The Best Days and the Worst Days

There is a ritual I’ve developed over the span of many years in New York. When something particularly celebratory or painful happens in my life, I head to one specific restaurant for a meal.

I have designated Superiority Burger as my go-to place “for the best days and the worst days,” and my patronage of this sceney vegetarian spot is one of my most consistent practices in New York. In the nearly 10 years since the restaurant opened, I have gone there to celebrate every new job, every breakup, every personal high and professional low.

My first trip to the place I annoyingly call “Sup Burg” over text was in June 2016, over a year after it had opened in its original location — a miniscule spot on E. 9th St. I was invited to dinner there by my friend Becca, and it’s been a fundamental part of my life ever since. The original spot was reportedly only 240 square feet — an exaggerated portrayal of cramped Manhattan dining. The kitchen took up approximately 80% of the shop, and there were five small seats built into the wall and window.

Back then, Superiority Burger was both enigmatic (because it was a pain in the ass to eat a meal there) and a relief to longtime vegetarians like myself who still had yet to experience a good veggie burger. I stopped eating meat in 2005, and the first time I ate at Sup Burg, it was revelatory. Sure, there were various local chains and fast food chains attempting to develop an edible veggie burger, but the inventiveness present in the Superiority Burger spoke to a long dilemma of vegetarianism: We want to be able to eat seemingly unhealthy or decadent food, too.

It was relatively inexpensive back in those days, and it quickly became the place I dubbed “my favorite restaurant in New York.” As a result, it became my default for the days that felt worth celebrating and the ones where I needed a little lift. It was a home for the seemingly most impactful days of my life, but in the nearly nine years since my first trip to that quirky little restaurant, just about everything about their business has changed. It closed for multiple years to move from the East Village to Avenue A. It is now a large diner with an expensive, extensive menu and no more slider sizes for its burgers.

I don’t care how much Sup Burg or I have changed over that time, however. There are restaurants I like better now, meals that are less expensive, places I find comfort in that don’t require a trip to Manhattan. I still enjoy the veggie burger and the beets, but at this point I only go to Superiority Burger when I feel particularly hopeless or hopeful. My attachment to the restaurant is, in many ways now, simply an attachment to my own ritual for self-support.

This is important to me. When I lived in San Francisco in my early adulthood, it was easy for me to find “my” version of the city. On the mornings when the insomnia was a lost cause, I could hop on my bike and wind my way through the city and over the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County. There is always a quiet area of a park, and an abundance of brilliant scenery. These types of places become a respite from the general chaos of the city, which can be energizing some days or exhausting on many others.

After 15 years of living in major American cities (two of them), this is what I think non-city people don’t understand about how city people “have the energy for” or “can tolerate” the intensity of these places. Sure, we have great restaurants and amazing cultural institutes and a community for everyone, but we also have ways of shrinking the city for ourselves sometimes.

Finding “my” New York took a very long time. The parks are so crowded, and there are so many options for restaurants, coffee shops, and bakeries, that I found it difficult (and antithetical to the spirit of spending all this money to live in a diverse city) to attach myself to specific places and use them as a respite.

But first at Superiority Burger, and later at many other commercial and public institutions, I came to find my most comfortable version of this city. The NYC Ferry is one of my things. The bench in front of Lee Krasner’s “The Seasons” at The Whitney is one of my places. The shadow of a particular tree in Brooklyn Bridge Park is one of my spots. Some of the places and things I love in New York are constantly crowded while others offer (relative) solitude at times. (Superiority Burger’s later weeknight hours have become my preferred time to visit.)

These are places that belong to no one in particular and are communally enjoyed, but you can’t tell me that I don’t own that bench at the Whitney. And it doesn’t matter to me that Superiority Burger is possibly culturally overexposed at this point. These places help define my life in New York, and all the good and the bad that comes along with it.

So, this is the place where I go to eat the same veggie burger I have been eating during the most pivotal days of my adult life. It provides consistency beneath the tumult of change. The food is very good, but the familiarity is what keeps me coming back.

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