Coffee break at Bruno’s Italian bakery on LaGuardia Place, Greenwich Village. PG photo. April, 2013
By Paul Goldfinger
While I was in the neighborhood, I went back to Bruno’s Italian bakery on La Guardia Place. Below is a link to our original post about this wonderful patisserie and cafe which is located on a busy New York street. You can sit outside, but you have to follow their rituals. (When in Rome, etc). So you pick your table and the waiter comes over. He tells you to walk inside where there is a store length display case filled with pastries, many of which I could not identify. A guy with a white apron comes over behind the case and, without a word, just stands there and watches me. I feel the pressure, so I confine my attention to items that I can recognize, although it is obvious that everything there must be delicious.
My eyes wander over some amazing fudge cupcakes (too rich and too American;) I feel obligated to find something inviting that looks European and sophisticated, and I am not referring to the waitress. So, in an effort to make the guy happy (he was watching me closely,) I chose the first thing that seemed to meet my criteria– I chose an apricot and walnut tart, told the guy I also wanted a cappuccino, and then I went outside to wait.
I found the only table that was left in the shade. It was an extremely sunny day—so bright that I had to go to the NYU bookstore earlier and choose a hat among the 1,000 choices. They even have one that said “NYU basketball.” Gimmie a break! NYU basketball? The last time I checked, their basketball program was shutdown over a gambling scandal 40 years ago . But I digress…. ( I often digress–makes Eileen a little nuts sometimes,)
So, the photo above shows what I ordered. The waiter brought the snack, but he would not give me a check. He told me to wait until I was done, and then I would get a check. Everything was excellent—the coffee, the tart (no, not the waitress), the scene across the street, the quirky service, and even the woman at the next table who ignored me even though I was close enough to try her croissant.
Across the street was something that looked like a park. But it was not—it was a community vegetable garden. A big sign on the fence said that NYU wanted to take the garden from the people. NYU is always butting heads with preservationists who want to keep the Village protected from the university’s expansion plans (sound familiar?)
So I took a photo of my snack and texted it to Eileen (just to annoy her). But I brought half my tart home so that I wouldn’t be a total SOB. But she’s on a diet and she only ate a tiny piece; but even a tiny piece is heaven, and I enjoyed the rest on my OG porch where I found a parking space in front of my house and I didn’t have to pay $35.00 to park for three hours in the Big Apple.
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