By Charlotte Eichna

Q: How’s the coffee? [Taken with milk and Equal]
A: Oh, delicious, always good here. Junior’s is part of my life. And it’s part of Brooklyn’s life. This restaurant defines Brooklyn. And it defines changing Brooklyn. When I started going here, its emphasis was heavily Jewish. They had chicken in the pot and they had other kind of Jewish-themed foods, and over the years as Brooklyn demographics have changed, the restaurant’s kept pace with those changes and now reflects the multicultural eating habits of Brooklynites.

Q: What does having Junior’s now open in Times Square mean for Brooklyn?
A: It’s our contribution to the under-nourished in Manhattan, so finally they’ll get a taste of real food—not that the restaurants aren’t great in Manhattan. Don’t get me wrong, I eat there all the time. But Junior’s represents what I like to call the traditional Brooklyn style of cooking. It’s not for those that are on diets, that’s for sure—although they have diet food. I would suggest if you want the real Junior’s experience, let yourself go. My suggestion would be, if you’re into cheesecake—I am—my favorite is the devil’s food cheesecake. It should be called “decadence,” but it’s called devil’s food cheesecake, and unfortunately, it’s my pick and my downfall.

Q: Does the Manhattan move reflect Brooklyn’s gentrification in a way?
A: What it reflects is that a third of Manhattan has already moved to Brooklyn. And if you speak to anyone in Manhattan, either their friends have moved here or they’re thinking or looking. And here’s an example where it’s the counter-flow: we’re moving to Manhattan. But you know there are restaurants in Manhattan that have opened their first unit outside of Manhattan in Brooklyn. Blue Ribbon is a good example—they’re doing phenomenally.

Q: I know Junior’s is your favorite for casual dining, but if you want a nice night out, maybe with your wife, what’s your pick?
A: You’re going to ask me to choose among my many children, and I’m not going to.

Q: How about a Manhattan restaurant then?
A: I would say Rossini’s, that’s off of 34th Street [108 East 38th Street]. And then I love Pietro’s [232 East 43rd Street]. Brick Lane, I love Brick Lane, on 6th Street [306-308 East 6th Street], for Indian food. I love Indian food. Brick Lane is unbelievable. I hope too many people don’t read this—it’s hard enough getting in there. And Seville [62 Charles Street], I’ve eaten in Seville for over 40 years. I think it’s the best Spanish in Manhattan.

Q: [As menus arrive] What’s your recommendation? Can we have cheesecake?
A: Too early for cheesecake. [He did buy one on the way out, though.]

Q: You’ve pushed a fitness and weight loss campaign, “Lighten Up Brooklyn,” but you’re also very passionate about food. How do you reconcile those two opposing forces?
A: The answer is, it’s a conflict. I reconcile it by saying the message is correct and the messenger is flawed. I can be right on message, and yet be a personal failure. And I don’t see it as being hypocritical at all. The demons I face, the challenges I face, I share with many people, unfortunately, in New York City and across the country. And they share with me. When I go around Brooklyn, and lots of Brooklynites know about this campaign of Lighten Up, and obesity issues, and they look at me and I look at them and enough said, we understand.

Q: Do you have time to exercise?
A: I try to work out. I didn’t today, but most mornings I go on the treadmill for 20 minutes or half an hour.

Q: Do you like salad?
A: No, absolutely not. It’s like grazing. No thank you.

Q: Switching gears—you’ve been a vocal proponent of affordable housing. What are some of the ways you’d like to tackle this problem in Brooklyn?
A: People I speak to that have left Brooklyn tell me, “Marty, we’d love to stay in Brooklyn. We can’t afford it here.” In Brooklyn, the problem is you want to build and we have no land, so you can only build vertically. And of course there is this romanticized version by some that all of Brooklyn lives in a brownstone. And that’s not true. We do have some wonderful, beautiful brownstone communities and I live in Park Slope and believe me, I love the area. But Brooklyn is home to all sorts of housing—high rise buildings, low rise buildings, tudors, colonials, limestones and brownstones and two families and four families—so we have a mix of all sorts of housing in the borough. But the truth of the matter is, as land becomes more scarce, you have to look for locations in the borough that lend themselves to building high rise buildings in order to meet the demand of those seeking a place to live, of all incomes. We don’t have land so we have to have smart development where we build housing and also respect the surrounding communities—we have to find that balance.

Q: So this is one of the reasons you’ve been a force behind the Atlantic Yards development, right?
A: Absolutely, without a question. And also because Brooklyn is deserving of being a city that has national sports. Religion, music, family and sports are what bring people together. And the arena will be a big center of family life in this borough. We’ll have a national team to cheer for again, after over 50 years of our beloved Brooklyn Dodgers leaving. The kids in Brooklyn today deserve to have a national team just like I was lucky to have it in my era. And the jobs it will create, the housing, the beautiful architecture—it’s the right location, it’s the right space, it’s the right time. And it’s going to happen. And the people that are the naysayers, they won’t even be a footnote in history—and neither will I. Because once it opens, people will say, “Wow, it’s always been here. How did we live without this?”

Q: When do you hope to see construction start?
A: I hope it will be yesterday. But hopefully maybe by the end of the year, at least, the process with the shovel, whatever, can happen, I hope.

Q: What was your first job?
A: I was a soda jerk. I made the best malteds and the best frappes. I made very good egg creams; I was an excellent egg cream maker.

Q: What’s in an egg cream?
A: An egg cream is just chocolate syrup — of course it’s got to be Brooklyn’s, Fox’s—and then milk and then seltzer. That’s it. But the seltzer has to come from the bottle. Not the garbage plastic bottles. As it comes out, the seltzer has to hit the spoon. The bottom line of an egg cream: you want to have a nice head on it, meaning on top of it is a beautiful, white head. Beautiful. Mmm. [kisses fingertips]

Q: What’s next for you come 2009?
A: I don’t know. I answer the question by saying, “Que sera sera; what will be will be.” I have a couple options. Option number one is they overturn term limits or extend term limits, and that would certainly give me the option of running again for borough president. And should the law stay as it is, my option would be to leave public service or [seek] some other kind of position in public service or maybe run for mayor.

Q: How do you think Michael Bloomberg has been as a mayor?
A: I think that Mayor Bloomberg will go down as one of the top five mayors in the history of New York City. I think he is an absolutely superb mayor. I have to tell you, if I ever became mayor, he would be the example that I’d like to follow. I don’t think I have his smarts, I have to tell you, and that’s okay—I’m not ashamed of telling you that. I don’t have his smarts; I really don’t. Maybe I have smarts in other ways. But we are very fortunate in this city to have a man like this as our mayor. A guy like this does not come around often. And I’m a Democrat, and he’s not a—I know he’s a Republican—I don’t know what he is. He’s not a Democrat; he’s not a Republican. He’s Michael Bloomberg. He does what he thinks is right as each issue comes up. His motivation, like mine: [he] gets up every day and says, “How do I make a difference?” The difference between us is that he can actually make a difference every day much more than I can. He can implement it. I have to be a nudge. To be a good borough president, you have to be a chief nudge.

Q: Maybe you’d be a good public advocate?
A: I don’t want to say anything about that position other than it really, in my opinion—the job has no constituency. Borough president, I have a constituency: Brooklyn.

Q: You wouldn’t see the constituents as being the people of New York?
A: On a citywide basis, the only job that has a constituency is the mayor. The public advocate, it is a very rough job. Number one, your budgets are completely dependent upon a mayor and a city council, and why would a mayor want to fund fully a public advocate whose job it is to question and debate and challenge the policies of the mayor?

Q: Speaking metaphorically, you ordered scrambled eggs, hash browns and a side of tomatoes to be healthy—does this reflect on your political strategy at all?
A: I didn’t eat the roll. I’m looking at it. I touched it. But I didn’t eat it. The tomatoes are deflecting me.

Q: So does this reflect how you approach politics?
A: No, usually this would be gone by now. The kind of politician I am is I jump in with both feet.

Q: So those eggs would be gone?
A: Yes, I’m sure the roll would be gone, too. I think most people would describe me as passionate. I have no agenda other than Brooklyn.