Fairway Café is cheap and often good. Don’t close it, neighborhood cries

        Cuisinary comfort is precious on the Upper West Side. No wonder the neighborhood is organizing a resistance to the possible closing of Fairway Café. When it is good, it is very, very good.  Admittedly, when it is bad, it’s horrid and we feel betrayed.  But it’s cheap and mostly welcoming.  We enjoy watching Mitch London, the often querulous baker who runs the place, grump around and rustle up some freebie onion crisps just because he’s so proud of them. His three course $26 prix fixe jollied the unemployed and sustained us as Wall Street imploded.  It could be cheaper to feed the family at Fairway Café than at home.

         Often the burgers are great. Sometimes they’re overcooked. Sometimes the place runs out of meat at 8:30 in the evening.  Out of meat?  You’re in a grocery store, good lord, go down and get some. Fairway is already stuffed with groceries.  Let them knock down the brownstones on West 74th Street before they torch our canteen.  It’s where I have my breakfast meetings: sometimes an egg salad sandwich on multigrain bread with leftovers for lunch. That's Tom Valenti's favorite indulgence here too. Gourmands and celebrities come here too.  I could not resist waving to the late Don Hewitt flirting with his wife Marilyn Berger over the Caesar salad.

       Will the neighborhood protest escalate into a shopping boycott? Who knows?  They already have a website savefairwaycafe.com

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