The Anthem For Regulars Who Make Repeated Visits To Eating & Drinking Establishments — Billy Joel's "Piano Man"

It's Thursday and this blogger will head out for his main meal in the afternoon for his weekly visit to the Outback Steakhouse in far reaches of his neighborhood. It is the sole corporate place in a nationwide chain of restaurants. When the blogger lived on the far limit of civilzation known as the Texas Panhandle, the Outback organization planted a restaurant in the vicinity of the newest mall at the outskirts of town at that time. So, years later, the blogger wandered into neighborhood Outback and slowly, week-by-week became a "Regular": that are described in today's essay., Waling into the bar area of the restaurant, the blogger will be greeted by Joe (actually "Mr. Joe" to the blogger) who will be preparing the blogger's traditional pre-meal apéritif, Dewar's scotch and club soda, as the blogger takes his seat in a booth near the bar that is served by the bartender. And so it goes from there. If this is a (fair & balanced) account of the quest for community, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Regulars — Where Everybody Knows Your Name
By Helene Stapinski


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Adda Aiello alone apartment author BAM bar bartender Berlyn Bowne coming couple dining early eat end felt food friends Gabriel gone group guy lives Louie love McKissack Mr Ms music name night open party phone recently regular restaurant room Siddiqui sit staff street times Umrigar visit week Weinstein works years

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For years, they came out night after night. Born of a time before internet and smartphones — or at least before Seamless — the regular is as old as the bar stool, and possibly poised for extinction.

But is the tradition really endangered?

We posed the question to our readers: What makes a regular? And are you one?

More than 500 responded to the callout, and they were as varied a group as you could imagine. The regulars come from every ethnic group and occupation, making certain restaurants and bars their living rooms and dining rooms, where they discover community, nourishment, sometimes even love. They tend to be over 40, though the tradition also seems appealing to millennials.

But no matter the establishment — cafe, trattoria, dive bar, coffeehouse, doughnut shop, pharmacy, even — those who make themselves permanent fixtures almost all say the same thing about what makes a regular. When they walk in, the people behind the counter know who they are.

THE EARLY BIRDS
Adda, Long Island City, Queens

One afternoon recently, Raymond Umrigar was out buying goat brains, which are not easy to find in New York City. But when he returned to Adda, the restaurant that he runs, his most regular regular was seated in her usual spot, waiting for a big bowl of shrimp curry.

Her name, which he knows, is Susan Weinstein. Ms. Weinstein works across the street as a sign-language interpreter at LaGuardia Community College, a job she has had for 32 years. Every Thursday, before her 5:35 calculus class, she has dinner at Adda at 4:30, even though the place doesn’t open until 5 PM

This particular Thursday, she and Mr. Umrigar talked about a trip she took and about the eggplants that just arrived. They have an easy rapport, as if they had been friends for years, but she visited Adda for the first time only this past fall, not long after it opened. Back then she came during normal lunch hours. But when her schedule changed, she poked her head in at 4:30 — not wanting to be pushy — and asked if she could get takeout. “They knew me by then so they said, ‘No, have a seat.’”

Mr. Umrigar and Ms. Weinstein bonded early on when he asked her at the end of a meal if she wanted some chai. She had to leave for class; he insisted on putting it in a to-go cup. “After that,” she said, “we adopted each other.”

She is not the only regular. Ahsan Siddiqui, a 28-year-old engineer who also works across the street (at the School Construction Authority), was the first person to visit the restaurant. He had gone a couple of times to the taco place that had been in the space before, so he decided to stop by to see who had moved in.

“I pulled the door open and asked if it was halal, and they said yes, come in,” said Mr. Siddiqui, who was born in Pakistan but grew up in New Jersey. He now comes a couple of times a week for the masala fried chicken. He even has the phone numbers of the owner and the chef, Chintan Pandya.

“Now they know my face and my name,” he said.

Adda has recently had some good fortune. The little cafe looks unassuming, but it was recently nominated for a James Beard Award. It didn’t win, but the attention has definitely made it harder to get a table. The regulars are proud of Adda’s popularity.

“I told Chintan,” Mr. Siddiqui said, “‘Dude, it’s crazy how much success you guys are having.’” But because they were early fans of Adda’s unapologetically spicy food, Ms. Weinstein and Mr. Siddiqui are guaranteed a table.

Now and then, Mr. Umrigar brings Ms. Weinstein something new to try. She was an early taster of the goat brains, which she enjoyed and which have a texture like scrambled eggs.

But the food love goes two ways. Ms. Weinstein recently brought her boyfriend, Brian, into the restaurant for the first time and he was immediately treated like family. “Somehow it came out that Brian cures and smokes his own bacon,” said Ms. Weinstein, who now brings bacon in for the staff. “I love that we are giving them food.”

ALONE AMONG FRIENDS
The Knickerbocker, Greenwich Village, Manhattan

The jazz duet was playing “Bye Bye Blackbird” as Dewey Louie swiped through the photos on his phone. (Yes, that’s his real name. He produced a driver’s license to prove it.) Mr. Louie and a few other regulars were snug at the bar at “the Knick,” reminiscing about their comrades who are either dead or married: Bill, the realtor; Cal, the ad man; Allen, the stockbroker; Bruce, the lawyer; Roslyn, the clothing designer; all gone. Many of them were memorialized on Mr. Louie’s phone.

Mr. Louie, an electrician who was raised in the Village by his Chinese immigrant parents, is the most regular of those who are still left, coming here nearly every night for as long as the place has been open, 41 years. He gets the comfort food: the half-order of short ribs or the mac and cheese. The staff are like his younger siblings. The chef, Clara, has been here over 30 years, the busboy Muji for 15 years.

The bartender, Hazel, who simultaneously manages to be cordial and keep her distance, has been serving Dewar’s to Mr. Louie for a very long time. “Hazel has been here forever,” said John Burbank, the maître d’. “But she won’t say how long. We would have to cut her in half and count the rings.”

Mr. Louie, 63, now lives in Chinatown and has never been married. “When you live in a studio, you have no dining room. So that’s why I come here.” He looked around, taking in the wood paneling, curved leather booths in the back, the Al Hirschfeld originals on the walls and over at Bob Valeiko, a 20-year regular who was quietly enjoying a giant plate of calf’s liver from the corner seat under the muted basketball game on the television.

Mr. Valeiko, who works in advertising, comes a few nights a week but never on weekends, since he goes to the Jersey Shore to be with his wife at their home there. Here he can be alone but among friends. Mr. Louie silently waved to him. “Bob holds up that corner,” he said.

Mr. Louie always has a mystery novel with him on the marble-topped bar, tonight a copy of James Lee Burke’s Robicheaux (2018), so he can be by himself if he wants to be.

Every Tuesday a rotating group of authors has lunch here. On this particular night, Salman Rushdie, who lived under a fatwa for years, felt comfortable enough to dine.

Mel Watkins, an author and professor who once wrote for The Times Book Review, reminisced about the Christmas parties at the Upper West Side apartment of Charlene, the former bartender, who hosted not only the staff but the regulars. Those days were long gone.

Mr. Watkins, 78, chatted up a couple in their 30s at the bar. They were from upstate but inherited an aunt’s apartment in the village, and they come to New York every couple of weeks. When they’re in town, they always drink or eat at the Knick.

“This is our spot,” said Jamie Anadio, an administrator at Herkimer College who started coming here as a girl when she visited her aunt. She extended a hand to show how small. “But back then I wasn’t allowed at the bar.”

THE WANDERING REGULAR
The Quarter, Fort Greene, Brooklyn

For five years, Jason Guy was a regular at Berlyn, across the street from the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), where he sometimes works as an usher when he’s not acting. Mr. Guy, 46, had never been a regular anywhere before.

“I’m from Maine,” he said. “Nobody in Maine eats out.”

He liked Berlyn because of the good food, its proximity to BAM and the weird décor — the white Chewbacca fur chairs, the tiny gnomes way up on the bookshelf, the pretzel, ham hock and log pillows on the bar benches, the casual use of antlers.

But somewhere between the second and third year of visiting Berlyn twice a week, he realized something: when he walked in, the staff would wave and say, “Hey, Jason.”

“I was like, ‘Oh, my God. I’m Norm at Cheers,” he said. “Norm!’”

At Berlyn he felt like even more than just a regular. Maybe the fact that he has to wear a uniform at BAM — black shirt, black pants and black tie — set him apart from the other regulars.

The staff started comping him. He got to know the waitress who seemed to hate everybody; was invited to see the hostess’s band perform at another bar. A waiter named Hugo would sit down at the end of the night and dish the dirt. “It felt like the ultimate honor,” Mr. Guy said. “Sitting down and sharing three minutes of humanity.”

Then Berlyn had a 350 percent rent increase in 2017, and it closed. Mr. Guy was invited to the regulars goodbye party and to the final staff party.

Since then, he has auditioned several restaurants to find a new regular spot. One place had great food but a nasty bartender. One was two blocks too far from BAM. One had great people but closed too early.

Finally, he discovered the Quarter, a Mediterranean bar and restaurant in a basement on Lafayette.

The music was low, the lighting was dim, the tacos and spicy cauliflower were delicious, and there was a neon sign that proclaimed, “Open Late.” The pretty back room with the retractable roof reminded him of Berlyn’s garden. On his sixth visit, Mr. Guy was recognized by the manager and given a free glass of Turkish beer.

“I think,” said Mr. Guy, “the audition period is over.”

THE EVER-EXPANDING DINNER PARTY
Gabriel’s, Midtown Manhattan

For 28 years, Gabriel Aiello has been curating a kind of dinner party at the 34-foot-long bar in the cavernous restaurant that bears his name. Over the years, the guests have come, alone or in pairs, lured by the famously good martinis, or just because it’s close to work or home. But those who recognize their tribe have remained.

“It’s kind of magic,’ said Steve Heaslip, a Tiffany executive who visits with his fiancé, Lori Hume, a nurse. The guy on the next stool piped in.

“There’s this crazy atmosphere here you can’t duplicate,” he said. His name was Stephen Bowne. “I can’t say why exactly. But we’ve all become friends.”

In addition to eating and drinking together most nights, the regulars here go beyond the bar. They go to movies and museums with one another, they send concerned texts when a few nights go by without a drop in. They take vacations with one another.

“We’re in each other’s lives,” said Julia Kirchhausen, a classical music publicist who started coming to Gabriel’s in 2005 because it was a safe place for a woman to sit alone at the bar and “not be propositioned or #metooed.”

It can get complicated. Nancy Bento, who lives across the street, has gone to Nashville and Puerto Rico with Dan and Mary Eccles, whom she met here, and who met each other after being introduced three years ago by Scott Chandley, the beloved bartender. Mr. Chandley was the best man at their wedding. On a recent Friday night, they all celebrated Mr. Chandley’s birthday at the bar with a cake and candles

Mr. Bowne, a dentist with a practice a few blocks away on Madison Avenue, has been coming to Gabriel’s for 27 years, the year after it opened, back before the Time Warner Center arrived, when the neighborhood was not so well lit and was slightly dangerous, shattered car window glass sparkling on the sidewalk from break-ins. Now Dr. Bowne does everyone’s teeth. In his office, of course.

Cheryl McKissack Daniel, who runs the oldest African-American-owned architecture and engineering firm in the country, McKissack & McKissack, uses Gabriel’s as her kitchen since her husband went vegan. “I can’t deal with his vegan stuff,” she said.

Mr. Aiello, who never leaves, and Scott, the bartender, help facilitate introductions and keep the conversation and martinis flowing. But this summer, the party will come to an end — at this address anyway. The landlord is demolishing the building to make way for a high-rise condominium.

“We all have to be out by July 31,” said Mr. Aiello, who has already broken the news to the regulars. Mr. Aiello is hoping to move to a new place a block away and has faith the faithful will follow.

Ms. Kirchhausen has no doubt Gabriel’s will be a movable feast. “This,” she said, “is our chosen family.” ###

[Helene Stapinski began her career at her hometown newspaper, The Jersey Journal. She is the author of three memoirs: Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History , Baby Plays Around: A Love Affair, with Music, and Murder in Matera. Her essays have appeared in several anthologies, most recently, Drinking Diaries: Women Serve Their Stories Straight Up. Helene has also written extensively for The New York Times, for The Washington Post, Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine, Salon, Real Simple, New York magazine and dozens of other newspapers, magazines and blogs. She’s been featured on NPR’s "All Things Considered," "The Today Show" and as a performer with "The Moth" (NPR). Stapinski received a BA (journalism) from New York University and an MFA (writing) from Columbia University (NYC).]

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