RIP, Kenny Shopsin, New York City's greatest restaurateur

Cory Doctorow 2:15 pm Tue Sep 4, 2018

Kenny Shopsin was the proprietor of Shopsin's, an incredible, storied, secretive, boisterous, tiny restaurant and general store in Greenwich Village, whose cookbook/memoir is a masterclass in sloppy diner chef-craft in the mode of Daniel Pinkwater's Fat Guys From Outer Space. He died this week.

I made a point of eating at Shopsin's every time I went to New York. It is the city's greatest restaurant, by far. I'd always namedrop Charlie Shopsin, a happy mutant whose sadly moribund Modern Mechanix blog is still a treasure-trove. Charlie's family members would greet me like a long lost cousin and ply me with delicious, weird food.

My heart goes out to all the Shopsin kids today, including Tamara Shopsin, whose own memoir, Arbitrary Stupid Goal, is the perfect companion piece to her father's cookbook.

(via Kottke)

(Image: Rex Roof, CC-BY)

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