- I'm Tiana Attride,
and welcome to Ride With Me.
The show where we talk to people we love.
I really do love what you do.
- Oh, thank you so much.
- [Tiana] About the places they love.
Today, we're catching up with comedian and actor,
Aparna Nancherla,
to hear some of her recommendations for the West Village.
- I'm afraid to talk about it
because they don't want it to get so popular
that it's impossible to get a seat there.
- [Tiana] And I'll be heading there myself
to check them out.
That smells so good.
I've never experienced something like that.
Ooh!
So come along and ride with me.
Hi, Aparna.
- How's it going?
- Do you want to tell us where you are taking us today?
- Yes.
I am taking you guys to the West Village.
It's sort of a quintessential Manhattan neighborhood.
I've never lived there.
I don't even know if I could afford to live there,
but most of Manhattan is a grid
and I have a terrible sense of direction,
so I think I also enjoy the West Village
just to challenge myself,
get lost and see if I can ever find my way out of it.
There's like cool things to do like bars and clubs
but I would say, I will take you on,
basically an introverts bender in the West Village.
Should I get into my first spot?
- Yeah, let's hit it.
Oi!
- [Aparna] The first spot is a coffee shop.
It's called ad hoc Coffee Shoppe and Collective,
I believe.
I mean's very cute.
I'm a sucker for a bougie coffee shop.
Like if I see more than two succulents,
I'm in, you know I'm hooked.
It's got this sort of Hobbit hole feel to it,
but there's like a huge food menu.
My favorite sandwich is the Sangita.
It's a pretzel croissant,
which I never heard of,
but they're delicious.
I am a sucker for a breakfast sandwich
and they just have like 40,000 varieties
of breakfast sandwich,
so it's just hitting all the notes for me.
They also just have so many coffee drinks.
Like one of my favorites is they have a matcha
that you can get with rose water.
- [Tiana] So you're a coffee over a tea person,
I'm gonna assume.
- I'm trying to become a tea person.
I dunno if you've heard,
coffee's it's a little addictive.
- [Tiana] I feel you there.
Shall we hop onto your next spot?
- [Aparna] Yes.
So the next spot I believe is a stationery store.
It's called Goods For The Study.
I do love a good stationery store.
I think maybe in a past life,
I was a Victorian coat rack or something,
because I believe women were furniture back then.
- [Tiana] My past time as a child was going to Staples
with my mom because I too
am addicted to stationery like that.
- I just love the whole idea of letter writing,
and like sitting in your, you know,
your little study, with like your quill pen
and your nice stationery.
- [Tiana] Ooh, that one is nice.
- That flowery sort of writing of like dearest Abigail,
you know, yours forever Bernard to be or whatever it is,
like, I just love that whole aesthetic.
I believe my next spot is another breakfasty restaurant.
I'm a big breakfast person.
It's called Breakfast By Salt's Cure.
They basically make this thing called oatmeal griddle cakes,
they're own spin on, I guess a pancake,
but they're hard to describe.
They're not as dense as a pancake.
- [Tiana] Ooh, that looks beautiful.
- They're like these thin, crispy, buttery,
just delicious things,
and I would say those are the stars of the menu,
like that's what you're really going for,
but they also have just like eggs and sausage
and like chickpea patties for the veggies.
- [Tiana] They don't put syrup on.
They're like very antis syrup
which I found really interesting.
- Like they don't need the syrup.
That's how good they are on their own.
- Woo!
Do you wanna go to the next spot?
- Yeah.
I think the next spot is also a food spot.
It's more of a dinner place, but they do have brunch.
It is called Delice & Sarrasin.
I'm not even sure if I'm saying it right.
It's a French restaurant and I don't speak French,
and I feel like I end up mispronouncing everything
at French restaurants,
but I don't wanna be like the American person
who's just like, "I'll have this" and just point at it.
- [Tiana] I too have a fear of mispronouncing French words
in restaurants and looking like a dummy.
So - Yeah. Yeah.
It's a vegan French restaurant
which I have never had before,
and I think as a vegetarian,
usually French food I kind of rule out
because it is so meat based,
so I think the fact that they made all these things
like cassoulet and like escargot and even brie,
like vegan versions of them and they're just delicious,
you do feel kind of spoiled.
You're like, oh yeah,
that's why I live in New York.
The final spot is just IFC Center.
It's...
I mean, I think it's right outside
the West Fourth Street Station,
which is like right in the West Village.
So you can't miss it.
It's kind of a nice mix of independent movies
and more current like mainstream stuff.
So it sort of scratches every itch.
And I think the last movie I saw there
was for the DOC New York City Film Festival,
and it was actually,
my partner is friends with this director named Hugo Perez,
and he did a documentary about this Ugandan film director
who basically started the Ugandan version of Hollywood,
which is called Wakaliwood.
The documentary is so good
and it just kind of shows how he got started
and how he's created this whole like empire,
just single handedly.
- Uganda!
- My movies, they're action but in a comedy way.
- You're about to be in an upcoming show called Fairview.
So do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
- Yeah.
I mean, our lead-in is South Park,
which is, you know,
hard to top such a Comedy Central institution.
Fairview is sort of...
It takes the premise of South Park.
It's about a small town in America
and it kind of goes even more off the rails,
if you can imagine that.
- We live in COVID times,
parties kill people.
- It's just really fun.
I mean, it's fun in the sense of like,
you're seeing news headlines that you're reading all week
that might be terrifying or unsettling
and then you're just seeing it all kind of play out
in this ridiculous absurdist wild way.
So I think there's something cathartic in that.
- It's a jerk off seminar.
Lighten up.
- Well again, thank you for hopping on and joining us.
Thanks for taking us on a tour of the West Village.
- It's an all for people who are emotionally,
you know, 145 years old
and wanna be in bed by 8:00 PM.
(laughing)