Cafe Zaiya

In front of Cafe Zaiya's gallery windows, plaques embedded in the sidewalk quote Dickinson and Woolf. If you choose to sit outside, directly across the street you'll be confronted by the awful spot where in August two construction workers crashed to their deaths in a faulty elevator. To the left, a far more pleasant vista and a glimpse of Fortitude guarding the library. The cafe's interior is brightly lit by lime-green hanging lamps, making the could-be-cleaner quality of the floor more noticeable. Erasure-y Japanese pop plays, or sometimes bebop. A dead flatscreen has recently been replaced by a garishly bad painting.

There are plenty of tables for a cafe this size, but after work almost all of them are taken by young Asian women enjoying pastries or light suppers, or snacking on triangles of nori-coated white rice. There's an understated Pop's Soda Shop feel to the place. Patrons favor big hair clips, highlights and long shag cuts. About five different pasta preparations like carbonara and puttanesca are offered in the evening for six dollars and change. Also a noodle soup beef bowl. A small cold food bar displays a rotating variety, including vegetable dishes, pasta salads, deep-fried pork cutlets (tonkatsu) and shrimps plated in regimented straight lines.

Zaiya carries a line of French- and Asian-accented bakery treats; slices of cakes, like an appetizing-looking strawberry and whipped cream-filled layer; a variety of croissants such as ham and cheese, and rolled cream-filled cornets, all presented attractively. You may be the only gaijin, but the round of eye are treated pleasantly here. My dad, always on the hunt for a good meal, would venture into just about any hole in the wall in an ethnic neighborhood, usually with no problems, but occasionally encountering chilly service or no service at all. In Quebec province, I remember a French Canadian waitress frostily pretending not to understand his steak order because he didn't know how to say "rare" in French.

The all-Asian room is an unusual sight for me and reminds me of the black table in my college cafeteria. I used to wonder how they'd met each other and why they'd decided to eat together. I thought my table was diverse. We were all white middle-class, but we were half Jews and half Catholics. We had one Lutheran, but I consider that Catholic. And proving we were really very diverse was the fact that we were half electrical engineering majors and half applied math. I understood better when a black girl was placed in an empty spot in my campus apartment. My two white Catholic apartmentmates felt me out with hushed whispers and suggested that something be done about it. I suggested that there was nothing that could be done about it and no reason to do anything anyway. They shut up with grim faces, strode purposefully away from me and waited for me to leave. I was gone perhaps two hours and returned to find a new white roommate, a delicate violin major, unpacking. I saw red and asked what had happened and was faced with a flurry of girls (my two roommates, the violin major and commuter friends who seemed to have already taken up permanent residence in the living room even though the semester's classes had not yet started) surrounding me and sweetly assuaging me with the story that the two had swapped and both were happier with the new arrangement. I don't know how they'd found the apartment where the violin major had been placed with black girls. Within two hours no less.

I've never had anything that lousy happen to me. I look Jewish, so the anti-Semitism I've encountered has been mostly men screaming at me from another car or from across a crowd like they would certainly want to kill me immediately. My mother, with smaller, finer features, had a different experience, as people would complain to her about the Jews, fully expecting her to agree and join in the conversation with her own observations about the rotten Jews. That only happened to me once?a different semester, in that same apartment, we got yet another roommate. She was a year younger and idolized me and was overly excited about living with us. One evening in the living room she was telling me about how she was from Allentown and her uncle was the mayor and it was such a great place it was the greatest place except for the Jews. The Jews! They were so awful! And they were ruining her town... The commuters in the living room, who'd known me for years at that point, got very very quiet. I was quiet too; who was I to interrupt. I let her talk and talk, giving a nod of acknowledgment here and there. When she was finally done angrily spewing, and I had a rapt commuter audience, I said softly, "You know Susan, I'm Jewish." First she turned red. Then she turned green, then white. Finally, she turned a grapish shade of purple. I've never seen anything like that before or since. She tried to apologize through gasps while sucking wind. I didn't hold it against her; we even went to see the Furs together.

I've put my foot in it myself, not being p.c. enough. My roommate Lorraine (I got called "Lorraine" a lot) and I were walking and talking on campus, making fun of a sorority that had a predominance of athletes. The word "lesbian" wasn't actually mentioned, but we were certainly discussing their masculine musculature and manner. There was a girl we didn't know a few paces in front of us. She spun around and said, "You're Lane Lipton. I recognize your voice from the radio." Then she told us she was a freshman and though classes hadn't begun yet she'd already moved onto campus. Coincidentally, she was rooming in just the sorority house we had been speaking of, and "...you know they're very nice girls." I realized this little freshman was going to go back and tell those girls that Lane Lipton had said such and such, and I had only one moment to use my brilliant young mind to derive the perfect words that would turn this situation around. I came up with "Oh."

So that sorority never approached me to be a friend of the house (or a friend at all), but, hey, they probably wouldn't have anyway. I was considered a "Friend" by the Thetas, a group I liked. As a freshman, the tri-Delts had attempted to recruit me, but at a get-to-know-you party they held, one of their number explained to me that "...we don't serve liquor at our parties. And we don't allow boys in our rooms." Somehow I lost all interest in becoming a tri-Delt that evening. Our "zoo" frat approached me to be a "Little Sister," and while I liked the crowd there, there was no way I wanted anyone calling me "little," especially fratboys.

One of their Little Sisters was in my "Europe Between the Wars" class. Since we were friendly with the same people we were extra nice to each other in class. We were on the verge of a friendship; she was someone I had good intentions of getting to know better, but it always seemed like things were too busy. She was a golden-haired natural beauty and down to earth, with a warm smile. She died suddenly and shockingly of meningitis, her illness and rapid death causing hysteria on campus. I didn't go back to that class. A friend read the booklist for term papers over the phone to me, which I hastily and haphazardly transcribed. I wound up mistakenly submitting a lengthy paper on a book that wasn't on the list. I got hold of an AMSCO European history review book, memorized it over a couple of days and showed up for the final. The prof blocked my way?he thought I was a ringer trying to take the test for someone else. But his face softened as in a quick instant he simultaneously recognized me and figured why I hadn't been there. I later took a few more classes with him; he was quite the genius and now teaches strategy at the Naval War College.

Cafe Zaiya's green tea cake is light as air, but doesn't taste like much other than sugar. Still, for a midday respite, it's pleasant enough, with soft frosting and garnish of sweetened beans. And to accompany, their hazelnut-flavored coffee is a tasty pick-me-up. Other exotic options include Curry Pan, which is fry bread with curry paste within, and Pan Yomogi, an herbal green mostly flavorless bun with an off-putting odor. There's a raised donut topped with black sesame seeds and filled with bean paste; the crunch of sesame against the sweet filling is a good combination.

Among the more prosaic offerings, cheese domes are puffy raised doughnuts with cheese Danish-type filling. Doughy Chinese steamed buns of pork vegetable or red bean have a sucral paste center, standard and perfectly serviceable. Wire shelving holds loaves to bring home, like tofu bread, a "mini-box" of midget pastries or bags of butter crescent rolls to serve with supper. There are also several boring-looking sandwiches in a refrigerator case.

A Japanese grocery and a bookstore are also on this block. Often crowded with the young and quietly bubbly, Zaiya's comfortable, but the food is not worth going out of your way for. However, when in the neighborhood, it offers something a little different, and prices are gentler here than at the Euro-delis on the avenue or the Starbucks at the corner.

Cafe Zaiya, 18 E. 41st St. (betw. Madison & 5th Aves.), 779-0600.