Rachel Kara - sweet bird of youth
I love having photographer friends.. Really, I do. Other than the fact that they sometimes try and snap pictures of me when they think I'm not looking, it's so much fun to go out with them and take your own inadequate happy shots and then to see much, much, much superior ones go up on their blogs days later. It's crazy to think that we were looking at the same things, the same tables, the same cafes, the same coffees, the same roads - and yet they made this and I only made that. It's exactly how you remember the day but better. Rachel's got the most incredible pictures of our days spent together in New York up on her blog - which is totally fantastic, by the by - and I can't help but share them. I know I didn't take the photos. But I was there!!! That counts, right?
This morning at Cafe Gitane was perfect. We found ourselves there on the back of not one, not two but several recommendations from various locations - guide books, friends, blogging mates, and even the QANTAS magazine - and several recommendations from various locations simply cannot be ignored. What we found? Really good orange juice, baguette toast that was twice the size of the plate, hand-ground peanut butter and so much avocado we could have covered the baguette. Twice. But we didn't because it was Rachel's avocado and not mine. We also found several ridiculous waitresses who hovered by the side gossiping to the exclusion of all else. You can't have everything, can you?
It's funny when you find something that a hundred, a thousand, maybe a million - but definitely, definitely the people who publish the QANTAS magazine, which kind of proves the point - have found before you falls into your path. Something that you stumble upon for the first time becomes your own in a way that it never belonged to anyone else. It didn't matter that people had recommended the avocado on toast to Rachel or that I had heard good things about the petit dejeuner complet, no-one else had had it quite like we had it. The best places are the ones that make you feel like that. The best places are the ones that make you feel like they're your own. It certainly helps going at breakfast time when the place is completely empty and you don't have to fend off locals for attention and the good tables. It's not hard to feel like a place is your own when you're the only ones in it. But we did, and we were, and it was. It's not like it was an out-of-the-way coffee house, a tiny little thing that had opened up the week before, a place you find when you're lost and you don't know where you are. Everyone knows about Cafe Gitane. Our recommendation is superfluous. But here it is anyway. Do try the avocado on toast. It's very, very good.
Cafe Gitane, 242 Mott St, Nolita
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