Occidental pastries

A. and I completed our Goodbye New York Pilgrimage with some faithful prayer at the shrine of the Hungarian Pastry Shop. (Have you noticed that most of my blog thus far has been devoted to food? I should really get a life. And show some consideration for those who are fasting Ramadan.) Barnard girls, Columbia students, residents of Morningside Heights, and certain well-travelled individuals may well be informed about the glorious Hungarian Pastry Shop. For all the rest of you, just know that one doesn't really go there for the pastries. Aside from the excellent pumpkin pie (thanks for the tip, K.!), the goods have been sitting around for a while -- and even if they weren't, I'm afraid they still wouldn't be a rave party on the tongue.

Eddie Said might have something to say (and perhaps did say something) about the arrangement of the pastries under the glass counter of the Hungarian Pastry Shop. On the right side of the counter are the cheesecakes, pumpkin pies, chocolate ganaches, and tiramisus. On the left side of the counter -- separated by a metal barrier -- are the baklava, poppyseed rolls, hamentaschen, and other "exotic" (hee hee) Eastern European/Middle Eastern sweets. Last year, as A. and I were making our pilgrimage to the Hungarian Pastry Shop before I departed for a summer program in Jordan, we ordered a tiramisu. At that moment, I had the unfortunate lack of discretion to say something along the lines of "You always choose the western ones." To this day, I have had no peace from A. for making such a hoity-toity (and probably intellectually misguided) comment. Oh dear.

All this to say: here are some pictures of the orientalist pastry cases. These, as you can see, picture "the western ones."













But as I said, you don't really go there for the pastries. You go there because it's right across from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (the world's largest Gothic cathedral, I think). You go there to sit outside at the sidewalk tables and drink Moroccan tea while either freezing to death or suffocating of the heat, depending on the season. You go there to relish the warmth (if winter) or cool (if summer) of the indoors, because the place insulates like no other. You go there to sit at one of the tables that are crowded so close together that there's no way it isn't a fire hazard. You go there to watch tons -- I mean, *tons* -- of intellectual types read books in lots of different languages and chug down black coffee. You go there to eavesdrop of the conversations of said intellectual types. You go there to see what said intellectual types are wearing.

I go there for the bathroom. To be precise, I go there for the bathroom walls (and ceiling and floor), upon which are scrawled feminist/communist/capitalist manifestos, declarations of freedom/gender/being, extended debates about Israel and Palestine, and rather juicy gossip. To anyone who's ever had the joy of reading what's written in the middle stall of the girls' bathroom in Adams House: darling, the Hungarian Pastry Shop is your Paradise.

Here are some treasures.