Surreal City
There are days when I wake and wonder if I dreamt that I had a commercial kitchen on the Lower East Side. Did I imagine that I spent a year working with industrial cleaners, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, restaurant supply dealers, Board of Health consultants, fire prevention experts and a commercial kitchen designer, to turn a dilapidated, abandoned pizza dump into a pristine commercial catering kitchen, tasting room, gallery and office?
It didn’t take a year to build a basic catering kitchen. It took a year to build a perfect catering kitchen. To turn the moldy, greasy, revolting dump that looked and smelled like a crack house into the pristine kitchen I’d always dreamed of working in. After years of sweltering in crowded, hot, airless, miserable kitchens, this would be my Shangri-La. Plenty of space, so no one would have to use sharp knives in the elbow room of somebody else. Central air conditioning, so we wouldn’t swelter in the summer. A big office/tasting room that doubles as an art gallery for my inner artist’s soul. Enough space in the convection oven to cook dinner for 1,000. She, yes she, would be clean, comfortable and efficient.
It’s better that I didn’t know what I was getting into, or I never would have done it.
Renovating the pizza dump was daunting. The contractors had to spread acid on the filthy floor before the work could begin. Actually, it revealed a minor miracle: The solid-inch-or-so of filth, grease and grime had actually preserved the floor below it. I never had to put in a new floor. Sadly that’s where my luck ended. The Ansel exhaust system had to be completely relined. Anything that could be called equipment had to be trashed and replaced, or completely refurbished. I was able to keep the shell of the walk-in, but it needed an entire new generator. I didn’t double my budget; I spent six times my budget. It was heart-wrenching, but when it was all over, the beautiful new kitchen with twinkling stainless steel tables was magnificent. No more inflated egos and slobs to share a kitchen with. This baby was all mine. Clients who visit my kitchen say it feels serene. Cooks who work in my kitchen call it a “Zen kitchen.” The only thing I kept from the pizza dump are the pretty tiffany lamps suspended from the ceiling that hang over our work table. What can I say? I’m nostalgic.
What I didn’t fathom was that after spending all that money to build my culinary Shangri-La, I would have to fork out money constantly for a zillion things I hadn’t planned on. Having a commercial kitchen in New York City means a barrage of endless inspectors and endless money put into curing your space of a zillion possible violations.
Did you know that it’s not enough for the bathroom door to remain shut? It has to be self-closing. If not, violation. Kajing.
Commercial kitchens can’t just throw out their garbage like residential tenants. We have to hire a commercial hauling company to do our pick-ups. The electric is not billed at the same rate as residential electric. It’s way higher. My first electric bill was a thousand bucks. We hadn’t even opened yet!
That was 16 years ago.
I love being a part of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The Lower East Side (I will never call it LoHo!) was the first part of Manhattan I ever saw. In the 1970s, my mother would drag us three badly behaved kids up and down Orchard Street while she haggled with Chasidic vendors.
The brown leather “bomber” jacket I wanted badly started at 100 bucks at the beginning of Orchard. Mom went into every store with a Jewish vendor to see if she could get a better price.
“I only buy from the Yarmulkes!” She declared.
She finally haggled one long-bearded Chasid down to 65 dollars. She shook her head no and dragged me out of the store. Halfway down the block, the Chasid came running after her. Mom scored my jacket for 50 bucks.
“Never buy anything until after you leave, and they come running after you” — Mom’s words to live by.
I got my first bras from an old Chasidic lady on Orchard Street. I tried them on in the back of the store, in a dressing room not much larger than a closet. I was mortified by the large bazungas that had erupted from my tomboy chest, but the little old lady, who reminded me a lot of Doctor Ruth, refused to let me be ashamed. She pointed to each of my breasts and loudly proclaimed, “These are beautiful! You have a lovely, lovely shape!”
A trip to Orchard Street was not complete without a huge lunch at the giant kosher deli near Katz’s. Katz’s was for the goyim; they were kosher-style but not kosher. David’s (I think that was the name), was a giant kosher deli with hanging salamis nearby. We would load up on so much corned beef, we could hardly walk. My family opted for corned beef over pastrami. Odd, I know. I converted to pastrami the second I moved out on my own. As a kid, I was fascinated by the beef jerky I’d see cowboys eating in Westerns. Mom would buy me kosher dry salami sticks at David’s. Took a lot of chewing, but they were damned good. I’d chew one of those salty, sublime sticks all the way through the Holland Tunnel and back to Jersey.
I continued to go to the old Chasidic bra lady for years after I moved out on my own. One day, she was just gone, passed away, I suppose. Soon most of the other Chasidic vendors began to dwindle away, too.
Folks don’t believe me when I tell them about the pushcarts from which the guy would slice smoked salmon for you right on the street. I suppose it’s not very sanitary, but I do miss those smoked fish push carts. The only things left from the Lower East Side of my childhood are Katz’s, Russ and Daughters and Yonah Shimmel knishes.
For years, I commuted to a shared kitchen in Long Island City from my apartment in the East Village. I figure I spent about 10 percent of my life sitting in traffic on the 59th Street Bridge.
I can walk the 12 blocks to my beautiful Shangri-La Lower East Side kitchen.
It would be fastest to scoot down Avenue C and cut across Houston heading west to get to work, but I almost always opt to add a few blocks and walk down Avenue B, then cut through Tompkins Square Park to Avenue A. There’s a tiny juice joint called Juicy Lucy’s on Avenue A. I’d go there just for the name, but the juice is fresh and tasty. Cutting leisurely through the park gives me a chance to watch the dogs running in the dog run and feel a smidgen of nature, then snag a green juice at Lucy’s. There has been many, a stressful day made a little easier by the park-juice morning foundation.
With the pandemic, big parties disappeared overnight. The CDC announcement in March barring gatherings of more than 50 people ended our busy spring wedding season. We just about never cater anything smaller than 100 guests. I’ve had pals make suggestions. How about weddings where everyone sits 6 feet apart? No problem. Just rent a football stadium. That should leave plenty of room for 200 guests and a dance floor. They can take turns dancing.
In the first few weeks, after our parties evaporated, I took the walk to my kitchen, just to pick up the mail and look for any leaks or signs of trouble. The neighborhood has changed vastly since I took over 16 years ago, but there are some rough and troublesome characters in our Lower East Side hood. Thankfully, owing to the fact that we do not have a cash business, they know there is nothing to steal except a few old pots and pans.
Some days, after Corona turned New York City into Surreal City, I’d walk to the kitchen, put the gate up, pull on latex gloves and run sanitizing wipes along the stainless steel work tables. What I really was doing was petting her, my kitchen. Some people believe places have a soul, like an old house, a building. If that’s true, I wondered if she had missed me, too.
One afternoon, I walked to the kitchen and surveyed the perishables I’d stocked up on for wedding season. They’d rot in my walk-in soon enough. I decided to make soup. The sound the exhaust made when I turned it on after a two-week hiatus sounded like purring.
“Yeah baby. Mama’s home.”
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That first day of cooking I made a lot of soup, vats of soup: carrot ginger soup, chicken soup, lentil soup and vegetable curry. All the catering freelancers were out of work. I didn’t have any work to offer, but I could give them soup. That day began a new ritual. My favorite work gal sisters and partners in arms Glory, Char and CC came in to help wash dishes, chop onions, and cart quarts of soup away for themselves and lots of other people. On the first cooking day, Char brought a bottle of Prosecco. When she popped the cork, I thought to myself, “We are still here!”
My sous chef Glory has been a hero in this new enterprise: feeding catering family, neighbors and friends in need. I call it “The Raging Skillet Loves You,” just because, well, it feels good to have a name sometimes. Glory bought a used car from a rent-a-car place. It’s adorable and green. Not many green cars on the road. Glory figured out (without my saying a word) that I wanted (needed) to do all the cooking. After years of delegating the heavy lifting in my kitchen to my chefs, I needed to be the one to cook the soups, curries, goulash, ropa vieja and more. Glory knows me well enough to know that I hate chopping, shredding, washing dishes and shopping. She carts groceries in the green-mobile she named “Bella,” then jumps right in to chop and shred.
CC has been my salvation. Since the first days of the shutdown, she’s accompanied me on weekly walks along the East River. I’ve lived in New York City for 39 years but never walked across any of its bridges. CC took me for a walk over the Manhattan Bridge. There’s a wire mesh fence that keeps you from poking your head down to look, but CC knew where the holes were. I stuck my head through a cut out porthole and looked out at the glimmering water and the Statue of Liberty in the distance. Glorious.
I cherish my morning walk through the park more than ever now. When most businesses shut down, thankfully Juicy Lucy’s stayed open. The owner, whose name is not Lucy, had to lay off all her workers and has been working alone in the tiny shop. She does all the juicing and counter sales herself. From behind her mask, her eyes looked tired and sad. I recognize the look. I’ve seen it often enough in the mirror since Corona blew in.
One day, we started chatting, and she confessed that she’d been so busy doing everyone’s job, she hadn’t had time to cook anything for herself.
“I’m starving,” she said sadly. I guess you can only eat so many carrots.
The next day, when I came for a celery juice, I brought two quarts of lentil soup. She refused to take money for the juice, and just like that, a barter between two business owners trying to survive the pandemic happened and became a regular thing.
Was this how it felt a hundred years ago? I give you a chicken, you give me chopped wood for the fire? How much wood pays for a chicken, anyway? Without the people and the traffic it was easy to imagine time travel.
So many things in our everyday life were fragile, only we didn’t know it. Who would have believed that most businesses, jobs, so many ways of life could simply NOT be?
The things that are still here feel more solid, more permanent. They stand out as if they’d suddenly been illuminated by a spotlight: the squirrels, the birds, the trees, the sound of laughter, relationships. Love.
I see love more clearly since the world shut down. It’s like the floor in my kitchen after they got all that gunk off it. There it is: love. The look in someone’s eyes when they see you in person (or now, on Zoom or FaceTime). Love makes a sound. It’s a joy you can hear in someone’s voice when they are truly happy to hear from you. My partner Lyla is many miles away, but the sound of her voice when I call her often borders on exuberance. No one, since my mother passed, has ever made me feel like they were that happy to hear from me.
On our last cooking day, I decided to dig up my mother Harriet’s Hungarian goulash recipe from my memory banks. I didn’t have to make it gluten-free. Mom didn’t use flour, anyway. Growing up, I don’t think I ever saw a bag of flour in our house. Astonishing, since we just about lived on bread. No wonder I became gluten-intolerant.
That last one was a big cooking day: beef goulash, Mexican chicken soup, Spanish rice, cauliflower carrot ginger soup, red bean Cajun soup. We toasted our soups with Prosecco. CC mopped the floors, and Glory went off in Bella the green-mobile to make deliveries downtown on Chambers Street and uptown on 101st.
I put the gate down, and CC and I walked toward Stuy Town. We passed a Mexican restaurant with a take-out window that was offering cocktails to go. Such a strange thing, the idea of cocktails to go, then drinking in public. It’s normally a big no-no in NYC, but these were strange times. CC bought us two mezcal margaritas. They were given to us in sealed plastic cups inside a paper bag. We sat on the steps of a church on Avenue B and sipped our cocktails in front of a dozen or so police officers congregating around Tompkins Square Park. Surreal.
Feeling happy from the sun, the company and the mescal we walked through Stuy town. It was the end of a beautiful sunny day, still crisp and warm. We marveled at the trees exploding in flowers all around us. CC took pictures with her iPhone.
Are the birds louder, or did we just never listen? I don’t know but it felt like they were singing just for us.
Caught up in our mescal induced, blooming colors, singing birds, marvelous breeze fuzzy, we didn’t realize it was 7 p.m. The cheers for front-line workers brought us out of our stupor. They were all around us. A man opened his side window, hung his head out and begin to bang on a frying pan with metal spoon. People cheered from the lawn, from windows, from distant roofs. Several elderly women sat on benches, wearing masks and clapping.
We were standing in the epicenter of Stuy Town. All around us came the whistles, cheers, drums, claps and pot banging. We slowed our walk to take in every bit of the glorious sound. Just as the buildings on First Avenue appeared came a trumpet playing the most beautiful, sad, mournful, trumpet music I’d ever heard.
What was the song? So familiar. Ah. “Amazing Grace.”
CC and I looked at each other and smiled ear to ear. I’d learned to recognize the look in eyes and the way her mask lifted up just a smidgen to know when she was smiling. She said she could tell when I was smiling, too.
The trumpet sang its beautiful song from a window somewhere.
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound.”
I started to sing, muffled from under my mask.
“I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.”
