New York kitchen: A cool treat for less
May 06, 2010
THIS was once one of the coolest places to drink coffee in town: coolest in the most cool, if not the most literal sense of the term. New York Kitchen is snuggled into a small corner in the bottom of the parking tower in Garden City.
By Ernest Bazanye
THIS was once one of the coolest places to drink coffee in town: coolest in the most cool, if not the most literal sense of the term. New York Kitchen is snuggled into a small corner in the bottom of the parking tower in Garden City.
Part of it is actually in a parking lot, and that part comes with the expected hazards. Yes, someone will blow a gust of exhaust at you as he leaves.
But there is more. There is an interior which is designed like those 1950s American movies with leather jackets and jukeboxes: the age when the word “cool†first took on a meaning beyond the lexicon of temperature.
The menu is also excitingly exotic in that way. Here you get to eat all those things you only hear of when you watch How I Met Your Mother, Like Bagels and Smoothies and Apple Crumble and Pumpkin Pie.
Before, well, I won’t name their competitors in their review, but before other cafes came along, this was a favourite spot for the young and well-westernised to hang out like Barney, Ted and Lilly and the rest.
The novelty seems to have worn off, though, and these days NYK doesn’t attract yuppies that much. Instead you find a lot of tourists there, probably looking for a literal taste of home.
But even though the excitement of dining like Seinfeld is past, there is one thing that endures about NYK. The food is still excellent.
Whether you go to snack on a slice of pizza or to gorge on that sensational chocolate cake of theirs, or to drown in one of their milkshakes, or to have your mind blown by those heavenly pizza dishes they serve, you will not be disappointed.
Once you get over the disappointment that hits you when you realise that the staff don’t talk in a Bugs Bunny accent (yes, he’s from Brooklyn) and the speakers don’t churn out 50 Cent or Miles Davis all day, and the more New-Yorkish interior is full so you have to sit outside in the plastic chairs so you are not getting that Big Apple feel, just tuck into their food (take 20k for a good meal at least).
And you won’t have anything to complain about.
THIS was once one of the coolest places to drink coffee in town: coolest in the most cool, if not the most literal sense of the term. New York Kitchen is snuggled into a small corner in the bottom of the parking tower in Garden City.
Part of it is actually in a parking lot, and that part comes with the expected hazards. Yes, someone will blow a gust of exhaust at you as he leaves.
But there is more. There is an interior which is designed like those 1950s American movies with leather jackets and jukeboxes: the age when the word “cool†first took on a meaning beyond the lexicon of temperature.
The menu is also excitingly exotic in that way. Here you get to eat all those things you only hear of when you watch How I Met Your Mother, Like Bagels and Smoothies and Apple Crumble and Pumpkin Pie.
Before, well, I won’t name their competitors in their review, but before other cafes came along, this was a favourite spot for the young and well-westernised to hang out like Barney, Ted and Lilly and the rest.
The novelty seems to have worn off, though, and these days NYK doesn’t attract yuppies that much. Instead you find a lot of tourists there, probably looking for a literal taste of home.
But even though the excitement of dining like Seinfeld is past, there is one thing that endures about NYK. The food is still excellent.
Whether you go to snack on a slice of pizza or to gorge on that sensational chocolate cake of theirs, or to drown in one of their milkshakes, or to have your mind blown by those heavenly pizza dishes they serve, you will not be disappointed.
Once you get over the disappointment that hits you when you realise that the staff don’t talk in a Bugs Bunny accent (yes, he’s from Brooklyn) and the speakers don’t churn out 50 Cent or Miles Davis all day, and the more New-Yorkish interior is full so you have to sit outside in the plastic chairs so you are not getting that Big Apple feel, just tuck into their food (take 20k for a good meal at least).
And you won’t have anything to complain about.