Gourmet G.'s Profile

An Upper East Side landmark, this small, unpretentious watering hole is the kind of hangout you'd expect to find near a suburban college campus - or a bit closer to NYU - rather than in one of the city's most expensive neighborhoods. You can't go wrong by sticking to simple fare like salads, chili, or the justifiably acclaimed burgers.

It comes as a pleasant surprise to discover yet another dining spot with an ambitious kitchen in a landscape littered primarily with fast food outlets and chain restaurants catering to the middle-income families and retired seniors who populate the area. The yard-sale decor, more shabby than chic, holds little promise of better things to come - large, dark oil paintings in heavy gold frames share tangerine-tinged wall space with simply matted prints of single fish, and the chairs are reminiscent of those in a church hall or nursing home dining room. But the food - in both its flavor and artistic presentation - more than compensates for any shortcomings in the interior design. On a hot and humid day, soup is the last thing I crave, but a bowl of hearty corn and crawfish chowder, paired with an order of fried calamari greatly enhanced by a dipping sauce of aioli/mayo infused with lemongrass and sweet chili, made for a very satisfying lunch. In recent months, my mother has become more adventurous in her culinary decisions, and she opted for a sandwich of grilled salmon with roasted red peppers and fontina cheese bathed with balsamic-basil mayo on a kaiser roll. With two iced teas, the tab - including tax and tip - was an amazingly low $30. The far more extensive dinner menu naturally is heavy on seafood but offers some steak and poultry options as well, with entrees in the $11-25.00 range. I'm already trying to decide what to order when we return in the not-too-distant future.

Rosemary's Baby

You won't find upscale dining or hard liquor atop the Empire State Building, but the view is better, the air is fresher, and it will cost you considerably less, even if you succumb to buying a tacky bronze replica with a thermometer in its side in the gift shop. Go there instead.

Simpson's plan to emulate Ashton Kutcher fell by the wayside when no network - not even the testosterone-driven Spike TV - expressed interest in his series, so it was left to inDemand, that purveyor of classics like Backyard Babes X-Posed, Jerry Springer: Hot and Hostile, and Vegas Amateur Strip-Off, to bring it to mindless morons who don't mind squandering their hard-earned bucks on pay-for-view crap like this. So Obscene It Horrified Laura B may be a description not understood widely beyond the yelp community, but it's the perfect tagline for this pathetic project.

A lifetime ago, when I was a struggling actor, I studied here between auditions and waiting tables so I'd have something upon which to fall back if my stage career failed to materialize. When I ultimately found myself entrenched in the travel industry, the degree in Advertising I earned at FIT proved to have as much value as the one in Drama & Theatre I earlier received at Queens College, which is to say it wasn't very useful at all. Still, I have no regrets . . . time spent learning is never wasted, and if I'm ever on "Jeopardy!" and the final category is Advertising, I may feel confident enough to bet it all.

O Queer Guys, where art thou? Seemingly unaware of the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," the Fab Five have veered from their established format this season and planted themselves in Las Vegas for a series of shows that have a lot less pizazz than the city in which they're set. While still very much present throughout the hour, they oddly seem to be missing in action, with a lot less time devoted to campy critiques of nearly uninhabitable digs and outdated wardrobes, cooking lessons, grooming tips, clothing selection, and furniture shopping sprees. One show revolved around an eloping couple, cheating viewers - and the newlyweds - out of a home makeover. Everyone in the quintet now seems to have as little purpose as Jai Rodriguez, whose contributions to the proceedings have always felt forced. They're there, but they're not doing very much other than tossing out product plugs even more obviously and often than usual against a glitzy backdrop of slot machines, showgirls, neon lights, and a white limo two-city-blocks long. Come on, guys . . . it's time to return to the Jersey burbs to transform a greasy slacker living in his parent's panelled basement into a slick-talking, sleek-walking Tony Manero who carries the girl next door off into the sunset.

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Even towards the end, when she strained to hit a note and struggled to stay on key, Judy Garland was more charismatic than any of the pop princesses littering the entertainment scene today. Her concert at the Palace Theatre in NYC remains one of the most electrifying live performances I ever have seen.

The number of malls in this area, especially along US Highway 19, is astounding . . . how many different places do people need to shop? While I haven't had the inclination to explore many of them, I'm sure this one is no better or worse than those with which it competes. Burdines-Macy's, Dillard's, JC Penney, and Sears are the anchors here, so clearly its primary target is comprised of the middle-class families and senior citizenry with fixed incomes that make up the bulk of the local population. The remaining two hundred nineteen stores range from the usual to the unexpected - Frederick's of Hollywood was a bit of a surprise - and the fifteen dining options include Japanese, German, and Greek in addition to the hot dog stands, pizza joints, and Chinese fast-food palaces typical of venues like this. We had a surprisingly good bowl of rice, beans, and spicy sausage at the Cajun Cafe, although it certainly wasn't a meal noteworthy enough to warrant its own review. All in all, on a hot and humid day when the beaches are overcrowded and the warm Gulf waters offer little relief from the blazing sun, this is as good a place as any to waste a few hours in air-conditioned comfort.