It all started out innocently enough: An offer of dinner in a loft near the Jefferson L stop followed by a tour of Amancay's Diner, the long-awaited Bushwick hotspot that's already made headlines with claims of possessing "the world's only spin-the-bottle table." It opens today, but I was given a sneak peek last fall, before a variety of issues postponed the opening.
My main reason for crossing Amancay's threshold was because 48-year-old party boy and restaurateur Chang Han said there would be short ribs and wine...and I've been known to do almost anything for a bottle of Merlot and some marinated meats. Plus, for some reason I was under the impression that this was what was going to be served as Amancay's "American Comfort with a Locavorian Bent." You know, another vaguely fusion-esque restaurant located south of Flushing Avenue, serving cross-cultural Nouveau-American in the form of bulgogi burgers and confit hash.
But I was also curious if Han would turn out to be as Peter Pan-Hellenic as his perma-frat boy reputation made him seem. I doubted it, and figured I'd eat a couple kimchi dogs, go home and write something up about how pleasantly tasty and twee everything was.
Oh, was I wrong. Because what greeted me at the door was if Steve Aoki and Hugh Hefner had a baby sans a PR team and any trace of common sense. After all, who offers a profiling writer several different kinds of drugs during an interview? What minivan-driving father of two brags about getting fake hitched to a barely-legal lady while sitting next to his wife? Who gives his son a magic mushroom in Costa Rica?
Then again, I probably should have known better, since this was coming from a guy known for Jell-O wrestling nights and laughing himself off as being "17 for the 31st time."
"Babe, I'm not creepy," he insists. "Can you call me 'shady' instead?"
I cringe a little as we sip champagne around a Coke bottle mounted on ball-bearings atop an oversized table, a permanent version of the high school kissing game. Members of our little smooch-free party include Han, his cousin, his cousin's wife, a fedora-wearing man named Sid, and myself. To make things even weirder, I also somehow end up bringing a first date along for this unexpected shitshow of a night, a shy illustrator named Logan who I met via Tinder, making us quite the rag-tag Tuesday night party crew. However, according to Han we were still missing something.
"Hey, do you guys have younger sisters?" Han asks us over a steaming pot of (very tasty) short ribs, followed shortly by a disappointed grunt when no one responds positively. I later learn that he prefers them young, twenty-two being the cut-off age when girls start actually "getting jobs and become all weird about me having a wife."
That wife would be the lovely and gracious Chris Han. Refined, beautiful and patient, she offers us refreshments as we play on the swing Han has permanently installed from the ceiling of his spacious loft ("I once had a former Miss Venezuela swing on it. Very sexy.")
"I don't like Han as much as I used to," she says in an interview from an upcoming film, which documents the family's Great American road trip with a band of touring, toke-friendly Danish folk musicians. All at the insistence of Chang, of course, who is a constant stream of off-kilter marketing tactics and one-off gimmicks. In the video clip, Chris pauses for a second, adding, "But he's still a good guy."
For as gross and extremely problematic as some of the things he says are ("Don't tell me she's one of those feminists," he jokes to Logan as I choke on some water), there's something counterintuitively endearing and generous about Han's hedonistic spirit. And though I contemplated breaking a boundary to slap him for saying a number of things that offended my sensibilities, I genuinely don't think he purposefully tries to be a misogynistic asshole. It just happens to be a byproduct of his particular formula for success: have fun, fuck it all, and give them something to talk about. He's like the uncle who slips you your first glass of wine with a wink, the friendly stoner who's willing to share with everybody and the wild friend who's hard to get a hold of on weekends, all packed into one graying, ponytailed package.
Not that it's an excuse for him being creepy—sorry, "shady"—but it's easy to see how he suckers relatively reasonable people into fawning over his remarkable charm and charisma—for a while, myself and my date included (but then again, maybe we just really liked those ribs). Because despite his penchant for the frat shock factor, at the heart of Chang's recipe for success is a solid foundation of food and fun. And he's obviously not used to being reprimanded for his interpretation of a good time. He chooses to ignore his detractors, a tactic that's evident from the way he bristled whenever I voiced the slightest hint of disapproval.
Either way, Logan and I continue watching the trailer, letting out uncomfortable laughs when appropriate, which was pretty much the entire rough cut. Shots of him toking up, skating around and just generally getting up to no good was all filmed by a "very sexy Swedish woman" named Karin ("Forgot The Last Name") with his reluctant-seeming family in tow. During this time, he also handed out 100 t-shirts printed with the "Sexy Enough For Han" slogan to "hot girls around the country." The same slogan is now spray-painted onto the wall at Amancay's.
Cue judgmental grimaces and the inevitable question of how he gets away with all of it.
"I told you 5 times already, my wife's a schoolteacher," he sighs, exasperated with what are apparently dumb questions. "She's always away during the day."
Things get more stomach-churning when he begins to gleefully show us the "artful" nude snaps of various "girlfriends" he has tucked away in his private bedroom. I can't distinctly recall, but I think she may have been one of the girls who modeled for the giant mural of the Xena-like sirens riding dinosaurs that decorates the diner's entranceway.
"This is my Thursday girlfriend," he explains, pulling out another photo of a beautiful brunette draped over a Queen Anne-style velvet couch with a flourish. "She's really hot."
We nod mechanically, resigning ourselves to believing everything this caricature of a person is saying. The giant Korean shaman masks covering the entire east wall of his isolated room stare back at us, a whole floor and DIY family mural (comprising of an egg and two sperms representing his wife and two sons, respectively) away from Chris's cavernous master chamber. It's an awkward set-up, but he seems to interpret it as freedom rather than emotional exile.
What I found most bewildering though is how he tells all these stories with such unabashed relish. How all of his Facebook photos are of him holding some college girl's waist, statuesque babes in bikinis or traveling to exotic jet-set locations. Further proof that he's living the high school boy's wet dream come true comes in the form of the shower he's installing in the downstairs music venue. "It's like you can take a shower, rest a little and keep partying," he enthuses before revealing plans to mount an old Harley Davidson motorcycle to the shower wall. For "grip" purposes of course. Talk about abiding by NY State disability laws. Someone else suggests a 7 Minutes in the Shower game to complete the diner's theme as I groan internally, already able to picture the Amancay's Instagram tag.
And unlike many other Bushwick dining establishments, I doubt people will be at Amancay's to peep the food menu, which apparently includes a fibrous menu of 9 different salads for all you colon-cleansing, New York Diet-fiends out there. No matter how gorgeous the talented Han's colorful vision of beets n' leeks may be, everyone knows that half-nude nymphettes are unfortunately the overriding sell to anyone even vaguely familiar with fist-bump dude culture. Because in his world, salads with goat cheese and omega-3s are what bring in the "hot girls." Not to mention a tuna melt, which one particularly "sexy chick" asked him for special.
So yeah, while I'm sure Amancay's will be a good time, know that it's destined to become an extension of a whacked out welcome week party, filled with newly-minted college grads on the prowl for a good time, no matter how problematic the implications may be. Obviously raunchy, unexpected and probably a little gnarly, if you don't mind a little slobber or strawberry-flavored Jell-O shots, you'll feel right at home on a Saturday.
My advice: Have a good night, sample the hot girl-approved tuna melt and swish some mouthwash before you take a seat at the table. See you at the bottle.
N.B.: After mistaking our initial preview post about the restaurant for this profile, Han sent a text inviting me over for dinner again. "There are cute boys staying over playing music every night so don't bring a date. Any night. Will get hi [sic]."
Amancay's Diner, located at 2 Knickerbocker Avenue, Brooklyn, opens tonight.
