In March, I traveled to Aspen for the first time and it was a life-changing experience. (More on that hopefully soon, but basically, I love skiing again.) I was too busy shredding the slopes, aprés skiing, fine dining and luxury shopping to make time for a proper spa day, so I knew one was in short order upon my return.
I booked a relatively last minute massage and scrub at Bathhouse Flatiron, which I sought out for its amenities: hot tubs, a salt water soaking pool, cold plunges, three different saunas and a steam room. The aesthetic is more trendy club than tranquil spa (the fact that you can pay with bitcoin should have been my first clue of the scene that would unfold) and it’s meant to be a social destination. Still, the cacophony of people under 30 chattering away energetically was a bit jarring to the system. Nevertheless, the sprawling facilities are luxurious, clean and well-maintained, and I managed to bliss out to a truly excellent functional deep tissue massage.
With day passes starting at $40, it’s also priced right and nice to have in your back pocket when you need a schvitz.
Let’s Get Dramatic
A Streetcar Named Desire
When we meet Patsy Ferran’s virtuosic Blanche duBois in the opening scene of A Streetcar Named Desire, she is the physical embodiment of jangled nerves, her voice a staccato loop-da-loop. She stands at the doorstep of her younger sister Stella’s (Anjana Vasan) apartment in New Orleans’s French Quarter with all her earthly possessions—mostly frilly dresses; mink stoles, gifts from former beaus; and a rhinestone tiara—packed into a trunk. We’ll soon learn that she’s lost the family estate back in Mississippi and her livelihood as an English teacher, haunted by personal tragedy. She is a woman at the end of her rope.
In Rebecca Frecknall’s Olivier Award-winning Almeida Theatre production, now playing at BAM (through April 6), we’re graced with a Streetcar by a director in complete command of Tennessee Williams’s play. This is a Streetcar that leans into his conception of “plastic theater,” a poetic, expressionistic approach meant to cut closer to the truth for heightened transcendence rather than the “exhausted theatre of realistic conventions.” The action is set on a spare, yet stylized set, actors remain on stage when they’re not in a scene and the blocking is so limber and precise it feels more like choreography.
Pre-Theater Dining
Strange Delight
I booked a pre-Streetcar dinner at the New Orleans-inspired seafood restaurant Strange Delight in Fort Greene. It was only when I noticed the Vieux Carré classic cocktail on the menu—also a Tennessee Williams play—that I remembered Streetcar is set in New Orleans and I’d made perfectly on-theme dinner arrangements. It’s truly a delightful, sweet little restaurant with an emphasis on raw bar, and I swigged Sazeracs and shared charbroiled oysters, smoked fish dip, hush puppies and a fried clam po’ boy-style sandwich.
Rampoldi
Before the Moby-Dick opera at The Met, I tucked in at the bar at Rampoldi, a glittery Monte-Carlo import that had piqued my interest ever since reading that our illustrious mayor Eric Adams was at the opening shortly after our former mayor Bill de Blasio was spotted on the rooftop at the nearby Empire Hotel smooching a mystery woman after announcing his divorce. (Look—I find the foibles and intrigue of municipal politics fascinating and it was a big news week for the Upper West Side.)
The high-ceilinged, polished marble-clad restaurant is crowned with tiered mid-century-style chandeliers and lit in a relentless rosy glow. It’s as good a place as any to play out your James Bond Monte-Carlo Casino fantasies. I enjoyed perfectly chilled Champagne and a beautifully prepared John Dory fish filet with sugar snap pea puree. The bread service was gorgeous and they give you little petit fours with the bill, as any proper Monegasque restaurant should.
What can I say, I liked it.
In Other Dining News…
Santi – a nice place to spend a lot of money on pasta by chef Michael White
