Your desires, thwarted

Nine PM on a Sunday evening, a work and school night. Still seems early, but it’s time to get in the proper mind-set for the next five days.

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Rocky Sullivan’s, reverse commuter

Named after Jimmy Cagney’s character in the movie “Angels With Dirty Faces,” Rocky Sullivan’s relocated from Manhattan to Red Hook a few years ago. They have a full calendar of Irish bands, reading, and other events. Today, the experts advise avoiding alcohol because of the extreme heat. It’s okay to go to the watering hole, though, and sit under a fan at the bar.

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United Meat

You can tell it’s an old sign when there’s a phone number but no area code. This photo is so blown up it looks like a silkscreen. Next door is Chinese food.

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Don’t look for tapas here

There’s a Best Western in Bay Ridge; ONLY ten miles from Manhattan, the sales info says. The hotel first opened in 1926 as the Hotel Madrid, went through a few incarnations, and now it’s the Hotel Gregory (Best Western Gregory). An average room goes for around $150 a night, and it has three stars. It is one of the few hotels in the five boroughs not crawling with European tourists. They must have read about the R Train’s reputation for slowness and checked in somewhere else.

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El Continental is a groovin restaurante

It’s BYOB and your seventies fantasies, too. The typeface makes me want to show-off my disco moves and  platform shoes. The pupusas are supposed to be outstanding.

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It’s fancy Italian food

You can tell because it says “cuisine.” There was a time when tossing in a French word elevated a thing from the ordinary. Ironically, this is really an old-style red-sauce Italian restaurant with checkered tablecloths. The menu’s not nouveau at all, but leans toward spaghetti and meatballs and pizza pie.

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House of the squid

3rd Ave. and 86th Street

They make pizza in many varieties. That, the neon, and the alliterative name are what Casa Calimari have going for them.

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The latest in hybrid restaurants

Cuban-Chinese immigrants brought their cuisine to the city decades ago; the latest round of multi-cultural latin-Asian fusian, the Chinese-Mexican restaurant, is an totally different phenomenon. It’s a business decision – Chinese take-out is waning in popularity and small restaurants are trying to get in on a new trend. The food is not purely Mexican or even Tex Mex, as a hint of Asian flavor remains. Still, the burrito (black beans, rice, spinach, etc.) I sampled from this joint wasn’t bad, it was rather plain and unadorned, not unhealthy. I’d take this hybrid any day over greasy Chinese food. In fact, I’ll return, take the food home, splash some salsa on it, and be quite happy.

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Roast beef neon

At La Bagel Delight on Court Street. You get the feeling that something, like a word or two, is missing here. Is roast beef lucky?

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Tasty likker now on sale

Everything tastes better when it’s been marked down. This store, at the corner of Fourth Ave. and Tenth Street, by the subway, is like an NYC liquor store museum. Management changed two years ago, and while the plexiglas, once there for safety, remains, the door between the front and the back has been removed. Shoppers can wander around the area that used to be the employees’ domain. The shelves are rough-hewn and the aisles are barely wide enough for two normal-sized people, but the wine and liquor choices are now more sophisticated. Plus, there’s the temptation of the ongoing sale.

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