It was a good friend’s birthday today, so she and her husband, and many of us who love her, celebrated at Anable, an outdoor bar and grill on the Long Island City waterfront. The drinks are simple – bottles of beer and cans of Perrier citrus sodas – and the furniture consists of polished wooden picnic tables and umbrellas, plus assorted metal and plastic chairs that look like they were filched from Generic High School USA. The view is undeniably beautiful, and by city standards, peaceful, with a few helicopters flying by and the occasional speedboat. It’s a good place to sit, watch the sun slip down between the skyscrapers, and, depending on your personality and tax bracket, either reflect on the beauty of the New York City water and skyline, or nurse a serious case of real estate envy.
Anable serves a variety of meats – cevapi, chorizo, kielbasa, bison – with pitas and the appropriate toppings (sauerkraut and mustard for the kielbasa, some kind of red pepper relish for the cevapi). I think they had salad on the menu, but no one in my party bothered with pesky details like balanced meals or fiber consumption. We had cake and cupcakes, after all!
The piped in music is lively and the crowd tended towards the young and pretty, although no one availed themselves of the ample space for dancing except a few of the kids. With the adjoining pier to walk or run on and the casual setting, it’s a very child-friendly place, although you will have to make sure yours don’t hurl themselves from a table bench over the railings into the East River. I was also afraid that mine were going to make themselves sick eating the green peaches from an overhanging tree, but no one has complained or puked (yet). In any case, this may be the closest they’ll come to eating the fruits of an urban garden, since I can’t seem to grow anything but weeds and poison ivy. (I even kill cacti. It’s a gift.)
Besides the need to keep your little ones from taking a swim, there are a few drawbacks to Anable. One is that they don’t give you water pitchers, although my kids had no trouble getting individual plastic cups of water or ice. It was hot outdoors, even after 5 pm, and we were all a little dehydrated by the time we left around 8. The other is that it’s outdoors, so there’s no smoking prohibition in effect. If you’re a smoker or don’t mind others smoking, this won’t be an issue, but if you don’t want your kids hacking up a lung, you may have to change tables at some point. The last sticking point is the bathrooms. There are no paper towels or hand dryers provided, so the floors are wet and slippery, and it’s hard to tell if what’s down there is water . . . or something else. Enter at your own risk, and don’t wear your shoes in your house when you get home.
A final danger to Anable is large, laughing groups of people making idiots of themselves by taking lots of pictures using selfie sticks and singing horribly off-key renditions of “Happy Birthday.” I plead the fifth on that one.
Note: My 30-day writing challenge to myself has officially ended, hopefully with some momentum built and discipline discovered. I will continue posting on a regular basis, but probably not everyday. My goal is two “Summer in the Psalms” reflections a week, plus at least one additional post.
Thanks so much to everyone who has been reading, liking, and following my posts. Now that I’m back from vacation, I will do my best to stop by all of your blogs and say hello, if I haven’t already. You’re all the best!