Truly a sad, sad day. The cultural and gastronomical landmark Gray’s Papaya in the Village is no more.

• No more of my favorite guilty pleasure.
• No more burning the roof of your mouth with steaming hot doggy wonderfulness, only to cool it seconds later with the cool sweet rush of yummy papaya juice from a plain styrofoam cup.
• No more “snappy” service.
• No more feeling superior to tourists who don’t know how to order.
• No more positioning yourself at just the right angle so as to have your own private counter space no matter how crowded.
• No more catching the flipped nickel from the cashier after getting the “Recession Special” and paying with a five.
• No more scowling at the horrid people who put ketchup on a hot dog.

Go on my old friend! Viva Gray’s Papaya! You will live forever in our hearts . . .

I should know better. Tuesday is the worst night to walk into a restaurant in Brooklyn, or anywhere else for that matter. But my schedule has been so screwy lately I didn’t think about what day it was until after I was committed.

The St. Claire Restaurant, is a diner on the corner of Smith and Atlantic in what I guess is technically still Boreum Hill though I think the trendy realtors like to call it BoCoCa (I’m not even going in to it.) I’d been by it a hundred times, it always looked clean, well lit, and as I reflect in this moment; empty.

I was on an aimless journey, I’d missed the early start time for a film I’d only marginally wanted to see and I hadn’t eaten, so I hopped off the bus and wandered into the St. Claire. My goal was to get my standard grilled chicken over a salad, though splurging on the special was a possibility.

Completely empty at 6:45PM. I must be an idiot, but still I nodded blankly as the busdude waved his arm expansively saying, “Anywhere you’d like sir.” I took aim on a booth opposite the counter, plopped down and reached for my book. It took several seconds to realize my ass was wet, then my arms, then slowly I awakened to the fact that this clue-dog let me sit at the one seat in the entire empty damned restaurant with the AC vent leaking on it.

Over in the next booth now, the menu and the iced tea came out without incident. To be completely honest it was pretty damned good iced tea. It hit that iced tea sweet spot, not too icy, not too tea-y. I forewent my usual salad mainly because they all had stupid names and I wasn’t in the mood to decipher the Smith Street Special or the Brooklyn Classic’s ingredients. I ordered the meatloaf special. It’s a diner, I’m from Jersey, and the Tuesday Night Special is Meatloaf served with soup or salad, potato and vegetable, how could I go wrong?

The salad came out promptly. Upon serving the salad, my friendly, yet strangely stand-offish server asked what kind of dressing I wanted. I asked for italian. She said, “Creamy Italian?” and I wasn’t sure whether she was asking if that was OK, or if she was trying to warn me off. I smiled and nodded. I’ve spent most of my adult life smiling and nodding at attractive women I don’t understand, so I went with what works.

As soon as it hit the table I realized I’d made a poor dressing choice. The texture was off, different than any other salad dressing I’d here-to-fore encountered. A heaping jiggly blob of creamy detritus that seemed to be plotting an escape from the all too confining monkey dish. I approached with due caution. It was a slightly flavored mayonnaise with chunks of odd chunkiness throughout, confused and a little disturbed, I asked for oil and vinegar.

I pushed my empty salad bowl, dressing dish, and oil and vinegar caddy to the corner of the table when I was finished, where it sat.

My main course came out on two plates, steamy meatloaf slathered in gravy on the big one, and steamed broccoli and green beans on the other also hot and steamy. I was psyched to dig in, “they can’t screw up everything?” I thought. Oh naiveté.

I’ll start with the veggies. The broccoli was sitting somewhere dying before being conscripted for my order. It wasn’t terrible, but more Denny’s than I’m used to. To stay on the Denny’s kick, the green beans were standard Jolly Green Giant frozen flavorless. At least Denny’s used to soak them for days in some greasy sort of salty brine which was a flavor sensation all its own.

Now for the thick meat-flavored substance, they were pawning off as Meatloaf. Back in the day, and when I was a kid, and when I made Meatloaf in a diner, it was a signature dish. It is deceptively tough to create and sell a dish so common as the lowly meatloaf because everyone’s Mom makes the best meatloaf ever! So it needs to be of quality and high standard, but with that something extra that makes it great without threatening anyone’s notion of mom’s pièce d’ résistance. A true balancing act.

Don’t worry, your Mothers have nothing to fear from the St. Claire. This meatloaf-ian mystery meat was almost worth eating just to discern what the hell it was, but between the grease, the furiously salty gelatinous glop that passed for gravy, and the hard bits, I was at a loss.

Dizzy with the MSG rush from the canned gravy-like substance, I stacked and pushed my plates next to the still there plates from the salad course, the empty water glass (plastic glass), the empty iced-tea glass (ditto plastic), and my Urban Kitchen flatware with my uncharacteristic linen napkin folded neatly atop the pile.

Finally after several bouts of the “obviously looking around for my server” head movements, she finally appeared from the one direction I wasn’t looking and startled the shit out of me. I asked for a refill on the iced tea. “How was it?” she asked with an accent of Ukrainian origin. I smiled and said, “The iced tea was great.”

After ten or fifteen minutes of relaxing, reading my book, and recovering from the salt shock, I got up to pay my bill. I was still the only person on the restaurant, though by then I knew why. I perused the bill as I walked to the very uninterested gum-chewing-reading-glasses-on-a-chain cashier, and laughed aloud as I saw that they charged me for the iced tea refill. My first instinct was to be annoyed but the iced tea was the only part of the meal that was worth paying for.

“How was everything Sir?” the very uninterested gum-chewing-reading-glasses-on-a-chain cashier asked in her droning way.

“Pretty terrible actually,” I said with a smile.

“Thank You.” she said not even registering my comment, or so cool that she didn’t want to give me an inch. I just kept smiling, by this time amused by the whole situation.

I walked over to the table and put my 20% tip on the table next to the festering pile of dirty dishes. It’s not her fault she works in the worst restaurant in Brooklyn, and I’m not the type to hold a grudge.

Peace,
Vinny (~~)