The other day was my wife Cory\u2019s birthday and we decided to have a \u201cfamily dinner\u201d down the hill at our neighborhood restaurant, the River Deli. So I dragged my clan over to the other side of the street, and we made our way down the steep hill under a canopy of Cherry Blossoms dropping their little white flowers as in a digitally enhanced Ang Lee film. Two blocks and we came up to the restaurant\u2019s sweet little affordable menu, posted in one of its giant plate glass windows.<\/p>\n
I held my hand up to the window to block the reflection and peeked in. To my delight, the dining room was basically empty. By some miracle we had beaten the Sunday evening crowd, which is hard to do these days, ever since my charming, low-key neighborhood in Brooklyn Heights has been turned into a tourist attraction. Our panoramic view of Manhattan is blocked by a new condo and hotel which eclipse much of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the view we once had all the way up to the Chrysler Building\u2019s silver toothpick. Now, our only unobstructed view is of the Statue of Liberty. If you turn your head to the right, you\u2019re staring at the plumber\u2019s crack of a crappy condo that says: I\u2019m just gonna squeeze right in here and stand in front of you and watch the sunset, buddy.<\/p>\n
As we eased in through the front door, relieved to be seconds away from an ice-cold Peroni, we were greeted, more halted, by a hostess, who stepped up to me like a crosswalk guard outside a public school. \u201cWe can seat you back there,\u201d she said in a thick Italian accent, turning towards the restaurant\u2019s dark back room, where they kept things like a mop and bucket, a wall-mounted cash machine, and a stack of hard plastic high chairs. I was about to blow my stack.<\/p>\n
I looked at my \u201chappy family Hunan style.\u201d (we\u2019ve been calling ourselves this ever since the \u201cHappy Family Hunan Style\u201d dish we once read with curiosity on a Chinese menu but never ordered). Then I turned back to the hostess, my pulse now like the mechanized thumping of a rave. \u201cUm, there are like six open tables here, and\u2014let me count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5\u2014five<\/em> empty stools at the bar. May we please be seated somewhere up front?\u201d<\/p>\n I could vaguely remember the River Deli a few years ago when its previous owners were selling Twinkies and Lotto tickets from a cat-infested corner in the armpit of the BQE. I thought about how charmed I was to discover that the place had been turned into a cool little off-the-beaten-path restaurant. I remembered the times I\u2019d sat sideways at the last seat at the bar with my back against the wall, fantasizing about switching professions to Hollywood Location Scout. The view, is one of the most captivating street-scenes in all of Brooklyn or Manhattan\u2014a \u201cdouble fall line,\u201d as my dad used to call it on the ski slopes. A feast, not of food, but of a fairytale city\u2014as the blue sky gets darker and bluer and darker and bluer, and the moon and the street lamps dim, and\u2026well it\u2019s called a romantic atmosphere. And it was just the Hunan Style Atmosphere I had in mind for my wife\u2019s 46th.<\/p>\n I scanned the restaurant again, from the bar seats, to the window seats, to the uninviting shadow in the back, where presumably there was a table just waiting for us. And then I looked back at the hostess. By now, the restaurant\u2019s single waitress, who must have sensed the confrontation, had joined her co-worker in solidarity.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d I asked. \u201cAre you holding all of these tables for tourists? If so, why not do what they do in Little Italy\u2014put a fake plate of food on a place setting at a table out on the sidewalk, and stand out there inviting people in. Is that the kind of place you are now? What about us friendly locals, who sat so cozily in here all winter long, entertaining your bartenders; eating microwave lasagna; not paying with credit cards but with cash?\u201d<\/p>\n The hostess reached for a little spiral pad and began flipping pages, pretending to count names.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t try to pull that reservations trick on me!\u201d I shouted, as I turned to my daughter and wife, who nodded in agreement. And like the start of a dance in a Broadway musical, we locked elbows, and stepped out in unison, back onto the cobblestone corner of brave new Brooklyn Heights.<\/p>\n Photo credit:\u00a0imjoannerr\/Instagram<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The other day was my wife Cory\u2019s birthday and we decided to have a \u201cfamily dinner\u201d down the hill at our neighborhood restaurant, the River Deli. So I dragged my clan over to the other side of the street, and we made our way down the steep hill under a canopy of Cherry Blossoms dropping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1481,"featured_media":34548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43902],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-professional-development"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n