Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar is too flashy and doesn’t have much heart

The arrival at 220 W. 44th St. of Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar, aka The Guy Fieri Restaurant, was for some the final nail in the coffin of the old Times Square, that halcyon place of peep shows and slashers, flashers and freaks. For others it represented something even larger, the decline of the state of cuisine in North America. If a man who has made his name not as a chef but as a cross-country tourist of the novelty hamburger is able to open a 500-seat mess hall in the flashiest neighborhood in the city, they cry, we’ve brought the indigestion upon ourselves, like one of the lesser biblical plagues.

For most, however, it lands on the curiosity scale somewhere between that guy you know who can open a beer bottle with his teeth and Ripley’s two-headed calf; a novelty to be gawked at, whispered about, but ultimately forgotten.

That is, unless you happen to walk past. The dizzying array of television screens blasting footage of The Guy himself, the bright signage that even in Times Square, the home of neon overkill, is really a bit much and the impossibly oversized wood-slab doors all conspire to stop you in your tracks, like a crow stopped at the edge of the field by a dazzler. You start to wonder just what it’s like on the inside. What on earth could all of this be in service of?

The promise of The Guy Fieri Experience™ is, unfortunately, more than it can deliver, whether you come ready to worship at the altar or to mock. It is relentlessly mediocre; not good enough to silence the haters, but not bad enough to delight them, either. A full 90 percent of the menu items’ names include some kind of booze; 82 percent are pun-based; and 4 percent are simply incomprehensible.

The Guy-talian Nachos, for instance, are allegedly Italian because they are topped with pepperoni and sweet Italian sausage. Then why, for the love of syntactical logic, are they served on fried wonton skins? Sangria-glazed shrimp are sweet, sticky and vaguely pink-tinted, as virgin as an Amish 16-year-old. Many dishes come with a long, unasked-for backstory; the Vegas Fries, apparently, were spawned when The Guy was in college and could only afford French fries, which he would douse in a startling number of sauces. Now they can be yours for $9.95, a price that would make any college student blanch.

You may be tempted to apply alcohol to the situation in a last-ditch effort to add a little entertainment value to the meal. Resist this urge. The cocktail list is a page of lies, real drink names assigned to bastard concoctions willy-nilly. Since when does a mojito feature blueberries and raspberry vodka? Nothing is as it seems; nor, unfortunately, is any of it strong enough to lend the necessary buzz.

But it’s the service staff that may be the most unsettling part of the whole endeavor. These poor souls have been subjected to the most rigorous training program/brainwashing camp ever devised for hospitality staff—the lesson on pronouncing the word “Fieri” alone must have been an ordeal of Clockwork Orange-level programming. One waiter couldn’t stop using the word “phenomenal”; things that were phenomenal included all of the beverages, the California egg rolls, a request for more napkins.

While the upsell is an accepted dirty little secret of the restaurant industry, this lack of finesse made little headway with our table of experienced diners. By the end of the meal, we had so subverted his script he was visibly terrified of us, and we had to flag down a passing stranger to ask him to bring us the check.

That, really, is the crux of the issue with Guy’s Place: It’s not for New York diners. It’s not even for tourists who aspire to be New York diners. It’s for the wealthy and lazy who want to eat food they recognize while being told they’re having fun, a not unsizeable market. Cry about it all you want, food-lovers, but Guy’s Place will probably be here long after we’re gone.

A survival guide to summer food fests

This past weekend, The Great GoogaMooga, the chefs-as-rock-stars food festival that had many bemoaning the end of civilization and the rise of the foodie monster, took place in Prospect Park with some 75 vendors and 40,000 attendees. The first day of the two-day event ended with chefs, critics and hungry parkgoers alike making Woodstock ’99 comparisons, bemoaning long lines, ill-prepared vendors and a Byzantine beer system that left people cranky and thirsty.

The truth is, though, what happened in Brooklyn is no different from what happens at every food festival—it just took place on a larger scale under closer scrutiny. Lineups? You can’t get into these chefs’ brick-and-mortar restaurants without waiting in line; why would a limited-edition outdoor version be any different? As for scarcity, consider that they can only serve as much as they can carry into the middle of the park—no walk-in coolers, no pantries, no back-up supplies. It comes with the territory.

The real problem was one of expectations. An outdoor food festival can be one of the greatest joys of the summer or an absolute hell on earth—the only difference lies in how you’ve prepared yourself, both mentally and materially. Here are a few tips to make sure you’re never left stranded, sweaty and starving surrounded by an ocean of food.

Decide why you’re there. For many, the draw of food fests is the fact that they gather a dozen or more top chefs/purveyors in one convenient spot. Rather than having to trek from borough to borough (or beyond) to sample each, you need only walk across the parking lot. Others, however, see the all-day fest as a test of endurance, the chance to eat as much as possible. This is especially true at events where the price of entry gets unlimited tastes; they are bound and determined to get their money’s worth.

Figure out which of these camps you fall into before you arrive and you’ll save yourself the awkward realization that you’ve filled up on hush puppies at the first stand before you’ve even reached the main course.

Recon. There’s nothing worse than having your heart set on a specific vendor or food item, then getting to the party and realizing you can’t find it. Heavy crowds and the landscape limitations of venues like Madison Square Park mean some stalls end up tucked away in a corner, signs obscured by trees or hat-wearing hipsters. Most events post detailed vendor lists online in the week before the big day or provide maps at the entry; don’t be ashamed to spend some time studying before you go barreling into the fray.

If there’s no guide, take a lap of the venue. Turn down every alleyway and make mental notes of the important spots to hit, as well as essentials like washrooms and drinks. While you’re at it, you can plot out your “must-eats” to make sure you hit all of the highlights.

Water. Seriously. It sounds like the advice your mom would give, along with use the bathroom before you leave the house (come to think of it, you probably should do that, too. Outdoor venues + overindulging attendees= porta-potties you don’t want to have to use). But trust me. Those long lines are a lot easier to wait in if you’re not dehydrating as the minutes tick by, and the sun is a lot less sweltering.

Bring the biggest water bottle you can comfortably carry with you; if it’s a closed venue with no outside containers admitted, make the drinks table your very first stop. If it’s especially crowded, get two bottles at a time and keep one in your back pocket. It’ll keep you cool and keep you from having to interrupt the fun to go back later.

When all else fails, corn. It’s the outdoor food fair’s great equalizer. At the lowliest of tube-sock fairs and the swankiest of charity fundraisers, somebody will be grilling corn on the cob. It may be called elote or topped with crème fraîche and caviar, but it’s always the elemental essence of summer, all fresh, sweet produce and smoky fire, so messy can only be eaten outdoors. If you can’t find your friends or the heat is getting to you, stop, breathe deeply and find the corn—it’s impossible to stay crabby with greasy fingers and a soot-smeared chin.

Just a few of the market offerings at Épicerie Boulud.

The avenues of the Upper West Side, in spots, can feel like someone dropped the Mall of America in the Grand Canyon, a wide-open valley of enormous glass-fronted chain shops and banks. And while elected officials and community members work to change zoning restrictions to prevent this disorienting trend from spreading, there are many spots where it’s already too late.

It’s a community of local favorites—residents know where to go for the best bread, the quiet drink before dinner, the best burger. But these aren’t always obvious to the naked eye. A casual stroller can end up pounding the pavement for hours just to find a non-Starbucks cappuccino, wondering all the while, “This can’t be it, can it?”

No, it can’t. Thankfully, one of the city’s most beloved chefs, Daniel Boulud, has taken it upon himself to relieve these huddled masses, opening not one but three of his eponymous establishments as a beacon to the confused, the hungry, the frustrated. If you have no idea what’s good around you, just look for the magic word “Boulud,” and you know you can stop trying to puzzle it out.

Boulud Sud is a Mediterranean take on his classic French training. Bar Boulud is a more casual approach to that classic French food, minus the starched tablecloths. And Épicerie Boulud is…everything else.

Going to Lincoln Center but have some time to kill beforehand? Taking a stroll in Central Park and want to take along a picnic? Need to pick up something to make for dinner? Épicerie Boulud has you covered.

The market/cafe/bar opened just under a year ago next door to the established Bar Boulud at Broadway and 64th Street, creating a mini-empire on the block. The glass-fronted shop is studded with elbow-height steel tables, with a granite-topped bar along one side and a dazzling array of deli cases stretching the length of the back wall. Baked goods and cashiers take up the other wall, while minimal market shelving separates the shopping and eating zones.

At breakfast you can take your pick from a delicate yogurt parfait to a Spanish egg tortilla. Lunchtime will get you anything from a thoughtfully composed cheese plate to a classic Parisian jambon beurre sandwich (with housemade ham, naturally) and lobster bisque. In the evening, choose from a selection of East and West coast oysters shucked to order or pick up a few éclairs for a late-night treat.

It’s rare that an all-things-to-all-people approach to food is successful, but Épicerie Boulud makes it work. Much of this is thanks to the strength of Boulud’s talent and approachable charm. He comes from a now-endangered species of chef who, while armed to the teeth with accolades and training, ultimately wants to make people happy. He is a chef who, if you want a hamburger, will make you a hamburger—not a deconstructed hamburger or his evocation of the memory of a hamburger, just the best possible hamburger he can make.

This is why one of his perennial bestsellers, so popular it made the leap from his Lower East Side menu to the bar here, is the DBGB dog. Using his impeccable French charcuterie training and his decades of American service, Boulud created a hot dog so perfectly hot doggish it needs no innovation. Similarly, the banh mi uses those same charcuterie skills to make the ubiquitous Vietnamese sandwich a thing both Lincoln Center doyennes and Saigon natives would happily call their own.

It’s a genuine delight to pop into Épicerie Boulud in any state of mind and be able to find just the thing to sate your appetite, but it’s at its best around 7 p.m. That’s when theatergoers lean against the bar with a glass of wine and a dozen oysters, nannies stop in with their charges for a final treat before handing them back to mom and dad and commuters pick up a loaf of bread for the next morning’s breakfast. It’s when it feels most like a community—which, after all, the UWS is.

The speakeasy trend hit New York City hard some six years ago, with bars like Employees Only, Pegu Club and Death & Co. springing up in every alleyway. Discerning drinkers were lured in with unlisted phone numbers, unmarked doors and strict codes of conduct that promised to keep unaccompanied ladies unmolested.

But for some reason, the bars all managed to stay below the 49th (Street) parallel, leaving uptown high and dry. It’s not as if uptowners don’t like to bend the elbow, as the continued existence of establishments like Bill’s Gay Nineties, P.J. Clarke’s and Bemelmans can attest, but for some reason, intrepid cocktailiers felt no urge to move on up—until recently.

Jbird’s first location opened in Midtown (241 w. 48th St., betw. Broadway & 8th Ave.), tucked away behind the mob scene of your standard high-gloss Times Square club. This is equal parts genius and misguided: Those susceptible to the allure of the comfortably underpopulated secret den may be too repulsed by the rubicon they have to cross to brave it—or they may run straight into its open arms.

Perhaps in recognition of this double-edged sword, or perhaps because there are fewer big scary clubs to hide behind, the Upper East Side Jbird (339 E. 75th St., betw. 1st & 2nd Aves., jbirdny.com) has its own storefront, albeit a very small one. They’ve figured out that in this neighborhood, cocktails this good don’t need the gimmick—locals are so desperate for an interesting drink they stop at the awning and rub their eyes, convinced it’s an alcoholic’s mirage.

But its looks are still deceiving. Entering the narrow room, bottles stacked claustrophobically to the ceiling, it seems as if you’re in a century-old haunt, where waxed mustaches were prevalent the first time around. Keep going, though, and the room opens up to 21st-century scale, all white tile and mirrors, leather booths and communal tables.

Back there you have a panoply of service staff and the option of a full dinner, as modern bars feel they must supply. Here’s the secret: they don’t have to. There are plenty of places to get dinner. There are very few places to get serious cocktails. You do the math.

Interesting bar snacks like savory popcorn with avocado and Cholula hot sauce or lardo on bread with “good salts” are a pleasant diverson, but a smoked chicken panini just ruins the illusion that you are in a more sophisticated time and place.

The truly remarkable drink menu that divides cocktails by type (old-fashioneds, swizzles, sours), then runs wild with combinations of spirits and flavors that put other bars to shame. This almost mathematical approach makes trying something new a reliable proposition, not a crapshoot—if you know you like old-fashioneds, a KSBW (bourbon, lemongrass acacia honey and bitters) is an easy jump.

Aromatized cocktails are similarly familiar yet fascinating, and the Maddow, which added elderflower liqueur and whiskey barrel-aged bitters to Old Tom gin, was spirit-forward with layers of sweetness and smoke that transcended its martini predecessor.

Jbird thoughtfully presents the different styles in the glasses that serve them best; a julep came in a proper silver cup with a steel straw to reach through the coarse crushed ice, while aromatized drinks are served in smaller-than-the-norm martini glasses with half the cocktail resting in a small decanter on ice, keeping the whole thing frosty as you sip.

At Jbird, it seems even the pioneers who have brought the first speakeasy to the Upper East Side got cold feet and given the neighborhood what they think it wants. But if you ignore this and demand what they’re actually capable of, it’s a cocktail to to rival the best in the rest of the city.

Clearly, Zengo saw this problem and figured they couldn’t help but do better. In one of those haunted spaces that has seen a hundred restaurants try and fail, a temple of happy hour and date night has emerged triumphant, like a mid-priced, dimly lit phoenix from the ashes.

There are Zengos in Denver, Washington, D.C., and Santa Monica, Calif. In each of those towns, it’s the sort of restaurant that is immediately recommended to visiting New Yorkers—interesting and multiethnic in a cosmopolitan way but shinier and larger than you know you’d ever find in the city.

That is, until you stumble into the New York Zengo and it feels just as mystifyingly glossy, 8-foot tables for two set 20 feet apart, carefully gnarled beams suspended from the three-storey ceilings. A mezzanine overlooks the main dining room, accessed by a spotlit, glass-floored walkway. The basement tequila bar is draped with velvet curtains and wrought iron choir gates on the windows add a gothic element.

The restaurant’s concept is Hispanic-Asian fusion, though you would be forgiven for not catching on to this from the decor.

Thankfully, the menu makes it very clear, with dishes like charred tuna wonton tacos and carnitas rice noodles with hot and sour sauce. Every item has at least one element that leaps out to hit you over the head with its cross-cultural audacity—chorizo in the gyoza! Nori in the ceviche!—when they’re not lost in a muddle of intentions, like the yellowfin tuna flatbread with gouda and sambal aioli. If your head hurts from trying to parse that one, welcome to the club.

Zengo’s chef, Richard Sandoval, is a well-regarded Mexican chef who established himself years ago with Maya on the Upper West Side, expanded his brand of highly executed traditional flavors across the country and then, presumably, got bored. Zengo began, like so many Broadway experiments, out of town, and after a successful run Sandoval decided to come back to the big town.

At 9:30 on a Tuesday evening, he seemed to have a hit. It’s pathologically impossible for that space to feel busy, but the majority of the tables were full: large, mixed groups drinking more than they were eating, smaller, Sex-and-the-City-esque groups drinking more than they were eating, pomaded and tanned couples trying to look like they weren’t drinking more than they were eating.

They all had the right idea. The cocktail menu is where this improbable fusion works well, togarashi subbing in for the spice in a margarita with no raised eyebrows, anejo tequila and hibiscus slipping almost seamlessly into a Manhattan. Some of the food is, in fact, quite good, and made to accompany a night of drinking, but it all suffers from the high expectations set by its own description.

If you didn’t know you were supposed to be tasting acai and Sichuan pepper in that spring roll dipping sauce, you’d think it was pleasantly sweet, rather than disappointingly spice-free and cloying. If you weren’t scanning the plate for the phantom jalapeno in your soup dumplings, you might notice they were pretty tasty bundles of mildly spiced pork.

A meal at Zengo can be a baffling experience, starting the moment you walk in the door and think you’ve ended up in Omaha’s up-and-coming arts district. But don’t dismiss it out of hand, dooming yourself to wander the canyons again. Just remember to do as the Romans do and, when in Zengo, drink more than you eat.

And while we’re supposed to spend these months reveling in heavy stews and root vegetables, cheese-covered casseroles and fresh-baked everything in order to build up our natural insulation and soothe ourselves into a state of semi-hibernation, this year it just doesn’t seem right. After all, without that massive cable-knit sweater to hide under, it’s harder to ignore the fact that those comfort foods make regular clothing a lot less comfortable to fit into.

Luckily, though the root vegetable reigns supreme in anyone’s description of seasonal winter offerings, there are a number of ingredients only available in these dark months that are anything but heavy.

Sweet shrimp
Though the Maine fishing season closed about 12 seconds ago, a last-ditch pilgrimage to your favorite locally sourced sushi restaurant may still grace you with this delicate, lingering morsel, all tender flesh and honeyed salt flavor, often with the fried head to remind you that this is no poached pink prawn like your usual ebi, long divorced from this mortal coil. The fried sweet shrimp head tells you he was alive and kicking (really—have you seen all those little legs?) but moments ago—and it’s a crunchy treat, to boot. For a step above, try Niko (170 Mercer St., betw. Prince & Houston Sts., helloniko.com), where the little guys are flash-fried in their entirety and served with sriracha salt.

Citrus
In the Northeast, we’re so divorced from the climate that makes citrus groves possible that it seems impossible that the fruit is grown like any other. Oranges come bagged up and pre-stickered with that cute little Sunkist logo, don’t they? Well, no, and they have a season, too—we’re in the middle of it.

Grapefruits taste extra sweet right now; oranges have a complexity of flavor and come in varieties other than “navel” and “juice.” Order some for yourself direct from the source from farmers like Cindy and Pete Spyke of Citra, Fla. (floridaorangeshop.com), low-impact, sustainable family farmers who grow oranges you didn’t even know existed. Or try a Vietnamese classic, grapefruit (sometimes pomelo, a comically enormous, sweeter grapefruit-type fruit) and shrimp salad at Xe Lua (86 Mulberry St., betw. Bayard & Walker Sts., xeluanewyork.com).

Cauliflower
Yes, right now this crucifer often falls under the umbrella of cheese-coated comfort, but that’s mostly because people don’t know they can’t just treat broccoli’s albino cousin the way they would its more vibrant kin. Cauliflower, when maligned, ends up tasting as pale as it looks, but it has a sweetness and nuttiness that will come out if you treat it right.

Creative chefs are roasting or braising it to get that flavor; one mad genius, Amanda Cohen at Dirt Candy (430 E. 9th St., betw. 1st Ave. & Ave. A, dirtcandynyc.com) is deep-frying it and serving it with waffles in a nod to the soul-food classic chicken and waffles. Cut with winter-bright horseradish and dressed with maple, the dish is the epitome of the forced creativity of the lean indoor season.

So don’t despair. Though there are still dark days of winter ahead of us—and that cold weather could still be lurking—Mother Nature hasn’t completely abandoned us. There’s better food in season right now than heavily discounted Valentine’s Day candy and bread; take advantage and you’ll be ready for spring when the real thing comes along.

He does care a great deal about gumbo—“After Katrina, I spent six months working on a good, dark roux; cooking it every day for six months to get it right. That’s when we had our first gumbo event,” he said—and he cares about helping farmers, food producers and other advocates for local, sustainable food systems.

That’s why his restaurant, Jimmy’s No. 43 (43 E. 7th St., at 2nd Ave., jimmysno43.com), is hosting their N’Orleans Style Gumbo Cook-Off to benefit Chefs for the Marcellus this Sunday, Feb. 19, from 1-3 p.m.

By night, Carbone is a beer aficionado. He founded the Good Beer Seal to help identify other bars in New York City that take the same care in sourcing and serving craft brews as he does at Jimmy’s No. 43; to qualify, bars must be independently owned, serve 80 percent craft beers and be active members of the community.

By day, he runs Food Karma Projects, the umbrella under which he organizes food-centric fundraisers, bringing together other likeminded chefs, restaurateurs and passionate amateurs to support a variety of causes, from the New Amsterdam Market to Slow Food NYC, Food Systems Network NYC and New Orleans reconstruction efforts.

“We’ve had a chowder cook-off, we do cassoulet, we have a duck-off coming up next month,” Carbone listed. “It’s a unique way to support groups we believe in.”

From using his restaurant’s empty back room—“it’s such a clean way to fundraise,” he explained, “since it’s essentially wasted space during the day, we just turn over the entire place and the entry fee can go directly to the organization”—his charity efforts have spread around the city all the way down to Governors Island.

The environmental concern on the tip of most New Yorkers’ tongues right now is fracking, the gas extraction process that decimates ecosystems by polluting groundwater with a potent chemical cocktail. Chefs for the Marcellus, the beneficiary of this Sunday’s event, is an organization of New York food professionals actively advocating against fracking in the Marcellus Shale, a region that encompasses the southern tier of New York State.

Not surprisingly, Carbone is an active member. “It’s an issue that affects a number of the farms we buy from,” he said. “And Ommegang [Brewery]—their neighbor has a large farm that she just sold to an energy company. If the state allows fracking up there, they told me they’re going to have to leave New York.”

The cook-off will bring together a number of gumbo connoisseurs, including chefs from The Green Table and Goat Town other food professionals and cook-off circuit regulars. For $20, attendees can eat as much as they can manage, comparing classic renditions and innovations on the Cajun staple to crown the gumbo king (or queen) of New York City.

And to round out the spicy weekend, Jimmy’s No. 43 will also be hosting a hot sauce tasting on Saturday. Ten small-batch, locally produced hot sauces will be available to try, with GuS sodas and some of the restaurant’s brunch favorites to soothe the burn. That event benefits Rootstown Ohio Farm, whose livelihood was threatened when its crops were decimated in a freak hailstorm.

As for Mardi Gras itself? Jimmy’s No. 43 will hold its regular Tuesday night event, a guided tasting of session beers. But if you ask real nice, you might be able to wrangle yourself a bowl of Carbone’s gumbo—if you just didn’t get enough on Sunday.

Hot Sauce for Ohio Farm Relief, Feb. 18, 1-3 p.m; $10. N’Orleans Style Gumbo Cook-Off, Feb. 19, 1-3 p.m; $20. For more information, visit jimmysno43.com/events.

It’s as reliable as the tides: Come Valentine’s Day, creativity goes out the window. Husbands feel they have to bring home long-stemmed red roses, the gift that is dying before it even gets to the recipient. Girlfriends feel they have to buy out the nearest Victoria’s Secret, even if their boyfriends have never found ruffles sexy and can’t stand the color pink. And restaurants have it twice as bad. Not only do they have to cater to the thousands of couples who feel they’re legally bound to going out for a “special dinner” on Feb. 14, they have their own clichés to contend with.

Champagne and oysters to start, filet mignon or lobster as a main and chocolate to finish. Somehow, the Valentine’s Day prix fixe menu turns otherwise creative, relevant chefs into hacks.

But does anyone actually want them to? Much like those roses and angel wings, people have been told this is what they’re supposed to like so often they’ve stopped trying to figure out what they actually want. To really prove your love, ditch the truffles and Barefoot Bubbly and give your sweetheart a meal that means something—one they’ll actually enjoy.

Most of the standard V-Day foods have some allegedly aphrodisiac properties, be they chemical, cultural or physical. Chocolate gives you a serotonin high, making you feel good about the person sitting across the table. Champagne flutes signal luxury, making you feel like a movie star while getting drunk enough to act like one. And oysters are slurped out of their shells, held in the hand—a sensual exercise tailor-made for a Cinemax late-night original.

Now consider ramen. Japanese noodle-eating tradition demands slurping—anything less is an insult to the chef—and manipulating chopsticks and spoon around the rich broth and tangle of supple, resilient strands found in any reputable ramen-ya is enough to leave any lover feeling handsy. At Ippudo (65 4th Ave., betw. 9th & 10th Sts., ippudony.com), the dimly lit dark-wood and mirrored interior elevates this homey, sometimes rough-hewn tradition to an elegant evening out. Yes, the wait here is legendary, but you can blow your date’s mind by making a same-day, in-person reservation (the only way they’ll accept them) and breezing past the crowds later that night.

For a chemical lift, skip over the same molten chocolate cake chefs have been peddling since Jean-Georges Vongerichten ruled the ’80s and take the spice road instead. Capsaicin, the compound that gives chile peppers their kick, increases blood circulation, provides an endorphin rush and makes nerve endings extra-sensitive—uncannily mimicking the effects of, as the old Newlywed Game so delicately put it, making whoopee.

Café Asean (117 W. 10th St., betw. Greenwich & 6th Aves., cafeasean.com) is the rarest of rare: a pan-Asian restaurant whose eclecticism doesn’t feel contrived or tacked-on, like the many really-thai-but-we-offer-sushi joints in this town. Asean takes you on a deftly orchestrated tour of the part of the world most intimately familiar with the chile and its many guises, from Singaporean slow-braised short ribs to Vietnamese lemongrass shrimp and nasi goreng, Indonesian fried rice. All are guaranteed to raise your temperature in a candle-lit den of weatherbeaten wood and colonial artifacts.
Or, indulge your shared misanthropy—it’s what brought you together in the first place!—and stay home. Swing through the Essex Street Market (120 Essex St., betw. Rivington & Delancey Sts., essexstreetmarket.com) for a couple of deliciously dirty, funky cheeses from Saxelby Cheesemongers and a rough French loaf from Pain d’Avignon, stop at Russ & Daughters (179 E. Houston St., betw. Allen & Orchard Sts., russanddaughters.com) to pick up some caviar and pre-made blini for that touch of class and ask the staff of September Wines & Spirits (100 Stanton St. #4, at Ludlow St., septemberwines.com) to recommend a bottle to pull it all together (don’t worry, they can).

Set it all out in the living room and snack to your heart’s content, safe from the rhinestones-and-roses crowd with the only person you really want to spend time with. Besides, you’ll be closer to the bedroom when the mood strikes—a Valentine’s Day cliché we can all endorse.