Pop Stuff: The Last Supper

When we cross the crisis, restaurants will come back with gusto, greeting us with gastronomic hugs, feeding us meals to write home about

- Soleil Nathwani

IT WAS THE KIND OF Winter’s day in the city where a lightness in the breeze foreshadowed Spring. The air was crisp and clean as a starched shirt and the sky on the West Side, where the sun had just set, turned from indigo to inky black. Reaching for the vestibule door, I glanced at the bare cherry trees that lined Columbus Avenue and imagined I could see tiny buds silhouetted on the branches. Inside, shielded from the cold, I stuffed my gloves in a pocket and took off my beanie, a chunky number with thick-looped, orange and navy zig-zags stitched over cream wool, an ironic hipster look, that I decided to spare the hostess. Shaking out my hair, I clasped the familiar curve of Gari’s large, wooden door handle and grinned at the one gentleman and two women standing patiently behind the tiny stand, just large enough for a single screen displaying reservations, blinking like Pac-men, for the tightly packed restaurant that hummed around them. ‘7.30pm for two at the bar. Under Soleil,’ I said leaning in close to be heard over the group that had formed behind me, ‘My friend should be here any minute’, I white lied.