Quick Eternity

In the 1990s and 2000s, when credit was cheap, and before anyone had yet disappeared into our personal screens or our megachurches, theme restaurants became more aggressive than a background show at dinner or peanut shells on the floor—the spaceship cosplay of Mars 2112, the flying shrimp theater at Benihana, the terrible Catskills patter of Johnny Rockets and the wet tedium of Rainforest Cafe, the quiet terror of Ninja. Eventually someone figured out, in the 2010s, that the food and beverage aspect wasn’t even necessary to get between a sucker and his money, and now we have what seems to be a permanent installation of The Friends Experience in New York, and the sticky sprinkle pool-vapidity of the multi-city Museum of Ice Cream, aka Charles Entertainment Cheese for the influencer death spiral set. This all makes a person (me) fantasize about “deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off,” to quote the first chapter of Moby-Dick.

I don’t do it. Instead, “[w]henever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet,” I think about a return visit to Quick Eternity, a (gently) Moby-Dick-themed cocktail bar and restaurant that stays out of your face, demanding little more of you than your presence in the isle of the Manhattoes’ s South Street Seaport. You’ll even be spared exposure to the newly-developed Seaport™ tourist district; it’s a standalone joint whose name comes from Ishmael’s observation that “...to chase and point lance at such an apparition as the Sperm Whale was not for mortal man. That to attempt it, would be inevitably to be torn into a quick eternity.”

Is it an allusion to the hospitality business, a dangerous pursuit that has torn asunder countless livelihoods? Perhaps, but proprietor Bryan Schneider, a restaurant and bar veteran who’d been dreaming of the concept for a decade, seems to be weathering it.

As someone who both respects the literary cult of Melville and pathetically abandoned my only attempt, just over a year ago, to read the entire book before the ship left Bedford, I approached Quick Eternity with humble abashment and soon felt a new resolve to try again with the Longman Critical Edition which is generously footnoted, contains an extensive glossary, and acknowledges revisions to the original text, made by Melville and his British editors.

On Quick Eternity’s ground floor, the bar features Azikiwe Mohammed’s whaling mural, framed by faux whale tusks, an homage to The Spouter-Inn:

“Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den—the bar—a rude attempt at a right whale’s head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the whale’s jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it.”

Whether or not the signature cocktail names (Howling Infinite, Golden Gleamings, Limit of the Land), lifted from the novel’s earliest pages, ring any bells for you, the drinks themselves are made with care and imagination, and if you want to talk about The Whale, the bartender is happy to do so. The food is straightforwardly delicious, with some dishes paying homage to the seafaring story (both clam and oyster chowder, a tack board) and others just giving the people what they may well want: a thin-crusted pizza, and a substantial smash burger served with crisp, vinegar powder-dusted fries, a genius way to impart tang without sog.

You can eat at the bar, or upstairs, in a handsome dining room called The Gam, a seafaring term from Chapter 53 that describes the friendly meeting of two whaling ships. In one corner, you’ll find a micro-bookstore, selling a selection of new and used books, including vintage copies of Moby-Dick, which also serve as a striking way for the server to present your check. By that point in the evening you’re probably sunk anyhow. As Ishmael puts it in the last chapter: “The drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth?—Because one did survive the wreck.” 

Belly up to the bar in the comments section