Brooklyn in Love

by Amy Thomas

  Which brings us back to his chicken.

  “Not to sound arrogant, but most people just don’t know how to cook chicken.” It’s different from steak or fish, Jonathan points out, when you’re just preparing part of the animal—a fillet. Cooking the whole thing can be daunting.

  “Every chicken is different,” the chef points out. “You have to look at each one individually.” Which is what he does hundreds of times over. “We sell so much chicken, it’s absurd,” he says dryly, acknowledging the restaurant goes through five or six hundred birds a week in the summertime.

  Jonathan had been celebrated at his original Jams restaurant for the deboned, grilled half chicken he served with fries. “But it was a different beast,” he says, in comparison to the pollo al forno at Barbuto, which is now one of the city’s most iconic dishes.

  “I wanted to not waste anything,” he says of the choice to roast the bird on the bone at Barbuto. Placing two halves of a chicken in a skillet, he dresses them with olive oil, sea salt, and fresh cracked pepper. He then roasts it in the wood-burning oven, basting it along the way to make succulent, brown, and crispy skin. Beneath, the meat becomes tender and juicy. After letting the pieces rest for a few minutes, he tops them with salsa verde, a mixture of smashed garlic, capers, cured anchovies, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a mash of herbs—such as parsley, tarragon, and oregano—and serves it so simply and yet it’s so spectacular.

  “It became one of my greatest hits,” Jonathan acknowledges. “And when people love something, you don’t deny them.”

  • • •

  In the weeks following that revelatory dinner, I found myself in long-forgotten territory. A goofy grin came to my face when I thought of Andrew. A speeding up of my heart. That telltale fluttering in the belly. He was under my skin. I looked forward to seeing him more often—I wanted to see him more often. I was no longer protecting my free time or strategizing like some weird misanthrope about how not to include him at group dinners. I wanted him there, with me, all the time. I wanted friends to get to know him, to unearth his sense of humor as I currently was, to be charmed by his gravelly voice and wholesome manners, to meet the man who could drop facts about the Supreme Court, the Civil War, and the history of Pearl Jam with equal aplomb. I caught myself daydreaming like a fourteen-year-old: about how cute he had been on AJ’s birthday when he unselfconsciously gave the Lower East Side hipsters a run for their money as we wound up dancing in a subterranean bar, about how we unabashedly made out in the crowded East Village streets, NYU students telling us to get a room. I longed to see him minutes after we parted. Yep, I felt it—I was in love with this guy.

  As soon as I let go of my hang-ups, I opened up to Andrew and all the possibilities of being with him. To be fair, it wasn’t like I woke up one morning in a rapturous aha moment. It was work. It took time. It was with the help of my brilliant therapist that doubt was replaced by hope, and I started moving toward him instead of trying to keep distance between us. Living together still seemed a bit much, but little by little, as I continued slogging through my personal baggage and unfair expectations, things changed.

  Our dynamics became so much more natural and fluid. I was no longer checking off all the things he wasn’t, but was psyched about what, and who, he was: kind, independent, no bullshit, intuitive, generous, and up for anything. Plus, he had a great bum and was superaffectionate, always putting his hand on the small of my back or lightly rubbing his thumb across my wrist. It was finally how I imagined having a boyfriend would be: a fun, fulfilling enhancement to my life, not rocks in my pockets, threatening to take me downstream.

  And then suddenly we were just like all those other New York couples who had unknowingly taunted me for so long. Going out Saturday nights naturally meant waking up the next day to sex and brunch. I became one of those girls at a crowded restaurant on a Sunday morning with a shit-eating grin and a big pile of pancakes, disheveled hair pulled back in a knot, wearing last night’s clothes and smudged eyeliner.

  As spring blossomed into summer, we started upping the ante. I was working on an article about Connecticut’s coastline, so we hopped in a rental car in Midtown and drove north to my home state. Through the tall hedges hiding regal estates in Greenwich, the urban-chic villages of Westport and Darien, to my neck of the woods—the beatnik clam shacks and weathered seaside cottages of southeastern Connecticut—we cruised the coastline. We pulled over to taste-test lobster rolls, went kayaking in the tributaries of the Connecticut River, and watched the sunset on the tiny peninsula town of Stonington. My love for the area was deeper than ever before as I shared it with someone who newly saw its charm and beauty.

  We spent the weekend at my dad’s, where Andrew bantered wit for wit with the man whom every boyfriend has ever had to measure up to—and he held his own. We went to my cousin’s for an impromptu party and he was totally comfortable, nonchalantly chatting with all my cousins, aunts, and uncles who ranged in age from two to seventy, and decibel levels of one to eleven. And it was so easy. Andrew made it easy.

  The summer continued with a trip to Colorado for his friend’s wedding, where we also went hiking, mountain biking, and ghost chasing at the Stanley Hotel, the allegedly haunted hotel that inspired Stephen King’s The Shining. We took a train up the Hudson River to a cute bed-and-breakfast for an extended weekend of loafing, reading, and tennis. Feeling more adventurous and certain about our future, we booked a trip to Buenos Aires for the following spring. And throughout it all, we explored Brooklyn with equal excitement.

  It was partly because Andrew lived in Sunset Park, an as of yet ungentrified neighborhood dominated by Mexican and Chinese immigrants near the exquisitely landscaped Green-Wood Cemetery, so many weekend mornings would start there. But it was also because I had my sights on defecting from Manhattan to this gentler, greener borough.

  I had fallen in love with Brooklyn Heights when I came home from Paris for AJ’s wedding two years earlier. One of the oldest and most landmarked neighborhoods—in fact, it was the first entire neighborhood in New York City to be protected by the Landmarks Preservation Commission—it sits immediately across the East River from downtown Manhattan, offering million-dollar views of the skyline, Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, and constant, whirling helicopters taking tourists and bankers to and fro. Instead of a fancy rehearsal dinner, AJ and Mitchell had thrown a party in one of the neighborhood’s quintessential Federal town houses with exposed brick and ten-foot-tall windows—the kind of place that makes you want to grow roots and stay there the rest of your life. We had spent the afternoon of the party food shopping at the local grocery and liquor stores. Everyone we passed in the street seemed part of a true community, greeting each other, pausing to stop and pet each other’s dogs and say hello to their children by name. Even though I was single at the time and living in the most exquisite city of Paris, it captured my heart and became an indelible image of where I saw my life going. I decided I would trade my frenetic East Village digs upon my return for this quieter, more…well, mature part of the city.

  As Andrew and I ate our way through every weekend that summer, I was expanding my knowledge beyond Brooklyn Heights. We’d wake up at his place, grab a Mexican coffee—made ridiculously sweet with condensed milk topped with sugar—and hit the pavement.

  We window-shopped along Court Street, the closest thing Brooklyn has to Manhattan, perusing the indie clothing boutiques, bookstores, and Italian bakeries, and stopped at Frankies 457 Spuntino, a casual Italian restaurant that every young Brooklynite loves, to pound fresh ricotta, gnocchi, and meatballs. Afterward, I dragged us ten blocks out of the way to hit up Sugar Shop, a modern-retro candy store I loved, to load up on malt balls and gummies.

  We strolled the magnificent blocks of Victorian homes and green lawns in Ditmas Park, as if suddenly transported from the city’s whirl to a faraway college town, perusing the rhubarb, Bibb lettuces, and buckets of fresh clams at the farm
ers’ market, before demolishing fried egg sandwiches on ciabatta at the Farm on Adderly, one of the borough’s now-prolific farm-to-table restaurants.

  We shared pizza at Franny’s: one red, one white, both pockmarked with giant charred blisters from the exceedingly hot brick oven. In a borough known for its temples of pizza worship, before it closed in the summer of 2017, Franny’s was right up there, owing to the perfect flavors oozing from each simple ingredient, from the milky mozzarella to the salty-sweet tomato sauce to the briny black olives.

  We pit-stopped for midday cocktails at Lavender Lake in Gowanus, the back patio blessedly empty in the heat of summer; we sought out the dark, nearly windowless cavern that is Park Slope’s Union Hall, sipping amber pints of IPA and watching bocce players trying to knock each other’s balls.

  We even made it to the holy mecca of Brooklyn food fanaticism: Smorgasburg, a collection of food vendors that battle it out for the most outrageously delicious, ridiculously inventive food. We duly ate our heads off, sampling panko-crusted chicken sandwiches topped with pickled cucumbers and daikon, brown butter cookies doused in flakes of sea salt, and the coup d’état—gigantic, billowy doughnuts from a Bed–Stuy bakery called Dough, one sweetly flavored with hibiscus, the other a savory, roasted café au lait varietal.

  I was thrilled with it all: not only all these delicious, new brunches and cocktails and sweets, but the landscapes we crossed to find them and the conversations Andrew and I had along the way. I loved how the occasional old-relic clapboard house would stick through the otherwise uniform brownstones, transporting me to a different city and era. I was enchanted by the giant plane trees that made the slate sidewalks ripple with their bulbous roots that had been growing for centuries and the gas lanterns along the gently sloping, quietly humming streets. I laughed at the dollhouse-size homemade lending libraries filled with paperbacks that stood at some curbs, and the way people left old blenders, records, shoe trees, and other bric-a-brac items on their stoops, free for the taking. From Prospect Heights to Red Hook to even Brooklyn’s commercial downtown, I couldn’t help but notice a different kind of energy everywhere: the mishmash of languages, races, clothing styles, and ages. There was a rhythm and a beat to it all. Exotic yet old school. Hippie and hip-hop. Dynamic yet relaxed. Walking arm in arm with Andrew, taking it all in, our bodies seemed just the right size and speed for each other and Brooklyn seemed destined to be my future.

  As summer drew to a close and Andrew and I were delaying separating at the end of another lovely weekend of traversing Brooklyn, I could tell something was on his mind. Or maybe it was me and this giant elephant in the room. Along our explorations, we’d occasionally stumble upon an open house and pop in, nosing around a stranger’s apartment. Andrew knew that I intended to move to Brooklyn, so there was good reason to be checking out these open houses. Things were now going so well between us, and yet I was looking for a one bedroom that fit only my preferences, tastes, and needs. It was, how do you say? Awkward. That morning, we had popped into a random Park Slope open house and the voyeuristic thrill that usually accompanied me was conspicuously absent.

  “Sooo…” I said, turning to Andrew on a grimy corner of Fourth Avenue near Barclays Center, where I would catch my train back to Manhattan.

  “Sooooo,” he responded, smiling at me, hands encircling my waist.

  “I guess it’s getting a little weird looking at open houses together.”

  Andrew looked up at the sky, nodding his head. “Yeah. A bit,” he said. “The question is: What do we do about it?”

  “Well, either we stop going to open houses together, or we start planning to live together,” I offered, emboldened by how good and how right things felt between us.

  So there on the corner, beneath a late-summer sun, we talked about how it would be great to live together…just not yet. Nine months of dating might be more than enough time for some couples to pull the trigger, but we were two individuals who had lived alone for so long that any excitement associated with the prospect of cohabitation was tempered with just a little bit of terror. With a combination of my Germanic discipline and his Midwestern patience, we agreed I would put my apartment search on hold and we’d look together in the New Year. It was a huge step. I had envisioned a home for myself in Brooklyn for a long time. That I could imagine doing it with Andrew told me this was real. The relationship was going places. I had a future with Andrew. In Brooklyn.

  FRENCH INVASION

  I was a Francophile even before living in Paris for two years. Needless to say, when I came home to New York in 2011, I was thrilled to find a French invasion underway.

  About nine months after I returned, Ladurée, the famed tea parlor that is purportedly responsible for creating the macaron, opened on the Upper East Side. Immediately there were lines stretching down Madison Avenue, as hordes of ladies who lunch and Japanese tourists patiently waited for their boites of pretty pastel pastries from the teeny storefront. When a second location, a grand salon, opened in SoHo a few years later, the hysteria had subsided, making it easier to get a fix of lemon meringue tarts, mille-feuille, Mont Blanc gâteaux, or any other storybook creations.

  Famed baker Éric Kayser has proven more than anyone that you can find the best tastes of Paris in New York. His first bakery arrived in New York in 2012, and there are now twelve Maison Kayser locations between Manhattan and Brooklyn serving up baguettes, brioche, and crumbles that will make you say “Miam!”

  Dominique Ansel, another Parisian transplant, became known to the world when he invented the Cronut in 2013, two years after opening his eponymous bakery in SoHo. The croissant-doughnut hybrids get all the fanfare, but the pastry chef’s versions of the Kouign-amann, Paris–Brest, and even New York cheesecake all warrant a trip.

  Pastry chef Damien Herrgott, who had once worked for France’s “Picasso of Pastry,” Pierre Hermé, is at the helm of Bosie Tea Parlor (where I had the honor of having my book launch party). Though his creations are lesser known than the actual French imports, Damien churns out stellar viennoiseries—croissants, pain aux chocolat, chausson aux pommes—and gâteaux, like the Ispahan, a raspberry-and-rose-flavored cake that is one of Pierre Hermé’s most-celebrated offerings in Paris.

  CHAPTER 4

  Forty Turns of the Carrot Grinder

  With the decision to move in together made but the actual search for an apartment still a few months down the road, Andrew and I reveled in our relationship. We were starry-eyed. Publically affectionate. In love. Eating up the city.

  It was nauseatingly great. So why was I feeling so adrift and uncertain?

  While this was the first time in nearly a decade I had relaxed into a relationship and allowed myself to feel hopeful, confident, and loved, I was otherwise feeling insecure. In fact, I was floundering. The self-assuredness and moxie that steered me throughout my twenties and thirties, building up my advertising and editorial careers, propelling me to far-flung corners of the world, seemed to have abandoned me. I had identified myself as an independent woman for so long, rarely giving in to self-doubt or questioning what I was doing, where I was going, when things would happen to me, or why I made the choices I did. But suddenly, I was analyzing everything. My fortieth birthday loomed, sparking questions I had long put to bed: Where was I going? What was important to me? What was my idea of success? I felt compelled to figure out “life”—as if it were something I could do on an afternoon stroll along the Hudson River.

  Part of my angst was that my book launch was now well behind me. The years leading up to its publication and the months celebrating its debut were over, leaving a hole in my life. Something that had percolated inside my brain and that I had obsessed about for years was gone, and I didn’t know where to funnel all that creative energy. It was like I had a phantom limb; I always felt like there was something I should be doing or writing…but what? It was disorienting no longer having a sense of purpose or urgency.

/>   The other part was my job. Ever since joining the ad industry as an eager twenty-two-year-old, I’ve had a pretty good run. Inspiring bosses, collaborative teams, work that I was proud of—some that had even won awards. I considered myself lucky to have a relatively cushy job like advertising. Even if of questionable ethics, it’s a young, fun industry, and educational to boot. I’ve gone to BMW driving school, learned how to scale walls at YMCA day camp, and seen how sweet potatoes are pulverized into baby food and how leather hides are transformed into handbags worth several months’ rent.

  When I came back from Paris with Louis Vuitton dominating my portfolio, a whole new world of fashion and luxury advertising was open to me, and I jumped right in. Talk about being seduced by all the wrong things. This downtown boutique agency I had joined about nine months after my return to New York was nothing like the larger, more established ones I was used to. And while those previous jobs were occasionally blighted by office politics and drama, none of it came close to the dysfunction I was experiencing now. This agency was firmly divided between the cool kids and everyone else. I was not one of the cool kids. Nearly twenty years into my career, suddenly I couldn’t get anything right. I didn’t dress right, talk right, or know the right people. Judging by how diminished my role was, apparently I couldn’t even write right.

  The whole atmosphere started wearing me down, especially Dennis, the executive creative director. He was advertising’s worst cliché of a moody, egomaniacal tyrant. He was supposed to be an inspiring leader, overseeing and fostering the talent within the creative department, but he really didn’t want anything to do with any of us—he just liked having minions to lord over and be witness to his daily genius. He was incredibly talented, but he was also deeply troubled. Not just capricious, but clinical. In the year I’d been there, he’d churned through four assistants and chewed out everyone in the department. His freak-outs were legendary: the way he’d rant and rave, pacing around the lofty, sunlit room filled with art and fashion tomes, spit flying from his lips, hands waving madly in the air, screaming and moaning about some idiot client or worthless employee or asinine decision. As he did, everyone’s IM would light up, with all of us stifling giggles, eyes popping in disbelief over his dramatic displays and lack of empathy. It was just so ridiculous—unless you were the target of his wrath. Then, it was no laughing matter.