Sloane Crosley (askanyone) on her favorite spots in the West Village, from a grocery store with red-bean cake to a cobblestone lane worth risking your ankles for
Photo: DeSean McClinton-Holland After around a decade of living in the West Village, author Sloane Crosley is convinced the neighborhood is weirder than it seems. Yes, there are the endless blocks of inviting cafés and boutiques. “But if you talk to any elderly person,” she says, “they will turn out to be, like, a former Egyptologist or a first-chair violinist or, fuck, Neil Young’s roadie or something.
The West Village, she thinks, can feel like a small town — “If you stay in the same place too long, you’re going around in circles with the same people” — though it turns into “a giant photo shoot” every weekend. The neighborhood is undeniably a tourist destination, but it doesn’t exactly have distinct landmarks, so visitors tend to wander. “It’s still idyllic,” she says. “You don’t have these kind of blood clots of tourists slowing everything down.
I have a standing date with a friend there. Well, not standing, squatting — it’s semi-regular. I have a squatting date with a friend who keeps his own maple syrup there because the French toast is the best thing to get. Sometimes I’ll go without him, which is a huge betrayal, and ask for his syrup. And the staff says no.
The owner’s name is Philip Mortillaro, and he’s owned the place for over 40 years. There’s something sort of charmingly bemused about him. He’s a purely helpful but not obsequious person. If there has not been a “Talk of the Town” about him, I’d be surprised. For a while, people were staying at my house or watching the cat or just watching the house when I was away, so I was there pretty frequently to get keys made.
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