Almost Famous
A walk and a bite around Gramercy
Thanks for bearing with me last week while I struggled to cobble something together here! Working full time and writing this newsletter (and also like, keeping myself and my cats alive) is definitely not always easy. And even though this is a labor of love, it does include a good amount of labor. Sure, part of the labor is me going out and eating a hamburger, but part of the labor is also me researching the history of the restaurant, noting little intricacies of the food or location, and tossing all of that into a word salad that will, hopefully, help you to decide whether or not you also want to eat that hamburger. There are tons of useless restaurant and event recs floating around on the internet and I work really hard to make sure BCLF provides you with enough actual info to help you to make informed decisions and not just follow trends (a sentiment echoed by in his recent post!).
I feel like I got so many comments on last week’s baby newsletter and I was so pleasantly surprised! I love to hear that you’ve visited a place because you read about it in here or that you shared a cool fact with a friend because you thought they’d find it interesting. If you find the info in here valuable, obviously a paid subscription shows me that, but it also absolutely makes my day when folks leave a nice comment or share my stuff. Don’t think I didn’t notice the screenshot that was shared on the Queen of Swords Instagram last week 😉 💕
Anyways, it’s a new week so let’s get into it! This issue is all about Gramercy - the tavern and the park. Both are pretty famous for being a little bit fancy in their own respective ways so, you guessed it, we have a Beef Fancy Dinner breakdown coming up! It’s been a bit since I included one since the last few were at places I’d already covered, but rest assured that we’ve been continuing to eat fancy once a month. To prime yourself for this week’s continued burger journey, I recommend reading these past pieces on Red Hook Tavern and Minetta Tavern.
Gramercy Tavern 42 E 20th St, New York, NY 10003 Neighborhood: Gramercy, Manhattan Open: Everyday, 11:30am - 10:30pm Price: $$$$ (cheaper Tavern menu, pricier Dining menu)
Gramercy Tavern had been sitting on my must-visit list for years. The impetus that really moved it up on that list was my old boss telling me that their burger/cookie combo is a must have. To be clear, there isn’t a burger/cookie combo meal on their menu (although maybe there should be??), it’s simply a journey that I was encouraged to choose. AND CHOOSE IT I DID!
Danny Meyer opened Gramercy Tavern in 1994 and oh boy was NYC a different place back then. For starters, Rudy Giuliani was the mayor, which is mind-blowing to think of now after watching him basically melt into a puddle of sludge while inching further and further up Trump’s butthole…but I digress. Gramercy Tavern was Meyer’s second restaurant to open, after Union Square Cafe (which has that iconic neon sign). Apparently, Meyer ran into Tom Colicchio at the Aspen Food & Wine Classic (which was obviously the inspiration for the fucking Catalina Wine Mixer). This was before Colicchio would go on to host the only reality tv show I enjoy, Top Chef, so my man wasn’t married to Bravo just yet. The two envisioned a dual concept restaurant: one part casual tavern and one part upscale dining room. The combo allowed them to have greater flexibility with their menu offerings by providing one fancier rotating tasting menu and another with more classic tavern fare (that still rotates a bit seasonally). Although their tasting menu looked exquisite, I was visiting for the burger.
I was very lucky to be joined for this month’s Beef Fancy Dinner by Danielle and Frank! They also subbed in last month for a fancy dinner at Rolo’s because Beef was sick and when you have a reservation at Rolo’s you do not cancel. Frank suggested we get an app to share and we settled on the flatbreads and dips (the option of a seafood tower was briefly floated as well). The dips turned out to be an excellent choice. The flatbreads were deliciously buttery and flakey. The dips change seasonally and we got a pumpkin seed pesto, a white bean puree, and a cauliflower puree. The pumpkin seed pesto was the overall fave and definitely had the punchiest flavor; you truly cannot go wrong with a vibrant pesto. The cauliflower puree really surprised us and took a close second! I wish it had a little more kick to it, maybe some paprika to take it over the edge. And don’t get me wrong the white bean puree was delicious, I fuckin love beans, but it was the mellowest of the trio so it just didn’t stand out as much. We also got a little surprise plate of the roasted white sweet potato from the tasting menu! The potato was so delicate and sweet, but we all went the fuck in on the honey yogurt sauce it was served with. Thankfully, our server sensed that we needed more vehicles for dipping and brought over some bread, which was squishy and crusty and flavorful and I would have eaten so much of it if I wasn’t saving room for my burger.
Beef ordered his burger medium rare first and, when asked if he wanted cheese and bacon on it, he of course said yes. The whole table basically said “I’ll have what he’s having” and committed to burger solidarity (except Danielle who got the brick pressed chicken which was good, but not great). I usually don’t add cheese or bacon to my burger when given the choice because I like the burger to stand on its own but fuck it, it’s a Beef Fancy Dinner. When all of our burgers arrived I immediately sensed some apprehension from Beef and Lorenzo - the burgers were smaller than they expected. To be fair, Beef and Lorenzo like to eat big food; I thought the burgers were perfectly sized and also enjoyed that they came pre-cut in half. They were served with a heaping mound of chips and while I prefer fries, I was just happy that GT recognizes that burgers need a potato-based side by default! The cherry on top was in fact a pickle that just so happened to be at a level of optimal picklization - not too pickly and not too cucumbery. These are scientific pickle levels, don’t double check this.
If we’re rating this burger on the Tavern Scale (which definitely exists and is not something I just invented) then I thought the burger was better than Red Rook Tavern, but not as good as Minetta Tavern. This is not a dry aged burger like the other two and while it was quite savory, I felt like it could have used just a bit more flavor. RHT had a fabulous peppery crust and Minetta relies on their absurdly delicious dry aging; Gramercy fell somewhere between the two and didn’t have any particularly memorable qualities. It was good, but not tell all your friends good (I say, as I’m currently writing to all of my little friends). I mentioned that I rarely get bacon on my burger; in this case I think the bacon actually helped! The bacon was placed on top in little square-ish chunks and whenever I got a bite with some bacon in it, I actually enjoyed the extra punch of flavor, so if you get this burger I do recommend adding bacon. The cheese I could take or leave to be honest, but I guess it was helpful for holding things together.
Beef and Lorenzo were also a bit disappointed to see a side of chips instead of fries (because in their mind chips are less food? I don’t understand men, sorry). I also would have preferred fries just because I think that’s the potato’s ultimate form, but these chips were really good. They were fried in duck fat which means that each single chip actually equaled like four chips because of how savory they were and how heavy they sat in my stomach (not in a bad way though). I dipped some of them in the smoked onion aioli provided on the side, but I’m not much of an aioli girl because deep down I know it’s just fancy mayonnaise and I don’t love mayonnaise. The chips tasted fine plain, but Beef and Lorenzo might have drank their dip because their little cups had nothing left by the end so I guess it was good.
The meal wouldn’t have been complete without a chocolate chip cookie, served with a tiny cup of malted chocolate milk. GT is actually fairly well known for having a robust dessert menu which is obviously something I appreciate and there were multiple options on there that sounded tasty (maple pudding, apple cider donuts, honeynut squash sundae?!?). But I was told to get the burger/cookie combo and once again, the whole table followed suit. The cookie was large, which made the tiny cup of milk next to it look comically small. The cookie was very good, but like the burger I found the flavor to be a bit inconsistent. There were some sprinkles of flaky salt on top and when I got a salty bite it was exquisite, but the salt-less bites were just fine. I also feel like the cookie was slightly overcooked, though I do prefer my cookies on the underdone end so that might be a personal preference. The molten puddle of chocolate on top of the cookie betrayed me because it made me think the cookie would be soft, but the texture of the cookie was slightly crumblier than I would have liked. I expected it to be a bit ooier and/or gooier (again, scientific terms, don’t @ me).
All of my nitpicking aside, the meal and service were very good. We were greeted immediately upon arriving and had our jackets whisked away to a coat room so we could dine comfortably. The servers explained all of the components to each of our dishes and were incredibly on top of keeping my water glass full, which was great for this thirsty bitch. I’d really like to come back to try the tasting menu in their Dining Room as I’m curious how that compares to the “commoner” food in the Tavern.
Gramercy Park E 20th to 21st Sts - btwn Park & 3rd Ave Neighborhood: Gramercy, Manhattan Open: Never, unless you have a key Established: 1830s
Do you remember the episode of Broad City where there’s a guy choking in a park and Abby and Ilana save his life by doing the Heimlich maneuver through the fence? Congratulations, that’s about as close as you’ll ever get to Gramercy Park because the gate is locked and only those with special keys have access.
Gramercy Park is one of only two privately owned parks in NYC (the other is Sunnyside Gardens Park) and it’s unlikely (though not impossible) that I’ll ever get to step foot inside. You know I’m a girl who loves her parks, so let’s take it back and learn how this private parcel of land in the middle of Gramercy came to be.
The year is 1831 and development in Manhattan has only reached around 14th St, but it wouldn’t stay there for long. Only 20 years earlier in 1811, the Commissioner’s Plan kicked off creating the Manhattan Grid that organizes our streets today. That plan was put into place with an eye towards orderly northern expansion, so it was only a matter of time before homes and businesses would pop up in the wildernesses of…21st St. It’s wild to think of now, but the area that would become Gramercy Park was once a swamp (and in fact, a lot of NYC was swampland that would be filled or drained). And since this area is now a Landmark, it’s remained relatively unchanged from how it was originally conceived.
It all started in 1831 when a dude named Samuel B. Ruggles decided to donate a large portion of his landholdings to the city to create a 2 acre park and a community around it. This was one of the earliest examples of actual public planning in NYC vs just haphazardly building homes and figuring shit out later. Sure, Ruggles was a lawyer and a politician (boo) but he was also a pretty solid advocate for parks, so my man contained multitudes. And believe it or not, the importance of park space still wasn’t really a big thing - Central Park wouldn’t begin construction until 1857. Ruggles was really ahead of the times, both in building parks and in creating spaces exclusive to the wealthy (like I said, multitudes).
“Come what will, our open squares will remain forever imperishable. Buildings, towers, palaces, may moulder and crumble beneath the touch of time; but space—free, glorious, open space—will remain to bless the City forever.”
On December 17, 1832, Ruggles deeded a big chunk of land to five trustees, who pledge to hold 42 lots in trust that would become Gramercy Park. Ruggles spent $180,000 to develop the property and laid out "Gramercy Square", deeding possession of the square to the owners of the 66 parcels of land he had plotted around it. The number of lots would eventually get reduced to 60 because my man also casually went about creating two brand new streets to feed into his little community - Irving Pl and Lexington Ave. Numbering of the lots began at No. 1 on the northwest corner, on Gramercy Park West, and continued counter-clockwise. If you look at a map of the buildings surrounding the park today, most of them still follow this numbering.
It took some time for folks to actually move into the residences surrounding the park because of the Panic of 1837, but by the 1840s the first families called the area home and picked up their literal golden keys to the park. The gate to the park has been locked since 1844 and to this day only 383 keys are said to exist. Residents of the original buildings around the park are allotted 2 keys each. Additionally, the Gramercy Park Hotel (set to reopen this year) has a key, though guests must be escorted to the park and back by a staff member to use it. Members of The Players, the National Arts Club, Calvary Church, and the Brotherhood Synagogue have keys. And most recently in 2012, a concession was made for owners of the luxury condos at 57 Irving Place who can obtain key access to the park by becoming members of the Players Club. Each key is numbered and coded and a woman named Ms. Harrison acts as “enforcer of the rules” and oversees the whole operation from behind her clipboard to make sure annual fees are paid and keys don’t pop up where they don’t belong. However, that didn’t stop one guy from using a key in an Airbnb a few years ago to go inside the park and take photos - which is a big no no.
If you do manage to get inside the park, a lovely landscaped garden awaits you. The park contains meticulously manicured plants, flowers, and shrubbery arranged in a symmetrical pattern with some benches arranged against the walkways. There is no playground and, in fact, “no alcohol, smoking, biking, dog walking, sports, Frisbee, or bird/squirrel feeding” are allowed in the park. The park, like Stranger Things’ Hopper’s mornings, are meant for coffee and contemplation. Even Central Park, which would be built almost 30 years later, didn’t originally have any playgrounds because parks were a place for relaxation, not recreation. The centerpiece of the park since 1916 is a large statue of Edwin Booth - stage actor and founder of The Players and brother to another Booth who became famous in the theater for a very different thing.
There are many buildings around the park that are pretty famous in their own rights. The aforementioned Players is located in a mansion at 16 Gramercy Park, built in 1847. In 1888 Edwin Booth purchased the former residence to establish a social club to connect actors “with men of different professions such as industrialists, writers, and other creative artists.” He also lived on the floor above the club and died there in 1893 so…haunted? Another famous building on the park is the Gramercy Park Hotel, which opened in 1925. The hotel was well known for its “bohemian character, low prices and locale” through the 1990s (the 2000 film Almost Famous was shot in the lobby), but began faltering in the last couple decades and closed in 2020 during the pandemic for renovations.
The residences around the park have obviously been home to lots of famous folks, from actors to novelists to artists, but one home in particular stands out for a couple reasons - 4 Gramercy Park West aka the James Harper House. You may recognize the name Harper from HarperCollins publishing and this Harper was the guy who founded the predecessor to that company. Harper also happened to be the Mayor of NYC for a year from 1844-1845, just before he moved to the home on the park. So what’s the deal with the building at 4 Gramercy Park West then? Well for one, it’s the only home on the block with two cast iron lampposts out front. The addition of the lampposts is a remnant of a Dutch mayoral tradition; “The Dutch custom of placing special lamps at the mayor’s door was an aid to finding his house at night, but by Harper’s day, it was merely ceremonial…the custom ended with the 1942 establishment of Gracie Mansion as the mayor’s official residence.” It also happens to be the backdrop of a Bob Dylan album cover - Highway 61 Revisited. It’s a bit hard to tell, but the white door behind Dylan is the front door of the Harper House.
I would love to drop some $$ when the Gramercy Park Hotel reopens just to be able to step foot into this goddam park because it’s not like I’ll ever be able to afford property there and get a key of my own. Gramercy Park used to open every Christmas Eve to us commoners for one single hour of Christmas caroling, but when I stopped by last month I was told they’re not doing that anymore. On the one hand, I hate that there’s a park surrounded by a tall fence that doesn’t afford access to everyone. On the other hand, the upkeep of the park is directly funded by the residents of the area rather than my tax money, so maybe this is a fair tradeoff? The park just feels like it’s laughing in my face a bit being so out in the open, ya know?
Lunar New Year is coming up soon (it’s my year 🐍) and for the first time, NYC schools will be closed in observance on Jan 29! I’m sure more events will pop up in the coming weeks, but here are a few I have my eyes on right now:
Very Cool Ice Cream will be part of a celebration on Feb 1 that will feature some exclusive ice cream flavors, an AAPI pop-up market, open mahjong tables, cool drinks, and a delicious spread of traditional + modern LNY foods.
Eater published a list of restaurants with celebratory menus. Skip Din Tai Fung, go to Nan Xiang (great soup dumps and rice cakes), C as in Charlie (great everything), and Grandma’s Home (surprisingly great mocktails).
Welcome to Chinatown has a whole weekend of events planned for Feb 7-9. I recommend signing up for their email list or checking back here to see more info as they post it.
Think Chinatown also has a ton of programming coming up starting on Jan 25. Check out their whole lineup here!
One of my fave restaurants, Mala Project, has a few special LNY menu items available; try their Chrysanthemum Fish, Inferno Prawns, or Treasure Trotters (and don’t sleep on the spicy peanuts and dry pot!)
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is home to a plant called Amorphophallus gigas, a close relative of the more common Amorphophallus titanum, also known as the corpse flower. These plants rarely bloom and they smell like death when they do, so it’s kind of a big deal in a weird way. The BBG’s plant is due to bloom any day now, so try to visit if you can!
Are you free on Monday, January 27 from 10am-12pm? Do you want to visit the Ridgewood location of @queenofswords.nyc? Finally, do have no bangs or grown out bangs and wear your hair curly? If you said yes to all of that, then you need to DM my girl
because she would like to cut your hair for a curly bang class.Remember when my beloved Filipino restaurant FOB closed? I will miss their cornbread bibingka every day, but maybe there’s a teeny tiny glimmer of hope because one of their chefs, Armando Litiatco, is opening a bakery dedicated solely to making bomb cinnamon rolls - Sunday Morning at 29 Ave B. Apparently they’re having a soft opening today and if you’re able to stop by I will need you to report back immediately. Also they just so happen to be around the corner from Carnitas Ramirez, so I just planned a whole meal for you!
I took a David Lynch film class in college and it is not an understatement to say that it had a huge effect on the way that I create things. Sure I write a lot, but there’s also so much inside of me that I struggle to express to others because it’s just wibbly wobbly feelings. And Lynch was better than anyone at finding a way to express a feeling or a fleeting sensation or that snippet of a memory you retained that lives between your dreams and waking life. He used sound masterfully to create worlds of darkness and pain, but also hope. His art didn’t always have a simple meaning because life isn’t always straightforward; but it’s the exploration and journey that’s important. I’ve been trying to get back to my own Lynchian roots recently and it’s been healing to let my mind wander as it naturally wants to; that’s partly why I’ve been posting more photos on Substack Notes. I try to make sure the pictures I post in the newsletter illustrate whatever I’m writing about, but on Notes I post photos that simply make me feel something or cause me to look at the world a little differently. It’s been incredibly heartening to have folks connect with me on there and tell me that they enjoy those photos - I hope they make you feel something, too.
⛰️🥧 ☕️⛰️
I love your intention for your Notes! Thanks for sharing a little window into your everyday.
I wonder about the naming of fancy places sometimes. Gramercy TAVERN, Union Square CAFE, and they’re all fancy and exclusive AF. What’s going on here? Anywhere else in the country and it would be a dive. Anyway idk why I’m worrying about nomenclature. Also my dad is right, that Giuliani bar is 🔥