Te Amo El Faro

This past weekend my parents took my brother, Adam, Steve and I to El Faro in the West Village for my birthday dinner. My parents have been coming to this little hole in the wall tucked away on Greenwich Street...forever. They always tell the story that they were there in 1975 with their best friends at the time, Ben and Barbara, before they went to a taping of Saturday Night Live! (The story continues that my Mom then fell asleep during the show, because clearly the first season of SNL couldn't hold my Mom's attention. Or maybe it was just the sangria.) Anyway, my brother and I have inherited a love for this place. We always request to go their for birthday dinners or special occasions if we are in the city.

There are a few things that stay the same every time we go:
1. We almost always get lost finding the place. My brother must be in the car every time because no one else in my family can remember what cross-streets it's near. ("Horatio! Wait Greenwich Ave or Greenwich Street!?")
2. We never make reservations; just show up at an early bird special time. My parents told us we do that because the place doesn't take reservations. We learned this past go around that they've been taking them for the past six years. Opps.
3. We all order the exact. same. thing. My brother and Dad get the double order of lobster and white sauce, I get shrimp and saffron rice, my Mom gets a chicken dish. We order some clams to split and fried potato slices along with a pitcher of sangria.
4. I take some of the white sauce and put it on my shrimp dish. (Thinking about it right now, and knowing that I have still have leftovers in the fridge...mouth is watering....)

What I think is the best thing about it is that we never go too often. It's not our back up nice restaurant we go to. It's a part of my family's history, and will hopefully stay with us. The numbers at the table will grow, but at its foundation, I'll always remember it as a table for four in the corner.