New York

I had an experience the other night that was right out of Larry David’s universe or Seinfeld’s. A classic. I’ll try to describe it for you.

It was around 9:45 and I was at Danji, the wonderful Korean fusion restaurant on West 52nd Street, waiting for Jill after her show. Our friends Florence and Richard Fabricant were seeing the show that night and we were all going to have dinner. I know that mentioning Florence Fabricant is name- dropping – I apologize — but her position as a famous food writer for the NY Times is part of the story.

So, I’m sitting at the bar, sipping a nice white with a Japanese name from Alsace. Yeah, a Japanese wine from Alsace – or an Alsatian wine with a Japanese owner – whatever – it’s very good.

I get the manager’s eye and he comes over.

“I’m with the Fabricant party. I’m the first to arrive,” I say.

He looks into his book, shakes his head and says, “You know, we don’t normally take reservations.”

How I love New York restaurants! I love my old standbys. I love the familiar friendly faces and food that I know exactly how it will taste. But, I also love going somewhere unexpected and original. This fall I fell in love with two new Italian restaurants both wonderful and both truly special.

Le Zie 2000 Trattoria

Please, promise me, you will not tell anyone about this incredible trattoria in the heart of Chelsea! It is a ‘hood fav and if we all travel from the far corners of Malibu or East 62nd Street just to have a perfect and obscenely inexpensive Venetian spread – therefore overrunning it with “flatland touristers” - my friend, Brucino, will be very, very angry with me.

Brucino – aka Bruce Levingston – is the brilliant pianist of renown, whose latest CD, “Portraits – Bruce Levingston,” has been described as “achingly beautifully played, a discrete and warm miracle.” It was through his gracious invitation to dinner (and Oh! coming from the Mississippi Delta his grace is indeed gracious!) that we discovered Le Zie and its charming owner Claudio. Claudio loves to make special dishes for Brucino, but there was so much to desire on the menu and the specials put my head spinning, my darling husband, Bill and I were more than content with what lay before us:

I didn’t miss him all winter.  Everytime I spoke to our mutual friends, who I guess he got custody over as I was limited to phone time with them, they would tell me he was being cold, sort of erratic, he was being exceedingly difficult.  In some form or another he was costing them all money.  He was not as exciting as he used to be.  But now that it’s summer, I noticed a change in their voices. They’re all clearly laughing with him again, enjoying his company, discovering new aspects of his personality. 

I am not jealous, per se.  I do have someone else, someone way more suited to my personality.  Someone who’s made me a little bit blonder, and a little bit tanner, and a hell of a lot healthier, but there’s still a separate heartbeat consistent for my first true love, and sometime in the middle of the night, when I know he cannot hear me, I’ll tell him: “New York, I miss you."

We all know the few things in our lives that give us status above and beyond our own reality.

Our dog, Buzz (an apricot poodle that bears an uncanny resemblance to Rod Stewart), always attracts attention, is far more famous than we are – and prettier! Telling people I am a union member (OK, it’s SAG) has always given me a certain social gravitas among my political friends. Doing a book on Richard Wagner has made me a “distinguished visitor” at the American Academy in Berlin… not a way in which I am normally described. I have a relative – John Singleton Mosby – that brings Southerners to their knees in a show of respect when his name is mentioned, but white smoke rises when people find out Bill and I have a Monday night table at Rao’s – the impossible dream. Or, as they might say when you call for a reservation, FUGGEDABOUDIT!

Monday night at Rao’s isn’t your average Monday night somewhere else. Rao’s, in Spanish Harlem and in the same family since 1896, with only ten tables and one seating is ‘famiglia’, and as such is closed over the weekend. Monday night is its weekly re-birth and the crowd is always gleeful, festive and full of song. (Yes they sing at Rao’s … but that is another story.) Monday night regulars, besides the characters that look like the cast from Goodfellas – and sometimes are, have included Sonny Grasso (the real cop from the French Connection) sportswriter, Dick Schaap (when Dick passed away Billy Crystal asked in his eulogy who would inherit the table), Ron Perlman, Woody Allen, and Judge Eddie Torres (who wrote Carlito’s Way and Q and A). Also seen Monday nights, Sophia Loren, Senator Alphonse D’Amato, Mike Wallace, Sharon Stone, Martin Scorsese, Don Rickles, Pierce Brosnan – the list is endless.