Many New Yorkers like to nurse their hangover with more liquor, the logic having to do something with ‘keeping you liver working.’ The exact science of this theory I cannot explain, but it’s popular among Manhattan’s expat crew: Italians, Frenchies and Brazilians who all seem to body surf their way into Felix Sunday afternoons to keep daylight just as jovial as nighttime at the club.
Felix, located in SoHo on West Broadway and Grand, is the thumping heart of a much larger Sunday circle of sin. The rounds include nearby Novecento, Café Noir, Diva and Cipriani’s Downtown. And for foreigners, there’s a zero percent chance of not running into someone you know. It’s an exercise in incest so be prepared to hear a lot of joyous shouts of recognition in a lot of different languages.
I’d stopped through Felix on a handful of Sunday afternoons, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I engaged in ‘the Felix tradition,’ a full day’s worth of productivity lost inside this French bistro/bar. Below I’ve documented my experience.
2:15 – I arrive. The place isn’t a mosh pit yet because the hardcore partiers are still sleeping. Every table however, is booked and the wait spills out into the sidewalk. Great.
2:18 – I wiggle toward the bar and see some French friends. They suggest I put my name down for a table ASAP as they were just told it’s a forty-five minute wait. I think to myself ‘that’s absurd’ and decide once my friends arrive to convince them we should go to one of the eighteen other perfectly delicious brunch places in SoHo. I approach the intimidating female maitre’de (she’ll scream at you just for darting a hopeful smile her way) and in the bar crowd almost trip over someone’s small dog.
2:20 – As I avoid nose diving into someone’s drink, I hear the owner of the leash I’m entangled in calling out to the dog I almost killed, ‘Cocoa. Cocoa’
I slowly double-take. I know a dog name Cocoa…
I look up to see the leash leads to the hand of my uncle who’s at the bar next to me enjoying a scotch. WTF?
2:42 – I’m still awkwardly chatting with my uncle while I wait for my friend Jewel and her sister to show up. They’re thirty-minutes late, something to do with a frozen bottle of champagne exploding. Me: ‘But why were you opening champagne at two in the afternoon?’ Her: ‘We thought it would get us moving?’
3:00 – Our entire party has arrived but we’re still waiting on a table. Waiters attempt to kick out patrons who are just nursing drinks. An odd French man-couple sits across from each other passing back and forth white plastic sunglasses, which they each wear for five minutes before switching off again. They seem to think they’re super trendy. Weird.
3:23 – We’re joyous as we finally sit. The problem is I now have to run a few block home to let someone in my apartment. Jewel promises to save my seat. I look at the steaming plates of Eggs Benedict and bubbling soups, drooling.
4:00 – I rush back to Felix while receiving texts from Jewel like: “They are being aggressive! Trying to put us in one table and steal your seat / the other table. We’re trying to hold down the fort!” and later, “They keep coming to ask what the status is. I made up that you went to buy cigarettes. They were like, ‘those better be some amazing cigarettes.’”
Tables and Felix are so hard to come by on weekends that most diners develop some sort of strategy (usually the only strategy is to order more and more food) to keep a hold on seats until the evening dancing hours. We were no exception.
4:31 – I come back to a table full of Mojito pitchers. Jewel and her sister are analyzing the crowd and guessing people’s nationalities. We hone in on a beautiful boy with the thickest hair we’ve ever seen and a Patrick Dempsy look alike by the door. This is by far the best people watching in Manhattan.
4:33 – Starving, I order a $17 Croquet Madame. Rip off!
4:45 – Did I say rip off? This is the best Croquet Madame of my life. It’s so incredibly cheesy, what is this cheese!!! This egg is perfectly runny. Take $27 for it. I’m trying to convince myself not to order another.
5:24 – About six friends have pulled up chairs around our tiny table and we’re now on pitcher five…six?…of mojitos.
5:57 – Traditional Brazilian dance music is now blasting. Our waiter has vanished. More mojito pitchers still manage to be ordered.
6:03 – Recognize Italian friends of mine in the sidewalk party outside. Bang furiously on the window in an attempt to get their attention. Other random men on the sidewalk think I’m motioning to them. They now crudely hit on us through the window using their tongues as a seduction tool. Gross.
6:27 – Italian friends finally notice my attention getting attempts and battle the congestion up front to reach our strategically held table. More chairs are pulled up. The female maître’de comes over in a hissy fit and rearranges our table so the over-capacity restaurant’s not such a body lock. We comply.
6:41 – I’m officially drunk.
6:46 – Listen to my Italian friend tell me a rumor that fifteen years ago when Felix first opened and was patronized by Wall Street bankers, they used to put half a pill of Uppers in a table’s first mojito pitcher to get them rowdy and ordering ten more. That’s how mojitos became so famous.
Me: Whaaaat?
Him: No one knows if it’s true.
7:20 – I realize it’s 7:20. I have dinner uptown at 8.
7:21 – Attempt to get one of the dancing waiters to bring us our bill.
7:28 – The bill’s finally delivered and completely illegible. We send it back to them and ask them to decode.
7:31 – We receive a readable version of the bill. Food $69. OK, reasonable. Drink: $230 Total, three-hundred and fifty something. Whaaaat?
7:35 – Re-gather Brazilian friends who ordered an extra three pitchers on our tab (FYI pitchers are sixty-something dollars. Good to know.) American Express cards and cash, the only acceptable forms of payment, are tossed into the middle of our table.
7:41 – With a lot less cash on my hands, I slither through the now jumping crowd and make it out of the sweaty restaurant onto the sidewalk alive.
7:45 – I catch an uptown train and upon sitting in the subway, realize I’m irrevocably more wasted than I was on Saturday night.
Miss Model Behavior’s the new nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com
