a sabella

Married with Children must be on a loop at Sabella these days, every time we go in, and that's often since I've accepted that my homemade pizza is lame, Peggy Bundy's giant smile and lofty quaff spice the otherwise barren restaurant up. It's of the old Windsor Terrace, back when the expensive sounding Prospect Park West was called 9th Avenue. There's no hint of the over-design or precious faux retro styling seen in newer enterprises. It's pretty much anti-design, spare, spartan, bare bones, bleak.

One of the few focal points in the shop is a small photo of Jesus that hangs directly in the back. A strange doubling happens when the man who's always there stands under it at work in the assembly of yet another wheel of dough, this profile so much resembles that of Jesus, wan and simple staring towards heaven, that the scene starts to take on a bit of a halo enhanced by the practically ascetic trappings of the place where people can still get something substantial to eat for 2 bucks. (Maker of pizza declined to be photographed, but it was worth asking to watch the blush bring new life to his face.)

There's also the curious placement of a small Pieta next to the soda fountain, so between that and the pie assembled under the Jesus looking skyward by the chef that he looks like, this is one of those places that suggests that the only thing limiting the Eucharist to the church is the long-standing negation of the mundane.