Hiding in Plain Sight
Stranger than Fiction's Maggie Gyllenhaal was
overwhelmed by
New York at first. But when she found the little
shops and cafés that led her into the world inside the city, that
changed. . Photograph by Justin Stephens.
I like the edges of New York," says
Maggie Gyllenhaal, star
of this month's
Stranger than Fiction, a comedy about a
novelist (played by Emma Thompson) who's struggling to complete her
latest book - if only she can find a way to kill off her main
character, a supposedly fictional IRS agent named Harold Crick
(Will Ferrell). But Crick is actually alive and well in the real
world and suddenly aware of the author's words and intentions.
Fighting for survival, he enters an unlikely romance with a wild
and crazy tattooed pastry chef, played by Gyllenhaal.
Though the part is a bit of a stretch for the big-eyed,
apple-cheeked Gyllenhaal, the fairy-tale nature of the film isn't
that different from her reality: She lives something of a storybook
life amid the bakeries and bookstores of
New York City. We're not
talking about mainstream Manhattan but about what she calls the
unlikely yet fascinating "edges" of the metropolis. She was born
in NYC but moved at a young age to
Los Angeles with her show
business family. Her mother, Naomi Foner, is a screenwriter who was
nominated for an Oscar for
Running on Empty, and her father,
Stephen Gyllenhaal, is a much-lauded television and film director.
Her brother is, of course, Jake Gyllenhaal, who has starred in
films like
Jarhead, Donnie Darko, and last year's Oscar
contender
Brokeback Mountain. It wasn't until college that
Gyllenhaal was able to return to New York, where she studied
literature at
Columbia University; she graduated in 1999.
But, Gyllenhaal says, "I always wanted to be an actress, and I
think I imagined I would stay in New York." She's done both,
starring in films ranging from her eye-opening breakthrough
Secretary to
Oliver Stone's
World Trade Center to the
recent
Sherrybaby (where she plays an ex-con trying to
reconnect with her daughter), all while putting down roots in the
city that has always felt like home to her, even when it wasn't.
Here's a glimpse of her New York City life, on the edges.
Tell me about Columbia. Are there places around there where you
liked to go and that you still return to? It was a very
different city to me than it is now. I live on the other side of
the city, and I almost never go up that far anymore, but there is a
great place near Columbia called the Hungarian Pastry Shop. My
mother actually went to
Barnard College, and she told me about it.
There's this delicious pastry called a rigo janci. It's a rich,
rich chocolate thing. When I was in school, I went there all the
time to drink coffee and eat sweets and study. It's really funky
and looks like it hasn't changed much since 1975. There are always
adorable girls working there and people reading and a lot of
college students. I would mostly just sit in the café and read, and
friends would come in, and people would talk to you while you'd try
to get some work done. I really like that place. It's across the
street from Saint John the Divine, where I actually once was almost
arrested.
Okay, we'll get to the arrest in a minute. What makes the city
so special to you? I've always felt more comfortable in New
York than in
California. But it's funny, because my feeling about
New York is actually that it's a tough place to live. Things move
so quickly and it can be very dirty and crowded and rough, but what
is so amazing about New York is that you can go into a little
restaurant or a little shop or a little bookstore, and all of a
sudden, you're in a completely different place. I think people
create these environments in New York - these very specific,
eccentric environments. If you know of these little secret spots,
you can take a turn into one of them, and all of a sudden, it's
calm and quiet. If you know enough places like that, New York
becomes a much more bearable place to live.
Tell me about some of these escapes. Let's start with food.
I love this restaurant called Prune. It's in the East Village, and
it's just a teeny restaurant with incredibly good, unpretentious
food, and the people who work there are lovely. A lot of people
know about it - it's not my secret. You have to wait an hour for
brunch, but every meal is delicious. They have this liver dish
that's really delicious. Across the street from Prune is Russ &
Daughters. It's like an old market on the Lower East Side, and it
has incredibly delicious smoked fish, salmon, herring, beautiful
pickles, and beautiful dried fruit. It kind of feels like it could
be 1945 in there. There's another one I like, Café Sabarsky - it's
in the Neue Galerie, which is a beautiful old building done in the
style of turn-of-the-century
Austria. I went there on my birthday
and had breakfast at the café, which has all Viennese food, like
sausages and warm potato salad and delicious coffee. Everything is
so thoughtful, and even the coffee cups look like beautiful
Viennese antiques.
Sounds like Breakfast at Tiffany's. Where do you
shop? I like a shop in NoLita called Mayle, which is just a
small boutique shop. Usually the designer Jane Mayle is there, and
she makes really beautiful clothes. Right near there is A Détacher.
A designer opened the store, and it's a small shop with really
beautiful and interesting clothes. I think it's hard to find Jane
Mayle or A Détacher at other places. It's part of what I like about
New York. You couldn't go to just any city and find that shop. You
have to go to New York.
Are there any bookstores as unique as those clothing shops?
I like a bookstore on
Bleecker Street called the Biography
Bookshop. They don't have only biographies, but I think they
probably have a good selection. I read mostly fiction, so I don't
even know how their biography section is. They are so helpful
there. If you look on the shelf for something and you can't find
it, just ask the guy behind the desk, and they will dig it up for
you. I also like Three Lives & Company bookshop. Three Lives is
prettier, while the other is more ramshackle, but they are both
pleasant to be in.
Where do you typically spend your lunch hours? The best
pizza is Joe's Pizza. It's just great pizza, with a really thin and
crunchy crust. You can get either a regular slice or a slice with
fresh mozzarella, and either is delicious. And also the tomato
sauce is kind of light-colored and not sweet. You know how
sometimes bad tomato sauce is sweet? This is not sweet. It's sort
of salty, light, fresh-tasting tomato sauce with cheese on a thin
crust. It's really what I think pizza is meant to be. It's not
fancy at all, but it's really good. Oh, you know what's a great
place, a good neighborhood place? Bonsignour Café. It's like a
takeout-food neighborhood place. There are only four tables. You
can't sit down and eat. It has really
delicious food, really good
coffee, and really great people who work there.
What about dessert? Is there another neighborhood place you want
to take us to? On Ninth Avenue between 40th and 41st, there's a
place called the Cupcake Café. It's a little hole-in-the-wall place
with incredibly good cupcakes and cakes, and they're beautifully
decorated. They're made with butter-cream icing, so they're not too
sweet. I guess you have to kind of know about it, because it
really is a hole in the wall. There's no air conditioning.
Nothing in there except beautiful cupcakes. Whenever I find myself
in that neighborhood, I always think about going there and getting
one of those cupcakes.
What are your favorite little pocket neighborhoods? I like
the far West Village, where it's still, at least for the moment,
pretty quiet. When I was in college, I used to spend a lot of time
on the Lower East Side, although I don't anymore. I remember
feeling that was an amazing place at that time. Everyone lived in
such teeny-tiny apartments, so there was one particular coffee shop
called the Pink Pony that everyone used as their living room. Union
Square farmers' market is great. It's best on the weekends. It
depends on the season, but you can get really great local produce.
There's one stand that has delicious grainy bread and granola and
things like that. You can get beautiful cheese and farm-raised
meat. It's a really good market. Really far west in Chelsea is
nice. Central Park really puts all the other parks to shame. I like
Prospect Park in Brooklyn too. It's really beautiful. The same
person,
Frederick Law Olmsted, designed both of them.
Do you have a favorite museum? I have never liked going to
museums. I have always felt like they overwhelmed me. I like
smaller museums where you don't feel like,
Oh, there are three
more floors, and if I don't see them, maybe I've missed
everything. Actually, I really like the
Guggenheim because you
start at the top and walk down, and by the time you've gotten down,
you've looked at everything. So it's manageable. I actually really
liked the temporary
Museum of Modern Art. When the new MoMA was
being built, they had a temporary one in Queens, and it was very
small. Well, it was a big warehouse, but you could walk through it
in an hour. I think that's why I like the Neue Galerie too.
Besides walking, how else can one get some exercise in New
York? I do yoga mostly. I go to a place called the Shala, and I
go to Om. Basically, when you go to yoga in New York, it's like,
we're up, we're down, we have an hour and a half. Let's just start
and do some yoga and not talk too much. Let's do what we're here to
do and give ourselves the space to calm down a little bit.
Where would you send us for dinner? I really like Il Buco,
which is always beautifully lit. I think it's on Bond Street,
between Bowery and Lafayette. Bowery and Lafayette are huge, big
streets. There are trucks going down them all the time; it's noisy.
You turn down
Bond Street, and then you turn into this restaurant,
and you could be in some other place. They have 20 different kinds
of
olive oil and really interesting, delicious, fresh, and
beautiful food. I love that place. I just love the food at Babbo.
It's small, with a cozy atmosphere. My brother's best friend used
to be a chef there, so I got to know a lot of the people who work
there. I love
David Lynch, who is now the general manager; I
learned a lot about wine from him. I've gone in the summer, and
it's beautiful, too, but somehow it really fits well in the winter.
There isn't a fireplace in there, but it feels like you could be
right next to the fire in some place you'd found in
Italy. In fact,
I remember we went to Babbo in a blizzard - my father, brother, a
friend of ours, and I - and we ordered pasta with butter and
truffles. It was incredibly delicious. The next day, there was
still a blizzard, and my dad and my brother were trying to figure
out if there were some way they could get truffles so they could
make it. Gramercy Tavern is bigger, but it's got delicious food. I
took my great aunt there when she turned 90, and we sat in the
corner, and we had this really great meal. What I remember most is
this incredible cheese plate we had that came on this huge wooden
board, and this really charming waiter who went through 30 cheeses
with us while we picked which cheeses we wanted. I always think of
that place as kind of a fall place, an autumn place.
Where should we go for theater? New York Theatre Workshop is
very small, so it doesn't have to appeal to as many people as
Broadway does. I've seen some really fantastic things there. I saw
some great Caryl Churchill plays there. The Public Theater on
Lafayette is bigger. It's where Shakespeare in the Park comes from.
I've seen great things there too. I've done a lot of readings but
never a play there. The
Brooklyn Academy of Music is great. I did a
play there with
Cate Blanchett, and I've seen a bunch of stuff
there. They've got a great movie theater, too, and there is always
interesting stuff happening - short runs and a lot of international
stuff. I also love Film Forum. It will be playing a couple of
interesting movies every time you go. They have really good
popcorn. They don't put salt on it, so you have to put it on
yourself. It's so different to see a movie there than it is to go
and see it at a big multiplex. It's not quite a revival house
because they also play contemporary things, but they play very
obscure contemporary things. It always feels pleasant, even if the
movie isn't good. I saw
La Dolce Vita there recently.
Tell me about your most memorable day in the city. Getting
arrested at Saint John the Divine! It's across the street from the
Hungarian Pastry Shop, and it's sort of known for its peacocks. You
can see these beautiful peacocks walking around. I believe it's one
of the biggest Gothic Revival cathedrals in
North America. I once
went in with a boyfriend and listened to people singing at mass.
I'm half Jewish and grew up as a Jew, so I'm not used to being in
churches. We listened to the choir, and we kind of hid in this
corner. We were hiding in a dark nook. I think we might have
climbed up some stairs. We went up there to listen to the music,
and then we heard that they were closing and locking up the church.
I was probably 19. We looked at each other and thought,
Let's
just stay. We didn't even know each other that well. We got a
little braver as the hours went by and started to explore a little
bit and accidentally set off an alarm or something. It was about 10
at night, and then two cops showed up and hassled us for a little
while. They finally said, "All right, get out of here." They scared
us appropriately - enough that I probably wouldn't wander in there
at night by myself again.
She Said...
Where Maggie Gyllenhaal lives on the edge in NYC
Dining
Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca, Italian, moderate to expensive,
(212) 777-0303,
www.babbonyc.com
Bonsignour Café, French, inexpensive to moderate, (212)
229-9700,
www.bonsignourcafe.com
Café Sabarsky, Viennese, moderate, (212) 288-0665,
www.neuegalerie.org
Cupcake Café, desserts, inexpensive, (212) 465-1530,
www.cupcakecafe.com
Gramercy Tavern, American, expensive, (866) 749-4923,
www.gramercytavern.com
Hungarian Pastry Shop, desserts, inexpensive, (212)
866-4230
Il Buco, Italian, expensive, (212) 533-1932,
www.ilbuco.com
Joe's Pizza, inexpensive, (212) 255-3946,
www.famousjoespizza.com
Pink Pony, French, moderate, (212) 253-1922
Prune Restaurant, American, expensive, (212) 677-6221
Russ & Daughters, delicatessen, moderate, (212)
475-4880,
www.russanddaughters.com
Shopping
A Détacher, (212) 625-3380
Biography Bookshop, (212) 807-8655
Mayle, (212) 625-0406
Three Lives & Company, (212) 741-2069,
www.threelives.com
Union Square Greenmarket, (212) 788-7476,
www.cenyc.org
Art
Guggenheim Museum, (212) 423-3500,
www.guggenheim.org
The Museum of Modern Art, (212) 708-9400,
www.moma.org
Neue Galerie, (212) 628-6200,
www.neuegalerie.org
Theater/Film
Brooklyn Academy of Music, (718) 636-4100,
www.bam.org
Film Forum, (212) 727-8110,
www.filmforum.com
New York Theatre Workshop, (212) 460-5475,
www.nytw.org
The Public Theater, (212) 539-8500,
www.publictheater.org
Yoga
Om Yoga Center, (212) 254-9642,
www.omyoga.com
The Shala Yoga House, (212) 979-9988,
www.theshala.com
Elsewhere
The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, (212) 316-7490,
www.stjohndivine.org
Central Park, (212) 310-6600,
www.centralparknyc.org
Columbia University, (212) 854-1754,
www.columbia.edu
Prospect Park, (718) 965-8951,
www.prospectpark.org
We Said...
Where we live on the edge in NYC
Lodging
The Maritime Hotel, very expensive, (212) 242-4300,
www.themaritimehotel.com. We first
learned about this stylish spot on a website for the world's
more unusual hotels. And unique it is, for it sports a natty
nautical theme throughout (it was built back in 1966 as the
National Maritime Museum). What makes it even more popular
are its trendy onsite restaurants and proximity to the
happening Meatpacking District.
Dining
Panino'teca 275, inexpensive to moderate, (718) 237-2728,
www.paninoteca275.com. Brooklyn's picturesque
Carroll Gardens is the new home of chef-owner India Ennis's clever
Italian-inspired cuisine. Take a seat outside and, surrounded by
beautifully landscaped brownstones and some of the area's most
handsome churches, savor everything from the signature panini to an
after-dinner glass of grappa.
Shows
Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (212) 556-4750. This family-friendly musical is making its debut, appropriately enough, in the Big Apple and, appropriately enough, just in time for the holidays. Showing at the Hilton Theatre November 8 through January 7.
Activities
NYC Run tours, (646) 649-5321,
www.nycrun.com. After dining at all of the great restaurants Maggie Gyllenhaal suggested, you’re going to need to work off some calories, so why not combine a nice little jog with some sightseeing on one of this company’s numerous guided Gotham running tours. You decide where, how long, and how fast.
Sky Rink, (212) 336-6666,
www.chelseapiers.com/sr01.htm. Everyone knows about gliding around the ice with your beloved at Rockefeller Center. But if you’ve been there, done that, and prefer to stay warm and cozy, a nice alternative is this indoor ice rink at
Chelsea Piers, which offers
ice skating year-round.