Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the newly renamed Brooklyn Paper:
Saturday night, Smartmom, Hepcat, and OSFO found themselves at Two
Boots, Park Slope’s beloved Cajun pizzeria known for its tolerance of
unruly children.
For a frigid January night, the restaurant was
moderately crowded and the maitre d’ told them it would be three
minutes until their table was ready.
“This is way more than three minutes,” OSFO whined as her parents sat at the bar drinking Turbo Dogs for more than 15 minutes.
Finally, the maitre d’ gathered up menus and took them to their seats.
“I’m
very sorry,” she said. “I had a bunch of tables that looked like they
were ready to leave…” Like most of the staff at Two Boots, she was
charming and full of spunk (you have to be to work in a restaurant
where the children run wild with small balls of dough while their
parents zone out on peach Margaritas).
As they walked toward the
pizza window, Smartmom noticed a long table of teenagers eating an
interesting assortment of appetizers. At another table, a kid blew
straw paper
“Oh sh—,” Smartmom said aloud. The maitre d’ was
making a beeline for the table near the pizza window — aka the
Second-Most-Dangerous Table in the restaurant. It’s the same table
where a dough ball once landed in Smartmom’s Margarita, tossed by an
unrepentant 4-year-old.
The Most Dangerous Table, of course, is the one next to the pizza window.
When there are too many kids at the pizza window, they use that booth
as a kind of off-ramp. At one dinner, Groovy Grandpa got many an
Elephantan shoe on his thigh.
As Smartmom perused the familiar
menu, she found herself overwhelmed with remembrances of things past.
She was unable to imagine ordering anything other than what they’d
ordered so many times before:
Pizza face for OSFO; goat cheese
and andouille pizza for the grown ups; a small house salad and an order
of calamari for the table.
And with each menu item, she saw a picture of herself and her children at various stages of their lives.
On
a cold January night in 1989, Hepcat proposed to Smartmom in the East
Village Two Boots, which was their favorite restaurant back then.
They’d usually eat after 10 pm and were barely aware of the
restaurant’s status as child-friendly. As far as they were concerned,
it was hipster cool.
“Will you marry me?” Hepcat purred as he offered an empty white porcelain coffee cup as an engagement ring.
You know the answer to that question (even though a busboy whisked the “ring” away with the other dirty dishes).
Fried
calamari from Two Boots was baby Teen Spirit’s first solid food. Or so
they like to say. He was a regular at the restaurant by the time he was
2.
OSFO’s first meal at Two Boots was in a Baby Bjorn. Smartmom
splayed the napkin over her infant’s head and gorged on pizza as the
tot slept. As she grew, it became a family tradition to celebrate her
birthday there.
Despite these crusts of memory, Smartmom longed
for something new. “How about the Sophia, the special pizza of the
day,” she blurted out. Red pepper, spicy Italian sausage, Vidalia
onion, and fresh mozzarella.
Sound good?
Hepcat made a
face. A creature of habit, he had his heart set on the usual. But with
that passive-aggressive flair, he left it up to Smartmom.
“We’ll
still have the house salad and the calamari,” she offered. He forced
his lips into a smile. Smartmom hoped the Sophia pizza would make him
forget this change in the routine.
The teenagers at the table
nearby looked like they were having fun. They looked so comfortable in
their seats — like they’d been there a million times before. And they
probably had.
In different incarnations of themselves, of course.
Once upon a time, they were carried in by Bjorn. Or wheeled in by single or double Maclaren.
Later,
they were one of the doughboys and girls at the pizza window. Perhaps
they were one of the runners, a kid who nearly trips a good-natured
waiter, holding a tray full of Sangrias.
Smartmom wondered how
they perceived the place. Was Two Boots the fuddy-duddy place their
parents always took them to? Or the childhood restaurant they
remembered most fondly?
Would this be like the restaurant on Fire
Island that sent plates from the kitchen by electric train that
Smartmom never forgot? Or was it like the Great Shanghai, the cavernous
Chinese restaurant on West 102nd Street that she was dragged to every
Sunday night for years?
Smartmom watched as Hepcat bit into her
steaming hot Sophia pizza slice. “How do you like it?” she asked
hopefully, her mouth full of savory, succulent pizza.
“It’s OK.” Hepcat is known for his pathological understatement. “OK” is actually a compliment in his lexicon.
But
then he made a face. “I don’t like this sausage as much as the
andouille. And the fresh mozzarella — it just doesn’t compare to the
goat cheese.”
You just can’t win. Still Smartmom enjoyed her
Sophia pizza and OSFO, after she removed the olive eyes, the broccoli
nose, and the tomato slice smile, was thrilled with her Pizza Face.
“Why do they put all this stuff on it that kids don’t eat?” OSFO yelped.
This is Park Slope. Kids DO eat vegetables here. And they love it.
At
that moment, a waitress bolted out of the kitchen with a slice of cake
with a single birthday candle. The kids at the teenager’s table sang
“Happy Birthday” to a very embarrassed birthday girl.
Soon the
entire restaurant was singing along. Out of the muck of discordant
voices came a gorgeous operatic soprano, from a cheerful woman sitting
at the Most-Dangerous Table.
Her soaring voice rose above all the
rest. It was clear as a bell, deep and full of ebullient feeling. Her
son hid under his shirt clearly embarrassed by his mother’s artistry.
The crowd applauded. Smartmom shouted, “Bravo.”
As
the Park Slope diva exited the restaurant, customers thanked her and
shook her hand. She stopped at the teenager’s table and wished the
birthday girl a happy day. Smartmom overheard that she was chorus
singer at the Metropolitan Opera.
Done with her food, Smartmom asked the busgirl she’s known for more than 10 years to pack up the remnants of the Sophia pizza.
It
may not be as memory full as the goat cheese and andouille, but it
would certainly taste great for breakfast tomorrow morning.
For
research purposes, Smartmom asked the waitress what the most popular
topping is: “Hmmm,” she thought for a moment. “Andouille. With goat
cheese,” she said assuredly.
Hepcat smiled. Vindicated at last.
