An Onion Ring Crawl Around Manhattan
^ Just when you think you’ve hit rock bottom after finding yourself Times Square, you take the escalator up to the Margaritaville Resort and Restaurant and realize rock bottom has a basement
Sadly there are just some foods you cannot order without evoking impulsive judgement from your fellow diners. Order a cosmopolitan and you register as a sex-starved middle aged woman manually warping the narrative of your own monotonous flat-lining life by, if only momentarily, dawning your inner Samantha Jones and telling yourself that this is what it feels like to be alive. Order a well-done steak (and with A1 sauce like it’s some high end ketchup) and by cremating your meat you herald yourself as man child who is blissfully unaware of how unsophisticated he is and your mother most likely still makes your yearly doctor appointments with the same physician you’ve seen since you were 11. Order a salad and ask the waiter what dressings they have then after hearing the full list say “I’ll just have ranch”, knowing full and well that you were going to get ranch all along, and you’ve permanently labeled yourself as the maddening type who will silently let a friend painstakingly plan a trip without offering any help then on said-trip, continually drop unsolicited critiques, like the always antagonizing, “Well I would’ve done it this way.”
But of all the foods to assume responsibility for bringing to the table, onion rings are on a whole other echelon. I’ll preface this with the loophole in which if your meal already comes with onion rings, you’re automatically rid of any guilt by association. But by ordering a stand-alone plate of onion rings, you are essentially parading that your preferred culinary palate is best captured by the food vendors one will find at the Iowa State Fair, Flintstone vitamins are tasked with quarterbacking the basic functioning of your vital organs, and there’s a strong chance that at the end of the meal, you’ll unabashedly remark to the table that “the banana split for two is talking to me.”
In the name of personal growth, instead of blindly assigning hyperbolic clichés to niche groups of diners, I wanted to walk a mile in one of their proverbial pairs of shoes. So to repeat our cutting investigative journalism no one asked for, my friends Frances and Dorothy joined me to experience a full range of deep fried regret so you never have to:
Margaritaville in Times Square
These Onion Rings own timeshare in Tampa. The Onion Rings are what happens when you use Sun-In. These Onion Rings wake up at 2am and find themselves thinking about what ever happened to Justin Guarini from Season 1 of American Idol. These Onion Rings only gave you a sad little half-scoop of guacamole at Chipotle. These Onion Rings are that picture of you from 4th grade when you got a full head of cornrows during your Christmas vacation trip to the Bahamas. These Onion Rings are SmarterChild.
Grade: 5/10
Gage & Tollner in Downtown Brooklyn
You check to see if these Onion Rings are wearing a wedding band. These Onion Rings are Marcus Aurelius holding court in most men’s minds. You find yourself looking at these Onion Ring’s instagram story 1 minute after it was posted. All of these Onion Ring’s suiting is custom made. These Onion Rings are a dressing room with a skinny mirror. These Onion Rings are the door opening sound on AIM. These Onion Rings don’t think twice when they take things from the hotel mini bar.
Grade: 8.75/10
Burger King in Downtown Brooklyn
These Onion Rings are Comic Sans. These Onion Rings are the repeating chorus of “Yummy” by Justin Bieber. These Onion Rings are as good for your body as Old Navy flip-flops are for your arches. These Onion Rings are the picked over remnants after a factory outlet store’s Black Friday sale. These Onion Rings are hyper fixated on the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce narrative instead of addressing their own mental health issues. These Onion Rings are the Flava Flav, Pumkin, and New York love triangle on Flavor of Love.
Grade: 3/10
American Bar in the West Village
These Onion Rings are a two hour delay on the tarmac because the air conditioning on the plane is broken. These Onion Rings are currently up in heaven complaining about being love-bombed by some guy they met during their Hamptons share house to women who were executed during the Salem Witch Trials. These Onion Rings quote Dave Matthews lyrics. Did you know that these Onion Rings still remember a little bit of French from their junior year semester abroad? These Onion Rings are ethically non-monogamous but are still seeking a meaningful connection.
Grade: 2/10
Cecchi’s in the West Village
You might be crossing these Onion Ring’s personal boundaries as we speak but don’t worry, if you are they’ll tell you. These Onion Rings have been using Retinol, going to pilates, and seeing a regular therapist since they were 18. These Onion Rings laugh at the thought of being beholden to a rigid number of vacation days. These Onion Rings smoke cigarettes but solely for the aesthetic of it all. These Onion Rings can order Onion Rings because they still have the metabolism of a 24 year old because they are in fact, 24 years old. You want to hate these Onion Rings but you realize it’s only because you know they’re doing everything more sustainably and healthier than you did and ultimately getting the same or better outcome.
Grade: 7.5/10
Pete’s Tavern in Gramercy Park
These Onion Rings are Christopher Columbus’ somehow spotless heroic reputation in American textbooks published before the early 2000s. These Onion Rings are the twisted joy of reading your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend’s spellbindingly painful instagram captions. These Onion Rings starred in a Hallmark Original Christmas movie as the main character’s fated love interest: the moody high school ex who still lives in their small hometown and owns a store that makes zero economic sense and is rightfully failing, but who also looks like Ryan Reynolds with the body of navy seal, all details that somehow negate the fact that this man will eventually destroy the main character in the long run.
Grade: 9/10