TRAVEL NOTES

Is this service journalism?

Will there be an official naming ceremony for World War III, at which the “president” does a little dance with Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee?

(It feels grotesque and negligent to not first say, before writing about food and travel, which it is still my privilege to be able to enjoy, that shit is fucking bad, and is probably going to get much worse. Two Congressional candidates I have been following and feeling energized by are Chuck Park, in Queens, and Beth Macy, in Virginia.)

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I have spent most of this winter on my couch with two blankets, a sleeping cat and a space heater, because my landlords have taken the bare minimum legal indoor temperature (68° F) very fucking seriously, and I’ve had a lot of work to do, and all those Housewives aren’t going to watch themselves. BUT, I have also occasionally put on two pairs of pants and two pairs of socks and a turtleneck sweater and my teenage son’s hand-me-up Land’s End parka from elementary school and I have ventured outdoors. Here are some notes on that:

In February, I went to San Juan, Puerto Rico for four nights, with my son and his girlfriend, during President’s Week. This was our first visit to the island, and I was aware that people have strong feelings for the place, especially in the wake of Bad Bunny’s moving and joyful Super Bowl performance, but I was still surprised and charmed by the full-throated yells, hoots and whistles upon landing, and the plane-wide singalong as the flight attendant played “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOTos” on his phone through the plane’s PA system. People do not feel this way about Denver or Frankfurt.

We stayed in an apartment two blocks from the ocean, in the Condado neighborhood, which is about a 10 to 15-minute drive from the airport. I got coffee, breakfast staples and snacks from a nearby SuperMax, which reminded me in many ways of my beloved local Foodtown. In fact, for the entirety of our short visit to the island, I felt that I was seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling some of the source material for the heavily Latin American-influenced New York that I have lived in for thirty years, first on Avenue C in Manhattan and later in Jackson Heights, Queens.

We lost half a day in San Juan to a nine-hour flight delay, during which I took down several sleeves of Lorna Doones and saw the absolute best and worst of humanity, as represented by fellow Frontier passengers stranded in Newark Terminal B, aka Legionnaire’s Disease Memorial Hallway (so many wet carpets). Once on the ground, we did what we came to do: we went to the beach (Ocean Park, gloriously uncrowded though with fairly rough surf, and Balneario Escambrón, whose surf was much calmer), we ate, and we slept.

OK, we did spend about two hours dodging the cruise ship zombies in Viejo San Juan, where I met writer Alicia Kennedy, who has lived there for five years. I enjoyed a substantial prosciutto and arugula sandwich on good bread and a hot Americano at the new cafe counter at Materia Prima, whose stylish cafe/retail grocery vibe reminded me of Gjusta, in Venice Beach.

The kids got meaty stews and açai bowls for lunch, from kiosks inside the SuperMax, and we had dinners together at Bebo’s, a solid homestyle restaurant; Degetau Seafood Restaurant, which my friend Santana described, accurately, as “low-key, local island food”; and, Sato Fino, which offers a well-executed pan-Asian menu with Caribbean touches (okonomiyaki bacalaitos) and the best Korean-style fried chicken I’ve had in years.

Two of the three evenings, the teens went out to La Placita, where they danced to live music and may or may not have taken advantage of the fact that the legal drinking age is 18, while I stayed back and hate-watched Love Story on FX.

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In late February, I spent two nights with my dad in Sherrill, New York, the smallest city in New York State, and the hometown of a (not the) Craigslist killer. We did our annual late winter pilgrimage to Many Maples Farm, to stock up on various grades and sizes of the good stuff, and had big bowls of pasta at Jadie & June’s, a brand-new Italian restaurant that occupies the sprawling former headquarters of the Oneida Daily Dispatch (womp fucking WOMP). We also visited the Oneida Community Mansion House, the historic home of a 19th-century Christian sex cult, which I wrote about over at Flaming Hydra.

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Here in New York, I was invited to a press preview dinner at Nōksu, the 15-seat tasting counter restaurant located within the 34th Street Herald Square subway station, in a space that was once a newsstand and shoe shine shop (womp womp?). Under opening chef Dae Kim, Nōksu received a rather frustrated two-star review from Pete Wells at the New York Times, close to the end of his long tenure as the head dining critic, and was featured in the first season of Knife Edge, the Apple TV docuseries about restaurants pursuing or struggling to retain Michelin stars (which I wrote about over at Rolling Stone). The restaurant now has a Michelin star and a new chef, Aaron Chang, who does delicately astonishing things with abalone, tuna, scallops, shrimp, ocean trout, crab and caviar. Dedicated pastry chefs are increasingly rare, but Nōksu employs former Le Bernardin pastry sous chef Brandon Ting, the beauty and elegance of whose petit fours reflect his training in Paris and Singapore.

Pete Wells was annoyed by the 80s pop soundtrack and the tall seats which require an assist from a staff member; I loved them both. I’m mostly on a peanut butter and tuna fish budget, with a kid on his way to college and New York City rent to pay, so it will be a while before I return, and indeed, at $250 per person, Nōksu may not be for you, either, but if you have a rich family member, a good job, an expense account, or that glorious willingness to accrue credit card debt that fueled most of my fun as a younger person, get yourself there.

A few nights later, my boyfriend and I sat at the bar at the reincarnation of Eddie Huang’s Baohaus, now on St. Mark’s Place, and had fucking delicious lamb and fried chicken baos, plus a half-chicken with sweet, tangy and subtle spicy peanut sauce, and rich chunks of eggplant with oyster sauce. The Baohaus soundtrack, as at Nōksu, was heavy on 80s pop, though it was more Saturday night cocaine-limousine-cigarettes (Stacy Q’s “Two of Hearts”) than the easy radio hits (Fleetwood Mac, “Seven Wonders”) at play above the tasting counter. I can’t remember when I have had more fun in the East Village.