Noah’s Lunch

Squibs & Blurbs

by Jerry Zimmerman

TEANECK, NJ—(Weekly Hubris)—8/30/10—I’m sitting here at this cramped little counter, with grease slowly dripping down my chin, french fries banging at my left elbow, my neighbor’s hot sauce and ketchup bottles filling the space where my right elbow should be, and all the rest of the teeny space allotted to me littered with skinny, well-used, crumpled-up napkins.

In front of me, on a slightly raised miniature stage, in a constant flurry of activity, is the Maestro, himself, a young, calm cook, dressed as if for a local rock concert, frying burgers, toasting buns, searing onions, and melting cheese, all on a griddle the impossibly small size of a large cutting board, and all at the same time with everything next to, on top of, and underneath each other.

Simultaneously, he takes orders for more of everything from the constant flow of incoming traffic, each order simply yelled to him above the noise of the place, each order a mish-mash of cheeseburgers and hamburgers, with onions and without onions, most orders comprising a large number of dizzying variations. And, of course, he never writes anything down and he always gets it right.

The rest of the performers in this constant action movie number two: a young woman, thin enough to have never actually tasted anything here, who’s relentless job is to fill french fry orders and keep the buns coming to the grill-man, toting in large stacks of buns from the back that she deftly rips apart from each other in the blink of an eye and deposits at the edge of the grill; and a smiling, Latino man, purveyor of all things liquid and every other necessity that doesn’t entail digestion—forks, knives, ketchup, napkins, take-out containers, etc.

Seated to my left in this swirling and totally delicious little universe, is my youngest son, Noah, the reason I am here in the first place. And “here” is White Manna, the smallest, quirkiest, most succulent throw-back hamburger joint you will ever want to squeeze into, located in Hackensack, NJ, but more deeply located in the folds of your brain where the old days still exist, when things were simple, local, and worked really well, though whoever originally planned this business must have been from Mars.

The whole restaurant (a rather grandiose description of this spot) is literally as big as someone’s kitchen . . . in a small house. As you walk in, you are immediately and actually on the back of the scrunched-up diner seated at the counter in front of you. Immediately in front of this diner is the whole deal—the grill, the food, the bun-lady and the drink guy—the whole conglomerate taking up as much space as the inside of an old Volkswagen Bug.

If you actually have a seat at the counter, you thank the eatery gods, since standing squeezed in between the walls and the seated clients are what seem to be all the rest of the residents of Hackensack, patiently waiting for their bountiful orders. Bountiful because, hold onto your wallets, the hamburgers are $1.05 (no, not $10.50—$1.05!) and, yes, they are small, but they are not skimpy and they are made before your eyes and they are delicious and everyone orders a TON of them at a time.

Let’s review. Here is a tiny diner with the prerequisite shiny silver walls, filled with greasy smoke and a miniscule counter that is always full, hungry locals of every size and stripe pressed one against the other and often out the door, all patiently waiting for humongous numbers of little burgers to be personally grilled for them by a calm and well-oiled machine of three even-tempered and smiling staff, with drinks and fries filling in all the empty spaces, in a room that is clean and workable and with a decor that pretty surely hasn’t been touched for the last umpteen decades.

It’s perfect.

Why I am here, gobbling down a handful of burgers, is also perfect.

Noah has been living in California for almost 15 years and, although I get out to see him several times a year, it is a rare event when he makes it back home. Noah’s latest visit lasted almost ten days and was a great delight. Besides enjoying his family, he was on a mission to eat all the food from his childhood that he missed and couldn’t get on the West Coast. He had his favorite pizza from his favorite pizza shop, his favorite Jamaican meat patties at his favorite Jamaican hole-in-the-wall, his favorite ice-cream from our local and famous ice-cream shop.

The last day of his visit came too quickly, but there it was. We had time to eat lunch at home before our trek to the airport, so I asked where he would like to have his last meal before heading back to the gastronomic hinterlands of California.

This was a serious question! He thought really long and hard. White Manna was the answer.

Lunch at White Manna was a revelation, a trip. The last time I was there was many, many years ago and all I really remembered was “grease.”  This time was different and wonderful.

Maybe the food had gotten better. Maybe there wasn’t so much greasy smoke as before.

Maybe nothing had changed at all and it was because my happy son was sitting next to me.