Though its owners have enjoyed relatively considerable success in the restaurant biz, Totale Pizza still seems like the benevolent pizza underdog whose innocent yet manipulative puppy eyes command your praise and support.  Not only is it a little late to the wood-fired world of personalized Neapolitan pies (behind Motorino, Keste, Paulie Gee’s), but its barely-there existence on the flashy, seedy St. Marks strip and unlikely Fanny Brice-Nicky Arnstein of a management duo designate Totale as unassuming, if not a little peculiar. Perhaps it is this mystery (and a worthy mention in New York Magazine’s  ”Cheap Eats” guide of 2010) that draws twenty-somethings like myself, salt-and-pepper couples, and groups of tourists to its modest, black and white-tiled dining room.  After all, it’s not every day that a local ingredient, gourmet pie type shacks up with a man whose living is earned selling dollar slices to drunken coeds and babbling hobos.

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After seeing Danny’s photos of the Vietnamese fare at Pho Grand, I’ve been determined to head over there to try the cutely packaged summer rolls and piping hot noodle dishes.  The restaurant’s sloping roof and wide wood paneling resembled that of a ski chalet more than it did a Chinatown hole-in-the-wall. Though instead of bunny slope babes in tight snow pants (a fashion phenomenon I never understood), there are surly, deadpan waitresses whose no-bullshit service gets you in and out of the place in 20 minutes. I’ll take business over bimbo any day, especially when it comes to mealtime.

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I like the esoteric playfulness behind Traif, the new pork-centric, small plates-only eatery situated near the entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn. Despite its stone’s throw proximity to the neighborhood’s Hasidic enclave, it seems the restaurant’s Semitic inside joke is still fairly exclusionary — our waitress’s wide blue eyes, fair hair, and button nose were a pretty clear indication that she’d never been hoisted in a rickety chair in her sweet, Midwestern life.  And from the looks of the other apple pie faces crowding the establishment, bacon’s current hipness in the foodie world, rather than its blasphemous role in the Kosher one, is Traif’s primary lure.

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Today’s weather did not make the long-holiday-weekend-to-work transition any smoother. This morning’s stifling heat made me uncharacteristically angry at a cute baby who mistook my turquoise headphones for playthings.  I’m usually angry during my morning commute to work, though this indignation is almost never directed at babies.

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