Disclaimer:
The greatest mistake my parent ever made was teaching me what nice things are for now I have become the ever-present snob. It wasn’t my intention to catch the crippling illness, but tragedy as this never is intentional. After a concise 25 years of meticulous manifestation I have become a Connecticut-an version of Anton Ego. I saunter the streets of your favorite cities adorn in “regal” wears with a degree of pomp not accustomed to my social stature. My 6’1” frame stands ten feet flat atop a conceited soapbox. Regularly, I find myself correcting the etiquette of the average dinner guest while tailoring topical discussions to niche intellectual crevasses where I pronounce unilateral declarations and twiddle titular points regarding the aligned topics of my sheltered, post academic world. I relish social situations to show my wit. Continually, I tabulate talking points in an isolated game. Attentively cold, my cutting eyes judge first impressions, critical and cynical as the unbudded atheist.
I bear a rich laugh, I twist a tantalizing tale, I whisper news through key holes and gossip the latest with unrealistic hyperbole perched as spittle on my lips. I take myself for a renaissance man, but this distinction remains a self-bestowed title that could equally fit the common stray cat in any local alley. I am unbashful-ly arrogant, judgmental, cruel and vile but in front of stained-glass eyes I display decorum for royalty. Your birthday, wedding, work event, dinner, club, golf trip, baby shower, funeral, or daughter’s baptism, call upon me for I will perform the required ballroom duties floating as an apparition and leave the gathering upon a victor’s chariot. The passing prince I gladhand the grandparents and swoon the lonely friends of friends, all will remember my presence while I quench my dehydrated soul’s thirst for admiration. I will break femur’s, crush kingdoms, and level snowcapped peaks to display my inherent superiority. Dear reader look about your local station, scan you preferred watering hole, check the cupboards, throw forth the dresser drawers and double count the attendance at your next gathering, for I am there, always there for you with a smile, a drink, a laugh and story.
At my young age snobbery in this regard remains a crime punishable by endemic death and confinement. Here lies but one journey of a recent escapade.
~Café Sabarsky~
It’s early March and any New England adjacent resident will tell you that Punxetony Phil’s wintry decree means nothing. March has arrived, thus so has Spring. The temperature might still be bitterly artic but cast agaze at any street corner and you’ll encounter bare legs gleaming in the low sun, reflectively pale from their hibernation they cast rays across western blocks. Spring is a mindset embraced foolhardily all too soon, but nonetheless captivating. Speckled gales may fly laterally carrying balls of precipitation on the dreariest March mornings though for the region’s inhabitants this is but a loving signal of winter’s end. On such a cold Spring Day early in March I found myself on a trepid mission making the ever-lovely hajj to the Upper East Side.
I must digress to put on record that I have my own bias to the area. I enjoy the posh attitude, young couples draped in Loro Piana athletic wear pushing the newest ergonomic Scandinavian strollers and sipping eerie Irish marshy muck through metal straws accompanied by ornate flaked pastries. Its beautifully cliché and vulgar…it imposes on me how much awareness I must grow to lose. Upon the same even slate stepping stones passes too the ghoulish weathered men and women who, by all legal standards, own the area. Wretched lines drawn into powdered faces from decades of city living; they limp their blocks in endangered animals, mumbling stories of former socialite friends whose progeny all fled west trading coastlines, and ideologies, to escape the cities chains. Clothes tailored bespoke era’s ago each stamped label frayed unrecognizable, all perceivably unnoticed by the juveniles who stroll past.
Walking the blocks you happen upon relics of and testaments to a grandiose era, where names held weight, manners mattered, and cocktail parties were providential displays of power. Today masked in increased commercialism, the virus of Madison Avenue cascades east, west, north and south encompassing more territory once ruled by the dying socialite faction. The ever-petulant conqueror, the air smells of imposters, ripe in self-admiration accompanied by luxury bags filled with name branded knick knacks. Each passing pedestrians step shutters an iPhone’s crunching camera capturing poised poses…“honey, make sure you can see the bags in the photo!” All done in the futile hopes to portray the appropriate affluence so that one might think they belonged within the deco veranda’s which line the blocks.
~
My northern exploration upon this day required me to make three stops, one to tour an apartment, one for clothing and the other for jewelry, all trivial but nonetheless mandated internally. I recognize which faction J reside in. I completed the set on a wanderer’s time drifting the blocks carelessly basking in the morning light, appreciating the quiet suburban-esque streets. I’d aid my ego to say thereafter I traversed the area directionless letting my soul guide my feet, but I am a pious follower of planning and known curator of actions…to be said I had planned for weeks where I’d be heading next. Following Lexington up until 86th St I banked left picking up my posture and deliberating my strides, as I descended upon my destination; the “hottest” club in town for curators of calculated conversation. While technically, not entirely a club; you wouldn’t know the from the security operation who stand in their legionary black suits guarding the doors, earpieces and batons eager for a misdeed.
While their coveted Roman Palace had been dismantled in its place rises a testament to Parisian decadence. Erected on the corner of 86th and Park in 1914 as the William Starr House, the Beaux-Arts edifice, stands as a replica of the illustrious Place des Voges in Paris, which you are all surely familiar with. Notably the storied structure housed Ms. Cornelius Vanderbilt III, a name to recall from your middle school histories, before subsequent iterations of tumultuous tenants lumbered its halls. Since 2001, the masonry possesses an Austro-Germanic collection of paintings, furniture, tableware and exhibits appropriately summarized in its name Neue Gallerie, that’s “New Gallery” for all you mono-lingual neanderthals.
Within the first-floor westerly confines, opposite the gift shop, lies a room of respite for the culinarily inclined. Stationed with the ever-present line, Café Saborsky offers guests a diluted taste of Viennese café culture within the Manhattans’ purgatorial paradise. Guarded by glassed parlor doors; the gateway to Eden is perched with fluttering waiters dressed in white collars and adjoined black ties who act with formulaic accuracy as to keep their dining room continually alive with rumbling chatter. For the impatient I recommend making brunch lunch and lunch dinner for the line trudges on slowly, especially on the weekend, taking each loping lobby corner recklessly wide trickling as a Mudejar brook through the palace doors and out into the quiet street.
To best maximize your time both in line and at the meal one must adhere to the following. First, arrive fashionably early and take a thirty-minute cruise of the Gallerie. You will know nothing about what is being presented before you, encapsulated in glass or tacked to the woodwork, but this isn’t the point. You must “earn the meal” while establishing intellectual dominance over your future line attendees. In your brief tour of the halls make note of a few artists name, snag a flashless photo of the artist’s work or plaque, maintain your hands behind your back and gaze inquisitively at a few encased exhibits for a few moderate minutes. In doing so you will retain ammunition to be disposed up the Café’s patrons or your dining companions in due time. Though most importantly you will begin to assimilate into the Austro-Germanic realm in which you stand. Once sufficiently saturated with miscellaneous knowledge about the only good artist there, Carl Geist, you may rejoin the herd who moo outside the farmer’s gate. For added artillery, when taking you place in line its best to gaze inquisitively around the room, embrace the mundane lobby as it may be art or a topical conversation too depending upon your vanity.
~
Undeniably regardless of your refined artistic pallet, intellectual prowess and Austro-Germanic pride, you all, as I, have come to the Neue Gallerie for the food. The well documented fair has graced all the prominent electronic collections of the Michelin guide, Infatuation NYC, Eater, and most other popular publication you pour eyes over. While the museum operates as the cultural appetizer and a gladhanded accomplishment which you can tell your mother; it is the food which beckons all to the Gallerie’s entrance.
Breeching the dining rooms double doors, on this day I was efficiently swept into a back corner table for two. An undesirable location but appropriate, as I dined alone and though a snob I will not reprimand an employee especially during a rush. Seated out to face the room I marveled at its oddities, most notably its dismal ceiling. In a room paneled appropriately in the correct decorum the few failures become ever apparent. Ones’ eyes initially encounter easy beauty. A grateful space the densely deep carved wooden walls, speckled quaint octagonal tiled floors, cast iron legs tabled with smokey marble tops, provide guests, café cakes, and Sacher Torts a luxurious viewing vantage. The room remains formally cozy enclosed by floral cushioned oak window booths on the western wall, a matching racked oak bar jutting from the northern one, magnificent sets of ten foot colonial “ten over ten” windows all who frame picturesque views of Park greenery. But, not all this, the whirlingly waiters or babbling chatter, can prevent the abhorrent blank white, sheet rock ceiling that stands as a middle finger to the guests. Put up a chandelier for God sakes! It’s Penn and Teller performing Liftoff while on a projector screen behind them displays a live feed of wee Teller crawling through the disjointed boxes underneath the floor. As a patron you have portioned your pay to escape Manhattan, why must they trigger your memory? Taking you to bone chilling flashes of sweated nights anxiously contemplating work while you stare blankly at your own white sheetrock ceiling ‘s judgmental face. I’m not asking for a refresco or Di Vinci’s The Creation of Adam but tack up some shrill tin for a simple Victorian décor. It’s frustrating. While installing the tin move the dust covered piano from the shuttered front corner by the door and throw an NYU kid a couple bucks to play the lunch service. The room is bleeding, give it aid.
Enough though on my architectural qualms, I don’t believe Michael Wyetnzer from Architectural Digest will be call me anytime soon. It’s best to move on to the meal for grievance’s sake.
The meal, the star of the show, the A-list actor who saves an underwritten script, the coach who rallies together the misfits for the unlikely championship win. Unfortunately these characters did not make an appearance.
Well… that’s not entirely true. Despite my previously curt criticism mere lines ago, the meal I will take majority’s blame. I’ll lay out my ordering decisions in plain Hemmingway-ian English for simple digestion. Chilled Riesling from Austria and the schnitzel and an apple strudel with a sniffer of Nux Apline (pure almond schnaps). I went for immersion. I chose to honor the ideals imbedded within the floors above me dedicated to Austro-Germanic achievements but was undermined by tourism’s twisted intuition. The Riesling played proudly for its countrymen, cool sweet and light it opened my mind to the meal before me, massaging away my confusion with the dining room.
Next arrived his dear Cisleithanian companion the Schnitzel. Initially perplexed by its near immediate teleportation to the place setting before me I soon understood its swift approach. It had been fried some time ago no more than an thirty minutes but noticeably tired and under salted. The frisbee of slim pork shellacked in golden breadcrumbs accompanied two consorts: one being a delectable potato salad with shaved pickles and the other a cranberry chutney of sorts. Balanced, as all things should hope to be the richness of the potato’s mayo was precisely pierced by the flash-pickled cucumbers who offered a stark crunch to the potatoes soft texture. Positioned improperly a drift the table lied too a lowly vessel housing a remarkably cold wheat loaf. No warmth to be had in its gluttoned glands. The bread resembling all too my heart; I slathered it in salted butter, putting the stiff carbs tentatively into my mouth. Momentarily dismayed by my misfortune in ordering it took a bit of elbow grease (i.e. adding salt) to rectify any miss deeds. Soon I let the meal come to me while the wine began whispering sweet nothings into my ears.
I made short work of the meal and wine in the end, though opinionated, when decent food is presented, I am not one to wait for it to get cold or colder in this case. Sufficiently satiated tipping back in my whicker seat my softer vision worked to document the various assorted islands of tables and their shipwrecked inhabitants who made up the dining room. Instantly my ordering error became known. Not one Schnitzel floated down from a proud waiter’s hand to the marble table tops nearby, solely bratwursts, sauerkraut and potatoes joined by liter steins of Amber Paulaner beer. My decided vigilance led to embarrassed dismay. How could I such a snob be undone by pure tourist rhetoric? Why today did safety dull my senses?
Wiry minded I cast my ears to reel in a catch of other’s conversations while picking upon the flaked apple strudel al a mode (please refer to my previous statement regarding mono-lingual Neanderthals). The room shimmered with talks of planned parties, recent rendezvous’s, worried work lives and salacious side-doored stories each serving to prod my imagination to passively dream while the words swam around me. Lost within the sugared shingled pastry, sips of Alpina and a drifting conscious I failed to notice the mellowed tones of a sharper dialect, one not of a romance origin but of Germanic brut-ism. Captivated I swiveled my senses to further track where such sounds were originating. Unbenounced to me lining the far walls in the windowed booths sat an ensemble of various German adults, presumably relatives, laughing away dictating conversations with pointed steins, pouring themselves over piles of bratwurst, miscellaneous pork products, pots of tea, breads, pies and any other menu item which I had not ordered. I sat and listened. I do not know German, besides a few jovial phares, “Prost!” (Cheers) being one of the more frequently used, but I do know what it looks like for people to feel at home. Thousands of measured miles meant nothing to these compatriots, they conducted themselves as if the grand room around them were merely their living room. Presumed stories were met with laughs, rich and true. Authentically passionate and pleased. Teleported away, they were in the soft hands of familiarity, guards checked within the coat closet.
Maybe it was the constant supply of wine and liquors or maybe my Grinch heart grew a few sized but, rapidly that the room shifted. Suddenly, the celling appeared appropriate, the food fair and the time well warranted. The final bites tasted of Austrian cafes I once knew and upon my departure I felt enthralled with my experience. My desire for extravagant recreation of my previous travels to the Austro-Germanic cafes of Europe had clouded my eyes from witnessing the quality before me. Café Sabarsky is not a recreation but an adaption, a testament to a concept known and revered amongst God’s children lucky enough to experience it. My disdain had been ill-founded and as I stopped in the Park to smoke a cigarette twinges of shame waltzed upon my conscious.
Overall, the meal serves its purpose, not that of nutrition or caloric fuel but as a device for contrite reflection, repast for the heart. The atypical cuisine, the ambitious setting do their darndest to pull you from city life. It begins when you cross the dining rooms threshold. It is reinforced by the ambiance, food, drink waitstaff, and companions all taking turns to soften up your midsection with stimulating hooks. New York is hell. We all know its hell. We all love it because its hell. Café Sabrosky reminds you the world isn’t hell, in fact it can be quite pleasant if you take the time to explore and meet it where it stands. Yes, I am a snob, I am cruel, I am judgmental, I am an aspiring full-time resident to Dante’s Inferno but I do amongst all things appreciate how a passion can stop me in my tracks. I don’t know the owners, the artists, the waiters or the cooks but they all they care enough to keep the emphatic charade alive. To keep you away from ratty streets, to stir feelings of Magellan-ism or sentimentalism for an ancestral home. Regardless of their reasons; noble or not, they care to perform, to cater, to display their own or creators passion. They care to try; you should too.
Go forth and visit it for yourself. Its worth it.
K.s. Holland 
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