Since I am no longer going to be working in midtown as of next week (SPOILER ALERT!) I’ve been trying to pick up food in the area that I’ll probably never be around to get again.
Across the street from where I work is a fancy-pants hotel called Le Parker Meridien. The kind of place where I feel like I should be paying a tax just to cut through their lobby. However, hidden behind a large, thick brown curtain in the cavernous lobby, is a cheeseburger stand. I mean that too: wood paneling, greasy tables, a tiny, tiny griller and deep fryer, 4 things on the menu. The only indicator of this place’s existence is a tiny light-up sign that is a picture of a warm burger that is set back a hallway that serves as the entrance and the smell of greasy Indian sacrilege that permeates the lobby during their business hours. I like to think of it as the hotel’s younger brother – their dying mother asked the hotel to always take care of the hamburger stand, and the snooty older hotel keeps it in business behind a secret curtain in the lobby.
However, like anything that’s secret in New York, it is no secret. Often the lines for a burger extend down the hall to the reception desk, lasting over a half hour. As an hourly wage slave, I’m not afforded such waiting luxury. Today, I lucked out and walked right in.
Although it looks like a bastard offshoot of Mel’s Diner, the prices are typically midtown. Hamburger stand: corner grill taste for hotel prices! I dropped $10.00 on a burger and fries. While it was a tasty burger, it wasn’t $10.00 tasty. It let you know how good it would be by soaking through the thick wrapping paper in which it was encased, and the fries came in a plain brown lunch sack. I am glad I went once, but I doubt I’d go back ever, unless it was to show my friends in person that this place exists.
Also, like any secret thing in New York City, I saw two people I tangentially knew from the comedy scene here in the city. Small big world.
-MAL