Once checked in, I step out into the thick soup of pretzels burning, subway steam, and exhaust.
I am ready for something edible -- and air conditioning.
I head east toward Pampano, a new Mexican restaurant.
White swirls lap at the white stucco walls of Pampano (a fish indigenous to the South and the Gulf of Mexico). The place feels more Miami than Mexico with its palm plants and salsa music. But there is no trace of gringo in the food.
This is the fourth restaurant by Richard Sandoval, an Acapulco native and chef who co-owns Pampano with world-class tenor Placido Domingo. That explains the framed clarinets, flutes, and other instruments in the downstairs dining room, aglow with candles.
The upstairs dining room, where my guest and I sit, is white and airy. The people to my left order their second round of margaritas. The man to my right recommends the lobster tacos.
"It's the best thing I've put in my mouth in a long time," he says, an elbow away. I order them. He watches as I take a bite. Their small flour tortillas cradle a smoky chipotle sauce, enough to make the lobster dance. I taste the sun gods and confirm his opinion.
For a late-night jaunt I head down to the Ear Inn on Spring Street. Captain Richard "Rip" Perry Hayman
is the homesteader above the legendary watering hole, in an 1817 home that lists like an old ship. (Ask him about the neon bar sign.) Along with its low ceilings and salty conversation, the Ear Inn has a reputation for a perfect Guinness pour. It was a longshoremen's bar for more than a century until the late '70s, when Hayman and his roommates injected some TLC to keep the bar afloat. Tom Waits beat an old piano to death in here. "Back when his voice was not quite so gravelly," Hayman says.
A late-night snack of shrimp and crab cakes (they are fresh and fabulous) and a Boddingtons could have been dinner.
Bands jam after 11. "By 3 in the morning, it's really cookin' here," says Hayman. By 3 a.m. this Beantown girl is asleep in the bosom of the Big Apple.
