Eating Alone

I’m famous for hating to eat alone. I regularly ensare more or less total strangers to have lunch with me at work, since I never pack and often eat at the wholly unsustainable but democratically priced diner near the theaters.

That said, I still eat alone all the time. I’m spending a few nights in my “investment property” in Washington Heights, where there aren’t a ton of resaturants to begin with, and a sizable portion of them are patently abysmal. Tonight, I wandered into a place that I’ve been to for lunch in the past with acceptable reuslts. Sometimes, it’s better to eat at the bar when you’re alone, but not when the restaurant doubles as the one-tier-from-dive-bar of the neighborhood. At dinner, like many places for which I see no discernible reason, they like to turn the lights down really low. And, while there may be heart shaped mirrors along one wall, it’s not exactly a romantic spot. Interestingly, the lights were low, but readable until I unfurled my dinner companion (the new New Yorker). At that instant, the lights went down even further, probably for the benefit of the ONE other inhabited table.

I ordered pasta against my better judgement, and told myself that no matter how poorly cooked the pasta itself (pretty bad) I would base my judgement solely on the sauce. In this case it was linguine with portobello mushrooms and goat cheese.

In my imagination, the pasta was going to come out with big, meaty chunks of portobello along with tart globs of goat cheese loosened with some wine or pasta water. What I got was overcooked bad box linguine with slightly burnt thin slices of crimini mushrooms with a smear of supermarket goat cheese all inundated by some truly bad tomato sauce.

In about a month the kitchen in this place will be able to be cooked in. Yee-haw.

Listening: “Half a World Away” REM Out of Time