cuban food, cuban man

One of the few joys of my workday is lunch. I gave up on the company caffeteriette after one too many post-digestive stress experiences. Midtown East has a wealth of bland options and someone handing out flyers aggressively on every street corner for all of them, but no one pulls the wool over my eyes. Now I’m on a steady rotation of three to four places. My mainstay is the decent sushi place around the corner, which has a two roll/miso soup/salad lunch-combo for a mere $7. A few months ago a Sophie’s opened around the corner. Sophie’s is a mini-chain, express Cuban lunch place. Basically someone wised up and took the classic NY Cuban/Puerto Rican restaurant with rotating daily lunch specials (with two sides) concept and added such luxuries as a competent staff and cleanliness.

Anyways, the place is a goldmine and the Pernil (roast pork) with rice and beans is dangerously good. I’ve had to cap myself at one visit per week. Fortunately, I eat lunch on the early side, so I get to avoid the throngs of people that shove in every day and still can’t figure out where to stand and wait for a table without blocking the take-out line. Sometimes I feel like a running back scrambling for an opening, getting out of there and then back to work, clutching my hot food-football close to my chest, weaving this way to avoid flyers and that way to avoid free samples.

This human traffic pales in comparison to what happens when the 7-train stops at Grand Central, though. It gets pretty ugly, the jockeying for prime positions closest to the doors in the front car. And once those doors open there is a full-on stampede for the stairs. If you’re any deeper than about twenty feet back, you’re basically stuck like herded cattle – as unpleasant a way to start the day as any. These are always the times when I start wondering why no one has bothered to suicide-bomb a train yet. I know, it’s awful.

So I end up being one of the freaks that speed walks/runs to get up the stairs and then the huge escalator first. At this point, gasping for air, I now have to dodge the aggressive free daily-paper pushers (because everyone wants reading material right after they get off the train, right?) as well as all the people handing out restaurant flyers and pamphlets.

Just past this barrage stands one of my favorite people in New York: the passive Cuban protestor. He’s in late middle age with deep-set eyes and a receding hairline that gives way to slicked-back black hair. His chin is lifted in confidence. Morning after morning he stands just outside the subway entrance, silently holding a crudely hand-written poster-board sign with an ever-changing variety of anti-Cuba/anti-US messages. The handwriting is that of someone who has had little formal schooling: unsure lowercase with the occasional unnecessary capital letter. It’s tough to read through the whole thing while running late to work as usual, but I can always catch a sentence or two:

“attention us. government You might want to check the background criminal History of one of your Top officials”

or

“I Am a Cuban born in1948 there. Crimes have been committed and There should be consequences.”

This man is confused at best, and probably much worse, but I hold him in high regards. First of all, he gets to work before me every day and appears to never take any time off. Second, he obviously feels quite strongly about whatever it is he’s trying to say, but doesn’t feel the need to get up in anyone’s business to do so. The rest of the neighborhood could really learn something from him.

A few weeks ago there was a man handing out flyers that read “Sophie’s Cuban Cuisine” right next to him. I wonder if either of them realized the irony. It’s quite an American thing, really – we’ll willingly take the best that any country has to offer, while ignoring all the other stuff. Maybe they could join forces – the Cuban man could get a nice, laminated, correctly punctuated poster that would read, “Cuba: Love the Food, Hate the Politics. Eat at Sophie’s.”