All of my life, where have you been?

I wonder if I'll ever see you again. The Lenny Kravitz song, you know? Well, the video was taped at Cafe Habana. The story line is exactly what you would expect of a late 90's music video: the rockstar (lenny) is no longer in love with his girlfriend (gina gershon) and starts falling for the hot waitress behind the counter of a local diner (Cafe Habana). It's one of those music videos that's insulting to viewers with an IQ over 10; the story leaves nothing to be inferred or imagined, it flashes "MONDAY" and "TUESDAY" etc. to highlight that not only does the smitten rockstar keep going back to the diner to see the hottie, he does so every day for an entire week!

Despite being immortalized in this seminal Lenny Kravitz video, Cafe Habana has a much greater claim to fame: its grilled corn. My friend Nadia, once a New Yorker but currently an Angelino, insisted on having Corn from Habana in the middle of our late afternoon rendezvous. She said that every day she's away from this, she misses it; she was stunned that I hadn't been. Because she wanted it so bad, and because we had a few hours before our respective dinners, we started in that direction. In Nolita, where either a cupcake or rice pudding or gelato seems to call out for you at every corner, this seemed like the most sensible snack.


Sensible, it was not. Incredible, it was. Handed to us from across the takeout counter (a satellite to the original sit-down restaurant but only a couple feet away) this corn was much more than I imagined. Smothered in an undecipherable cream, (I'm guessing part mayonnaise, part a soft cheese) this corn, grilled to charred perfection, is heightened to a snack of extreme indulgence. This cream base is just the start: on top of that is a generous coating of grated cheese, I'm not sure what kind exactly, queso fresco maybe? Manchego? It's a white-ish cheese, fresh, but with a bite. On top of that, a dusting of Cayenne pepper, the heat easily tolerable by those with a low threshold for it, and the flavor just the right compliment to the rich cream and the sweet corn. Served with a wedge of lime for tang, this cob of corn was the most electrifying $1.90 I've spent in New York. We each had another.

I can't but wonder if the song is Lenny's homage to the food there, the corn specifically, cloaked in a more rockstar and MTV-friendly infatuation with a woman.