LOU REED & the Secret Life of Plants

“Where does this put me with the punk-rockers?” Lou Reed mutters, not caring much, as he helps himself to another blini. We’re lunching at New York’s totally unreal, definitely prerevolutionary Russian Tea Room, just a cork-pop down 57th Street from Carnegie Hall. It’s like walking into Dr. Zhivago—a red and forest-green swankerie, festooned with tinsel Christmas decorations twelve months a year and a catchy line-up of second-string impressionist/fauvist/cubist paintings sold off by immigrant White Russian ndbles who fled the Bolsheviks to become New York City doormen. (“Blini”, for all you uncouth louts, is caviar pancakes with sour cream—you don’t dare ask for maple syrup.)