Crooklyn

This past Saturday night my smart/rich friend Eric invited me to dinner in Williamsburg aka Billyburgh....Crickets? Ok thats fine, I can't take credit for that joke anyways. Eric had a gift certificate for this new restaurant called Traif. The name means unkosher in Yiddish. That is such a clever and witty name I was salivating from the get go. Word quickly got out that Eric had this gift card and an intimate (re: free) dinner turned into a crew of seven stragglers. Eric said restaurants in Brooklyn don't take reservations so we took our chances at 730pm. Bad idea. Three hour wait for table of seven and 90 mins for two tables of three and four. The redheaded hostess was nice and just wanted to be honest with us. I thanked her and we left. As we were annoyingly deciding where to go next I snuck back inside and called her bluff. I was having a good hair day so my confidence was up and I told her in a flirting way that we would like to put our name down for two tables. I think I might have also commented that she looked like Isla Fisher, don't quite remember. I go back outside and tell my squabbling posse we will be seated in 20 mins. That shut them up quick.

This story shows how pretentious, or wanna be pretentious, Brooklyn had gotten. Why would she lie to me? Was it to show us that the place was popular and waiting in line is cool? Whatever it was, no one was going to shove me around, especially in Brooklyn. I like Brooklyn, again I would never live there, but going out and eating there is fun. Maybe if Brooklyn had a Lavo or T-Bar I would reconsider, but I need to be within crawling distance of those establishments. Not that I go there every night but I need to know I could if I needed to. Its all about piece of mind.

Anyways, the food was actually awesome. Everything from the bone marrow, to the strawberry-cinnamon glazed baby back ribs, to the bacon glazed donuts (yup, you heard it right) was excellent.  On the way out I slipped the Isla Fisher hostess my "business card" and thanked her again for a great meal and seating us quickly. She said next time make a reservation.  Duh!! And thanks to Eric I didn't even need to bring a wallet. Thinking about this more, maybe I should leave my wallet at home more often. Why do I need a wallet anyways? "Hey, I'm Retired at 28!"