The Buzziest Restaurant in America

The mob has reached the vestibule. It’s 5 pm on a Thursday and the staff of Superiority Burger waits with  palpable tension, a battalion line bracing for assault. There is always a New York restaurant of the moment, but there’s something in the air here, something more than lingering post-Covid hunger FOMO, or the fact that this is the first intoxicatingly warm night of spring, the cherry and crabapple trees in bloom across the street in Tompkins Square Park, and Avenue A doing a surprising impression of Bourbon Street. There’s the usual animal kingdom of trend-chasers lined up outside the new restaurant, in the space that previously housed the legendary Ukrainian diner Odessa Restaurant: the bullies, the beseechers, the selfie-takers. But it’s hard not to detect an extra vibe. Call it an April-appropriate mixture of memory and desire.