Josie’s: River stones in the restroom; soy in my scramble

Starting a vegan experiment the day before a trip “home” to NYC is pretty stupid, but once I commit to something, I commit. That meant scrounging around to find a brunch spot that would satisfy two vegans (Running Buddy and me), a carnivore (New Best Friend) and the always agreeable Mariez — no easy feat. We landed on Josie’s on the Upper West Side (74th and Broadway), and it didn’t disappoint.

Mariez lamented that Josie’s looked sort of like IHOP inside (true), but the similarity stopped at the dining room. Josie’s restroom, in fact, was quite awesome, despite its deceptively simple exterior, which had pale gray walls, white brick-like tiles and plain white doors. Inside, there were more brick tiles, and the sink was one of those geometric, asymmetrical ones where the bowl is off to one side. And then there was the main event: a floor-to-ceiling wall covered with big square tiles printed with a photo of river stones. How cool is that?

Besides being a temporary vegan, I decided to be an annoyingly picky temporary vegan, and I asked the waiter to please give me the tofu scramble with the veggie omelette filling (asparagus, fennel and portabello mushrooms) instead of the scramble’s Denver-style filling — oh, and don’t forget I need soy American cheese. Between the scramble, several links of soy sausage and home fries (which included sweet potatoes!), I don’t think I’ve ever had such an amazingly satisfying meal. It wasn’t my favorite combination of foods, but I felt perfectly full and energetic, and that feeling lasted until I got back to Pennsylvania at 6pm that evening. I’m not sold on veganism yet, but my experience at Josie’s was a positive one.

Restroom Rating: [rating=4]

Tatiana Grill: Paper towels on floor “bock” up toilet

One thing I miss about NYC is all of the train-accessible beaches, including Brighton Beach, recommended in TimeOut’s “1000 Things to Do in New York.” K and I spent a day there, basking in the summer sun and eating traditional Russian foods — Brighton Beach has a large Russian population — including meat-filled pastries and a late lunch at Tatiana Grill on the boardwalk (3152 Brighton 6th St.).

As you descend the stairs to Tatiana Grill’s restroom, you walk under a cluster of lights suspended from the ceiling that look like roses hung up to dry, like a bride’s bouquet being preserved for posterity — or until it disintegrates. You’re directed to the restroom by handwritten paper signs, and there’s also a sign on the door that tells you, in Russian and English, “do not throw paper on the floor, the toilet / sink is bocked [sic] up.” I’m not sure what throwing paper on the floor has to do with “bocked” up plumbing, and I’ll leave it at that. Inside, the restroom has a lot of rich royal blue, including the tile work, walls and sink counters. A vase of fresh flowers sits on one counter. My most memorable moment in Tatiana’s restroom was trying to clean gum off my flip flop; sitting on the wooden chair in the sink area might have helped, because the hot, sun-baked gum was particularly oozy and uncooperative.

K and I ordered a traditional Russian seafood salad that came with strips of cucumber and caviar-topped hard-boiled eggs. It was my first experience with caviar, and I was not in love — tiny spheres that squirt salty liquid are apparently not my thing — but the salad in general was delicious, and it was fun to delve into a new ethnic cuisine. The best part about Tatiana Grill was sitting on the boardwalk under a blue-and-yellow umbrella, and sipping fabulous pina coladas on a perfect, relaxing summer afternoon.

Restroom Rating: [rating=2]

 

Hill Country: A taste of Texas, even in the restroom

Hill Country is a little taste of Austin in New York City (26th St., between 6th Ave. and Broadway): mountains of barbecue, live music and a Texas-themed restroom.

A painted “Restrooms” sign hangs on a well-worn wooden entryway, studded with Lone Star belt buckles (reminds me of Roaring Fork‘s restroom, in Austin). Inside, the restroom has walls made of bricks and white wooden slats. A large mirror with a white frame is above a  wide stainless steel sink with  industrial-looking faucets. Bare bulbs light the restroom, which has an exposed ceiling from which a tangle of pipes hang. The paint on the stalls is distressed to make them look old, and there was an empty beer bottle in the trashcan of the stall I used – so classy, ladies. My stall was also scrawled with graffiti: “Live long and prosper.” My favorite part about Hill Country’s restroom was the vintage high school yearbook photos: Most Handsome, Most Beautiful, cheerleaders, a homecoming queen flanked by star football players. I know that football is a religion in Texas, so this was a clever way to decorate.

I met up with a Texan at Hill Country to listen to the live music and watch the Texans’ last attempt to make it to the World Series, so I can’t comment on the food. Everything looked and smelled fantastic, though, so I’d like to give it a try – and their website says they even sell Kreuz Market sausage!

Restroom Rating: [rating=5]

Katz’s Delicatessen: A restroom and a jail in the dining room

When I decided to leave NYC and move to Pennsylvania less than 3 weeks before my lease ended, I didn’t have time to do all of the things I hadn’t done in my 4 years in Manhattan. I settled for finally going to Katz’s Delicatessen with MN (205 East Houston St.).

To get to the restroom at Katz’s Deli, you follow a giant illuminated “RESTROOMS ATM” sign hanging beneath a fluorescent Budweiser sign. The ladies’ room, marked by a fluorescent sign with an arrow, is in a small room that juts out into the center of the dining room. Cardboard boxes of beverage napkins and plastic soup spoons are stacked on the room’s “roof.” Inside, the restroom is kind of dumpy and old. The walls are made of peach tiles with a row of shiny black tiles on top — hilariously, this is exactly what the bathroom at my parents’ house looked like when we moved in in 1993 (although there’s white paint on the top half of the walls here, instead of metallic goldfish wallpaper). A mustard yellow hand dryer sticks out like a sore thumb, but it feels sort of appropriate here at Katz’s, where you’re encouraged to load up their tasty meats with gobs of mustard.

Katz’s food was memorable, as it should be at such a famed NYC deli. We split the “3 Meat Platter,” which the menu says “feeds 3 tourists or one regular customer”; I was stuffed with my half of the meat, plus pickles, despite eating only a little bit of the rye bread. All of the meats were delicious, and I’m glad I tried them all. I wish, though, I’d gone with my gut and ordered a reuben sandwich, even if it meant I’d only have the corned beef — the reubens I saw going past our table looked fantastic.

And then the fun part: getting stuck in “Katz’s Deli jail.” I’d read a bunch online about the importance of hanging onto the blue ticket they give you when you enter the deli. Okay, cool, got it. However, when we placed our order, because we’d ordered only one item, the waiter scribbled it on my ticket and took MN’s. It sort of crossed my mind that something seemed off, after all of my research, but I figured that a Katz’s Deli waiter would be the expert when it came to the tickets. Turns out, nope. I handed in my blue ticket on our way out, and paid the cashier. When MN tried to stroll on by, she screamed at him, and then made us wait behind a gate for quite a long time, until one of the “jail keepers” lied to her and told her he’d found our ticket. But he only did this after insisting that we dig through our pockets in his presence, because he didn’t believe our waiter had taken our ticket. To make things better, the jail keeper asked our waiter about the ticket. But rather than ask our waiter what we ordered (thereby quickly proving that we’d paid for what we’d received), he asked our waiter if he’d kept our ticket. And the waiter — of course — said “No siree, Bob!” RIDICULOUS. What a way to end my experience in NYC. Glad I got to taste Katz’s delicious meats, but I’m never going back there on a return trip to the city.

Restroom Rating: [rating=2]

Krystal’s Cafe 81: Black and black and black bathroom

One thing I love about urban life is the plethora of ethnic cuisines you can try, at nearly every street corner. What I love even more is when I have a friend whose ties to their motherland are way more recent than mine (pretty sure all of my ancestors were in the U.S. by 1850 or so…), and can therefore show me the ropes of a cuisine I haven’t yet tried — as Mariez did with Filipino food at Krystal’s Cafe 81 (7th Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues).

The restroom at Krystal’s Cafe 81 is all black. The only digression from that theme, in fact, unless you count the toilet paper and paper towels, are the brown wood doors. Oh, and the floor is gray (but isn’t gray just light black?), which gives your eyes a bit of a break from the black toilet and sink, and the black marbled tile all over the walls. The toilet and sink, in addition to being the unusual black color, are also very angular — this is particularly interesting with the toilet (notice the sharp angles around the base, which are mirrored on the tank, but that you can’t really see in the photo).

We ordered the sizzling sisig (chopped pork belly and liver with egg), and gollygeewhiz was that a fried heart attack served up on a platter. Phew. Awesome and delicious, but you can eat that only once in a lifetime, I think, without subtracting years off your life. The rest of my meal wasn’t memorable — I think I had something traditional, like chicken adobo — but I do remember Mariez eating a whole fried fish that came with banana-flavored ketchup; whole fish freak me out. Filipino cuisine, at least in NYC, is too greasy to be one of my favorite types of food, but I’m glad I tried it.

Restroom Rating: [rating=2]

Irving Farm: Restroom man is bigger than restroom woman

If there’s one thing I really miss about living in NYC, besides my wonderful friends, it’s getting up at 7 a.m. on Saturdays and coffee shopping for hours on end with Mariez. The MacBook Air I bought three weeks before I decided to move to Pennsylvania gets plenty of use, sure, but not the kind of use that inspired its purchase (i.e., toting it all over town in a small Longchamp bag, with its charger, a water bottle and a journal). Irving Farm on the Upper West Side holds a special place in my heart, because it’s the last coffee shop in NYC where I spent the morning writing as a New Yorker (79th St., between Broadway and Amsterdam, New York).

Coffee shops range the gamut from folksy to modern, and despite having the word “farm” in the name, which would suggest quaint and antique, Irving Farm is on the sleeker side of the scale, as is its restroom. Beautiful wood in various shades of gold and brown flank the dark restroom door, which is labeled with the standard men’s and women’s restroom signs — the real fun here, though, is that they made the man largely than the woman. Guys aren’t always taller than girls, as I’ve sadly learned in the dating world, but it is generally true, and I was amused by this quirky little detail. Inside, the restroom had gray painted walls, with snazzy gray and black paneling that looked a bit like wood grain but not quite. A wide, frameless mirror hung above the square sink. In the sunny hallway outside the bathroom, there was a cushioned bench where you could sit while waiting in line and read cast-off copies of the New York Post — a nice finishing touch, as coffee shop restrooms often get a lot of use by a lot of people.

I’m a coffee lightweight, so I judge coffee shops on their mochas, and Irving Farm’s was good — I would get it again. Mariez moved into my old apartment building a couple of weeks after I moved out, so when I visit Manhattan, I’ll be in close proximity to loads of coffee shops, including Irving Farm, that I can go to with the best coffee shop buddy ever. Until then, though, the coffee shop in my suburban town will have to do. One of these days I’ll make it there. One of these days… It’s a 20-minute walk, and it’s not the kind of walk where you get to do lots of people watching and discover magical little boutiques you’ve never seen before. Nope, it’s a walk along the same busy road you’ve walked a million times to get to the train, and to mail things at the post office, and to buy running shoes, and to use your buy-one-get-one-free Chipotle coupons. Still, one of these days I’ll get there. One of these days my MacBook Air and a mocha will make a writer out of me again.

Candle Cafe West: Restroom is a shrine to tasteless vegan food

It’s interesting how many restrooms have a shrine-like theme — Rapture, for example, or Sookk — and Candle Cafe West, one of several restaurants in the vegan Candle chain, belongs on that list, too (Broadway between 89th and 90th Streets).

As you descend the stairs from Candle Cafe’s dining room, you pass a praying Buddha, who stands in an alcove next to a sentence stamped on the wall: “All’s well that eats well!”, a play off Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. The entrance to the women’s room is painted a beautiful dusty purple, which pairs nicely with the hallway’s warm tan and a print hanging on the wall of anatomical depictions of various fruits and vegetables. Inside, the color scheme cools off, with light gray-ish purple stalls, pearl gray brick-like tiles, and black toilets and sinks. The shiny black sinks are lovely — they look sort of like giant, oblong soup bowls, with a ledge on top for the faucet and handles. The cheesy inspirational quotes continue here, sprinkled across the wall: “Want to make lots of money? Invest in yourself!””When you say ‘YES!” where others say ‘No!’ miracles happen.”

The cheesiness of the quotes is unfortunately a poor stand-in for actual cheese. To celebrate Mariez’ completion of the New York bar exam, we feasted like vegan kings at Candle Cafe, and the faux cheese on the nachos was only okay. But my entree was really boring, despite having 2,862 components — when I’m out to dinner, I don’t want to eat something that’s so healthy that it lacks richness and heft. The mole tempeh I ordered was a couple of slabs of mole-drenched tempeh (obviously), resting within a ring of Brussels sprouts (the best part), atop a bed of green beans and pureed sweet potatoes; the tempeh was then topped with shaved fennel and pomegranate seeds. Individually, each part was fairly good, but together, it just tasted like a whole bunch of health food dumped on a plate — and I apparently do not like pomegranate seeds on savory food. At all. Yuck. I will pass on Candle restaurants in the future, because I clearly prefer decidedly non-vegan options, like burgers, salmon or anything covered in cheese, delicious, delicious cheese. Vegetarian food is one thing; vegan is a whole other story, and totes not my thing.

Restroom Rating: [rating=4]

Grand Central Oyster Bar: A red lip couch in the restroom…?

The Grand Central Oyster Bar is such a NYC classic, yet I’m sure it’s one of those things that most New Yorkers never actually do. I certainly haven’t, and neither had K, despite being a bit of a raw oyster aficionado, so we decided to celebrate her impending move to Denver there, with Prosecco and an abundance of seafood.

The Grand Central Station restrooms right outside the restaurant were much closer, but I wanted to be able to blog about the Oyster Bar, so I took a bit of a trek from the dining area into the saloon, which, true to its name, reeked of stale beer. The restroom area was accessed through a wooden door with a giant fish – a marlin? – above it. A porthole window was frosted with the standard man and woman icons to let you know you were heading to both genders’ restrooms. A vestibule behind the door had two leather chairs that looked like baseball mitts. The ladies’ room door was painted pink, while the men’s room door was – you guessed it – blue. Tiles painted with a mermaid and a merman, respectively, also indicated which direction you should go. Right inside the ladies’ room was a leather couch shaped like red lips. Uhhhh. A long granite countertop held a bevy of toiletry items, which a not-too-in-your-face restroom attendant hoped you’d take so that you’d leave her a tip. The toilet stall area was a bit dingy, with the doors needing a fresh coat of Pepto Bismol pink paint. The inside of the restroom sort of had a peppermint vibe, with the pink doors, white walls and a stripe of red tile going the whole way around the room.

Our meal at the Grand Central Oyster Bar was certainly fun, but I wasn’t enthralled with my food. I’d never had raw oysters before, so I was game to try them – and I don’t need to do it again. They tasted like eating the ocean, and if I want to eat the ocean, I can go to the beach and swallow a bunch of seawater. Much cheaper, and I’ll also get a tan and pina coladas. If I were required to eat raw oysters, though, I’d go for West Coast v. East Coast (and I feel so cultured being able to say that). I also do not like clam bellies. What I do love is New England clam chowder, and the Grand Central Oyster Bar’s is some of the best I’ve had. Our waiter felt bad that I hated my entire meal, and kindly brought over a cup of soup, on him. He got a nice tip. I would absolutely go back for a giant bowl of that chowdah. And other things not involving oysters or the bellies of clams.

Restroom Rating: [rating=4]

Mont Blanc: Where a bathroom blog is born and raclette is eaten

You could say Mont Blanc‘s restroom started the Porcelain Press. True, I was first enthralled by the uniqueness of NYC restrooms when I experienced the mirror next to the toilet at Turkish Cuisine – but it was at Mont Blanc that this bathroom blog was born (48th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues).

I went back to Mont Blanc recently and realized the bathroom isn’t all that amazing, compared to some of the awesome ones I’ve seen over the past two years. But it is unique, so I understand why I noticed it. The two unisex restrooms are marked with inverse triangles: a dress for the woman and broad shoulders for the man (they’re nested together like New Hampshire and Vermont). Inside, the restroom has mushroom-colored fixtures – tell me, how many times have you seen a mushroom toilet and sink? Everything is earth toned, and the tile work features an intricate pattern that looks like interlocking infinity symbols. Infinite infinity, I guess, which is redundant. Black-and-white photos of Times Square hang next to the sink. And what’s really cool is the ceiling. Leaves are stenciled on the top edges of the walls, and three-dimensional vines of ivy crisscross the ceiling.

Mont Blanc serves incredible raclette, which is kind of like a Swiss version of fondue. I had raclette in Paris, too, at Le serpent qui danse, and I prefer Mont Blanc’s, because they give you shakers of seasonings, and apparently cheese, prosciutto and potatoes taste supremely better with a healthy dose of caraway seeds. I love it at Mont Blanc. Everyone who works there is so gracious, and they keep bringing you more cheese, vegetables and meat until you’ve had your fill. You feel as if they’re actually excited for you to be there, which is rare at a restaurant. And it’s a mere $20. Highly worth a visit.

How was the Porcelain Press born there? I was in the restroom, and I recall thinking, “Huh. This is a cool bathroom. I won’t remember it, though. I should start to take pictures of the best ones I see.” I returned to the table and shared my idea with K and two of our French friends, including Boirgereau. K thought a blog was a fantastic; the Frenchies looked at me like I had 11 eyeballs. To this day, they’re the only ones who’ve responded to the Porcelain Press so negatively – good thing I ignored their advice.

Restroom Rating: [rating=4]

Caffe Bene: Washing away yesterday in the restroom

I’ve wanted to get serious with my personal writing for a while, and I can thank Mariez for getting me out of my apartment and into a bunch of local coffee shops, where I’ve started writing like a madwoman. One of my new favorites is Caffe Bene (49th and Broadway), which also specializes in waffles.

Caffe Bene is massive, which means you’ll easily find space when you want to plop down with your laptop for a while. Unfortunately, thought, they have only one restroom – like, literally one toilet. And when you’re drinking coffee for a few hours, you’re likely to need to use it once, if not twice or thrice. I’ve had to stand in line for a while a couple of times, watching images of NYC and coffee flash on the giant TV screen above the restroom door. Inside, the restroom has an industrial-style bare concrete floor, made chic by shiny brick-like white tiles. It’s a large space, so there’s room for a metal stool (not sure who would sit on this), as well as a large piece of furniture that’s been decorated with a USPS Priority Mail sticker marked to “Art.” The soap dispenser is stocked with blue soap that foams, and the cover has been busted off. A quotation is printed on the top of the far wall: “Washing away yesterday. Cleansing for today…today.” I think this would be more fitting in a domestic bathroom with a shower, but the sentiment is nice.

Just steps north of Times Square, Caffe Bene is quite touristy, but I put up with the waffle-eating tourists because I don’t have to worry about finding a table. The baristas are also fairly slow, and they’re not very good at pouring the steamed milk, creating rather lopsided blobs that don’t really look like anything. Nevertheless, the drinks are delicious – the first time I had the maple macchiato latte, I was tempted to get a second giant one, and I enjoyed the seasonal red velvet latte, which is bright pink and tastes like cake frosting. Caffe Bene’s coffee seems to be working, perking me up from my former laziness. I’ve been doing so much personal writing lately that after one long morning with a maple macchiato latte, I decided it was time to pull the trigger on purchasing a MacBook Air. Pricy, sure, but I consider it to be an investment in becoming a writer and making my dreams come true.