Chekhov's Mistress
Rice & Beans
Cuban food in NYC, Joe – the Art of coffee, Biography Bookshop, Italo Calvino’s “The Uses of Literature.”
In my unceasing search for good Cuban food in NYC, I found myself at Alma Havana, off Bleeker in the WestVillage. I sat in the “jardin”, which is somehow evocative of anything other than a garden, although I’m not sure what, and larger than the dining room of the restaurant. The low lying clouds provided for a tent-like roof to block those nasty UV rays, and the backs of 5-story walkups (poor souls) surrounded the enclave, creating a not-quite hemmed in, but cozy feeling; typical of a WV garden.
The food was good; I had arroz con pollo, a simple dish. What I liked about it, which is what I like about Cuban restaurants generally, is the fact the meat is rawish. Not uncooked raw, but the skin is there, and the bones, and you feel as though the chicken was just plucked (or pig slaughtered, however the case may be). There seems to be a certain messiness that accompanies the great gastronomical delights of the world, and this is one of them. I also liked the peppers laying across the top, which when mingling with the rice and beans and chicken and sauce, transformed the dish from mere chicken and rice to a sweet and spicy combination – particularly apt since there was no hot sauce on the premises (other than Tobasco, liberally used by myself, but bland compared to what you can usually find in many of these Havanese spots.
Another good thing about this restaurant is that it is conveniently juxtaposed between Biography Bookshop on Bleeker, and Joe – the Art of coffee, on Waverly. (Not precisely juxtaposed, I have to say, but what a nice word). BB has a fair amount of new/cheap books on the table outside and is always worth a quick browse. I bought (as I report in keeping with the Hornby/Believer tradition) a copy of Italo Calvino’s “The Uses of Literature” for $5.98 – less than half the cover price and worth a baker’s dozen more times than that.
That’s all for now. I will talk later about the perfect ristretto at Joes, but this post was really a roundabout way of mentioning an independent bookstore, which I aim to talk more about in the future.
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: June 03, 2004
- Filed Under:
Dependent Children of Independent Bookstores
- Comments:0
- Links to this Post: Technorati
