SOMEBODY GET ME A CHEESEBURGER

Yet another blogpost I wrote almost two years ago, back when good intentions to update my blog meet its nemesis: Ilene's proclivity for procrastination. Having re-read this, it's not great but I stand by everything I wrote. Blissfully, the Office Space-esque experience mentioned towards the has ended but the indulgence in a really good cheeseburger now and then remains a moral imperative.

Last night a good friend emailed me that she was having dinner at trendy-NYC hot (but on the verge of jumping the shark) spot WAVERLY INN and did I want to join the party. Very funny, ha ha. April Fools' Day - I get it. But it was no joke. There was a reservation for four people, one person backed out and I was the pinch eater. I didn't even think before I agreed to meet her out front at 6pm. If I'd thought about it, I might admit that I despise anything really trendy as the one word that would never be used to describe me would be hip.


I'd have to admit I have a strong distaste for Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and his ownership of the restaurant which turned a small local haunt into a haughty A-list destination for privacy and chi-chi comfort food. And I might admit that I didn't have the money to go out to Waverly Inn -- it's not over-the-top expensive but doesn't fit into my self-imposed definition of Austerity Friendly. And, I might also admit that I had a very late lunch and had no business eating anything that could remotely be considered a meal just 4 hours later. But, I didn't think. I just said YES!

So I find myself on the corner of Bank Street and Waverly at 6pm. I looked like a tourist or celebrity stalker, trying to appear nonchalant while I waited for my friend. I saw no paparazzi -- it was too early for anyone of buzz value to be dining (thus, the availability of a 6:15 table I that would actually be mine.) Then again, if Gawker reports are accurate, Lindsay Lohan's dad was a recent diner nabbed by the stalkerazzi waiting out front for photo ops... that's probably a sure sign the status of Waverly Inn is on the decline. Then again, my presence also indicates the inherent un-cool factor of any establishment.

In the end, I'm glad I experienced Waverly Inn but I can cross it off my Life Experiences list (though I don't believe I'd ever logged it as a must-do anyway) knowing that I had a good meal with great company. Now if the other main thing about the Waverly Inn is celebrity sightings, then I did OK. Julia Roberts was chowing down as I walked past her to exit the restaurant. So, chalk one up for me -- even if I HAD met her before (in an elevator, on 17th Street -- she was heading up to the 6th floor loft where her then boyfriend Benjamin Bratt was living, whereas I was heading up to the fifth floor to collect the spoiled, dog-agressive bulldog princess I was walking for cash.)

Burgers and celebrities -- as a native New Yorker, celebrity sightings are a non-event, just as much a nuisance and as common as common as your Metrocard failing to swipe thru (damn you 57th Street F-train station, damn you.) Then again, you register them in your mind and store the memory away. Like the time I took an out-of-town friend to Planet Hollywood for dinner. Thinking about it now, what's more pathetic? The fact that I WENT to Planet Hollywood, by choice, or that the people sitting at the next table included Anthony Michael Hall? And while my tourist visitor loved the fact that she really encountered a celebrity at Planet Hollywood, I was mortified, as the collage of movie images on the bigscreen that looped throughout our meal included scenes from Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. Awkward. Keep your head down, Farmer Ted, and keep munching on those Captain Crunch Chicken Tenders...

But the Waverly Experience naturally recalls another happening downtown hang -- The Spotted Pig. It's a GastroPub, so they say -- a traditional pub setting with gourmet comfort foods. Same type of menu as Waverly (minus the concert-ticket priced pasta) but whereas Waverly Inn is impossible to get a reservation unless you know someone or have the super-secret-Batphone number, The Spotted Pig only sorta/kinda takes reservations but if/when they do, they rarely abide by them. First visit, we had a 7:30 reservation and were asked to wait at the bar until our table was ready -- TWO hours later (2 hours) we were ushered upstairs to a little table for what amounted to a really awesome cheeseburger. OK, the Devils On Horseback are pretty damn good too (braised figs wrapped in bacon and served on toothpicks -- apparently an English delicacy.) And we had a celebrity sighting, sorta -- if you're willing to award points for an unshowered, unkempt Josh Hartnett.

The next visit to the Pig, we waiting maybe 15 minutes and had a prime booth on the main floor, looking out towards the bar with a good view of everyone who entered (this apparently was supposed to matter?) But we'd already had out brush, literally, with the blonde man who arrived while we were waiting for our table -- he'd brushed past us in the very crowded entry and bar area, while being escorted along with his dinner party upstairs. He wore a black wool cap and a black peacoat on a very cold night. And then a month later he was dead. Random moment, like any other in NYC on any given night. Poof -- he was gone.

So now, after a day of writing biographies at a flourescent-lit cubicle in a dreary, midtown Dundler-Mifflin replica office populated with a cast of characters clearly created in the mind of a sitcom-by-the-numbers hack writer, I'm heading home. Perhaps to shop my personal bedroom Barnes & Noble for my next reading challenge (I'm finishing up Mark Kurdansky's SALT but think Jane Austen might be on deck in the batter's circle... always a good call) or perhaps to blog some more.

But definitely to eat the leftovers of the Waverly Inn burger and fries currently residing in my fridge. If I'm gonna eat at an uber-trendy expensive faux-dive, I'm gonna make it last two days.