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.