Essex, with Its Latin-Ashkenazic Menu, Is Excellent, and Perfect for These Days

I'm reservation-impaired, preferring to walk in last minute and beg for an awful seat. But there has been so much advance press for my dinner choice, I'll have to give in. An army of flacks has moved their message on the opening of TanDa. I thought we'd try it, as it's a scant two blocks from where my friend works.

Well, where she works today; she's just discovered that she is on a list of the "To Be Terminated." She tells me of an impending interview for which she doesn't want to lie on her resume. She says, "I know you'd tell me to do it." I've become so predictable, I no longer need to actually speak. She's nervous about the interview and says, "I'm not as articulate as you are."

"Nah, I might be a better bullshitter, but that's just because you're so honest."

"Oh! You are a great bullshitter. You are such a good bullshitter!" Thanks? So I call TanDa and I am promptly hung up on. But I am tenacious if nothing else so I call back. The host (or is it Charles Nelson Reilly?) is saying to someone, "Could you just give me a second... I need to get this together...and I'm on the phone too." Well, he is apologetic that they're booked.

Essex Restaurant's host is relaxed and friendly, but not dealing with the same pressures. On a Thursday evening, it is completely empty.

A very few steps from the F train's Delancey stop, the doorway is on Rivington at the southeast corner of Essex. The ubiquitous sidewalk flower is painted at the threshold. The block holds the Magician bar and a Mexican joint right across the street, Welcome to the Johnson's, a sandwich shop, a guitar store, a gallery and a cafe. A handful of folks at Johnson's, hardly anybody at the welcoming Magician, but SX 137 down the street is populated. Its front looks like some project my dad and I might have started and not finished. Mexican place is completely empty.

The four food groups at Essex are starters, small plates, entrees and sides. The menu is Latin with Ashkenazic accents?a nod to the nabe. My forebears lived here?then you could get a concession for two month's rent when you moved to a new place, so they moved a lot. My great-grandmother lived on the same street as her sister at one point, sitting on stoops across from each other but refusing to speak for years. No one can recall why, but possibly because it was held that the sister's husband Moshe was "low-class." Or some other shtetl stuff. But the cousins all played together and were in and out of one another's apartments. Much later, my mother named her first doll after Moshe. The Liptons, a more accepting, yet serious, lot, would only stop speaking to you if you were a Communist.

My father's grandmother Tillie Janis was also born on the Lower East Side, into a family of five sisters. She married a gambler in the theater biz who always carried a pearl-handled pistol. They had three daughters, of which the baby, Charlotte, was supposed to be a movie star, but died at 17. She was dieting and caught pneumonia and had no resistance. Someone in the know has recently suggested she actually had TB, but that it was covered up. At any rate, my dad had been told it was pneumonia. I recall in slow motion a doctor pulling a stethoscope away from my chest and turning around to say to my dad, "Well, she has pneumonia." To which my dad responded by fainting. The doctor called for the iron-haired nurse, who determinedly rushed toward me with a smelling-salt-laced pad. The doc said, "Not her. Him." Shifting her attention to the 6-3 tank-shaped form, eyelids aflutter, she did revive him once her laughter died down.

I had to go to the hospital for an x-ray. Gossip picks up steam in a small town, and when I walked in to my first day of high school a couple of weeks late some were surprised to see me, as they'd heard I was in the hospital dying instead of watching tv on my little black-and-white, taking gentle walks with my friends in the Indian summer sunshine and playing with a kitten they'd brought over in a brown paper bag. Later that schoolyear, when I came down with a bad case of chicken pox (I was miserable, pustules everywhere?inside my mouth and between my toes, which would explode of their own volition, no scratching required)?my mom entreated me to please get better, because what could you do with a pickup-driving, rush-into-burning-airplanes-trained, motorcycle shop-owning tearful tank.

The high-ceilinged dining room at Essex has black sleek booths, large wood tables, walls of white-painted brick whimsically spackled with white-painted tennis balls and black industrial pulleys that are echoed on the constructivist menu cover. The counterpoint is bamboo, white candles and groups of green glass candle holders. Cool funk and melodic electronica brighten the room. It's all prefaced by a mirrored and candlelit expansive bar. This is the first chilly evening and the heat is on and hugs us. My companion says, "In here, it seems like everything must be okay out there."

My request for red prompts our waiter to say, "What do you like, hearty? Fruity?" Yeah?I do like fruity. He goes off to discuss my desires with the bartender and returns with tastes of zingy zinfandel ($7), with a tartness running through. He fills our glasses to the brim.

Tostones ($4) are so fun to eat; hot crisp rounds with pliant plantain insides come with a mound of head-clearing pico de gallo. I'm not much on salad ($6), but I keep reaching across the table to raid my companion's order. It's piled high with the freshest mixed greens; most bites have a surprise of roasted pumpkin seeds, and bits of Cabrales sheep's milk cheese are tangy-sweet. All very lightly dressed in a balanced and most agreeable vinaigrette. It can be had topped with chicken or steak also.

The lights are quite low, slightly frustrating as the presentation is consistently attractive. A disturbing echo results from the smattering who've come to dine in the bar; the sophisticated room cries for a crowd. There's nothing we need more than "comfort food" now, and Essex can provide. (Last I heard of my Battery Park City-resident baby cousin, he was cooking up a mess of macaroni and cheese in a big Brooklyn kitchen.)

The potato Napoleon ($10) "small plate" is not so small. An architectural wonder, it is composed of a thick potato cake layered atop shiitakes, lightly steamed spinach and a moat of vegetable cream sauce. Crisscrossed asparagus stalks mark the spot. When my fork pierces the cake's fried shell a crispy sound beckons and the densely packed and tender, scalloped insides prove meltingly creamy. A flannel robe, furry aqua slippers and the puzzle on a plate.

Roasted duck breast ($17) is scored for easy eating and comes with a flavorful au jus. The salty, meaty duck is so tasty, how could there be a care in the world? Over a platform of spinach and authentic button-mushroomed kasha varnishkes, it's as comforting as Bob Keeshan admonishing Bunny Rabbit while your soft-boiled egg is being prepared.

Desserts are $4-$5. My companion orders Mississippi mud pie, but is brought peanut butter pie. Mox nix, it's all good. I get the banana custard. A bread pudding is also available this evening. Steaming mugs of coffee are brought without delay. The peanut butter pie has a moist graham-cracker crust that holds together without that shattering-when-forked syndrome. It's filled with light peanut cream mousse and a drizzling of chocolate. Hey, where'd it go?

My dessert comes in a big martini glass; a scoop of boardwalk frozen custard enfolded by sauteed sliced bananas and their warm brown-sugar sauce developed in heaven's test-kitchen. Peanuts are thrown in for crunch. Comforting like an Alsatian who will not leave your side when you've been brought to its house to call your parents after a drunk hit the car you were riding in and you'd refused to get into the ambulance, which had certainly seen death, instead screaming at the perplexed cops, "I want my mother," as blood coagulated over your eye. Well, there is perhaps nothing so comforting as a concerned shepherd looking after a shook-up 12-year-old, but the desserts at Essex are good nonetheless.

My companion checks her voicemail before departing in case any calls require another drink. There are cigarettes and matches on the bar for those really bad messages. We both loved Essex?a definite return destination, but we'd prefer additional diners to eavesdrop or comment on: "Charo must be looking for her hair," "Her stomach is too flat," etc. Essex is a late-night spot, but the block and the restaurant are still emptier than they deserve to be.

Hey, hold the reins, I'm getting on my high horse: Mommeleh, come out of your undisclosed location and eat something. Even if you're on the To Be Terminated list, you can get away fairly cheaply at Essex with the ample salad, tostones and beer. And I saw no suspicious powder there whatsoever. Or at least go to that Mexican across the street. Inexpensive, and it's got to be better than Lean Cuisine, Survivor and trepidation. Whoa Applejack, could someone help me down from this thing?

Essex Restaurant, 120 Essex St. (Rivington St.), 533-9616.