Got lunch just now from Empanada Mama on 9th Avenue. I normally don't venture that far to get lunch (I often work through lunch entirely), but I was curious to try this place. I liked the name. I ordered one beef and one chicken, made with corn flour. As I waited I gazed out the shop window to see that this particular stretch of 9th Avenue, up through the 50s, really hasn't changed much over the years. Directly across the street was Afghan Kebab House. I vaguely recalled our law school days when Alane and I walked south from Lincoln Center one evening to get a kebab dinner at a place that was either Afghani or Uzbeki -- I don't recall.

The memory is murky: though it couldn't be more than 10 or 12 years since we did that, and so much of that old Hell's Kitchen neighborhood is frozen in time, it all seems like so many lifetimes ago.

The empanadas were good.