THENASTYBITS (24 page)

Cafe, a hellacious Terrordome of banality: Tourists and their spotty children chaw haplessly at frozen hamburgers, waiting listlessly for a glimpse of Michael Jordan on one of the gigantic video screens. World Wrestling Entertainment has a store. There's a Gap—unthinkable a few years back, when the shelves would have been quickly emptied by enterprising sneak-thieves and shoplifters. The MTV studios look down on the Square, attracting doughy teenage girls hoping for a glimpse of one of their nonthreatening hosts. Wasn't rock and roll dangerous once? The hideous Mars 2112 restaurant offers "Martian cuisine" and a virtual reality trip through a "wormhole in space" to thousands of children and their bored-looking parents where junkies and Johns once frolicked unfettered.

On Eighth Avenue, once called "The Minnesota Strip" as it was prime recruiting for pimps who'd catch impressionable young victims fresh off the bus at Port Authority, the blight continues: The Haymarket Bar, a vicious hustler hotspot where young male entrepreneurs would pick up older Johns—so they could rob them at knifepoint—is gone. Lady Anne's Full Moon Saloon, called by
Paper
magazine's well-traveled bar reporter "The Worst Bar in the World," where the smell of Lysol and vomit distracted one from the recently released convict population playing pool on a warped table in the rear, is now the Collins Bar, with a smart Art Deco facade. You can walk from Fiftieth Street to Forty-second without once hearing the comforting refrain of "Smoke, smoke" or "Crack it up, got it good . . ." The legendary Terminal Cafe, across from the bus station, where at eight a.m. you could enjoy a shot of rye and a draft beer, pulling it to your mouth with a dirty bar towel, is now a parking lot. The Hollywood Twin Cinema, immortalized in
Taxi Driver,
is now the home to Big Apple Tours, and the terrifying peep show/bookstore downstairs is now a Burger King. In the convenience stores and shops where once were rows of dildos, crack pipes, bongs, and nunchuks, there are only rows of Pringles.

The Lower East Side is worse. At one time a superstore of heroin and cocaine, where customers would line up in the streets for admission to a vast underground empire of abandoned, burned-out tenements converted into fortified rabbit warrens of booby-trapped passageways (the dark, candlelit peepholes manned by gun-toting guards)—it's now a neighborhood for the Starbucks generation. And an
expensive
one. Once the air smelled of burning candles, piss, and desperation. Now it smells of CK1. The old name brands (of heroin) proudly shouted out over the ever-present salsa music—Toilet, Laredo, Try-It-Again, Check-Mate, 357—have been replaced by Prada, Comme des Garcons, and Tommy Hilfiger.

The meat district? Crisco Disco, the Anvil, the Mineshaft—a former world of unsafe sex, amyl nitrite, Quaaludes, and leather, sandwiched between meat wholesalers—is now the hottest restaurant district in town.

Tribeca? A former no-man's-land of warehouses where mob-run after-hours clubs thrived, and you could pass out on a stack of empty beer crates in a rear "VIP" room and wake up near a nodding Johnny Thunders or a gibbering Belushi, greet the cold gray dawn with a shot of Wolfschmidts vodka poured from a Stoli bottle. Robert DeNiro seems to own it all now. You'd think that that might make it interesting. It doesn't. One swank restaurant after another, offices for the cell-phone set. Conversation at bars tends to lean toward back-end points and development deals rather than hijacked loads and who's got the bag.

Upper Amsterdam Avenue? You'd think the former Crack Boulevard would retain a vestige of its glories. Now it's a cluster-fuck of frat-boy bars, serving girl drinks and Jello shots to a bunch of towheaded projectile-vomiting college boys for whom Ecstasy is a dangerous drug.

New York used to be a tough town. It demanded of its visitors a certain vigilance, a certain attitude. If you didn't walk the walk and talk the talk you could end up naked and walletless in a hot-sheet motel, wondering how the hell you got there. The wrong look at the wrong person and you could be looking at the business end of a Saturday Night Special (a cheap .38). Buying drugs without getting beat or cut up was an accomplishment, visiting some neighborhoods an adventure. Everyone was always admitted—but not everyone could stay. Survival required speed, flexibility, volume, aggression. If you stopped to look up at the skyscrapers or decided to linger over a friendly game of three-card-monte the locals would be all over you like carnivorous beetles. I saw a New York comedian a while back, talking about the Boston subway system—how they had, to his amazement, cash machines right there on the train platforms. "Of course, we have cash machines on our subway platforms too," he said knowingly, "only we call them 'tourists.'"

Now the tourists are scarier than the locals. They don't even look worried, consulting their maps and adjusting their leder-hosen without fear of discovery. Who's gonna stop them? You can't even spray-paint your name on the subways anymore. Subway cars used to be an exciting showcase for dedicated artists, a place where they could create masterworks two and three hundred feet long that would rocket across the boroughs, write their names in the sky, every wild style "piece" more outlandish and distinctive than the one that came before. Now, every subway car, like every American city, looks the same— another soulless space, filled with slack-jawed, sleepwalking bodies, unconnected to anything, running from nothing, to nowhere.

Giuliani's right, of course. That increased "quality of life" enforcement leads to a lower violent crime rate. Let's face it— you get rousted every time you crack a can of beer on a particular corner, you're less likely to shank a visiting tourist there. But with the diminishing threat of violence comes a deadening torpor, an end to life. Movement and thought become optional.

It's been a while since I felt that adrenaline-juiced exaltation, that "I can't
believe
I'm
still
alive!!" feeling that made me proud to be a New Yorker. A half-decaf mochaccino is a pretty poor substitute. I'm not alone. I can see it sometimes—the vestigial memory of sleaze past—in the faces of my fellow smokers, huddled in the cold outside their glass and steel office buildings, stoking up on nicotine before reentering their antiseptic, climate-controlled towers. I can see it in the disappointed faces of kids from Jersey, scouring Hell's Kitchen for a thirty-dollar whore and finding only Tweety and Goofy. "What happened?" they seem to say, their innocent expressions sagging as they put Dad's car back into gear, going home empty. What they came for is no longer there.

PURE
AND
UNCUT
LUXURY

as much as
i love to espouse the "luxuriousness" of simple, often inexpensive things, the idea that a fifty-cent bowl of pho in Vietnam or a properly made bagel in New York can often be more satisfying than a fourteen-course tasting menu at Ducasse, sometimes you've just got to spend money. Lots of money.

Sometimes, if you want the very best, you really
do
have to be the sort of person who can shrug off five hundred bucks for your dinner. Sometimes, a very high price tag
does indeed
translate directly into quality. Masa Takayama's tiny, thirteen-seat sushi bar-restaurant on the fourth floor of the unimpressive-looking shopping arcade at New York City's new Time Warner building is perhaps the best example of this principle. It's widely referred to as the most expensive dinner in the country. At Masa (as opposed to the less pricey Bar Masa next door) if you want to play, you've got to pay.

And it's worth every dime.

I'll go further. At three hundred fifty dollars per person as a starting point (that's before tax, tip, beverages, and any extras), it's a
steal.
It's the deal of the century. It's a completely over-the-top exercise in pure self-indulgence, like having sex with two five-thousand-dollar-a-night escorts at the same time—while driving an Aston Martin.

Imagine if you will: You are one of only thirteen customers sitting at a long, wide, blond hinoki wood counter of such warm, inviting loveliness that you want to curl up on it and go to sleep.

You want to spend the rest of your life rubbing your cheek—if not your nether regions—against it. The nation's most highly regarded sushi master is standing directly in front of you with a knife, a plane grater, a hunk of fresh wasabi root. On both sides of him are casually deposited heaps of the sexiest looking fish you've ever conjured up in your wildest, soy-spattered dreams of sushi heaven. You catch your breath and gape in wonder at the thick hunks of pale, fat-rippled otoro tuna, flown in that morning from Tokyo. Two silent assistants with shaved heads help the chef, moving among the austere trunks of green bamboo and a simple Stone-Age grill. There's no menu and you don't order, so you have no idea what's coming. But already, as you sit there, blood rushing to your head, lips engorged, hands trembling slightly, saliva thickening, semitumescent, you are absolutely certain that
no one,
anywhere on the planet, is going to be eating better than you tonight. You are alone, in the nose cone of a rocket headed straight to the epicenter of gastro-culinary pleasure. And there's nowhere you'd rather be.

Not to rub it in or anything, but on my most recent visit to Masa, I had it even
better
than that. Sometimes it's good to be a chef.

I rolled into Masa with Le Bernardin's four-starred chef, Eric Ripert, on one flank and the well-known author of such professional foodie classics as
Soul
of
a Chef,
Michael Ruhl-man, on the other. Michael had just emerged from a long day observing the kitchen operations at Per Se, down the hall. In case you didn't know, that's Thomas Keller's breathlessly anticipated, just-opened temple of haute cuisine. Michael co-authored
The French Laundry Cookbook
with Keller, and I guess that experience left a reservoir of goodwill because on entering Masa, we were immediately followed by Per Se's sommelier, who for the full span of the evening kept us lubricated with a progression of jaw-droppingly good wines. I'm talking wines that never in my life will I be either smart enough, or wealthy enough, to order again.

As always, there was nothing on the bar but napkins and chopsticks. A glass of wine for each of us—and for chef Takayama—and in the hushed, reverential silence, it began.

First, some raw crayfish tossed with cucumber, served, like all the courses to follow, in simple earthenware vessels designed by the chef. Next, a lovely lighter-than-air softshell crab tempura. Wine. Then more wine. A thick, nearly pureed disk of raw toro tuna, heaped with a giggle-inducing pile of osetra caviar, followed by bonito rolled around radish sprouts—I think (the wine beginning to kick in now). Then a simmering stoneware hotpot, a bowl of
combu
broth in which we were invited to dip slices of fresh foie gras and lobster, before shoveling them greedily into our faces. The broth, now beaded with tiny golden pearls of foie gras fat, was then served in soup bowls. Keller's sommelier was pouring heavily, each wine, each course leading beautifully to the next unbelievable thing . . . and then the next. (I'm relying increasingly on Ruhlman's notes here, as I was by this point pleasurably drunk.)

Masa put a dark gray slate square down in front of each of us and my favorite part of the meal began: sushi. One piece at a time. Don't even
think
about soy or dipping sauce or that hideous, electric-green wasabi paste you see in most sushi bars. Each warm, ethereal pillow of rice and fish came preseasoned, with yuzu or sea salt or soy or freshly grated wasabi, as the chef felt appropriate. Fresh water eel. . . then sea eel. . . screamingly fresh mackerel . . . buttery, unctuous otoro tuna that seemed to sigh as it relaxed onto the rice in front of me.

The three of us were eating with our hands now, eyes glazed, begging for seconds. All caution, logic, and reason were long gone as our brains spit out endorphins overtime.

More wine . . . more sushi.

Ruhlman tells me that by now I was moaning audibly, muttering things under my breath like, 'Oh yeahhh, ohhh baby . . . mmmmm." I don't apologize. Watching Masa run his scary sharp knife through that pale, pornographic-looking tuna, separating and peeling back one layer after another before slicing and applying it to your piece—the piece you know is going to be in your mouth in just a few more seconds—is like sex. In fact it's better than most sex. There is no risk of disappointment. Watching Masa pack about eighty dollars (wholesale!) of that incredible once-in-a-lifetime tuna into a single nori roll makes you want to faint.

There was grilled toro
...
a grilled shiitake mushroom wrapped around rice that fabulously mimicked fish . . . sea urchin roe so sublime it should probably be illegal . . . scallop, tenderized by Masa's delicate crosshatching . . . sweet clam (had more than a few of those) . . . squid . . . shrimp
...
eel brushed with home-brewed soy . . . finally, there was kobe beef that with each bite squirted its pampered, oft-massaged fat between the teeth.

If the preceding account sounds like it was ripped from the pages of a cheesily written stroke book, don't let that slow you down. Go to Masa. Go now. Book late and show up on time. Sit down, shut up—and relax. He'll take it from there. Give yourself over to the experience. And enjoy.

Cooking professionally is a dominant act, at all times about control.

Eating well, on the other hand, is about submission. It's about giving up all vestiges of control, about entrusting your fate entirely to someone else. It's about turning off the mean, manipulative, calculating, and shrewd person inside you, and slipping heedlessly into a new experience as if it were a warm bath. It's about shutting down the radar and letting good things happen. When that happens to a professional chef, it's a rare and beautiful thing.

Let it happen to you.

THE HUNGRY AMERICAN

nearly five weeks of
hotel rooms, airport lounges, mammoth meals, and equally mammoth amounts of drink, and yet, only thirty minutes out of Hanoi's Noi Bai Airport, I'm nearly levitating off the ground, absolutely giddy with excitement and pleasure. I'm no longer jet-lagged, burned out, or jaded. I'm alive. I'm hungry. And back in Vietnam.

I start grinning idiotically right away, beginning with the warm welcome from Linh, waiting for me by customs, and continue on the ride into town. Out the window are rice paddies, narrow two-story homes decorated with rows of drying corn, gray skies, and bright red banners everywhere, most bearing the Tet (lunar new years) greeting: Chuc Mung Nam Moi; others are flags, yellow star on bright red field, anticipating Monday's anniversary of the founding of the Vietnamese Communist Party. (Though it's sometimes easy to forget it, this is still a communist country.) The road into town is crowded on both sides with motorbikes, bicycles, and scooters, most overloaded with passengers dressed in their Tet best: jackets and ties, children swaddled in blankets or netting, women with scarves and face masks covering everything below the eyes. Everyone is smiling and loaded down with holiday goodies. They carry fruit, flowers, traditional
chung
cakes still wrapped in artfully tied leaves, shimmering gold paper trees, bundles of bright red joss sticks. The center of the road is for four-wheeled vehicles, meaning that cars and trucks barrel at full speed, headlong into each other's paths down the center line, beeping maniacally, pulling out only at the last second.

I am supposed to head straight to the Sofitel Metropole Hotel to check in, but Linh is a Hanoi native, anxious to show me the best of his hometown, and as soon as we pass the long, Russian-built Dragon Bridge over the Red River in the inner city, we pull over to an open
bia hoi
joint.

Eight or nine people sit at low tables on tiny plastic chairs outside what looks like an out-of-business garage. A large square keg of
bia hoi,
the legendary, fresh draft "bubble beer" of Hanoi, is situated prominently out front by the curb. You won't find this stuff in Saigon. The beer is made fresh daily, trucked or hauled to area shops—and quickly consumed. Most places serving it run out by four p.m., and what's trucked outside the city seems not to make it too far south. I haven't even taken a seat yet and the proprietor hurries to fill two glasses, challenges me to a chug-a-lug. I drain my glass and we repeat the process two more times before I've even settled into my little chair. The man's wife wants to show me her child, dressed up in his holiday best. An ancient Vietnamese gentleman in a weathered tweed jacket and jaunty beret, smoking from a bamboo pipe at the next table, offers me a puff and another beer.

"Je suis un cineaste,"
he says.
"Nous sommes tout cineastes."
He indicates a few other smiling septuagenarians around him. Soon the beer is coming fast and furious. The owner insists on changing to a fresh keg.

"How did you know this place would be open?" I ask Linh. Because of the holiday, most businesses are closed.

He smiles, and points across the tamarind-tree lined street to an old, unpainted building.

"That's the oldest brewery in Hanoi," he tells me, ordering another round of foamy, fresh, and delicious beer.