A New York Holy Week
ONLY ONCE did someone remind me that it was Holy Week. My daughter and I were walking down a thoroughfare in Harlem when two men peddling CDs spotted us. “Oh, two Asian women! Sisters, would you like to buy my CD?” said one. We ignored them and went on our way. Then, after taking a closer look at us, the outspoken one declared: “Hey, I know! You’re from the Philippines! My girlfriend is from the Philippines!” As we walked on, picking up speed, he started to follow us, exclaiming: “Won’t you help me and buy a CD? Why are you ignoring me? Don’t you know it’s Good Friday? You’re committing a sin!”
Either he was feeding on our well-known Filipino Catholic sense of guilt, or he knew we had just had a sumptuous lunch on what is traditionally the most abstemious day in the Catholic calendar. But it was jarring to be reminded of Holy Week in a city (and a country, it seems) where it was “business as usual,” whereas back home we heard that the usually traffic-choked streets were clear and everybody seemed occupied with penitence and prayer or fervid leisure.
We had just come from lunch at Sylvia’s Queen of Soul Food Restaurant (on Malcolm X Boulevard), which is famous for Southern-style cuisine but especially so for its fried chicken. My daughter Miya proclaimed it “the best chicken I ever tasted,” to which I replied, incredulously: “Better than Chicken Joy or Max’s?” And you know what, it was the best chicken I also ever had. Its breaded skin remained crisp despite being “smothered” in gravy, while the flesh was tender, moist and flavorful. These are claims most chicken restaurants make, to varying degrees of success, but I must say only Sylvia’s has lived up to the hype. And I must say, too, that the “sides” I ordered, candied sweet potato and mac ‘n’ cheese, complemented the chicken spectacularly.
Miya was still hankering for chicken, but felt she should stick to a seafood dish (opting for breaded catfish) because it was Good Friday. She frowned skeptically when I told her I was exempt from the “meatless” mandate because I was already a senior citizen, something she said she never learned in catechism class.
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THE day before, Miya brought me to another favorite of hers: Artichoke Basille’s Pizza, a joint that is so popular there was a long queue at its Chelsea branch even if it was already 3 p.m.
My daughter warned me they served huge slices, so we opted for a selection of three slices (a whole pizza was truly huge!) including of course the classic artichoke. We found ourselves seated at the bar because the place was packed and, interviewing the bartender, I found out their most popular beer on tap was the Belgian Stella Artois. And no, they didn’t have San Miguel.
Artichoke Basille’s is owned by two cousins: Francis Garcia and Sal Basille, who cut their pizza teeth in the family-owned Basille’s on Staten Island. Food Channel enthusiasts might recognize them as they have a show, “Pizza Masters,” where they visit pizza parlors around the United States and try variations of this very popular dish. Judging from their offerings at their own restaurant, I can say the cousins truly have the “k” to be passing judgment on the products of other pizzerias.
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FROM Artichoke Basille’s we walked a few blocks to take a lift to High Line, a unique park born of an abandoned freight rail line that hovered several stories above New York’s streets and was used to deliver goods to factories in Chelsea and The Meatpacking District. Ever since Anthony Bourdain featured High Line in a show in tribute to his home city, I’d dreamed of visiting the park. A collaboration between the New York city government and private groups led by the “Friends of the High Line,” the abandoned railway was saved from demolition and creatively reused as an urban oasis, giving both residents and tourists a bird’s eye view of the Lower West Side.
A portion of the park, which opened to the public in 2014, features wooden benches arranged amphitheater style and facing a bank of glass windows from which park goers could get a street-side view. A few meters away, wooden benches even allow the public to recline and take in a view of the Hudson River. Further along lies the Whitney Museum, a modern glass edifice devoted to modern art and conceptual pieces.
The High Line is said to have become the centerpiece of a “gentrifying” trend that has saved its once deteriorating surroundings. Part of the trend is the Chelsea Market, a food emporium located in the old Nabisco Factory, which I visited some years back. But while the area has become safer and trendier, it has also led to fervid development and the shuttering of smaller neighborhood establishments. Ah, the price of progress.
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WHEN my husband and I learned that Miya had moved into an apartment she was to share with three friends in Harlem, we imagined the worst: our daughter walking the streets of blighted neighborhoods in the ghetto.
But while Harlem still has pockets of poverty, it has also gentrified in some parts, and is in fact fast becoming a tourist draw in itself. I felt a thrill, in fact, walking past the Apollo Theater which was the center of African-American culture in the years when blacks weren’t even allowed to enter mainstream entertainment venues.
I stayed with Miya in the last two days of my stay in New York, and thanks to her “roomies”—Anne Lagamayo, Bianca Consunji and Nisha Shrestha—I felt right at home listening to them discuss “That’s Entertainment” and unintentionally amusing music videos of Jose Mari Chan. Of such memories is a New York Holy Week made.
