The Right Thing

New York City is a city full of restaurants. I live near Columbia University, in a neighborhood that is extra rich in restaurants. There are a billion of them, and many of them are very, very good.
But on a particular day, at a particular moment, only a very few of them will be right.
This Saturday Z and I woke up late, after an adventurous Friday night. We had little coffee and no milk in the house, and so were reduced to venturing out for our mornign fix. We walked past Tom's Diner, and past the fancy French-style and Italian-Style restaurants with the numerous sidewalk tables. We crossed the street and walked past super-posh Henry's, and then we saw, back across the street, the Blue Moon Bakery.
The Blue Moon Bakery has perhaps 6 tables outside, all small. It is on the corner so some are on one side of the building and some on the other. I don't know if it has any tables inside: we didn't venture in. The tables were for table service only, so we sat down and waited for service.
Our waitress was thin and smiley, with curly hair. She made us just a little more joyful.
Z had a little sandwhich with cheddar and lettuce and cucumbers and mustard on rye, and I had half a fresh-baked baguette with butter and jam. I had coffee and orange juice, he had a cold mocha thing. All of it was delicious. Sweet butter, good jam, fresh squeezed juice, simple sandwhich, frozen-coffee drink that was more flavor than sugar. Simple and easy, outside and in the shade, at a place that had attitude (joyful, simple, honest) rather than airs.
It was the right thing, and it set the stage for a day of wandering up and down the city, lying around in Riverside Park, visiting with a friend of ours, going down and adventuring to find dim sum in china town. Just a sweet and lovely day, which felt stolen because Z had almost-promised to go down to Brooklyn for all of it.
That was my Saturday, the start of a weekend that recharged me.
Food, of course, was there for every bit of it.