Sleepless in Empanada Mama
Fan Chen
Let’s start at midnight, when all restaurants in Hell’s Kitchen are closed and Ninth Avenue is dark. Between 51st and 52nd Streets, the only sources of lights are a one-dollar pizza shop, a deli, and Empanada Mama, the Latin restaurant which has an “OPEN 24H” red neon sign that has salvaged and consoled hundreds of hungry, nocturnal souls between sunset and sunrise.
Wait at the entranceway for a few minutes before Stephanie Nino, the manager, coordinates the crowds in her buzz-cut, curly hair and a loose floral blouse. At 12 a.m., front desk usually bustles with deliverymen, the homeless, people for pick-up and parties for dine-in, with whom Stephanie never confuses. She asks someone out, let a few in, then waves at you to follow a waiter through the hallway of wooden floor and warm lights: bar on the left, tables on the right.
Glance at what others are eating and drinking — oftentimes, spicy chicken empanadas and Margaritas — before you enter the main dining area, where the walls are painted in shiniest red, yellow, and green. This area houses the loudest music and the happiest laughter. Hanging on the brick walls are eight giant oil paintings of tropical plants, painted in broad brushstrokes. Tables are wooden with steel stands, and chairs are metal in glossy red.
Decisions are not easy to make, because the menu is 11 pages long, with more than 150 kinds of food and drink, including 35 empanada fillings. And there are constantly scenes that steal your attention: A woman dressed in a pink kirtle with a black canvas purse hanging on her chest spots someone and crows “Yoooo Biiitch.” She strides all the way from the north-western to south-eastern corner, dodging all chairs, tables, and busy food servers to hug her long-time-no-see friend, who is dressed in black leather skirt, and cheers for the unexpected reunion.
The music, often playlists of Cardi B or Lady Gaga, is loud enough to swallow conversations that roasted someone’s ex or that centers on anime, Apple Watch, and religion, but not enough to mute the clinking sounds of draft beer bottles, silverwares, laughter, or curses that burst from the tipsy or drunk crowd.
Often, among a party of the chattering six or seven, one or two are asleep. Their heads rest on the wooden tabletops and their flushed faces are squashed. They wake up once or twice during their meal, sit still, and stare into the ceiling fans that spin dizzily fast. The five wooden blades of each fan, which only run at night, do not actually create any breeze. But they churn the euphoric air of a weekend night, pass it from parties awaiting to be seated at the entrance to waiters and waitresses who walk out of the back kitchen, holding in each arm four or five rattan baskets of freshly fried empanadas, humming all the way towards the tables.
The exuberance ebbs a little at around 3 a.m., but often resumes at 4, when gay clubs in Hell’s Kitchen are closed and all the flashy, flamboyant personalities, “sometimes weirdos,” crowd the place to continue their revelry, said Stephanie, the manager. The restaurant, all tables full, dazzles in glittering silky clothing, shiny purses, and dangling earrings. Drag queens’ high heels thud the floor, while three men all in identical crew-cut hairstyle and tight, white sleeveless shirt and shorts grooves and dances to the music. The other night, a customer accidently knocked down a chair. A drunken man in gold chains and braids yelled delightedly, “You did the damn right thing! Do it again!” The drunk walked up to the chair, slammed it down again, banged the floor. Waiters and waitresses calmly watched by the cashier.
“It’s nothing. We’ve seen more,” they told me later.
The “more” includes:
A man dressed in sleeveless green fur coat, leather tank top and shorts, with sunglasses on his half-red-half-blonde hair, lashes the floor with a whip at the entranceway.
An intoxicated man around 50 who dines in every night. He takes a bite of empanadas, and always shuts down, falling asleep. He wakes up after 20 minutes or so, calls the waiter, and asks, “Did I eat?”
A 72-year-old, Latino man, who wears beanies all the time, winter or summer, who the staff secretly nicknamed “the soup guy.” The soup guy orders, and only orders chicken soup with yellow rice every single time. He too arrives at the Empanada Mama intoxicated. No waiter could ever have a conversation with him because he murmurs inaudibly (But the staff like him, because he is quiet, tips generously, and sometimes pays twice).
Close to 5:30 a.m., drunken customers slowly zigzag out, and waiters start to clean up the restaurant. It is now their time to take a real good rest on the couches and do some bookkeeping. Chefs walk out of the back kitchen and treat everyone to plates of steamy rice meal. Stephanie mops the bar counter, and joins the staff, fist-greeting them. Three waitresses from the Philippines, who Stephanie names “The Filipino Mafia,” sit next to each other, chitter-chattering in Tagalog. Stephanie punches them and voices her objection aloud. “Hey, hey, I don’t understand what you’re saying.” The Mafia laughs, and teasingly raise their voice without changing their language, to annoy Stephanie even more.
Next to the girls sits quietly Felipe Florez from Colombia. Unlike the others, who all wear jeans, he has on an entire jogging suit with an orange beanie. Felipe speaks little English, but he enjoys the boisterousness. He also enjoys working overnight, because then he’s available to study advertising at Google Academy during the daytime. The only thing that bothers him a little about working overnight is that sometimes, drunken male customers may hit on him.
Dezmon Rogcis, of North Carolina, another manager at the front desk, picks up the conversation. He too doesn’t like flirting with customers, but recently he has developed a major crush on one of the regulars, Yancy.
“Yancy who?” Stephanie asks.
“Yancy! Yancy the go-go dancer. His body is so…fine. The big, beefy, sexy muscles…” Dezmon closes his eyes as he talks and hugs himself around the chest to as if to feel the biceps. “Oh my god, Yancy!” Dezmon sings out.
“Oh, I thought you’re talking about Nancy,” Stephanie says.
“No, not Nancy. Nancy is fine. He’s just a normal customer,” Dezmon says. “But he tries to get free stuff all the time, just because he’s cool with us. It doesn’t work like that.”
One more hour of their chatter comes the end of the overnight shift, which runs from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Wooden tables have been put aside and re-aligned. Red steel chairs have been placed on the tables and put down again. Bar counter is mopped, floor swept.
Felipe puts on his backpack. He’s going to take the downtown 1 train and then the ferry to Staten Island. He will take a nap, and study advertising in his apartment, another step closer to his career goal of opening his own marketing agency in Colombia.
Stephanie will stay around until the morning shift takes over. She needs to pick up schoolwork in civil engineering. She wants to find a job there instead of one in the restaurant industry, which she thinks is crazy because “people in restaurant industry either do drugs or alcohol, or both.”
Dezmon stays till the last minute to count the money and finish the final report. After he heads north to The Bronx, he will go to the pharmacy, get high, and sleep as if under anesthesia till 5 p.m., and wake up for work again. “I’m looking for a job that pays well and doesn’t have much to do,” he says.
“That’s everyone’s dream,” Stephanie says and leaves the restaurant.
Dezmon prints out the long, uncut receipt and waves everyone goodbye. It’s 7 a.m., Hell’s Kitchen is bathed in daylight. Empanada Mama in its daytime will be just like other diners in the neighborhood. Its speaker will play Christmas songs instead of Nicki Minaj or Britney Spears. Its customers will be families, elders, and idling locals instead of the nocturnal New Yorkers. Those nocturnal creatures will be asleep. They will wake up hungry after sunset, sniff the fried food all the way to Empanada Mama, ready to party when the clock strikes to 12 and the red neon sign lights up again.
