Just watched this week’s episode of No Reservations and it is easily one of my favorite episodes of the show ever. And where is it set? Tokyo? Mumbai? Paris? No. New York City. Bourdain visits a bunch of places that represent the old school New York, “the golden age of Manhattan,” places that are rapidly disappearing. Where does he go?

Esposito’s Pork Shop in Hell’s Kitchen
Manganaro’s Grocery
Keen’s English Chop House
Russ & Daughters Appetizers
Katz’s Delicatessen – back in the days when I drove a taxi, I used to pray that I’d have a fare that would put me near here during lunch time. Those days when my prayers were answered AND I could find a legal parking spot, those were some of the best days in some damned dark times.
Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop
Schaller & Weber
Hop Kee in Chinatown for old school American Chinese food
Le Veau D’Or for 30s style French cuisine

These places are all at least 50 years old, some of them 100. I could think of some places that he missed – but you can’t fit everything into a one hour TV show and besides, some of those places I remember are probably gone now. They do have a shot of McSorley’s – the real 150+ year old McSorleys, my college hangout, not the faux Irish burger joint in Soho here – but they don’t go in. Yonah Schimmel’s ain’t on the show, but one of the guests on the show wears a Yonah Schimmel t-shirt, so that’s sort of something.

The final stop is Sophie’s, a dive bar in the East Village with writer Nick Tosches. Some of the best quotes in this episode come from Tosches – “These days, I mean, there are bars that I go to in the morning, bars that I go to in the afternoon, they’re sort of like, for me, compromise bars, For me, most of New York exists only in my memory, my fading memory.” And, “What disheartens me most about the loss of the New York I knew is like, it seems that the forces that be have no sense about what should have been or should be preserved.”

Jeez, he could be talking about Hong Kong with that last line, couldn’t he?

That’s why I can never go back to New York. The New York that I remember simply doesn’t exist any more. It’s been replaced by plasticized, homogenized, franchised, bastardized places for tourists and kids who simply don’t know any better and don’t care.

And lemme ask you, are there any real bars in Hong Kong? Certainly not in Wanchai or Lan Kwai Fong, where it seems every bar has to have a “theme” or a “gimmick.” Okay, I’m old, but I’m tired of the faux Irish bars and British pubs, the discos where the music is so loud you can’t possibly have a conversation, even with yourself. And the Chinese bars seem filled with karaoke, dice games and cheesy house music, at least the ones I’ve tried. I want something old school, some place where I can sink in, slowly drink myself to death (“Drown in a vat of whiskey? Death, where is thy sting?” – W.C. Fields), like every song I hear on the jukebox, something Mickey Rourke Barfly style (and was it really Bar-fly, or was it barf-ly as in “he was feeling kind of barfly”?).

Like McSorleys. No jukebox. No TV. No pinball. No one sitting there with a fucking laptop computer or looking at their Blackberry every two seconds or texting on their cell phones (okay, it was the 70s, I guess if it’s still there it’s changed at least in that way). No designer burgers. You had a choice between porter and stout, nothing else!, and you grabbed at least a couple of them at a time because they were cheap and the mugs were small, or at least they seemed small. Ham and cheese on rye bread lathered with British mustard and a really sharp bit of onion. You could talk to anyone in there or no one. A single communal bathroom where women had to push past you while you stood at the urinal to get at the booths (well, they didn’t let women in there at all for the first 90 years or so). You’d go in there and time would stand still, time just didn’t exist. You didn’t need all those modern distractions.

I’m not saying Hong Kong bars are bad. And I’ve certainly drank my fill in more than just a couple of them. Guess it’s just my mood tonight.

Hongkie Town
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