Pre-dinner distraction.

Dinner plans were set for the night by CJ's friend MS in very MS fashion - relaxed order.

Upper East Side, after work; Bill, you're on starch duty.

Clearly "after work" is a non-essential detail for me, but even with these two - CJ's season busy and MS's schedule pleasantly hectic - dinner was to fall somewhere between 8:00pm and Hong Kong's lunch hour. Nonetheless, I was on board. I earnestly appreciate the moments of regularity - or what I used to consider regular - that fall my way nowadays. However brief and inconsistent they might be.

I decided to find the necessary ingredients local to the evening's kitchen. After all, potatoes are heavy and I'm still milking every last thing I can out of this broken shoulder. After two perfectly timed train connections I found myself moseying the 70's for a grocery store well before the other chefs were expected to be en route. In the process I came across JG Melon's. Quintessential New York.

I was here once before. I had set up shop in the dark back corner, my Mac being the only computer on premises (even the register behind the bar remains the manual type).

"Burger medium rare, fries, and coffee, please."

Not even writing my order down, my waitress had probably heard the same combination of caffeine and grub requested hundreds of times over. It was the turning point of the night for the pub; the consistent dinner crowd was long gone but was steadily being replaced by a drunker, louder clientele. The ubiquitous one-more-drink, first-date-going-strong couple laughed at the table to my left. The table of real life Gossip Girl kids recounted the party they just came from at Jim's NYU dorm. Then there was me - wi-fi in tow - going through endless work; when I used to be the type to take work home with me.
The burger was cooked spot-on and the coffee bottomless. One of the drunks knocked his water across the red and white checkered table cloth, but no one else seemed to notice.

But right, dinner. Pork, vegetables, and Mama K's red skinned mashed potatoes. One ill-advised covering of the pork and a conference call with Hong Kong later and we sat down to dinner at 10:30, perfectly normal by New York standards.