Whenever my parents visit, our time together is spent largely at restaurants. Well, that’s not quite true, but the interim is spent figuring out how we’ll fill time until our reservations for the next restaurant. I was not born to grazers, we just don’t know what to do with each other. They’re in their seventies, they’re Christian, they’re racist, they hate museums, I hate shopping, and Broadway costs $100 a pop (besides, they’ve already seen all the shows on tour).

We do all eat. We have that at least. So beyond tickets to the The Color Purple, and an equally hellish trip to the counterfeits-and-handbags strip of Chinatown, our itinerary revolves around restaurants. My mother consequently associates New York City with gluttony. She says things like, “I would eat all day long if I lived here. There’s so much food!” And indeed, Hell’s Kitchen is just a long row of restaurants, interrupted occasionally by nail salons, boutiques, delis, hot dog stands, pizzerias and bodegas. From the outside looking in, we crap entire bakeries.

But from the resident’s perspective, it looks like a straight mile of gut-bludgeoning cheesecake and tasteless paninis. No matter how they repackage it, it’s all more of the same. The same Thai restaurant appears three different times on my block. Three different restaurants, same name, same owner, same menu, same mediocre noodle and curry dishes. Different decor.

So …

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