Unseen & Deluca

Last weekend, we found ourselves without any ground coffee on an early Sunday morning, so I blearily stepped out to procure us some, as facing a full day of child-wrangling without the aid of the precious elixir was flatly out of the question. Not wanting to subject myself to the horrors of Gristedes or D'Agostino's at that early hour, I decided to splurge and ducked into the Dean & Deluca on the corner of 11th Street and University Place to purchase a needlessly pricey bag of their fabled "Breakfast Blend."

Now, I'm dead sure my endearingly feisty comrades at similarly-inclined weblogs like Vanishing New York, EV Grieve, Bowery Boogie would sooner gargle from a fetid flask of their own tepid filth that spend a thin red dime at a joint like Dean & Deluca -- and I can't say I really blame them -- but this particular location doesn't really bother me. While I'm prone to break out in hives if I so much as step into their Prince & Broadway store, the University Place branch is a comparatively more user-friendly affair. I'm not quite sure what was previously housed in the spot, but I'm guessing it was a spacious antique outlet. In any case, this corner location is a great place for neighborhood lollygagging and gratuitous people-watching.

Since moving downtown in 1996, I've always gravitated to the decidedly more utilitarian News Bar between 12th and 13th streets, but I still appreciate the bright, openness of Dean & Deluca's spacious dining room. Every time I walk by (which is pretty much daily), I see a colorful coterie of regulars -- grizzled intellectuals immersed in their reading, chatty NYU co-eds, eccentric old ladies laboring over sudoku puzzles, bespectacled web warriors hammering away at their laptops -- all within its stately ballroom-like interior. I admire the ornate tiled floor and lofty, decorated ceiling. For some reason, however, I never feel quite comfortable in there. Is it too bright? Too spacious? Too crowded? I can't say, but for whatever reason, it's never been my spot. But, clearly, lots of people love it.

About a year or so ago, they inexplicably decided to paint over the welcoming white of their walls with a dour coat of battleship grey. While its big picture windows still flood the room with light, it's a decidedly gloomier affair as a result. I'll never understand why they did that. In any event, I walked in last Sunday morning and asked the barista behind the counter to kindly grind my "breakfast blend" beans for our long-suffering electric drip machine. As she was doing so, I took the liberty of asking her why the management decided to paint the walls gray. She didn't know, but this morphed into a discussion about the aesthetics of the afore-mentioned dining room. I cited my fondness for the tiled floor and the filigree-laden ceiling and she agreed, suggesting that the room cries out for a garish chandelier. Then she said something that woke me right up.

"It's haunted, you know."

Huh? Yes, apparently neither she nor the rest of the staff look forward to spending any time in that room after they've closed up shop for the evening, as they've all evidently felt a "presence" there at one point or another. Even more intriguingly, there are evidently faces carved into the bricks down in the basement (I'd love to go check those out). My imagination captured, I mused that the room was probably the parlor of a private home at one distant point, so the notion that some former occupant from the spirit realm takes exception to a bunch of irritating yuppie douchebags sipping espresso within their walls undoubtedly prompts a bit of spiteful paranormal tomfoolery.

I paid for my bag of coffee grounds and repaired back to the apartment, but I doubt I'll ever look at that room the same way again.