
Know who's serving you.
THE MAN WITH A PASTThese are the waiters found in dark Italian restaurants owned and operated by Lebanese families. They generally work alone, handling the whole restaurant with the aid of a small boy who buses tables and has the mien of a monkey. These men, the men with histories, are generally in their mid-50s. They are slim, move elegantly, and have skin that appears to have spent decades veiled in cigarette smoke. Their manners are scrupulous. They go out of their way to charm obese sets of women in stained pastel cotton-jersey sweater sets. They bring free shots of apple liqueur to the table at the end of a meal and coo over the young toddler who did not like her pesto. They insist on bringing out something she will like, anything—perhaps meatballs. You might, looking from afar, imagine that they will, in back, piss into the kid's food, but they aren't like that. What you can't see—what you can only feel—is the mysterious darkness of their past. Who knows? Maybe they put a steak knife through somebody's hand, and this is the only place that will hire them. Maybe they owe the restaurant's owner $10,000 for his service in the murder of the prick-of-a-swine uncle who raped their daughter. Maybe he just gave blowjobs. It's impossible to know why, at night's end, your waiter pulls down the roll-down gate and makes a pallet on the diningroom floor (true story). Just be aware: These characters are as sinister as hairdressers and smile just as sweetly, and the best you can do is look them in the eye and try to get with them, vibewise. Because if you're not connecting with ominous waiters, why are you in New York to begin with?
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