The sidewalk in front of Elaine's smells like perfume.  Inside, the midnight bar crowd generates a thrum that swallows words and even whole lines.  Two guys clap each other's shoulders and yell at the umpire on TV as their wives attempt a conversation.  There's no space here for a late arrival, but in the next room there is an empty two-top.  In a single motion a waiter sets it with fresh white cloth and heavy silverware.  A woman in big glasses stares impassively from her own table on the cover of the menu, gripping a fork in one hand and a book in the other.  The two pages convey less personality: fried calamari, linguini with clam sauce, and veal piccata.  One wall is all dark wood and mirrors; the opposite is covered in a blurry mural that must be Venice, judging by the gondolas that float down the street.  Around the ceiling are shelves lined with exhibition posters from unknown museums, a Hirschfeld sketch, some dozens of first editions signed by authors you've never read.  A large photo print declares that Everyone Comes to Elaine's, and there are the same fantastic glasses, sitting with friends and smiling widely, not so imposing in this shot.

Most of the dining room is older than you.  Even the young couple by the wall seems more mature.  He's parted his hair to one side; she tugs at his vest; they exchange greasy kisses and no one is embarrassed.  A party of four is ignoring their dinner.  One of the ladies stops a passing server to reminisce, "She was the only..." but it's impossible to hear over the burst of applause that comes with the delivery of red wine.  The waiter pours into round glasses, smoothly wiping the bottle on a napkin folded over his arm and setting it down.  He clears their unfinished food, taking all four plates in one trip.  Then he returns to you with a steaming plate piled with pasta, and a garlicky cloud envelopes your head.  Spaghetti with anchovies and capers — something you might make at home, only with more salt and oil.  The noodles are hot and perfectly cooked, just what you want with your fifth or sixth chardonnay.

Excitement mounts among the rowdy bunch when one of the gentlemen whispers, "It's the police commissioner!"  His friends turn to look and a glass tips in over anticipation.  There's a cry but a waiter appears magically with a towel and the glass is refilled.  Finished the spaghetti and wipe some sauce from your glasses.  Coffee is bitter but not as sobering as the check.  The man at the loud table is laughing as he takes bills from his wallet.

In Koreatown a doorman sits listening to Russian radio.  When asked for Mono + Mono he replies, "Second floor.  Elevator is broken."  Upstairs, a door is propped with a bucket.  The dining room is furnished like a lounge, with leather benches and low tables and vertical stripes looking out over the pizza place on Fifth Avenue.  The wall behind the bar is brick; everything else is concrete gray, punctuated by reminders that the restaurant accepts CASH ONLY.

The menu is thirteen laminated pages in a binder.  Fried chicken is the signature dish, but there are also sushi and ramen, as well as Mexican corn and Idaho cheese nacho fries.  The most space is devoted to booze: eight shooters like the Liquid Cocaine or Redhead Slut and twelve vodkas including one described as "french sparking win" that is recommended to ladies.  There's cognac, champagne, and something expensive called soju.

Dinner comes in golden rows on a white platter.  Eleven pieces hardly resemble the parts of a real bird.  Four legs are short and round, and seven wings have a fat boomerang bend.  They look more like crispy chicken shapes from a cartoon.  The portion seems comical, but with the first perfect wing you vow to eat every last morsel.  The flavor is "soy and garlic," but the taste is an addictively vague sweet and salty, reminiscent of a Chinese buffet and youthful afternoons of overeating.  Polishing off the third drumstick you set a personal record for cleaning a chicken bone, even the crispy fried cartilage at the end.  Try to slow the pace by sipping beer between bites, but there's no conversation to distract you, and your neighbors' is an insipid salad of Samsung contracts and IBM.  "You grew up in Asia?  I grew up in Alabama."  A glass shatters and the room jumps — someone claps nervously — but you don't even flinch as you reach for the sixth wing.  Only on the ninth piece do you pause to wonder whether this is as good as it was hot, and it's ten before the idea of protein poisoning ever occurs to you.  Finishing brings relief and then guilt, and looking at the remains you get the urge to flee.  But the check is slow, and in the time it takes to pay, another order has arrived at the next table.  The aroma seizes you by the brainstem, and you have to leave before it can repossess you.

On a quiet corner wrapped with windows, two black flags herald Matsugen in fine white type.  A man in smart glasses leads the way to a seat at a counter piled with fish and sauces and cooks in paper hats.  The table is long, but there is just one other person.  He eats fluently, not hesitating with condiments.  He is white, with a gray ponytail, but maybe he has a girlfriend from Japan.  It's not even seven, and the dining room is calm.  A high ceiling draws conversations up.  Translucent panels divide a space which seems big without feeling large.  It's a beguiling trick of design; you wonder at the paradox until the menu is presented.

The book is delicately lettered in characters that signify nothing.  The translations are no less mysterious... Toro Tataki 5 slices?  Searching for some familiar meaning, you find sea urchin, which is not so familiar really.  The special soba would be less adventurous; most of the toppings sound vegetable.  But in a flash of confidence you order the urchin.  The waiter is duly impressed, but a minute later the bravado has subsided, and calling him back you ask for white wine.
A tray is set down, with a bowl of pasta.  On top is an awesome array: scallion, seaweed, bonito, shiso, but your attention is solely on the bright coral lobes of urchin eggs.  The server advises to mix it together and "just dig in."  Snap apart the chopsticks and rub them nervously, and after another second you throw yourself on his recommendation, splashing on the sauce and attacking a noodle.  The first impression is of cold.  It's strange to be eating dinner at this temperature, where taste is dulled.  The texture is special; the word the waiter had avoided was slimy.  Obscure sensations clarify into flavors.  Something smoky, and a fresh herb, one that rhymes with basil, it's almost recognizable, and a sharp point that must be wasabi.  And then — the sea, smooth and softly saline.  You are back on an island, wiggling over a plate of purple spines, tasting this for the first time.  It's late afternoon and waves are at the rocks.  When the memory breaks, you see that you're rubbing the table.

Eventually chopsticks are abandoned and the last slippery strands eaten with a spoon.  There's a birthday in Brooklyn, but here's the waiter, offering something sweet.  Green tea ice cream brulee sounds silly but brandy would be nice.  Your friend isn't busy, so he lingers with the dessert menu.  This was his first job since he got to New York and he lucked out.  With red hair, and an accent, he looks like he could work at an Olive Garden in Georgia, until he leans over the counter and fires some Japanese at the sushi chef, who waves back an order ticket in defense and grabs a knife to disassemble a fish.  Hold the cognac over a tea candle and breathe.  You can be late to the party.

At first it's not clear that 202 is a restaurant.  The space stretches unbroken from the door like a factory floor, a worn wooden expanse that in an older age might have been stacked with crates of biscuits or some foodstuff.  Now there are sugar bowls and candles and dresses hanging on a rack, dangling their tags.  There is no host, but some activity at a register.  An older lady, with red hair faded to orange-pink, is explaining a sweater to a nodding sales associate.  But then there are a few people seated in the corner, amid twenty open tables, and someone in an apron gestures, "Sit anywhere you like."

The menu is succinct.  On one page it lists half a dozen breakfast items and ten for lunch, nine of which have been crossed out by a wobbly line of ball-point pen.  The pen has chosen for you, by elimination, the lamb burger.  A waiter takes the order, and informs that there are no chickpea fries today, and are regular fries okay.  In fact the fries are not okay: they're limp, not crispy, barely cooked through.  The burger hides under mesclun greens, lost in an enormous brioche.  The only inspiration is a ramekin of tomato sauce with raisins and cilantro, probably meant for the sandwich but so full and varied in its own flavors that you eat it alone, at the end.  Your server leaves the floor, hugging fellow workers as she goes.  You watch through glass doors; she buttons her black coat and crosses Ninth Avenue.

The plate is cleared and you order another white wine.  Note the other diners.  Several are alone — pecking at an ipad; gazing into a kindle; thumbing a blackberry.  Two women speak Spanish and sip bellinis at the next table.  There is a small fleet of strollers to your left.  Mothers approach, with babies so new-looking you wonder if they were just purchased off a shelf of housewares.  But it's not possible, because the pink-haired lady has not moved from the register; she is still clutching the sweater, now visibly frustrated.  When the check arrives, you have only been charged for one glass of wine.  A waiter explains that your server must've forgotten to ring in the first, and when you offer to pay he shrugs and repeats that it wasn't rung in.

Zarela is buzzing with an uncommon energy.  Bright paper flags hanging from the low stucco ceiling make the place feel like a party.  The margarita machine is hard at work, filling glasses with a luscious green slush that is lovingly chronicled with smartphone cameras.  Half a dozen tables are all occupied, and upstairs another dozen, busy with families of upper east siders.  A small crowd stands waiting to be seated, so you decide to eat at the bar.  Pulling up a stool, you're pleased to find the tile-top littered with baskets of chips and salsa.  You order a beer and some pork.

Cochinita pibil, the bartender pronounces with a funny accent as she sets down a bowl of rusty red stew— pork shoulder and sour oranges in a thin, smokey sauce.  The tortillas are small; it's not clear how these four coins of corn could suffice for such a portion.  So you eat it with a spoon like some awkward but delicious soup.  A glossy green rectangle of banana leaf slowly reveals itself in the bottom of the dish, as if the chef had hidden there some inscrutable photo.  The relish is sweet and then spicy, and you signal for another beer.

Your neighbor to the left asks where you're going after this, which is strange and forward.  Wait, she's asking where you'll go for Mexican after this place closes.  She pokes at her queso fundido and starts explaining her online dating company.  "People are looking for a lifetime partner and great sex," she says easily, with the confidence of a happily divorced baby boomer.  "Do you want to try my margarita?  What are you writing?"  When you say you're reviewing the place, the young couple on your right breaks in with a coincidence: they have a restaurant blog, too.  She is very pretty, and he is discouragingly friendly, and you're sad to understand that they are married.  You discuss hamburgers and he cites cross streets fluently.  She gives a good tip on fried chicken in K-Town.  You exchange web addresses.  Someone taps your shoulder and you turn to find one more stranger.  She is smiling as she whispers that people can see your buttcrack through the front window.  You laugh aloud and pull up your jeans.

Brunch at the Loading Dock is quiet.  There's a silver food cart sticking from the side of the building, the same model you'd see dishing out lamb over rice on some avenue.  Inside is empty except for one person standing at the counter, and a chef vaguely visible in the kitchen-cart.  Without smiling, the counter guy asks what you'd like so you pick up a menu.  This front room is flimsy, just a wooden floor with plastic walls looking onto a loading dock, and the kitchen hanging off the side.  Someone opens a door into the dining room.  "Want to sit in there?" the guy asks and you step into a vast gallery space.  Tables are set with hot sauce and salt, and there are seats for forty people, but every one is vacant.  The walls are high and white and lit like a museum.  Art is everywhere: fuzzy black and white photos, a blob of sculpture, cartoony drawings of hipster hairdos.  Two sherbert-colored canaries are nibbling seeds in a big cage.  Charmed, but not wanting to sit alone, you reconsider the front room and install yourself there at the coffee table by an antiquey wood stove.

It's the first real fire you've seen in a long time, and you're hypnotized by its consuming glow and by the murmur of conversation behind you.  Two men in puffy coats have come in to order take-out.  They talk about getting older and being called 'Sir.'  They leave with their food as your quesadilla arrives, a golden half-disc cut into wedges.  The cheese is oozing hot and the salsa is cold and spicy.  Black beans stick to your fingers.  It is four dollars of perfection.

The counter guy crosses the room to poke the flames and puts on another log.  You say how nice it is to warm your shins like this and he tells you how he used to light fires in his backyard.  Someone else comes in, not to eat but just to talk, and they stand at the counter discussing the artistic process and their next jobs maybe.  There's no beer so you order coffee but can't find the sugar.  Sit with your nose in your cup and stare at an oil painting of dogs.

It was not so cold last night, but tonight it's snowing and thundering as you hunch down the avenue. Mercadito Cantina is warm, and when the fog clears on your glasses, you move to sit at the bar. The front of the restaurant is furnished with long, high tables and stools; there are a few low tables and proper chairs in the back. Decor is minimalist: place settings comprise fork, spoon and napkin on a tiny glass plate. You order a beer and some tacos. Your barmates sip tequila cocktails and complain about PATH service. Later they will sing a little song about chem lab safety.

Two tacos are assembled in the kitchen, a small hot space squeezed behind the bar. The chef tosses a pan of carnitas under the salamander as his sous pulls up a plate and readies a squirt bottle of sauce. Four minutes later dinner arrives. The tortillas are tender and subtly sweet, topped with a mess of pulled pork and peanut salsa. They are very good.

This review was supposed to be anonymous, but after a couple minutes you've already told the bartender and given her the web address. She asks if you're in the 'business' and you say that you wait tables. She gets you another beer and speaks about herself and her only valued possession, a betta fish named Mark. When you compliment the playlist she says oh it's just Pandora. She makes you a cocktail with grapefruit jarritos and then, almost too soon, she makes you another. You're buzzing when you get up and head back out to the snow.