Version of McHale's to Return?

McHale's, the timeless bar at the corner of 46th and Eighth, closed more than six years ago. And it still hurts. You can go visit the neon sign at Emmett O'Lunney's pub on W. 50th Street. But otherwise, not a trace of it remains outside the memories of a few hundred Broadway stagehands. Me, I now go to Jimmy's Corner for my beer and the Edison Cafe for cheap Times Square eats.

Now, JVNY reports the words of tipster who says this: "This past Friday I was walking with friends in Midtown and we stopped by the gin mill on West 50th St that has the old McHale's 'BAR' sign. The lady standing in front told us that 'McHale's is re-opening on 51st St.' We immediately walked over to investigate. There is a bar under construction on the north side of 51st St between Broadway and 8th Ave, real modern looking, no sign up. We yelled in to what appeared to be the owner or at least manager who was going over blueprints or something. We asked 'is this place McHale's?' and he said yes. We cried that 'how can you name a place after a former business?' and he said 'why can’t I?' then backed off when he heard our outrage and came up with what I think is a story. He said 'I bought the name' and when we asked about 'Jimmy' he said he’d be there once a week and that they hired the old chef from McHale's."

This news may be so. But it cheers me not at all. Listen, I can open up an eatery and call it Toots Shor, but it doesn't it make it so—any more than Gabe Stuhlman's Fedora has anything to do with the original Fedora; the current Hurley's is a patch on the original bar on Sixth Avenue; or John DeLucie's upcoming restaurant in the Bill's Gay 90s space will have any real connection with Bill's.

McHale's outside the original McHale's space and location would not be McHale's. McHale's without Jimmy McHale would not be McHale's. Recreating burgers, however good, does not reconstitute a 70-year-old bar. Sorry.

To find out more about what I thought about McHale's and its shuttering, see here and here and here.

Star Shoe Shop, Village Survivor

I have walked by the Star Shoe Shop on Bleecker Street, near Crosby Street right by the Two Boots pizza, for decades and not quite grasped how old it is until I went in recent and got my shoes shined. Ready? It's been there more than 70 years. Unbelievable.

There's not much inside to betray that level of age, though if you peak back where the small bathroom is, you'll see some ceramic floor tiles that look fairly ancient. Otherwise, the feel is very 1970s. Fake wood paneling, standard issue wall clock, a small television set embedded into the wall behind the counter. And a couple photographs featuring the shop as a backdrop: one of an unidentified CBGB band from the club's golden age; and one of Christopher Walken back when he was young, handsome and not yet too weird.

The photos reveal that the neon sign in the window has not changed in the last four decades. I'd guess the same holds true for the yellow sign hanging outside, as well, since it features a phone number without an area code.

The world inside is very old Village. Vagrants, drifters, grifters and neighborhood eccentrics seem to recognize that they will not be given the bum's rush from the accented old men who run this cluttered shop. While I was there, a grizzled old rummy with a three-day growth and a cig hanging from his mouth came in and tried to sell a few items from out of a large trash bag. The owner seemed to be entertaining his offers. Clearly the man had made some sales in the past.

The man who shined my shoes took a lot of care and time on my zapatos. Glad I wasn't in a hurry.

Lost City Asks "Who Goes to L&B Spumoni Gardens?"

Never know what "Who Goes There?" subjects are going to get people excited. My account of L&B Spumoni Gardens in Bensonhurst/Gravesend pulled down more comments than any other WGT since Sarge's Deli. Here it is:

Who Goes There? L&B Spumoni Gardens

I have never driven to any of the destinations profiled in this column. "Who Goes There?" is strictly a piece of shoe-leather reporting. But I happened to briefly be in possession of a car this week, so I motored to far-off L & B Spumoni Gardens in Gravesend. The circumstances couldn't have been more appropriate. L&B is a drive-to-it kind of place. There's a parking lot next to it dedicated to its customers. And, though the lot is sizable, it's always full. Even on a Tuesday afternoon.

Look at the license plates and you will start to grasp who comes here. It's a fairly even split between Empire State and Garden State motorists. The New Yorkers come from all over, all five boroughs and from out on Long Island. Plenty of locals haunt the place as well, positioning their ample bellies under the picnic tables the line the front of the joint. There's usually a cop car or two double-parked on 86th Street — New York's Finest love L & B. Finally, there's the tourists. A busload of them truck in from Manhattan every single day. Seriously. Every day. It's no wonder this family-owned place, founded in 1939, has stayed in business.

What you come here for is the namesake spumoni— it's homemade, perhaps the best in town, and people buy it by the five-gallon tub — and pizza. There's a sit-down restaurant attached to the east end of the low-slung building, where you can order sandwiches and pasta. But in 20 years, I've never eaten there and I'm not sure who does. As to pizza, you can order a slice of "round" or "square." But if you order the ordinary, lackluster round, you're an amateur and obviously don't know what you're doing. L & B is famous for their one-of-a-kind Sicilian slice — crispy on the bottom, light as a feather throughout, a minimum of mozzarella topped with tomato sauce and loads of parmesan. It's routinely regarded as the best Sicilian slice in town.

Inside, where you order the spumoni, you can scan a pictorial history of the place. "That's from fuhgetaboudit," said an employee, referring to an old photo of Ludovico Barbati in his horse drawn ice-cream cart. Barbati learned how to make the sweet stuff from a local baker. The horse's name was Babe, like Paul Bunyon's Blue Ox. Then there are pictures of when the place was smaller, more art deco, and called L&B Luncheonette. The middle building of the three-building complex is the oldest. The pizzeria arm of the enterprise didn't arrive until the 1950s. It's strange, actually. What with the fame of its pies, the word "pizzeria" has never been part of the L&B name.

—Brooks of Sheffield

Lost City Asks "Who Goes to Colandrea New Corner Restaurant?"

It's my hunch that the footbridge above the Fort Hamilton Parkway was built expressly for the convenience of the Colandrea family and their patrons. Here my "Who Goes There?" column from Eater:

Who Goes There? Colandrea New Corner Restaurant

Its diner-like name notwithstanding, there has never been on "old corner" for the Colandrea family. Their Dyker Heights restaurant has always been where Eighth Avenue meets 72nd Street, though it has come to dominate that largely residential intersection more and more over the years. It began as a one-room pizzeria, founded in 1936 by Vincenzo Colandrea. Several expansions later, there's a spacious bar room, the "booth room" (booths line the walls), the main dining room and a party room. The most recent renovation, which doubled the joint's size, was in 1973, and the decor retains the flavor of that era: colors of brown and orange, wood paneling, brick arches and oil paintings of pastoral scenes. (Look at some of the old photos near the bathroom and you'll weep for what was lost, including a beauty of an art deco bar.) Fate and construction has given the restaurant an unobstructed view of the Fort Hamilton Parkway, added to its seeming isolation.

The sprawling restaurant is now in the hands of the third generation of Colandreas, Vincent and Steven. They are very much on the premises. Even during the lunch trade, Vince was walking the floors in a gray blazer (no tie), greeting the guests. There were few he didn't recognize. One group he knew so well that he sat down and began eating with them.

My waitress was Russian, and very friendly. But not as friendly as she was with the longtime regulars who sat in the booth next to me. She anticipated their every order, and reacted with surprise when they strayed from their usuals. "Chicken Parmigiana! That's something new for you!" Most of Colandreas patrons areloyalists of many years standing, and quite a few drive a distance to get there. There are a lot of graying temples—though those oldsters bring along their progeny and progeny's progeny—and you hear Italian spoken, if only a little, at most every table. Everybody orders a lot of food.

They should. It's good food. New Corner makes many of its own pastas, and the recipes date from Vincenzo's time. I had the linguine with clams and white sauce. It was among the best linguini dishes I'd ever tasted, served perfectly al dente. The broth was flavorful and the clams amazingly fresh. This dish had been well-attended to; no one in the kitchen had fallen into a rut, as so often happens at Italian restaurants that reach this age. The mozzarella carrozza were also fresh, and as large as hockey pucks. The meatballs were large, mild in flavor and had a fine, tender texture. I could have used more spice and zip in the marinara sauce, but a lot of old-school red sauces are tame in that way.

The secret of Colandrea New Corner's history is that it has not always been the Colandrea's. If you read a framed article from 1962 about the place, you learn that Vincenzo Colandrea, who came from Naples, was felled by a heart attack in 1949. He was forced to sell the place. The new owners ran the place into the ground for a decade. When it was up for sale again in 1959, the Colandreas bought it back. And here's a historical tidbit: Vince's cousin, Tony, worked at the old Astor Hotel before leaving to become New Corner's maitre d'. Swank.

Perhaps what most impressed me about New Corner was how much the Colandreas still care what a stranger thinks about what they do. As I passed through the vestibule, I ran into Vince. "How'd we do?" he asked. He really wanted to know. I told him how much I had enjoyed the linguini with clams. "You know what we like to do," he said. "We order a little bit of the red sauce and a little bit of the white and we mix it up." I'm going to try it that way next time.

—Brooks of Sheffield

Lost City: Asheville Edition: Little Pigs Bar-B-Q

When I'm down south, I look for barbeque. Recently, I was in Asheville, North Carolina. I was told that Asheville was not a big barbeque town. Nonetheless, I looked for barbeque. I had heard of an old roadside place called Little Pigs—a name that is hard to resist. So I asked after it. I was warned off it, told it wasn't very good.

But I've got a hard head, so I went anyway. Little Pigs was founded in Asheville by Joseph Carr Swicegood Sr. in April 1963. In January 1986, he hired Bob Conner, a former district manager for Burger King, as the general manager. Conner still runs it. According to the website, he embraces "the philosophy that Little Pigs must maintain a clean and comfortable environment with great food and superior customer service. Little Pigs offers personal service and we recognize our regulars on a first name basis."

Lot of stuff on the site about cleanliness and customer service and value for your dollar. Which is great. But I go to barbeque places for the barbeque. And, while I love the Little Pigs sign and the building and general ambiance of the place, the barbeque was disappointing. Perhaps the most lackluster bbq I've had in the south, with next to no flavor. It tasted of "I don't care." The beans were a little better, and the hush puppies were good. But those are side attractions. I hope Little Pigs remains in business. The potential there is huge. But I also hope they start putting some effort into their product.

Lost City: Asheville Edition: Mountaineer Inn

Asheville, North Carolina, is a beautiful town. Though a boho center of liberality today, it came into being through the efforts of millionaires like George Washington Vanderbilt III, Edwin Wiley Grove and George Willis Pack, who fell in love with the remote area enough to fill it with some of the most beautiful art deco architectural monuments in the country, as well as a few mansions for themselves. (Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate is the largest private home in the United States.)

The Mountaineer Inn is not one of those monuments. But it is a marvel in its own right, mainly due to its wonderful use of old-school neon. The shotgun-toting neon hillbilly seen above stands about 30 feet tall, and keeps watch over Tunnel Road, a strip of hotels and restaurants on the other side of a mountain to the east of Asheville.

The Mountaineer was founded in 1939, and is family owned and operated. The rooms are very cheap (under $50 a night), and you basically get what you pay for. But the place has a homey charm and the woodsy architecture has an appeal that harkens back to the postwar way of American family vacationing.

The unusual figure below is an actual neon rendering of Mammy Yokum, the character from the "L'il Abner" comic strip, which hasn't run in a paper since 1977. I doubt many people who stay here or pass by recognize Mammy.

The office building itself is a lovely sight, a round fieldstone hut topped with a birdhouse.

The oddly shaped pool stands in front of the motel, perched high above the highway. It's a lovely vantage point, if you don't mind drivers being able to see you swim.

Recently, I reported that Leske's, the old Scandinavian bakery in Bay Ridge that closed last year, would be reopening soon, using the same bakers as before. In response, I got this comment from a reader:

I live across the street from what used to be Leske's, and according to the new managers its going to re open with same recipes and bakers... that is a FALSE and a poor fake!!! All the bakers found new jobs and they are stable. One of the bakers is baking most of the stuff at Jean Danet bakery across the street from Leske's and there kringler and black and whites taste REAL good. It's similar to Leske's.. Please dont believe that fake sign! The new owners are lying to every one! 

I have no idea who's telling the truth here. But the timing of the comment was a coincidence, because I had been thinking about Jean Danet bakery in recent days, and wondering about its history.

Jean Danet is just a couple blocks to the north of Leske's on Fifth Avenue. It has an old-looking vertical sign on the side of the building, but a shiny new facade and interior. I expect the bakery's been renovated recently. Ironically, the redo's specific intent was obviously to make the facade look old! Look at the fake-ancient-ruin mix of bricks and plaster.

Anyway, here's the story according to the Danet website: "Originally started as a french pastry shop forty years ago, Pat Giura decided to keep the original name of Jean Danet and use the owner’s original recipes when the Giura family bought the business back in 1998. It was a natural fit for the graduate of The French Culinary Institute and certified Wilton Cake Decorator who grew up working at Savarese Italian Pastry Shoppe, owned by his parents, Cathy and Mario Giura."

Interesting pedigree. If the Leske's bakers are indeed employed there, the pedigree just got even better.