Cafe Orlin - St. Mark's

WHAT IS THIS GREEN STUFF? HUH? WHAT IS IT?

It's some sort of spinach sauce thing.

It was good. Anything that makes me look like I'm eating the secret ooze from that TMNT movie is cool with me. $12 for a steak and eggs meal is also cool with me--especially when it's a steak tenderloin and not some chuck steak or broil like in this case. In tow: 2 fried eggs over-easy, 2 slices of wheat toast, home fries, a thin spinach sauce, some sort of high quality and slightly grainy hot sauce that tasted good on everything.

I order steak and eggs whenever the opportunity arises and I'd have to admit this is one of the best I've ever had--possibly the best I've had for such a low price point (excluding homemade steak and eggs). The nicer cut of beef and the spinach sauce really lift above the bar compared to most standard dishes. A respectable portion too, I'm tired of paying more for less so this was a refreshing experience. I love to leave a restaurant not feeling like I was beguiled and satisfied.

The staff was very attentive and our server was congenial as was the other staff we encountered. One of the fondest Saturday brunches I've had. The seating area outside was small and slightly cramped, but not enough to be a bother--I was comfortable. So comfortable as a matter of fact, I was close to ordering a bottle of the house red for $17 and just chilling the early afternoon hours away there--another day.

The menu is great. It's not one of those menus you just glance over and see the same tired descriptions of the same sandwiches and entrees. I know I will come here often, because there are at least half a dozen items on the menu that I am excited to try like their goat cheese sandwich with eggplant and peppers, chicken schnitzel, Tunisian eggs, wood smoked salmon and more.

41 St. Mark's Place, New York, NY, 212 777 1447, www.cafeorlin.com

HEGGS (with soy sauce)

"The chickens! HEGGS! All the time we eat HEGGS! Nothing but HEGGS! Poop, poop, poop! The chickens poop HEGGS! All day, all night long my job is to save the chickens from the young black boys! All the time the young black boys climb the fence and run at the chicken coop! I hit them with a long stick, I say, 'You muthafuckas you stay away from my chickens which poop the HEGGS!' I cannot think, I cannot think of my own life or my own death, I am always chasing these young black boys with a long stick!"

p. 85 Hollywood - Charles Bukowski

Scratcher - East Village

There are a damn lot of bars in Manhattan so there's a lot of good ones and even more bad ones--the bad ones I like to call them "clubs." If you go into a place and immediately hear anything remotely sounding like "untz untz" or any variation thereof on their sound system and it doesn't bother you--then you probably shouldn't even read this blog.

The Scratcher is an ideal bar for me. It values simplicity and focus. It's one of the most legit Irish bars in the city, I recently tried their Guinness on tap after many friends had proclaimed it to be the best in the city--they were right, it was damn good and I don't even like dark beer. Tall glasses, congenial Irish bartenders, warm environment without all the lame trinkets and four-leaf clover bullshit that theme bars have--it's great if you don't like to feel as if your senses are being violated while you are at a bar.

Rarely overcrowded, it's a nice place for a date or conversation with friends. The happy hour boasts $4 drinks on tap from 4-8pm--yes that includes Guinness. Great deal. And they don't serve food, but have no problem with you getting food delivered or bringing your own. Like I said, congenial. Did I mention they're economically appropriate? Being "on the scratch" apparently means being unemployed.

209 East 5th St., New york, NY 10003, 212 477 0030, New York Times article

Atomic Wings - Manhattan and Brooklyn

Whoa. Damn, look at these buffalo wings--they look pretty gnarly. Imagine your teeth sinking into the tangy, spicy flesh straight through the white savory meat inside only to feel a gush of hot buffalo flavoring seething in your nostrils. Yeah, imagine that. Wings stand at the apex of recreational snacking along with nachos and potato chips. They make an ideal marriage with beer, television, conversation, and most other social activity--yet, they retain the ability to be delicious while without social interaction as well--infallible? Maybe.

A subjective question here is boneless or on-the-bone? Which do you prefer? It's a very personal question, your answer will be a product of hegemony, your life's placement on the scale of nature vs. nurture, and the relation of the moon to your coordinates on the Earth in terms of distance and gravitational pull. I prefer boneless, my friend, Brendan, prefers bones. Symbolic? Probably not. Arbitrary preference? I don't think so.

Pricing is decent here, especially for Manhattan. You can get 20 wings for $15.49 and as pictured above you can split it 10/10 so you and a partner can both get what you want in terms of bone or boneless and degree of spiciness. The wings are substantial, certainly not wimpy, and the sauce is a good consistency--not too thin nor too dry.

Waffle fries made a good couple with the wings and you get a generous portion with gravy or cheese dipping sauce for a minimal extra cost of $0.75. Atomic Wings serves alcohol too and has a decent happy hour. A good place to hang and eat food that is, for the most part, bad for you. The servers are very congenial as well, which is always a plus. I've never had to wait in line either, it seems like a very calm place--good for conversation.

Multiple locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan as well as Jersey City.
www.atomicwings.com, info@atomicwings.com, 212-571-7667

Creepin' dis

Lindsay Withers brings all the over-bearing and slightly-terrifying in an off-kilter and potentially-harmless-way dudes to the yard. And she only has herself to blame for a number of reasons:

1. One of the last surviving female redheads of New England.
2. Finds cool cups.
3. Makes food balls with minimal supplies.


So squat with me in this thrush as we take pictures of her from afar with our spy cameras. But, seriously, see for yourself. She details some ancient recipes on her blog--some sort of chocolate caffeinated drink and food balls.

File this link under "Babes."

Ashkara - Lower East Side

The small frontier nation of Ashkara, also commonly referred to as Urban Pita, lies on the Western border of the stalwart Bereket subcontinent. Ashkara's main exports of Belgian fries and fallafels are a consistent source of income for the small, militant country. Their borders are often breached by wandering tribes of drunkards late at night--the Ashkarian council has found a clever way in which to subdue these tribes. By playing an awful house/trance channel on XM radio the normally-raucous drunkards are coaxed into a state of ill-awareness; this, coupled with the filling and cheap fallafels pacifies these drunks completely.

Take a moment to valuate the natural resources of Ashkara: fallafel, homemade lemonade, Belgian fries. The monetary value of these raw materials is severely under-valued at a lot-price of around $10. Because of this, the immigration policies in Ashkara are hardly existent and it is very hard to open their door for some reason (seriously, their door is weird).

I'm shedding my faux-wikipedia entry narrative for now. This place is bomb. The fallafels are big and fresh, doughy pitas crammed with crispy fallafel and slathered in hummus. A big highlight is the salad bar--with fallafel in hand you are free to stuff your fallafel further with anything from huge tomato chunks and pickles to garlic and hot sauces along with other various vegetables and dressings. The Belgian fries are nothing to scoff at as well and pair well with the rosemary garlic sauce. I'll warn you though--the fallafel and fries combo is a gratuitous amount of food, especially if you are well-versed in the ways of cramming as to fill the fallafel to the brim with floral goodies.

189 E. Houston St., New York, NY 10002, 212 260 8302, www.urbanpita.com

WWYD?

What would you do if someone showed up at your house with a cake and cupcakes?

A) Eat cake.
B) Potentially eat some of the cake, but mainly throw and/or slather over other people's bodies.
C) Cover yourself and others in cake and then break all the furniture in the house and then strip down to your underwear.
D) All of the above.

Sarita's Macaroni and Cheese - East Village

You know what pairs up with delicious gourmet macaroni and cheese really well? Blood. Blood that's been ground from the fresh corpse of an innocent half-witted victim promised free puppies in the trunk of a car. It's true. To be fair, the following review of Sarita's Mac' and Cheese may have been enhanced by the viewing of the movie Blood Car, which means that this mac' and cheese might just be awesome and not super awesome--or that you may be inclined to watch said movie about a car that runs on human blood while eating Sarita's Mac' and Cheese.

The above picture may not look too impressive, but c'mon, it's mac' and cheese--you shouldn't expect a big show out of something that is only partially a contraction (4 syllables is kind of tough though). Let me decipher this cheesy code for you: hidden in the throng of fresh melted mozzarella, a cheesy tar pit if you will, are roasted tomatoes, garlic and basil. A great combination, quite simple, and I appreciated the light mozzarella flavoring as I am deathly afraid of being inundated with over-cheesy, unforgivingly rich, mac' and cheese that leaves you feeling as if you have ingested the cheese of a non-mammal.

Mild cheesiness, adequate amounts of garlic and tomatoe, a perfectly portioned size at $9.75 and the satisfaction of ordering take-out from a mac' and cheese place? I'd say this is a good niche and one that I can forsee many subcultures partaking in: cheese-lovers, pot-heads, drunkards, backpackers, neo-socialists, postmodern absolvists, sex addicts, and, of course, liberal arts students. If you can't find one of the aforementioned categories to identify with then you may want to take a moment to squeeze out an epiphany about how you don't really know who you are. Deep.

345 East 12th Street, NY, NY 10003, 212 358 7912, www.smacnyc.com