LES (Lower East Side); Unscotti

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

LES (LOWER EAST SIDE)

"N-E-S-T-L-E-S, Nestles makes the very best, chocolate." In New York City, we
name neighborhoods after half a commercial jingle.

"ALLAN RICHMAN on New York's Lower East SIde" announces the September 2004
BON APPETIT, the "Where to eat now" issue. From page 97, col. 3:

"Don't call it the Lower East Side,: she chided.

I apologized.

"It's L--E-S," she said, spelling out the letters."

I stood corrected.

"So when are we going to Les?" I asked, pronouncing it like a man's given
name.

"It's not Les!" she said, exasperated. "That sounds like Lester. I do not
live in a place called Lester."

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UNSCOTTI

>From BON APPETIT, September 2004, pg. 198, col. 1:

ANISE UNSCOTTI
Batali calls these soft cookies unscotti because they are baked once, unlike
biscotti, which are crisp and baked twice.

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COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC

WHERE DID BARRY POPIK GO FOR DINNER ON MONDAY?--Maya, 1191 First Avenue at
East 64th Street. Not bad Mexican, but the most expensive beans and rice and
stuff I ever had.

WHERE DID BARRY POPIK GO FOR DIINER ON SUNDAY?--Tsampa (Natural Tibetan Home
Cooking), 212 East 9th Street. Remember Tibet and the bad tour guide? Remember
"Q: Do those poles have any significance in Buddhism? A: Yes"? I asked Tsampa
about its hot sauce. "What is this?" I asked the waiter. "Hot sauce" was the
answer. Oh, forget it!

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE--Yeah, it was a good article, a mere twelve years too
late. What happens now? Do I show it to Charles Gillett? My mother? My father?
Do I make a dollar out of this to buy an apple? Or, to make a doolar, do I
continue adjudicating thousands of parking tickets half brain-numb for the rest
of my life?

The "power of the Times" numbers were equally curious. The NYT article was
about the web site. The Sunday New York Times circulation is over a million,
most of them web-savvy people. So I thought my hits on Sunday might be only one
percent of that, or 10,000. I got a little over 200 new visitors!