is waif
SIDE SALADS
It’s six am on a Monday morning in July and your head throbs. It feels like Skrillex has set up a DJ kit somewhere between your inner ear and your eyeball. He’s spinning “Fuck That,” a shadow hit he wrote for you back in the winter of 2014. You’d spent it shacked up in his Icelandic wood lodge reading and eating take-out Chinese. But cuffing season’s long gone. It’s the middle of summer and you’re fucking starving. You pop four Advil and make your waif to the back of Yitza – the Ukrainian restaurant your roommate owns. You and she and her sister and her sister’s boyfriend and his über young stepdad have been bowling for the last three hours. Before the bowling you’d been drinking frozen daiquiris at the rooftop basement Cabana Club in midtown. Midtown, Brooklyn. (Anyone who is anyone who is anyone knows the only night New Yorker’s actually go out is Sunday.) Or at least that’s when they drink the most. Before the Cabana was the Charles Hotel, before that was the Westin Inn and before that was New York Ranger’s summer league game. Before that you woke up. When did you squeeze in food? You didn’t. Well you ate one dog biscuit mistakenly at the Westin, but it wasn’t filling in the slightest.
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So you are starving. And so are your companions. As you take your seats, your roommate heads towards her kitchen while shouting some slurred Ukrainian commands towards the kitchen staff. No doubt a feast is heading your way. But a glance at the neighboring table has you thinking twice. A small verdant mountain climbs from a ceramic plate sat in front of a girl so thin you doubletake. It’s a side salad.
“I need the bathroom, I think,” you say as you wobble your way to standing. Whether you do need the bathroom you’re not sure, but you have get a second look at this girl and her food. The scene captivates you, so you walk slow. The girl’s hair is spun gold, and you Rumpelstiltskin. Her salad looks like how you picture the Ukrainian forests where your roommate grew up. The dim lights cast long dark shadows and yet the girl and her salad dazzle. She’s the Madonna, her fork plunging into her only son – killing your sins with each bite. Your headache hasn’t dissipated and the beauty makes you feel faint. So maybe it’s your head – this gorgeous distraction – or maybe your purple Louboutins have had too much to drink, but either way your composure crumbles. Your knees buckle. Your hands swing forward. Skrillex slides towards the tiny hairs in your ear that control your balance and you plunge head first into both the girl and her salad.
In flash and a scream and a kick you’re ejected from the restaurant. You back away into the night avoiding eye contact with your disappointed roommate. You’re embarrassed but your craving still lingers. Here are three other spots in the city to get a side salad
1. Kale Salad, Belli 860 Fulton, Brooklyn
This side salad is much more of a side dish consisting of braised kale. The kale is cooked to a wet perfection, surrounded by what they call down south “pot liquor.” Sadly it wont get you drunk, but you’re more than welcome – if not encouraged - to order alcohol in which to douse the dish. Don’t worry it won’t affect the flavor as this dish doesn’t have much in that department. One bite will tell you: sour is the name of the game. The greens are served already sufficiently lemony, but if that won’t do they are served with more lemon on the side. I guess a few onions are in the dish, but sweetness is not a component. I’m sure our readers already do this, however if you don’t normally bring your own salt to restaurants a trip to Belli would be a good time to start. The highlight of the dish are the whole cloves of garlic. Unctuous and sweet, the tender cloves will make you remember you early life on the farm. But you shouldn’t eat them because they’ll make your breath smell.
2. Caesar Salad, Emily, 919 Fulton, Brooklyn
You’ll like this one because it’s expensive. That’s the fucking rule you waif. Fresh full leaves of romaine hearts. Just the nice parts. Big bowl, as it should be. You spent thirteen of the forty thousand you have in the bank. That’s .30% of your net worth. It’s dressed in some mayonnaise-esque deliciousness. Breadcrumbs stand in ingeniously for croutons giving the salad a most exciting sandpaper quality. But the highlight of this non-side side salad is the litany of small fish swimming around. A school of sardines and anchovies, at least a hundred apiece, sneak their beady little eyes into each bite. If you don’t like seafood then maybe you shouldn’t eat salads. Again, I wouldn’t eat this salad at all as it will most likely make your breath smell bad.
3. Bread, Brooklyn Shawarma 1001 Fulton, Brooklyn
Easily the most delicious of all our side salads is the “Bedouin Bread” from Brooklyn Shawarma. Without a vegetable in sight, this salad is homemade dough taken from well-oiled balls and rolled out in front of your very eyes to large tortilla-like rounds. They are then placed on a large plancha till they rise like Jesus and puff with extraordinary fluff. Quickly the man behind the counter who looks like John C Reilly -and, for all I know, is– hands the warm dough into your arms like a newly adopted baby. Only a moment ago it was born. You cradle it and care for it. You gently tear at the gluten structure and warm steam escapes: the soul of the wheat. Your eyes moisten from either the steam or tears, so you blindly place the bread’s flesh on your tongue and you brain explodes with serotonin. You go to ask Mr. Reilly what you owe, but your mouth doesn’t work like it used to. Nothing is like it was. You careen back through every happy memory you have until you’ve gathered your bearings. “What do I owe you?” you mumble. He asks for two dollars. You give him a thousand and stumble out into a world you don’t recognize. Time is so slow you can watch the colors as they pool into the trees: the whites of the leave’s veins. The blacks and greys of the bark. The yellow-green chlorophyll in the grass. The short blue waves that zip across the sky. You’ve been changed for good. You call your mom to tell her you love her, and you ask her about her week. After that you fire the three sculptures you’ve been meaning to finish since your youth. Then you sleep. You sleep for a good while. And when you wake American democracy has been restored. And your breath smells great.