Cranky Post Columnist Desperately Seeks Dining Companionship
June 1, 2011, 2:53 p.m.
Steve Cuozzo is at it again, griping about the popularity of downtown dining and mourning the loss of the "late-night" uptown scene.
Poor, lonely Steve Cuozzo. The cantankerous Post columnist who hates pedestrian plazas, Wikipedia, and Brooklyn restaurants in equal measure now has a new enemy in the dining scene: downtown.
"Lately I’ve felt like a downtown eater trapped in an uptown body," the 61-year-old Cuozzo writes in his latest piece. "Popular eateries in Midtown and uptown seem to empty out a lot earlier than they did just a year ago." He then quotes fellow Uptown Old Tim Zagat, with a "no duh"-inducing “I agree that Midtown and uptown seem slow, and downtown seems much busier and much younger.” Cuozzo's theory? "Maybe it’s all the Viagra and Botox, but the mature crowd increasingly gets its jollies by dining amid the young." Uptown, the cantankerous columnist dines increasingly in solitude, with just his thoughts for company.
Cuozzo says his favorites, like La Grenouille and Brasserie Ruhlmann are still turning tables, it's just that "now everybody wants 7 or 7:30." There's nothing wrong with the early-bird special, Steve! Besides, nothing exciting ever happens downtown, anyway.
