Notebook Breakfast special
Baumann, Paul
BREAKFAST SPECIAL Paul Baumann Things left behind on Dutch Street On Thursday mornings I make a point of head-ing for work at a very godly hour, traveling from Manhattan's Upper West Side to the...
...Yeah...
...King Donuts' large front window features an outline of a blue neon coffee cup with the words "Worlds [sic] Best Coffee" set in the center in red...
...But King Donuts, despite its worn features and gruff disposition, is a soothing place...
...We're thinkin of gettin off [Staten Island...
...he will ask if I am the only person sitting at the counter...
...Yeah, danks...
...Politicians come in for routine abuse, and there is an air of matter-of-fact cynicism about government, about the rich-especially overpaid professional about the craven, but clearly coveted, lives of celebrities...
...Aggghh...
...Now that Com-monweal is moving to the Upper West Side, I'll miss the eggs, the "meat," and especially being called "sir...
...Basketball, hockey, football, baseball, and last night's television shows are the common thread of the men's talk...
...Regular, sir...
...He doesn't know my name, but he knows what I eat for break-fast...
...The ser-vice, like everything in the city, is fast, the unprepossessing surroundings orderly, and the prices cheap: $3.15 for the Breakfast Special...
...Like nearly everything in Manhattan, that's an exaggeration...
...I try not to think about that...
...ing of the year's final episode of the "X-Files...
...During slower times he will sometimes sing along with the songs on the radio, all of which he knows by heart...
...Yeah, you are...
...You're back...
...The counter staff, in their boxy white kitchen uniforms and black "King Donuts" baseball caps, is Hispanic...
...Yeah, we like it...
...Copies of the Daily Neius or the New York Post, rarely the Times, preoccupy the soli-tary diners...
...Women seem to like to sit at the tables in the back room, a drearily paneled space with a trap door to the diner's base-ment set in the middle of the floor, cumbersomely marked off by a thin iron railing...
...Hey, you look fabulous...
...Therefore, I know that before 6 A.M...
...I felt as though I had fi-nally secured a mezzanine box at the Met...
...Otherwise, he prepares my breakfast-two eggs over medium, bacon, whole wheat toast, home fries, and a glass of orange juice-without our exchanging a word...
...Cool-eyed complaints about the cost of clothing and food, or about children, husbands, or former husbands, are the staples of conversation here...
...Recently I overheard a contentious debate about the meanIn keeping with Commoniweal's usual schedule, only one issue is published each month during July and August...
...My cholesterol count, however, is certain to go down...
...The trip from the Upper West Side down to Dutch Street, which is nearly at the bottom of the island, can take as little as twenty minutes...
...We're lookin at Jersey...
...A radio is always on and always tuned to WCBS-FM, New York's "golden oldies" sta-tion...
...She likes it...
...King Donuts' coffee ain't that great, as its patrons might say, but the breakfast is, well, special...
...the subway cars are sparsely peopled, and you can usually find a seat next to equally drowsy early risers...
...And at dawn, when its streets are largely deserted and its buildings not engorging or regurgitating endless streams of people, one can feel al-most in possession of Manhattan, an object usually indif-ferent to my attentions...
...Vicki...
...Yeah, but expensive...
...Hey, you shouldn't have...
...But it's expensive...
...King Donuts caters to cops, with their make-believe looking guns, sanitation workers in their bright orange shirts, clerical and office work-ers trying to steel themselves for the day ahead...
...In the fall many puzzle over weekly betting slips for the NFL games like rab-binical students over the sacred text...
...This is a time of day when the city seems filled with men (most are men) in overalls, not business suits...
...Yes, my retrograde appetites will soon make the traffic through my arteries look like the FDR Drive at rush hour...
...The cook, who might be Greek or Italian, is the boss, and seems to speak Spanish...
...It was vir-tually theological...
...How's ya sista like Staten Island...
...A small mountain of hash browns is kept warm in one cor-ner while eggs, bacon, sausages, pancakes, and breads are thrown on the grill in dizzying succession and quickly trans-formed into recognizable meals...
...Before the city prohibited smoking in restaurants, the air in the back room would be blue, blue with cigarette smoke and blue with the harsh, nasal accents of what are called New York's "outer" boroughs...
...The houses, they're boo-da-ful...
...We are intimates...
...Jersey's nice...
...BREAKFAST SPECIAL Paul Baumann Things left behind on Dutch Street On Thursday mornings I make a point of head-ing for work at a very godly hour, traveling from Manhattan's Upper West Side to the Wall Street area where Commonweal still (uneasily) resides...
...Everything needed to feed an army is with-in arm's reach, and if the place is busy the cook can display the dexterity and invention of an acrobat...
...Part of my Thursday morning ritual is breakfast at a nar-row diner on Fulton Street called King Donuts, just around the corner from Commonweal's Dutch Street office...
...Several years ago I mustered up the courage to move from a cramped table in the windowless back room of the diner to a seat at the end of the counter...
...The seemingly make-shift grill-something of an antique-sizzles reassuringly...
...He's courteous, even friend-ly, but not chummy...
...They work long hours-I have seen them there over a twelve-hour period- but seem to share a certain esprit de corps...
...Instead, I luxuri-ate in the unusual feeling of being in a place where, like cer-tain aspects of family life, wordless communication seems more the norm than an exception...
...That includes what the short-order cook calls "meat"-bacon, sausage, or ham...
...Short and muscular, he is as efficient as a surgeon, cracking eggs with one hand and tossing the shells into the basket under the counter behind him without looking, flipping bread into the slots of a row of toasters, and literally throwing "to go" orders ten feet down the counter to the guy manning the cash register...
...The next issue will be dated August 15...
...That means Elvis, the Beatles, doo-wop, the Phil Specter "sound"-a melody of postwar pop and rock 'n' roll...
...And so is the dogged everydayness of the place and the people...
Vol. 124 • July 1997 • No. 13
