Cafeteria

Celebrities-favored restaurants are like quantum physics – you don’t have to understand, just simply accept it. Why are all the actors, musicians, media people and wannabe artists accumulating on the corner of Seventeenth and Seventh, Lord only knows. Well, the elementary particles behave both like particles and like waves.
Cafeteria is ear-splitting like combine harvester testing area; relatively expensive, with tiny, slimy tables, moody personnel, absurd waiting times (40 minutes is no oddity) and painfully untamed pubescent clientele. Kids are scanning around, so as not to miss some semi-famous face that might appear. The food is absolutely divine.
I dive into my goat cheese & tuna salad and not come out before the plate is completely licked clean. The last thing I savor is a perfectly seared tuna steak – a piece of meat surprisingly, notably thick. Just like the waiter, who forgets half of the orders and comes with water after 45 minutes.

To die for: Cafeteria is open 24 hours and the food is unbeatable. Pure and breathtaking.

Turn off: if you’re a bit sensitive, don’t even try it. The staff are uniquely blunt and if they don’t like you, you might leave in tears.

Cafeteria, 119 7th Ave (at 17th Street), New York

Babette's

I’ve never been to the London based Books for Cooks store and it obviously makes me a pathetic loser. EVERYBODY knows The Legendary Books for Cooks. Inspired by the London institution a Viennese store was launched some time ago, and I immediately fell in love with its second branch distinguished by a slightly altered concept. Besides cook books it also offers an impressive collection of herbs and spices. Shiny floors, airy shelves and pharmacy-like cabinets, weighed down with hundreds of cook books and flasks with condiments. An ethereal fairy behind the counter is willingly seeking nonexistent herbs for us. Spices and their wonderful mixtures are what will lure me back here; to breathe in the pale memories of something good and forgotten.
Books there are a plenty, cook books of any sorts and kinds, highly specialized publications on specific ingredients or methods of preparation, national cuisines and low profile eating deviations. Don’t come too hungry.

To die for: Babette’s has got a minicafé where you can get a rough espresso and rifle through books. I found great pieces on veganism.

Turn off: many books are in English, but most of them naturally in German. If you cannot Deutsch sprechen, you can still go crazy about the herbs.

Babette's, Schleifmühlgasse 17 or at Am Hof 13, Vienna

Café De Zuid

It could appear that Amsterdam is just as nasty as all other European cities in February. The truth is, it’s even nastier. Vexatious rain gives wet smacks left and right and gripes even more so, given that locals obviously don’t give a damn about it. They pedal joyously along in short jackets, faces unfrowned. Me - not such a hero.

I crawl miserably into a random café, and voilá – I change from a severely beaten dog into one evidently cosetted. I let my coat dry and while waiting for the food, I drool a little.

A salad with pear. Lolo rosso, pine nuts, capers, sour sundried tomatoes, goat cheese, honey, thyme. Baguettes to choose from: brown and white. Tiny bowl of herbed butter. Brash New York feel. I melt immediately.

Maybe this month won’t suck that much after all.

To die for: fluffy blond waitress lost in dreams, eyes all sky-blue and deep. Food’s immense.

Turn off: opening hours are suited for brunchists – eleven ‘til five real food is served, after that only cakes and little things. I’ll still come back.

Café De Zuid, Azartplein 2a, Amsterdam