One third of the way to drunk and mourning an American Spirit that went too soon, we sat down to dinner at the New Wave Caf‚ Bar and Restaurant. As we approached the table set aside for reasons related to relating the restaurant publicly, an excited thirty-something redhead welcomed us for the second time in 10 minutes and offered us the seats we had already chosen. "Thank you," I said, equally excited.
I sat across from a man with a well-kept moustache and my date, Emily, sat to my right. Next to her sat one of New Wave's co-owners. There were handshakes all around, and the co-owner was "glad to know" all of us. Within five minutes, we had met another surprisingly ebullient PR guy and the chef, Ben McNamara. I was glad to know all of them.
New Wave is a tidy sports bar slash gourmet restaurant with all the workings of all of the above. A few feet from the entrance and there's the bar--hardly polished, hardly beaten. The customary televisions are set to the customary games played at a fortunately unobtrusive volume. And pool in the back for drunks.
There were little green folded menus and offers of more drinks and soon, a waiter ready to take our orders. The man with the moustache, my date and I decided to do a bit of communal eating, the better to broaden our understanding of Ben's kitchen potential, we said. After a bit of harrumphing, we agreed on mussels ($8), escargot and antipasto for appetizers, and roasted Peking Duck ($18), chicken breast stuffed with lobster and crabmeat ($18) and filet mignon for les entr‚es.
I never get to eat like this. As I sipped wine and contemplated my stomach's day of reckoning, the moustache-man and I chatted about the ups-and-downs of University City, what women want, and how he, well into middle-age, could afford to look classy and write at the same time. He was a consultant who sort of stumbled into writing. We talked about past girlfriends and he warned that women will always eventually want to go further than my psychology allowed. I, nibbling my first bite of escargot, nodded and laughed and wondered where he would be when the last of his still-good looks faded into photographs and there was nobody around to love him anyway. The snails, the mussels in their lemongrass broth and the antipasto's skewered shrimp, smoked mozzarella and squash were skull-numbingly better than my daily pizza-and-California-roll staple.
The subject of discussion shifted to movies, Mozart and the mess of the Manhattan skyline. Tragedy, we agreed on the latter; I, on my fifth glass of excellent Pinot Grigio, wished it would go away so we could get back to the Maestro and "Magnolia." The entrance of the entr‚es marked the end of mindless chatter and soon we couldn't stop talking about how fantastic the filet mignon was, how heavenly the duck was, and how brilliant--what genius!--to stuff chicken with lobster and crab and soak it in a brandy lobster sauce.
