When everything’s not quite

When you are sick and exhausted and have a massive to-do list (see: burnout), sometimes you just want to escape for an hour or two. And sometimes a brand-new restaurant is just the place.

I first encountered Hunky Dory on a sort of extra vacation day I had right at the start of the year, when it obligingly opened up for coffee and pastries right as I was looking for a destination. I ate a beautiful decadent bowl of oatmeal with poached pear, along with a hot cup of coffee, as I watched the owners work toward putting the finishing touches on the space. (Perfect fuel for a January day in the Botanic Garden, where you might encounter my old friend the torii, also working on some personal growth and r&r.)

Hunky Dory’s location on Franklin Avenue around Park Place makes it easy for me to drop by–it’s loosely on my way to the garden, home from work, to other fine establishments in the neighborhood that I frequent. So last weekend I found myself impulse buying a tastier banana chocolate chip muffin than I had any right to expect.

And tonight I nabbed a seat at the bar; some delightful cod tots; a ham, beans, rice, and egg confection; and a warm chocolate chip sesame cookie: a perfect three-course meal in bites. Perhaps even more enticing than the food were the drinks (chosen from a shortened, second-day-of-opening menu): a cocktail with oolong tea, whey, and meyer lemon, with whispers of new components weaving through each sip, and a nonalcoholic concoction mostly hibiscusy with an edge of toasted rice. Sitting and reading a pretty Brooklyn essay collection and coughing merrily to myself, I got to luxuriate in a brief escape from everything awful. Everything besides the restaurant wasn’t quite hunky dory, but, maybe, like SEPTA, getting there?

 

 

 

 

 

 

(PS: This post was apparently brought to you by hyperlinks! Who can say why or where they’ll go.)