If you really needed a striking example of how different things are downtown and uptown in Manhattan these days, you’ve got it: BuzzFeed checks in with a group of people in the East Village who are so in need of food that they’ve resorted to Dumpster diving — not in the ironic hipster way, but in the actual desperate-for-anything-to-eat way. Says one hard-hit resident, “It’s getting dark outside, I don’t know how to get food like this without going all over the place and waiting in lines, and I don’t want us to go to bed hungry tonight.” Uptown, things aren’t really the same.
The Times checks in with a few spots north of the power cutoff, where people are having a grand ol’ time. The restaurants are packed, the Champers is flowing, and ha-ha, sorry downtown people without power or fresh food, they’ve even put a burger on the menu at Crown! Can you imagine? “The whole place had a festive air,” John DeLucie says of his 81st Street restaurant.
Sirio, the brand-new Le Cirque spinoff, was even forced to fully open early, despite the fact that the managers were really hoping to be in limited preview mode this week. “But,” says François Latapie, the restaurant’s manager, “because of circumstances we wound up doing more. There was pressure from the hotel and from celebrities. You can’t say no to Tommy Hilfiger.” What an excellent reason to open your doors to people in need.
Geoffrey Zakarian weighs in as well on all the people heading into his midtown restaurants: “People were coming up from downtown even though there were no Broadway shows for the past few days.” Gosh, you don’t say?
Hungry New York Families Dig Food Out Of Dumpsters After Sandy [BuzzFeed]
Uptown, the Deluge Is Customers[Diner’s Journal/NYT]
