Aria Aber Soothes Her Hangover With Mexican Korean Soup
Growing up, Aria Aber’s favorite thing to eat was her mom’s aushak, leek-filled Afghan dumplings. “But I only like it when my mom makes it, or my dad,” she says. Even other relatives’ versions don’t compare: “They just don’t love me as much, and I can taste it.” Aber — whose 2019 poetry collection Hard Damage won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and whose debut novel, Good Girl, is out next month — isn’t eating much home cooking at all these days: She just wrapped up the semester teaching at the University of Vermont and is settling into her new Prospect Lefferts Gardens apartment. She did get the gas turned on, however, so she can turn her attention to preparing her other favorite food. “I just love soups,” she says. “I don’t like cooking when it involves more than one pot.”
Monday, December 9
I should start this by saying I don’t know how to take care of myself at all. My most successful text of all time is a tweet in which I compared my eating habits to a bodega rat in Bed-Stuy. But now that boyfriend, Noah Warren, is my husband, so I eat more regular meals instead of abjectly snacking for sustenance. Usually, Noah brings me coffee to bed. Every morning, I get up a few hours after him, because I am nocturnal and like to read and write in the stolen hours after everyone has gone to bed. But this morning, there is no coffee that magically appears after I wake up. The semester ended last week, and we just moved into our shitty pied-à-terre in PLG, and we don’t have anything set up yet, let alone a full kitchen. So we end up at Ciao Bella Coffee, a café in the neighborhood, to repeat what we did on Sunday: coffee, pastry, and reading the news together. I drink an almond latte and wait about 30 minutes before ordering an everything-croissant, lightly toasted. I usually don’t eat until midday, but I’m in a new place and don’t have a routine anymore.
After a massage, I get a fresh orange juice from Union Market and some bananas, then make my way through the rain with a newspaper over my head, like a character in a movie. Lunch is pizza from The Swiss Slice, which we had for dinner the night before. Because the gas isn’t yet set up, I can’t reheat it, and because the topping is “fresh veggie” — broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, peppers — I just consider it a salad on bread.
In the evening, I meet my friends Sally Wen Mao and her boyfriend, Bo, in Manhattan for drinks. I hate going to the city, but Sally is leaving for six weeks, and she lives in Harlem, so John Devoy’s is more or less the midpoint between us. We have oysters and some parmesan truffle fries while we discuss Luigi Mangione’s six-pack. I wish I could order picklebacks without anyone judging me, but a dirty martini will do for now: vodka, extra dry, extra filthy. My ideal cocktail would honestly be a jar of olives with a splash of vodka, but because I have to maintain decorum, I take my time with the three olives on the toothpick. After John Devoy’s, we walk to Tara Rose, where we order another round of drinks (Prosecco with blueberry foam) and real dinner. Bo gets the burger, Sally gets the pasta, and because I have been eating like crap all day, I get what looks like the healthiest and warmest thing on the menu: the soup du jour, which is a white bean vegetable soup and tastes like every brothy dish I’ve cooked over my winter months in Vermont.
Tuesday, December 10
At around 9 a.m., I receive a coffee from the French press with a splash of almond milk in bed as I deserve. Breakfast is a banana and three ibuprofens for the excruciating menstrual pain I’m suffering from this morning. I’m also quite hungover from that one martini and the Prosecco, and feel dehydrated, but I don’t drink any water because I love torture. However, my appetite is raging today, so we’re intent on ordering some big, fat sandwiches. Eggs are amazing in theory, but I hate the taste, so brunch menus are my enemies in general. After cursing at Noah’s UberEats app for half an hour, I settle on a halloumi bun and a side of Yukon potatoes from Cafe Madeline. I gorge on half of it for lunch while sitting on the living room floor. We still don’t have a table, but I make it my mission to find one today.
After grading student papers, I crave something sweet. I go to the hardware store to buy light bulbs and glue for a hanger that broke during the move and get a vanilla almond milk latte and a cinnamon roll from Ciao Bella on the way back. Later in the afternoon I am feeling peckish again, so I’m eating the rest of my lunch (cold, papery, but the halloumi is still delicious) while fantasizing about dinner. My friend Maggie Millner recently raved about the Mexican soup from Kimchi Grill, and I browse the restaurant’s menu online (this, by the way, is one of my favorite pastimes: studying restaurant menus in advance). I still haven’t had water but am drinking my fourth can of LaCroix. I suddenly remember my late mentor Louise Glück, who also preferred sparkling drinks out of a can and hated hydration. “Water tastes like sickness and hospitals,” I said to her once. She just looked at me. “No,” she said with an earnest face. “It tastes much worse than that.”
In the evening, while having a conversation with my editor at Bidoun about an essay I wrote on Fatih Akin’s film Head-On, I snack on almonds and a Babybel, and another can of LaCroix. For dinner, Noah suggests ordering Vietnamese, which I have to admit is a genius idea, because I never feel at home until I have a good vegan pho spot. This is a habit I cultivated back in 2020, when I lived in Berlin and had just started writing Good Girl, and would end up at the restaurant Chay Village two to three times a week. I was a vegetarian for 14 years, and even though I eat everything now, I still love veggie food the best. The Vegan Ginger Chick’n pho from Lucy’s Vietnamese arrives at around 9 p.m., and I eat some of it before we drive to the East Village to pick up a table from Facebook Marketplace.
The plan is to have some more when we get back, but destiny has something else in store for me: I find a cockroach in the bathroom and, like a character dreamed up by Clarice Lispector or Yasmin Zaher, I spend the rest of the night crawling around on my knees with a bottle of bleach, some caulk, and a steady flame of hatred flickering in my heart. I fall asleep with a faint taste of Lysol in my mouth.
Wednesday, December 11
The day begins with two cups of coffee with almond milk. I wish we had chocolate in the house, but the only thing in the pantry are bananas and a jar of peanut butter. So I’m having a banana with peanut butter. I’m furiously vaping while responding to student emails for hours. Noah is working on his book and I’m left to my own devices until around 2:30 p.m., when we heat up the leftovers from the night before, and have lunch at our beautiful marble table that Noah brought up the stairs single-handedly. I realize quickly that I’m not feeling very hungry, so I only eat a little bit and refrigerate the rest for another day. How long can pho survive in the fridge? For as long as I want it to, I’ve decided, especially if it’s vegan.
In the afternoon, my merch for the novel arrives — a hat and a tin of mints that says “EAT ME” on them. I greedily eat a couple of mints, then take the train to Grand Central. I’m a guest at the NYPL Christmas Party to celebrate my friend Isabella Hammad, who is a Cullman Fellow this year. I buy some coconut water at the station and have it while waiting for my friend Perwana Nazif. It’s raining, and we’re drenched, but the gathering is sweet, and it feels magical to drink and eat at the library. To be honest, these small-plate buffets at literary parties are my favorite — I wouldn’t complain if I could have dolma and pickles and white wine every day for the rest of my life. I fill up my paper plate with olives and grapes and cheese and crackers, a slice of mushroom pizza, and a piece of cake with icing so sweet it makes my teeth hurt.
Dinner at home is take-out from Jerusalem Falafel House, a Palestinian restaurant on Nostrand Ave. My Falafel Platter is legendary and delicious, but Noah’s chicken shawarma smells much more delectable, so warm and spicy and homemade, that I am having more of his than my own. And because I’m feeling especially generous, I even let our cat Jeanie Rhys eat a bit of chicken as a treat. In the middle of the night, I sense a headache coming on—hello, dehydration, my old friend!—but instead of having a glass of water from the tap like a normal person, I’m drinking two cans of LaCroix in front of the fridge.
Thursday, December 12
Overnight, the internet stopped working and Optimum does not want to send someone over to fix it, so the mood is anything but optimal this morning. I’m also feeling groggy because I stayed up until 3 am to read a contemporary novel whose happy ending left me irate, though the writer did create some beautiful images of food (apples, gourds, autumn soups). I’m dissecting the plot over text with my friend Asiya Gaildon while having my usual coffee with almond milk, as well as a banana with peanut butter and three ibuprofens. Perhaps this is my new routine.
The rain has finally cleared, but it’s freezing outside. I buy a large bottle of Smartwater at CVS and feel very proud of myself for finishing it during my icy walk through the park. Looking at the trees, I’m whispering to myself water is good, water is necessary, water is life. In the afternoon, I camp out at Hamlet Coffee Company, which, according to my friend Daniel Poppick, is “the only good coffee in our neighborhood.”
I order a latte with macadamia milk and the grain bowl that comes from UpTaco. The coffee is indeed very good but so strong that I start vibrating. While finishing my email work for the day, I eat almost all of the cheese and none of the greens of my salad and take the rest to go. Because we still don’t have any groceries, I stop by a store and buy a haphazard assortment of things: a papaya, kaki fruit, limes, Pedialyte, cucumbers, apples, Kinder chocolate, and Tunnock’s caramel wafers. Back at home, I have an apple, and then half of a caramel wafer, but it tastes like old socks and paper. I feel sufficiently hydrated and nourished, even though I suspect that I will undo all my good work in a matter of hours: Fountains of alcohol and cigarettes are on the horizon, winking at me.
Perwana invited me to the Eckhaus Latta holiday party, but because all my friends are in town and all of them are writers, we decide to go to the Paris Review party instead. I realize it’s the fourth day in a row that I’m traveling to Manhattan — I guess I can’t hate it that much. As I’m making my way through the cold, dark streets between the high-rises, I smoke a couple Marlboro Golds and listen to an episode on the fall of Assad by the podcast “It Could Happen Here.” I wish I was back in Germany so I could talk and celebrate with my Syrian neighbors, and eat a large plate of the glossy Yabrak with dried apricots and beef that they used to make for me.
The old-fashioneds at the party are so stiff they taste like acetone, but they’re free, so I’m having too many and get stuck on a sofa with Perwana and our friends Maya Binyam and Hannah Zeavin. By the time the Lyft drops Noah and me back at home at around 3 a.m., my heart is very full, my throat is made of sandpaper, my hair smells like an ashtray, and I’m way too drunk. But we’re responsible adults tonight: We drink water and have the leftovers of the falafel platter, which we can heat up on the stove like normal people, because the gas is finally set up.
Friday, December 13
A raging headache startles me awake at 7 a.m.. All things considered, I thought last night was quite civilized, but I realize I didn’t take off my make-up and fell asleep with my vape in one hand and my phone in the other. I blame my recklessness on the shots of Jameson with my friends Sam Ross and Bobuq Sayed at Westside Tavern, where we ended up after the office party. Two hours later, the Ikea delivery team is forcing us out of bed, even though they weren’t supposed to arrive until 4 p.m. at the earliest. For obvious reasons, I’m recalling Jemima Kirke’s feature in Interview Mag, where she talks about how vaping reminds her of watching someone at the hospital press a button to get more drugs, and I feel a little disgusted with myself. But hey, at least we have a couch and a mirror now.
Breakfast is two cups of coffee with almond milk as usual. After building half of the couch together, Noah and I venture out on a walk. We want bagels, but we haven’t found a reliable bagel spot yet, so we settle on buying a loaf of sourdough from a secret kosher bakery called Crust Baker. They don’t have a real storefront and usually make food to order, but we get lucky. The bread is still warm, and we tear pieces off it on the street. As far as sourdough goes, this is one of the best I’ve had — fluffy and soft on the inside, with a perfectly hard crust on the outside.
Back at home, Noah is making his famous grilled cheese, but I insist on having a cold sandwich with butter, tomato, and cheddar, because it reminds me of the good old belegte brötchen from the German bakeries of my childhood, and some cucumbers with sea salt, a simple Afghan staple snack. I build the rest of the couch by myself, and as a treat graze on Kinder chocolate. Magically, the internet has started working again, so I’m having an Olipop apple crisp and a glass of Pedialyte while responding to interview questions for The Brooklyn Rail.
Dan is cooking for a group of friends tonight, but hangovers make me antisocial, so I stay in by myself. At 6:40 p.m., I finally DoorDash the tofu Mexican soup from Kimchi Grill, the dish that has been haunting my thoughts all week. The soup consists of a dashi broth base, fresh kimchee, avocado, kale, beans, fried tofu and rice gnocchi. I’m usually suspicious of fusion cuisine, but this Mexican Korean soup tastes like heaven. Peppery and hot and healing, it does to my body what Pedialyte failed to do. I practically inhale most of my dinner while trying to watch Girl, Interrupted, because I love looking at Angelina Jolie, Winona Ryder, and Brittany Murphy, but tonight I, too, am a girl, interrupted so I turn it off and instead stare at the wall for 30 minutes. By 9:30, I am starting to feel a little better and sip the rest of my kimchee broth while reading Ghassan Kanafani’s The Land of Sad Oranges. I fall asleep dreaming of Jaffa, children playing on dusty streets, and rows and rows of orange trees.