ve been wrong.

City Hall Park

Who doesn’t love a bit of pink in the park? This is part of the Statuesque exhibit, currently scattered around City Hall Park. “Statuesque celebrates the return of figurative sculpture, but not in the classical sense,” according to the description from the Public Art Fund. (See for yourself, until December.)

Hudson Street and Jane Street

Does this plate of pasta look enormous? It is. That’s pumpkin ravioli with walnut cream sauce (and a heaping platter of rabbit with olives and tomatoes in the background)—with a glass of Sicilian rosé in between—at Piccolo Angolo, a tiny, bare-bones, loud, old-style Italian restaurant in the West Village that has always been a favorite place to visit (and now is a relief from the roar and glitter of all the places that have sprung up nearby in the Meatpacking District).

13th Street and Washington Street

I don’t know, but it looks like a quote from street artist Elbow-Toe.