We aspire to honesty on this blog, dear readers, so I might as well reveal that I landed at the northern end of the A line, at 207^th Street in Inwood, a touch hungover and in a mood that was verging on surly. Manhattan, with its gritted teeth and fake-it-‘til-you-make-it attitude, is usually a marvelous place for a hangover, so I was taken unawares by the blinding good cheer of Inwood. I wandered the streets in a daze, nursing a cup of coffee and trying to take it all in. Birds sang. Trees blew in the breeze. Even the streets themselves had a jaunty roll to them. Outside a mental health facility, the residents parked their wheelchairs and turned their palms and faces to the sun, slight smiles pulling at the corners of their lips. Was I still in New York?

On 207^th, street vendors hawked their goods, but rather than the large established halal and pretzel carts of midtown, it looked like someone’s grandfather had wheeled his aging charcoal grill onto the sidewalk and decided to cook you a hot dog. One couple had piled a stolen shopping cart with plastic containers of fruit salad and was doing a brisk business.

There were plenty of restaurants here to choose from, most of them Mexican and Dominican, but I was drawn to a Chinese restaurant called Amy’s, where a man and woman about my age were poring over a menu hanging in the window. They paused every so often to happily embrace, almost sloshing coffee onto each other in their enthusiasm.

“Do you know this place?” I asked.

“No,” the woman answered, gracing me with a beatific smile. “But doesn’t it look amazing?”

We traded notes on good places to get coffee and then I scurried off down the block, leaving them to love each other. I couldn’t really take their recommendation, I decided, since they’d never actually eaten at the place, so I walked around for a bit, culling some more suggestions from people on the street. A pizza joint, a Thai restaurant—everything seemed weirdly pale in comparison to the ecstatic glint in that woman’s eye when she offered up the word “amazing.” And so eventually, I went back to Amy’s.

There was no sign of the lovebirds when I arrived on the scene, but there was a friendly proprietor tending bonsai trees in the window and a toddler chanting, “Yummy, yummy, yummy,” in the middle of the small dining room, both of which I took as good omens. Depleted, I folded myself into a chair in the corner, sucked down a glass of water and ordered some Szechwan tofu.

To be absolutely honest, the sight of my food landing on the table filled me with trepidation. The sauce looked similar to the gloppy brown mystery sauce that is endemic to bad Chinese restaurants, but thankfully, it couldn’t have tasted more different. The layered spices of the sauce and the smoothness of the tofu were a warm and comforting combination. The more of it I ate, the better I felt, as if it were akin to chicken soup or the culinary equivalent of a hug. I cleaned my plate and headed back to the subway, hoping that somewhere, on the cheerful streets of Inwood, my unwitting restaurant scouts were declaring their love to each other.

Amy’s Restaurant. 586 West 207th Street, New York, NY 10034. (212) 567-3175.

Want me to take you to lunch? Send your End of the Line suggestions to Submissions@Pitchknives.com.