Sweet City Guides: LES

Lower Eats Side. And, yeah, the Trump thing.

I held off on writing this note until today and I’m glad I did. Nothing I could have written before 5:30 this morning, when America called the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, would have felt real. Already, yesterday has the texture of a different time. I'm devastated and still processing. I considered skipping this week’s newsletter altogether.

This is not the outcome I wanted and I was so hopeful that enough people in this country would stand up for what was right and morally decent. That they would not allow the selfish indulgences of a spiteful, misinformed, and manipulated mob to prevail. But somehow, we didn’t have the numbers, and he won. Bigger than before. I’m dumbfounded and totally unsurprised all at once. For a country that sees itself as exceptional, it sure does revel in mediocrity. I’ve never seen a group of people act so squarely against their own interests. I’ve never believed in America, in the United States, less.

But maybe this is where I’ve been wrong all along. There have always been two Americas. There was the one I heard about in movies and in the fiction of my own making, where people value things like integrity, equality, and justice for all. And then, there is the one that exists materially, where racism and sexism and greed have yet to be truly condemned and exorcized. How naive not to see it! America has always presented its people with the freedom to choose — best your best self, or be your worst self. It’s been a long, painful journey unlearning the lessons of my miseducation.

I had my head buried in TikTok over the last few weeks and it felt so good to see all the pro-Harris memes with hundreds of thousands of likes and shares. I wasn’t convinced of a win, but I felt hopeful for the galvanizing energy of social media. Nothing online is real. The balm of social media has become a trap. That’s how I feel right now.

Rural America voted, young white men voted, the communities that have blinded themselves to the color of their own skin hoping to belong to the white majority have voted. The people who are simply bored with what we have, who don’t actually understand how the economy works, who have never had a meaningful relationship with a Black person in their life, or a Muslim, have voted.

The political analyst Chuck Todd said something on NBC last night that has stuck with me. He said the Republican party catered to all working class voters equally while Democrats leaned, in retrospect, perhaps too heavily on identity politics. Granted, Republicans used fear to activate their constituency while Democrats appealed to reason and logic, which just goes to show that you can’t outsmart evolution. Still, the point of inserting identity into the political realm is to celebrate what makes us unique and individual, to account for the underrepresented, to give the voiceless a voice. As a writer, this has been my North Star, too. But at the same time, what if these silos we’ve created, these “areas of expertise” we’ve cultivated, are just alienating us further from each other?

I don’t know. It feels like we’re overanalyzing at the margins while the majority sits pretty, and vindicated, in victory. At the end of the day, all we’re trying to do is dislodge and challenge a worldview that revolves around one group of people — at the expense of everyone else. Now that worldview feels more entrenched than ever.

I have no good segue into today’s newsletter, a dessert guide to the LES. But it’s Wednesday and I’ve sent a newsletter to you, my subscribers, every Wednesday in 2024. Today is different, but also, for most of the rest of world, it’s not. And so here we are. Thank you for being here, for reading this, for supporting small businesses and independent writers, for making New York City what it is, which is the best, truest American city in the world. 💙

---

The Lower East Side really does have it all. Late-night, all day. Brand new and centuries old. It’s a little residential, a little touristy. You can splurge on a fine dining tasting menu or you can feast for less than $10. There’s cool and aloof Dimes Square sequestered within a Chinatown-adjacent neighborhood utterly unconcerned with the discourse of the day. And for our purposes, there’s savory and there’s sweet.

There are many ways to draw an outline around the Lower East Side and to make this guide I’ve taken a generous chunk of lower Manhattan that runs south of E. Houston Street and east of Bowery. Technically, this also includes the Two Bridges neighborhood and a sliver of Chinatown.

Map via www.new-york-city-map.com.

There’s so much to learn about New York from this corner of the city. The German and Jewish immigrants who moved here in the 19th century and peddled their way out of the neighborhood into a middle class life left an indelible mark on the architecture and the markets. The Puerto Rican and Chinese residents who are still here imbue the neighborhood with personality and thrift, despite the tug of gentrification. You can witness all this history on a walking tour hosted by the Tenement Museum, which I’ve done before and highly recommend.

The LES is also just a great neighborhood to eat around and shop for food. There are destination-worthy places like Scarr’s Pizza and Dhamaka. Allen Street icons like Congee Village and Dirt Candy. Experience endless pancakes at the Clinton St. Baking Company or the epitome of downtown cool at Cervo’s. I don’t need to tell you about Katz’s or Russ & Daughters so instead I’ll point out fun new restaurants like Kisa and Son del North. And new Manhattan offshoots of Brooklyn’s Peking House and DC’s Pho Ga Vang. Want to pretend you’re in Spain? Go to Ernesto’s. Want to feel like you’re in Tokyo? Try Yopparai. See for yourself if the pizza at Una Pizza Napoletana really is the best in the world.

Because of its proximity to Chinatown, or in some cases its overlap, there are lots of Cantonese bakeries and dim sum restaurants around the LES. I actually prefer places like Dim Sum Palace over the popular spots west of Bowery. Then, there are the markets along Grand Street with sidewalk displays of tropical fruits and bundles of Chinese greens or Aqua Best, a purveyor of high-quality seafood to restaurants across the city. I usually go to Viva Fruits & Vegetables inside Essex Market for a bunch of culantro whenever I need to make a fresh batch of sofrito.

And even though the neighborhood has already been gentrified (a few times over, in fact), the LES is always on the verge of more change. Just as Soho was once an edgy part of Manhattan filled with interesting shops and artists, the LES used to be far grungier than it is today. It was weird and experimental. Now it all feels a little…superficial. Take the 2019 revamp of Essex Market, for example, which took a beloved institution — it was a little ratty, fine — and transformed it into glossy overpriced condos and a bland food hall known as the Essex Crossing (note that the lower level of the new Essex Market, which had some excellent food options, closed because food halls are a doomed business model in New York and yet developers keep opening them).

Or maybe I just sound like a grumpy old person waking up to the fact that New York belongs to no one. In any case, here are some good desserts, in no particular order, to seek out the next time you find yourself in (on?) the Lower East Side. There’s a Google map linked for subscribers at the end!