If you're a fan of food/this documentary/bizarro NYC restaurants then you will/should know about Shopsin's. This restaurant is magic. In all caps. MAGIC. Magic with weird hours, limited seating, rules, and the most loveably surly staff ever. So, Tuesday, my ex-coworker pals met me at Shopsin's for general gluttony, and the following remarkable things happened: I managed to scour the like 300-item-plus menu and look beyond my beloved mac and cheese pancakes, and some escalator inside the adjacent Delancey St. F stop caught fire and filled our happy chunk of the indoor market with acrid black smoke. Wooo.. hoo? Look, I'm no foodie (in fact, I was just drinking pickle juice right out of the jar a moment before I sat down to write this), but I think it MEANS something when a cloud of electrical fire-smoke doesn't make your food taste bad. Ok? I'm not saying Kenny Shopsin is some kind of magical wizard of... magic... and wonder, but I'm not saying he's NOT some kind of magical magic wizard of magic and wonder and... magic. Let's also talk about the fact that it doesn't make sense that everything on that menu is ridiculously awesome. How do you do that? I've been places that couldn't get a pancake (one pancake) right, how do you make 300 things right? I would drink their hot sauce. I would literally rub it into my eyes, just to have it near me. Do you understand? Do you? I would eat the napkins there. And it's not just that Senior Shopsin is the Lord of The Spatula, ALL OF HIS KIDS CAN DO IT, TOO. They have, like, butter and magic in their genes. HOW DO YOU MAKE CHOCOLATE COCONUT PANCAKES SO GOOD THAT THICK BLACK SMOKE AND A BLARING FIRE ALARM DOESN'T DIMINISH THEIR AWESOMENESS?! How often do you go to a restaurant and say, "I bet this would taste just as good in a cloud of toxic smoke," or, "Wow, I hope the proprietor of this business starts a cult, because, man, I am ready to sacrifice myself to whatever Norse god he's into if it'll get me closer to these pancakes." Kenny Shopsin, for the win.
The sliders and pancakes are great, but I wish they were more reliable about when they'll be open. I took an extra-long lunch hour yesterday in hopes of getting some Shopsin's pancakes, but when I got there it wasn't open. Nothing about this on the website or anywhere else -- it's really a crap shoot.
Posted by: PG | 2009.04.08 at 12:08