Okay, what about neighborhood restaurants? We are very
conventional. We go to Pastis all the time. The food is
consistently good; the atmosphere is nice. They are great with
kids. We go a lot for brunch. It's sort of a big place for us to go
for brunch. They have this bread basket, and if you feel like
throwing caution to the wind, you can order that. Their french
fries are always good. It's a nice kind of family place, like I
could bring my parents there when they come into town. We also go
to a restaurant called Piccolo Angelo, which is a wonderful place
on Hudson and Jane. It's family-owned. The man who owns it is named
Renato. His wife, Pauline, comes in on Sundays, and his son and
daughter, Peter and Maria, are there working all the time. They are
such a lovely family. The food is delicious and you never order off
the menu. Renato will do this sort of spiel. They also make their
own wine.
Where would you go on a typical weekend day? I love to go to
Union Square to the Greenmarket. All the produce is great, and it's
kind of a fun scene. They have a lot of people and dogs, and
there's food. You can buy doughnuts and produce and flowers and
wool - there is a person who sells wool. They raise their own
sheep, and they dye and spin their own wool. The Coffee Shop is
right there, and it has really, really
delicious food. It is
another place that is great for kids, although there are a lot of
young people there and it's kind of a hip spot. The owner is a
friend of ours. Actually, our little boys are best friends at
school. I always have the coconut shrimp or a tuna salad, which is
really good. My husband always has the barbecued-chicken sandwich.
The Coffee Shop is right across the street from
Union Square Café,
which is also delicious, but you shouldn't take the kids there.
What are your kids' favorite places? If we go uptown,
there's a slide on the east side of
Central Park at East 67th
Street, right above the children's zoo, that my kids love. It's
sort of crazy and almost bordering on dangerous. I always catch my
breath when I go there because it's like polished stone. The bigger
kids sit on cardboard and they just go whipping down it. It's the
fastest slide I have ever seen. You even see adults going down it
sometimes. One day, when the Gates were still up, we walked across
the park, and we went to Shun Lee. We always go to the dim sum café
there. The restaurant is great, but the dim sum café is a lot of
fun because they come around with these carts, the steamed cart and
the fried cart.