Famous Fat Dave: The Hungry Cabbie

I keep having this same dream. I’m driving my cab down 5th Avenue. Just as I’m getting ready to take a right at the park, I look through the arch and there’s the twin towers downtown plain as day. They’re back. Good as new. I smile from ear to ear, and I feel okay. Then I wake up and remember an empty sky.

And nearly every time I walk out the door to my house, I instinctively spin around into a hockey goalie position to keep my cat from running outside. For a second or two, my mind still tells me Sugar is going to come sprinting out from a well-planned hiding place, juke me with a head fake, and dart between my legs. It doesn’t take me long to remember that she’s gone.

Each time I went to Yankee Stadium last year, as I looked out into center field between pitches, deeply engrained instincts expect to find number 51 standing there with his shoulders slouched, his head cocked forward, and his belly gently protruding. But Bernie Williams was forced into retirement, and he’ll never play again. It took me a long time to come to terms with that.

When I walked by the Second Avenue Deli to find it shuttered that day, I accepted it. It was gone. . . forever. I figured I’d taste that corned beef again in the next life just about the time I see my grandma again. In fact, we’d share a sandwich. Nevertheless, the bank on the corner of 10th and 2nd Ave surprises me every time I see it.

(admittedly, the East Village was in desperate need of another Chase, but 2nd Ave Deli did give a little more life to the neighborhood)

Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.

Second Avenue Deli has reopened. It REOPENED. Back from the dead. The story NEVER turns out like this. Never in my life has something I loved so much been taken from me so callously and then returned to me so unexpectedly. Actually, one of my fares likened it to the time Family Guy was cancelled and then came back on the air. And I agree it’s similar. But the Second Avenue Deli is so much dearer to me it’s hardly comparable.

Just two days after it’s grand reopening, I went for dinner with Melissa and my friends Jack and Doug. We were apprehensive. We didn’t want to get our hopes up in case the new deli was a shell of its old self - a very real possibility that none of us wanted to admit. We were all as giddy as Ukrainian schoolgirls skipping school to hang out at Pommes Frittes.

As soon as we tasted the chopped liver that they passed around to the folks standing on line in the cold, we knew we we’d traveled back in time. The wait was long, but the atmosphere was electric. It felt like everybody in line was a true New Yorker. The thrill in the air was palpable. The feeling of camaraderie was overwhelming.

There are very few situations in this town when you feel like you can talk to anyone who’s gaze meets yours. This was one of them. A rare moment that left me with fond, uniquely New York memories I will keep forever. It kind of reminded me of the blackout in that everyone was looking at each other in disbelief, excitement, and a even a little brotherhood. It was actually more like those glorious October nights when the Yankees won World Series after World Series. I could have hugged a stranger (or tipped over a taxi cab in jubilation).

When we passed through the threshold and smelled the distinct aroma that already filled the air (but not yet permeated into the wood), we all knew we had come home. I recognized half the guys behind the counter as if I were in a dream. Even our waitress was one we’d all had a million times in the old joint.

And it wasn’t just people working there we recognized. My best friend Nate and Julie who I’d know for more than a decade had a seat in the corner. When I went over to say hi, Nate’s response was, “OF COURSE I’d run into you here.”

(the blur of this picture reflects the pandemonium of the moment, and the fact that I don’t know how to work my new camera)

Most importantly, the food too was familiar. Immediately, we were plied with pickles and health slaw as good or BETTER than before. I ordered the mazzo ball soup with noodles and a half a corned beef sandwich. The soup was perfect, just as I remembered it when my mom used to order it for me when I got sick (or homesick) as a freshman at NYU.

The corned beef was, admittedly, a tiny bit dry. But that didn’t sour the mood at all. We could all tell Second Avenue Deli would soon hit its stride in that department (and it did when I went back at 3am just a few days later). Doug actually fell deeply, desperately, borderline inappropriately in love with his corned beef:

Jack’s old standby - pastrami and eggs with crinkle cut fries - was right on the mark:

And the waitress brought us complimentary shots of egg cream, a practice I hope becomes a custom but was probably just a celebratory gesture:

We toasted to life and to rebirth, once with our pickles to begin the meal and once with our egg creams to end it. It was as though we’d created a new religious ceremony.

We all agreed that it felt like we’d died and gone to deli heaven. But we hadn’t. We are alive. And so is Second Avenue Deli. This story ends differently than those other ones. This story ends with rebirth, renewed life, and a greasy smile.

2nd Avenue Deli, 33rd St Btwn 3rd Ave and Lex, Murray Hill, Manhattan

Visit www.FamousFatDave.com for five borough eating tours on which 2nd Ave Deli is a favorite stop, especially on the midnight munchies tour now that the deli is open 24 hours