It’s been a (long) time since I gathered together a bunch of things (mostly foods) I’m feeling. Let the good vibes roll….

Previously:
••• Eight New Enthusiasms: March 2012
••• Eight New Enthusiasms: December 2011
••• Eight New Enthusiasms: July 2011
••• Eight New Enthusiasms: April 2011

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What I want from a café isn’t just good coffee (although I want that, too). I want to relax for a few minutes, to treat myself for a minutes. But I also want something aspirational, and not in an income-related way—I want to feel cooler for a few minutes. Crucial to that is the decor and, even more so, the staff: The workers need to be cool but not chilly. Everyman Espresso, on W. Broadway just north of Canal, nails it. (Although one time, when asked how things were going, a barista replied, “Aces!” is that something young people are saying?) And it gets extra points for being in Soho. One caveat: A cappuccino, which is on the small side, is $4.50. I did say I was treating myself….

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I first fell for the chocolate mint cookie ice cream at Blue Marble inside All Good Things—it’s like a Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookie but without the oily, processed-food mouthfeel—but then I moved on to the burnt sugar ice cream. It is astounding. I was thoroughly dejected to learn that it’s not always available.

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As you may recall, I spent Sandy out in Connecticut, where we also lost power, but only for 36 hours. It was long enough to come to despise the smell of a candle that has been extinguished. Anyway, afterward, I went to Home Depot to see if they had candles—it seemed like a good idea to have a bunch around, both in Connecticut and at home—but Home Depot doesn’t stock them. (Suggestion box!) It was just as well, because I had an excuse to buy more of the beeswax candles at Birdbath bakery. They’re made by Cayuga Candles in upstate New York, and they smell delicious. They’re not “scented”; they just naturally smell like honey. And they even smell good when you blow them out. Available in small ($10) and large ($15), and the large is a far better deal. P.S. I do realize that the cowboy pug cookie jar immediately calls my taste into question.

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At Mas (la Grillade), the awkwardly named but very good restaurant on Varick (near Leroy), I couldn’t decide whether or not to have another glass of wine. “I can pour you a half a glass,” offered the server. Why won’t all restaurants do that? Sometimes one more glass is just too much and no more wine is just too little.

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I don’t even know if Brushstroke does this anymore—it’s been that long since I ran one of these roundups—but I was tickled to receive my doggy bag from the restaurant. I’m not sure what was inside, but I probably heated it up and then put a fried egg or two on top. That’s what I do with most leftovers.

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I bought fresh dates and Livermore walnuts at New Amsterdam Market when Palmero was there, and they were so much better than what you normally get—the dates were fresh and not leathery, while the walnuts tasted like walnuts (too bad the red fades when you cook them)—that I tracked down the owner in California. He offered to send me more—it is oatmeal season, after all—but when I learned that they’d soon be available in “Lower Manhattan stores” (he wouldn’t say which till they had arrived), I let him off the hook. I wasn’t totally thrilled to learn that they were at Union Market at Avenue A and Houston, even if it meant my first trip on the J train. The store was pretty great, though; too bad they won’t open in FiDi. The manager (?) and I geeked out over the quality of these dates and nuts. Note: There are also Union Markets in Brooklyn.

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Every couple of months I make a trip to Aji Ichiban in Chinatown to buy more Ting Ting Jahe candies, which seem to also be known as Sina Ginger Candy. They’re extremely chewy, and they pack a gingery punch, but not so much so that it hurts. Adam and I are addicted to them. (Aji Ichiban, which sells all sorts of Asian sweets, is a worthy destination even if you don’t like ginger; the closest one is at Mott and Pell.)

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These last recommendations aren’t expressly Tribeca-related, but this series is called Eight New Enthusiasms, and when I think about what else I’m excited about these days, I keep coming back to books. Perhaps because I spend all day burping up text writing, I don’t read as much as I used to. And yet eight of the last ten novels I’ve read have been winners. Two books I recommend to just about anyone: Rules of Civility by Amor Towles and Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. They’re each a little pop, but with more insight and sparkle than that label implies, and they’re films waiting t0 happen. If you like historical fiction, I’ll insist you read Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the first two books in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and his role in the court of Henry VIII. I’m not one of those people who get excited about anything royal, and yet I devoured these books—both of which won the Booker Prize. No pressure on the third, Hil! I direct A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book and Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love (from 1945) to my Anglophilic friends: The former is literary, possibly to a fault, with a cast of thousands; a little skimming will ease the read. The latter is like “Downtown Abbey” but modern and zippy and mainly played for laughs (with none of that “downstairs” business). If I were at the BBC, I’d start an adaptation pronto. I didn’t find Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue as thrilling as Kavalier & Clay or The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, and for the first quarter I was turned off by the purple prose. Then it all just starts clicking. Finally, I recommend Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette to people, like me, who wish more writers would attempt contemporary comic novels. I didn’t laugh out loud the whole time, but I smiled a lot. Isn’t that enough?

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Bonus excerpt from The Pursuit of Love, in which the narrator compares her life to that of her best friend, Linda:

Alfred and I are happy, as happy as married people can be. We are in love, we are intellectually and physically suited in every possible way, we rejoice in each other’s company, we have no money troubles and three delightful children. And yet, when I consider my life, day by day, hour by hour, it seems to be composed of a series of pinpricks. Nannies, cooks, and endless drudgery of housekeeping, the nerve-racking noise and boring repetitive conversation of small children (boring in the sense that it bores into one’s very brain), their absolute incapacity to amuse themselves, their sudden and terrifying illnesses, Alfred’s not infrequent bouts of moodiness, his invariable complaints at meals about the pudding, the way he will always use my tooth-paste and will always squeeze the tube in the middle. These are the components of marriage, the wholemeal bread of life, rough, ordinary, but sustaining; Linda had been feeding upon honeydew, and that is an incomparable diet.