The new New York

New York is changing. It’s getting smaller, friendlier, less corporate, less

ostentatious and maybe even a little bit more geniune. The stock-market bubble

has burst, the economy is turning rough, and people are less interested in what

you do, more interested in who you are. That’s my take, anyway. Others are less

upbeat, with the New York Post declaring

that my neighbourhood has been "jolted" by a crime wave of late.

I, however, feel just as safe here as I always have, and certainly the boutiques,

restaurants, bars and other signs of gentrification continue to open up apace.

One of the more recent such additions to the East Village scene is Sen,

a new restaurant on Avenue C which Michael Blowhard calls

"nouvelle-Asian". I don’t really know what that means; as far as I’m

concerned it’s Vietnamese, but mercifully free of the formica tables and fluorescent

lighting that most Vietnamese restaurants suffer from. There’s not even any

bamboo!

On the other hand, seeing as how the people behind this place also had a hand

in the likes of Sushi Samba and BondSt, Sen is blessedly attitude-free. You

can come in here not wearing black and feel perfectly comfortable; the waitstaff

is friendly and not oppressively beautiful; you don’t need to navigate your

way around doormen or Blahnik-clad maitre d’s. Now, if only they’d put their

name somewhere on the restaurant, it would be perfect. Like Smith

(RIP), the only time you ever see the name of the restaurant is on the credit-card

slip.

Actually, Smith’s demise is another indication of the new New York. Its replacement,

Starfoods, remains

a little bit fashionista but has lost a lot of Smith’s attitude. The food is

meatloaf, not rabbit ravioli; the waiters wear t-shirts, not designer duds.

Local tagger Pork has done a mural on the front wall. Most importantly, the

diners are having a good time on a relatively tight budget, rather than attempting

to be seen on an enormous one.

Sen’s the same. I ordered a whole curried fish for $19 which was pretty much

the most expensive thing on the menu. That would get you a couple of bites of

(exquisite) sushi at BondSt. The fish (red snapper, the day I went) was perfect:

crunchy on the outside, deliciously tender on the inside, and covered in the

kind of spices which make you wake up and tingle.

Sen has a certain amount of fusion food on its menu too: I’m particularly fond

of the frogs’ legs and the quail, both of which are available either as starters

or mains. On the more traditional side, there’s ironpot chicken or some great

curries. And the restaurant certainly has fun on the sake front: three different

infusions, including lemongrass and passionfruit, as well as an extensive menu

of excellent cold sakes. (Beware: these can be very expensive indeed if you

have a few of them: I can highly recommend the Masami, but it’s $11 for a pretty

small glass.)

The one thing I’d avoid is the desserts, even if a pastry chef from Jean Georges

did consult on them. As in nearly all Asian restaurants, they simply don’t work:

avocado ice-cream is not a good idea.

But if you live in the East Village, you don’t go to restaurants for your ice-cream:

you go to Il Laboratorio del

Gelato on Orchard Street. You knew that, right? It’s one of the few success

stories south of Delancey Street: the big six-lane road coming off the Williamsburg

Bridge is a formidable barrier to have to cross, but we’ll do it for ice cream

this good.

Is Il Laboratorio the new New York? Very much so. The owner, Jon Snyder, founded

Ciao Bella and then sold it before

it became the huge business it is now; his latest project is much smaller, and

even more artisanal.

There’s lots of this sort of thing going on: the road on which I live, Rivington

Street, is filling up with small art galleries showing interesting work without

Chelsea attitude. (That said, it’s also home to a monstrous new

hotel, which is definitely, and defiantly, Old New York. For what it’s worth,

my sources say the same as Lockhart Steele’s: that it’s not going to be a W,

it’s going to be a Standard. Either way, it’s going to be extremely yuppie.)

Even websites are getting smaller and cooler. The latest must-visit New York

weblog is Gawker, a veritable cornucopia

of guilty pleasures which was started on a shoestring budget by Nick

Denton and Elizabeth Spiers,

both formidable bloggers in their own rights. Lockhart Steele makes frequent

appearances, as does Aaron Bailey. But Gawker’s

more than just another blog: it’s actually an attempt to make money. It has

a cool and pared-down listings section every day (just one or two things really

worth knowing about) and tries to keep up with media gossip. (Today, for instance,

it managed to link to Radar magazine’s website

long before Romenesko

did.)* It also has some original reporting of its own, such as the truly great

interview with a drug-addled

Wall Streeter entitled "The Quest for the Perfect Coke Dealer".

Gawker is the new New York, then, in the way that dead old websites like New

York Sidewalk and New York Today were the old New York. Or look at alt-publishing:

Russ Smith, the founder and proprietor of the New

York Press, sold out to a couple of gay-press publishers who fired two editors

in as many weeks and brought in someone who was last seen editing an expat rag

in Prague. I doubt we’ll be reading much about Smith’s Concorde flights any

more.

I hope the new New York lasts, that my adoptive hometown can become somewhere

amenable to non-millionaires again. The city is going through a very nasty budget

crisis, and I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of negative equity in this town

when the housing bubble bursts, but every cloud has a silver lining. Look at

Buenos Aires: I’m told that in the wake of the economic crisis there, the city’s

cultural life has only got more vibrant. People who used to be obsessed by making

money are now unemployed and making art instead.

Here’s to the Small Apple!

*Actually, I’m wrong about this. Romenesko had a link to Radar on Thursday, almost a full 24 hours before Gawker. Sorry, Jim!