The Eating Adventures of a Checker Cabbie
If you are fan of Eric BADLAAAAAAANDS Booker or Run DMC (or both) you will enjoy this 49 second video:
Famous Fat Dave and Badlands Rap
Let me just say this: it was the single greatest moment of my career.
Famous Fat Dave Video: Nathan’s Famous 4th of July Hot Dog Eating Competition Vs Eric Badlands Booker
Let me give you some advice. If you ever do a Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating competition, don’t do it for the FIRST time AT the original Nathan’s in Coney Island, WITHOUT ever training, AGAINST a legendary professional, ON CAMERA. If you do, you could end up looking foolish.
That’s basically what I did for the grand finale of the History Channel Dot Com Holiday Foods series. I went to the storied Stillwell and Surf location to take on the storied Eric BAAAAAAAADLAAAAAAANDS Booker in a mini three minute version of the 4th of July Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating competition.
Badlands has been a personal hero of mine for a number of years already, if only for the open mouthed poses he has mastered for the camera. But when I was told I’d be going up against him in battle, I did a little research. I knew he held some records, but I didn’t realize he held records for some of my favorite foods: cannoli . . . corned beef hash . . . candy bars . . . matzo balls . . . donuts . . . burritos . . . hamentashen! And it’s HIM up there in the middle of the big board staring at Tekeru The Tsunami Kobayashi, hot dogs at the ready.
I was intimidated to say the least. Badlands is a competitive eating Goliath, and I’m no David. I did spend a summer selling Nathan’s hot dogs at the Single A Cyclones ball park right next door to the original Nathan’s. And any hot dog I couldn’t sell, they’d let me take home for free to my endless bbq in the 2004 Summer of Awesome (as it came to be known). I’d eaten more than my fair share. Still, I thought I’d better train a little so as not to make a fool of myself.
As luck would have it, my best friend Greg bought me a sweet ticket to see my lowly Nats take on the mighty Phillies down at the ball park in Philadelphia the night before the contest. AND IT WAS DOLLAR DOG NIGHT!!!
It would have been the perfect opportunity to get some practice in. Never mind Badlands, I could see what I was up against internally. But the dogs in Philly have less snap than Nathan’s dogs. Nathan’s dogs, the ones at the flagship location at least (I don’t know why Nathan’s Famous would sully its good name by selling snapless franks in supermarkets and franchised locations the world over), are encased in real intestine so they taste way better but they’re harder to eat. It’s an entirely different experience biting through one of those.
I still should have tried eating one in Philly as fast as I could to see how I fared. Instead, I convinced myself that I’d die of nitrate poisoning if I ate a bunch of hot dogs the night before a hot dog eating competition, and so settled for a photo op with Greg, and only really ate two . . . slowly. Rookie mistake.
When the day came I was NOT prepared. After leaving Philly at 11pm, I had to stay up until about 430 writing a paper for school. I was on NO sleep. Aaaaaand I had a shoot early in the morning during which I had to eat a bunch of tacos (delicious tacos at Alma, but not the proper way to start my day).
By the time I got to Coney, I was so nervous. And worse, I felt like a pretender to the throne. People train for years, fight through dozens of qualifiers, suffer through endless heartbreak before they get to compete at Nathan’s against the likes of Badlands Booker. And here I was, a rank amateur, getting a shot at the champ just because I had cameras with me. Shame washed over me when I saw the big man approach.
But anyone who knows Badlands Booker knows he is a great guy. Truly a gentle giant. He greeted me with a “What’s good Famous?” and immediately put me at ease. Even the sight of dozens of hot dogs didn’t really effect me because I was having such a blast with Badlands mugging for the camera and such.
However, when I met the EMT on hand, I got nervous again. It’s funny that even though I should have felt better that there was a trained medic who would be just feet away while we competed, it made me more ill at ease. I guess I was thinking about how dumb I’d feel if I choked on a hot dog.
Badlands told me it’d be a good showing if I ate five in the three minutes we had. I decided I could down 7, at which point Badlands said, “Oh it’s like that, then we’re ON.” That’s how inexperienced I was. I didn’t even know I was challenging the pro when I was challenging him.
I stupidly decided NOT to dunk my hot dogs in water on the logic that dunking is gross and I could eat more if I was actually enjoying them. The competition began, with three cameras set up, a four person film crew, Ryan Nerz – author of the hilarious “Eat This Book” – announcing, the EMT standing by, and about 20 onlookers gathered round. And on my very first bite I immediately realized, “There is NO way I’m gonna eat 7 hot dogs.”
The bread expanded rapidly into every corner of my mouth. The bite I took must have been far to big. I couldn’t swallow if my life depended on it. But I only had three minutes to compete and Badlands was chomping through two dogs and buns (dunked) at a time. So, prematurely, I dunked my dog and took another big bite. Now it felt my whole head was filled with wet bun and chewed up hot dog. There was nowhere for it go. It just went in circles around my mouth. It was not pleasant. And I was making a fool of myself.
After a full minute I hadn’t even finished one. By the time I recovered from the original bite, half the competition was over. I managed to nearly choke on a couple of occasions too because I’d be chewing all that wet bun up front and a stray piece of hot dog would try to escape down my throat. I felt like I could end up like the little girl Moonlight Graham had to save in Field Of Dreams. That’s not how I wanted it to go down.
When three minutes were up I’d eaten less than 3 hot dogs (and I’d chipmunked the last 3/4 of a dog, Major League Eating lingo meaning I had just shoved it into my cheeks) while Badlands swallowed ELEVEN. That’s a really good pace for him considering the real competition is four times longer and his personal best is 30 and a half.
When I finally downed my chipmunked hot dog, I said, “I’m not even full,” and Badland responded with “You wanna go again?!? Let’s GO.” With that, we were off for, as Ryan Nerz put it, “An unprecedented one minute overtime.” None of that part made the cut for HistoryChannel.com so I’ll tell you, I managed just one more hot dog while Badlands downed another FIVE. What a pro.
Badlands had been semiretired from the competitive eating circuit when I met him. He’d lost 120 pounds (then gained another 40) he told me. He’d gone from an XXXXXXL Nathan’s tee shirt to an XXXXL. Everyone wanted to know if he was going to get back into the game. Last week, I heard he won a qualifier in Camden New Jersey and he will be ON STAGE tomorrow at the 4th of July Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Competition. I’d like to think I had a little something to do with it.
Missed the video link at the top? Here it is again: Famous Fat Dave Vs. Badlands Booker At Nathan’s
(Post-competition it’s a classic Badlands pose)
(Badlands Booker you’re my hero)
(Badlands, Melissa, me, and a lemonade)
(Badlands, Ryan Nerz, Me, and the Crew. Thanks History.com)
Visit www.FamousFatDave.com for five borough eating tours where the original Nathan’s Famous is a classic stop
Big Rocky Allen and his hungry on air cohorts took a few minutes to chat with me LIVE about my gluttonous five borough eating tours a little while back. In case you missed it, click below to have a listen to what transpired.
Rocky Allen Showgram Interview
And in case you missed my Travis Bickle reference at the end of the interview, I was quoting Travis saying, “Each night when I return the cab to the garage, I have to clean the come off the back seat. Some nights I clean off the blood.” Except I was gonna say “tartar sauce” and “tobasco,” and if you listen closely I actually say tartar sauce as I’m shouted down like a lesbian at a Halliburton meeting (really they just asked me politely not to say it, asked me nicely again, and then told me firmly “Dave, we said no.”)
(Here’s my boy Travis Bickle with some tobasco on his hand and a little on his cheek there)
(And here’s my boy Travis Pickle talking about pickles)
It was midnight in Austin, Texas. My friend Gary – Brooklynite, sushi eating champion – and I were in the midst of a cross-country road trip. We just spent a lovely evening eating queso and drinking margaritas with some hospitable UT kids. But we had no place to crash because, contrary to my assumption that all of Texas is full of wide open spaces, these grad students were packed in like sardines. We may as well have been back in New York. There wasn’t even any floor space to spare.
(That’s my cousin’s husband’s little sister on the right modeling some queso with her friends. Talk about southern hospitality, we were already approaching a full 6 degrees of separation and she treated us like family.)
But we were in an open road state of mind, and we were happy to take on the driving challenge. “You think we can make it to White Sands, New Mexico by morning?” Gary asked one of our gracious hosts. “Sure, and you’ll pass through the darkest place in America on the way. You’ll see all the stars,” she replied in a slow, southern drawl as we looked at the Road Master together. “You gotta go through a shit ton a Texas first though,” were her only words of caution.
So off we went into the muggy Texas night. Gary drove first because he hadn’t had a margarita in a couple hours. I was used to driving my cab very late at night, so I’d take over in a few hours. I folded my arms and pulled my hat low over my eyes like I was Austin Millbarge and Gary was Emmett Fitz-Hume.
Very soon thereafter I was awoken not because we were surrounded by Mujadhadeen, but because Gary was howling with terror as we whizzed by a deer standing on the shoulder. Gary’s eyes were wild with fear, mostly because he loved his 2003 Hyundai like a son. I begged him to slow down, but even at 50 mph, deer would appear from out of nowhere, and we’d miss them by pure luck. When we saw the mangled carcass of a buck that looked as though it’d been creamed by a tractor trailer, we figured our chances of hitting something had risen to about 50/50.
In the first town we came across, we asked the gas station attendant why there were so many deer out. “This here is Hill Country you boys are in. We got a lotta deer in these parts,” he informed us. Why none of our hosts in Austin had warned us, we didn’t understand. They must not have known what dangers lurked to the west. “Well, how fast can you go?” I asked. “You can go as fast as you want. But I keep it to 40 . . . and that’s still pushing your luck,” he grinned.
Realizing we couldn’t get anywhere in Texas going 40 mph, we found a cheap motel for the rest of the night. We were both deflated. I knew Gary was in a weird place, because he was speaking fondly of the Gowanus Expressway as I fell asleep. I dreamt of queso and margaritas and venison jerky.
We awoke to discover that we were in a town called Llano. But even before we found out where we were, we were overwhelmed with the divine scent of barbeque. As we wandered out into the street like a couple a hobos, we felt as though we’d happened upon some sort of Garden of Eden (we actually weren’t far from Eden, Texas).
(Here I am later in the day in Eden, Texas)
The entire, tiny town was engulfed in smoke from multiple barbeque pits and smoke houses lining the main street. The locals weren’t batting an eyelash. We thought that this must just be the way it is in Texas all the time. We were wrong, but we knew there was nothing like Llano back in New York.
It turns out, we were wrong about that too. Recently, I was driving a plucky family of adventurous eaters through Brooklyn when we got caught in a traffic jam on Nostrand Avenue approaching Flatbush. We were overwhelmed by a familiar smoky scent. The whole street was filled with smoke, and the locals didn’t seem at all concerned.
I spotted the source of the smoke, pulled the cab over in a no parking zone in front of a church, and ran across the street to see what was cooking. “Jerk chicken, Guyana style . . . you know, the place where Jim Jones killed all those people,” the sweaty cook standing over the steel barrel full of chicken and charcoal on the sidewalk told me.
(It struck me as kind of sad that nearly 30 years after the kool-aid, this native son of Guyana still felt he had to invoke Jim Jones’ name to explain where he was from)
(The jerk chicken was to die for)
Before I saw what was on the grill, I hadn’t the audacity to dream I’d found Texas brisket or beef ribs on the streets of Brooklyn. But once I tasted that jerk chicken, it seemed to me that Shaborn Juice Bar must be the Brooklyn equivalent of Llano. That divine scent and that ubiquitous smoke brought me back to the heart of Texas. And the jerk chicken, tangy and spicy and custom drenched in jerk sauce, was as flavorful as any barbeque I had back in the lone star, though in a totally different way. We devoured it all right there amidst the smoke filling the air on Nostrand Avenue. It tasted as though we’d found the Garden of Eden.
(Usually we don’t try anything I haven’t had a million times before on the tour, but that day it was clear that whatever came out of that smoke would be delicious)
Shaborn Juice Bar, Nostrand Ave And Glenwood Rd (near Flatbush Ave), Flatlands Brooklyn
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I’ve never had that Puritan work ethic Americans so revere. If I don’t absolutely have to work, I don’t. I never saw the point in going to work for the sake of going to work. That’s why I only drive the cab when I need the money.
Yesterday, I needed the money. But it’d been so long since I drove the cab that I’d gotten myself into a rut, and I really didn’t feel like leaving the house much less driving to Brooklyn, waiting for a cab, driving for nine or ten hours, returning the cab, and driving back home again.
I thought I might mitigate the pain and injustice I was about to face by taking my lovin’ spoonful of a girlfriend Melissa along with me. She gets a kick out of riding shotgun in the cab and talking with my fares. Once she put in a full eight hour day at her job, and then spent twelve hours with me at my job all the way from picking the cab up to dropping it off again.
We arrived at the garage before shift time, so there was time to kill. Neither of us had eaten a thing yet, and I suggested going across the street to Casanova. I’d been LOVING their grandma slices since I started working at Cha Cha’s garage almost five years ago.
I’d made it into a minor tradition (more like Chinese food on Christmas than apples and honey on Rosh Hashana) to down one of their crispy, thin square slices while I waited for Cha Cha to serve me up a trip sheet and cab keys. Sometimes, I make two trips to Casanova when it’s a particularly long wait for the cab. The grandma slice is irresistible.
I almost had a heart attack a couple months ago when I saw their doors were shuttered and their windows were covered in brown paper for a long while. Thankfully, they were merely undergoing an unexpectedly lengthy renovation. When I saw they were open, I knew we were going for a Casanova run. But we were in the mood for pasta, so Melissa and I walked right past their new oven, making a bee line for the refurbished back dining room.
It was closing in on five pm and neither of us had a single bite of food in our bellies. We splurged and ordered mozzarella sticks as an app:
It very well may have been because we were starving, but they were so freaking good that all we could do was stare at each other with wide eyes as we devoured the lot of them (an odd number so we split the seventh mozz stick like the high cal Lady and The Tramp). Then we filled up on toasted bread with olive oil, so I’m positive that our entrees really were as tasty as they seemed.
I’d only ever eaten grandma slices, garlic knots and such from the front counter at Casanova, but I had a strong premonition that the dining room would yield some classic southern Italian, red sauce delights. My plate arrived with a generous portion of baked ziti (the only thing on the menu for less than $10 although I was in the mood for ziti regardless), which we enjoyed immensely. Melissa ordered spaghetti Bolognese, and it was exactly what she had a taste for. There was about a ten pounds of pasta, the sauce was meaty, and the bottom of the dish didn’t get watery (a pet peeve of mine that is very common at the expensive red sauce joints on MacDougal near our abode). At first Melissa was acting a little coy toward her meal:
But once she tasted it, she lost all inhibitions:
Like real Italians, we sat for a long leisurely meal. I’d say it took about an hour for us to polish off all that food. We were totally satisfied, but Melissa was bummed that we had to go to work now. I needed to make some money. She was being a bad influence on me, trying to convince me not to go back to the garage to lease the cab. By that point though, I was so late to start driving, I probably wouldn’t have made much money anyhow. But this look she gave me sealed the deal:
Maybe I’ll go back and pick up the cab tomorrow. . . Maybe. And I’ll definitely grab a grandma slice while I’m there.
Casanova, McGuiness Blvd and Green Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn
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Mister Cutlets is somewhat of a role model for me . . . maybe even a father figure. We are both food writers. We are both lovers of meat puns (his book is called “Meat Me In Manhattan” and my last post was about a place with the motto “Let’s Meat At Sahara.“) We’ve both appointed ourselves absurd nicknames. And we both find it appropriate, even though neither one of us is a super hero as far as I can tell, to take on theme songs (”With the bacon and the lamb chops and the scrapple and the ham hocks, Mister Cutlets spend some time with me” written by Life In A Blender West versus “Pickles! Salami! Dumplings! Pastrami! Take a look, grab a bite, put it in your tummy!” written by Jack Dolgen of Sam Champion before, mind you, he ever heard that phenomenal Mister Cutlets theme song.)
So I take very seriously what Mister Cutlets writes. And a couple of weeks back, when blogging on Grub Street about the new Saveur 100, he declared that he was “shocked – shocked – to discover that just two entries cited the New York food scene.” These two entries, Mister Cutlets’ headline claimed, are “The 2% of the Saveur 100 That Matters.” One was about a Brookyn spot I’d never heard of. The other was about me.
Being 50% of the 2% of the Saveur 100 that mattered to Mister Cutlets was quite an honor for me. I was surprised to find that Mister Cutlets himself wrote one of the blurbs in the Saveur 100, and it was about a New Orleans oyster loaf, a good 1300 miles south and west of New York. Still, I felt like Michael Corleone must have when he shot McClusky and The Turk . . . kinda.
So I thought I’d better go taste the other half of the 2% that matters. Had I not, it would have been like never meeting my half brother. I was drawn to it by something greater than just my fat belly. I was following my heart across the East River.
Saveur describes it as a Dominican juice drink called Morir Sonando (To Die Dreaming) at Reben Lucheonette in Williamsburg. Fresh-squeezed orange juice, condensed milk, sugar, and vanilla syrup are all shaken with ice. The folks behind the counter seemed almost as proud as me when I showed them the magazine:
Even though I’d taken a thousand fares to Williamsburg and no one ever recommended Reben, I had a good feeling I was about to experience something great. I was right. The drink was absolutely delicious. And the guys behind the counter were as friendly as could be. I knew I’d found a new stop to take people on eating tours.
The Morir Sonando was refreshing and sweet. The flavor was so pleasing it made my shoulders slump and my eye lids droop shut when it hit my lips. I could clearly see why they call it To Die Dreaming.
The guys behind the counter didn’t speak much English, and my Spanish is spotty at best, but I did understand them saying “Top 100 in Brooklyn” as they looked at the magazine. I told them, “No, no solomente Brooklyn.” “Oh, todos de Nueva York?” one of them said excitedly. “Todo el mondo,” I corrected him.
Now they were thrilled. The counter man who seemed most interested in the whole thing informed me the drink was exactly as it had been for 45 years. Only the price had changed, and he showed me the original price hidden behind a construction paper cut out:
(I think that means it is actually less expensive now than it was 45 years ago if you adjust for inflation)
When I told them that I too was featured in the magazine, and that according to Mister Cutlets, we were the only ones that mattered, they got even more excited. And everyone crowded around to read my blurb with a genuine enthusiasm that struck me as almost childlike in its sincerity. I was touched.
I left Reben Luncheonette with a slight sense of euphoria as a result of the Morir Sonando. I also felt a sense of brotherhood with my new friends behind the counter. And hopefully, I made Mister Cutlets proud.
As published in Gothamist.com
Reben Luncheonette, Hevemeyer btwn Broadway and South 5th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
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You wouldn’t know it by looking at me, but I love salad. I enjoy it as an appetizer. I clean off my plate when it comes as a side. And, if it’s really tasty, I could be completely satisfied with salad as an entree.
However, meat, and plenty of it, is clearly what brings people to Coney Island Avenue and Avenue T. Sahara, which is open extremely late into the night, is packed every evening even though it is not cheap. Russians come up from Brighton Beach. Italians come over from Bensonhurst. Black cars parallel double park out front. The lot is usually full by dinner, and on the weekends Sahara is popular enough that they have to offer valet. Everybody in southern Brooklyn knows that Sahara is the place to go for a fix of tasty Turkish meat.
The mixed grill is nothing but winners. The plate is loaded down with shaved bits of meat off their lamb and beef “gyro,” crispy on one side, juicy on the other. The chicken kebab is grilled beautifully, leaving exactly the right parts charred and the right parts tender. And the lamb chop is delightfully greasy.
When I stop at Sahara on a tour, I usually show off Sahara’s shawarma (which they refer to as “gyro sandwich” even though they’re Turkish). Although the spacey grill man occasionally fills the pita with far too many vegetables on top so that the precious meat can’t be reached until after a few messy bites, I still consider it one of the best shawarmas in town.
So isn’t it ironic that Sahara serves my favorite salad on earth? It is called the Shepherd Salad, and it is genius in it’s simplicity. It consists of nothing more than cubed tomatoes and cucumbers along with some red onions and cilantro. The dressing, they tell me, is simply olive oil, salt, and vinegar. And it’s usually garnished with three or four black olives (unless you order it to go, in which case you get none, which is annoying). And every salad comes with soft, fluffy, chewy Turkish home bread that they bake there daily.
But I’m sure the main reason I’ve fallen so hard for Sahara’s Shepherd Salad is the cheese option. For an extra couple dollars, they’ll serve the salad with feta. This Turkish feta, however, is a creamier version than the crumbelievable Greek variety I’m used to. And, quite brilliantly, they SHAVE it rather than crumble it. The result is a salad with an even distribution of feta that makes every bite a sensation.
Yes, there is a giant, lit-up plastic gyro over the doorway. Yes, their slogan is “Let’s Meat At Sahara.” And, yes, I am, admittedly, an unreconstructed carnivore. But since I discovered Sahara’s Shepherd Salad, when I find myself on Coney Island Avenue, my mouth starts watering for salad.
As published in Gothamist.com
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As much as I like to pretend to act like one, I am no working class hero. True, I’ve done a number of blue collar jobs. But that hardly makes me a member of the proletariat. My mom was a teacher and is now a counselor. My dad was a professor, then a high level government official, and is now a lobbyist. And they paid for my undergraduate degree at NYU. No matter how long I drive a cab, I’ll never really be working class.
My dad, on the other hand, really did start out honest-to-goodness blue collar. His father ran a convenience store on the North Side of Chicago. My dad sold tube socks on the corner because he had to. I sold pickles on the sidewalk because it was my idea of a dream job. He drove a bus because it was a steady job. I drove a bread truck to get free, fresh rye bread. He sold lemonade at Wrigley Field and Comisky Park because that was how to make money at his age in Chicago. I sold hot dogs at the ball park in Coney Island because it was fun.
Although my dad successfully clawed his way out of the working class (he never imagined his second born would find it enthralling to claw back into it), the man can still enjoy blue collar cuisine. And I do believe that there is such a thing. I’ve never seen any other former Under Secretary of Commerce for Export Controls devour a Chicago hot dog or an Italian beef sandwich or a deep dish pie with as much pleasure and comfort as my dad does. It’s like watching an old teamster at a truck stop on Route 66. He is in his element. Even though he became a Republican and moved to Potomac, Maryland, he never forgot his working class roots.
And even though I could never pass myself off as anything close to a real blue collar guy, I’ve read that taste buds are genetic. And I’ve always loved to eat the working man’s lunch.
That’s probably a big part of the reason I fell in love with Defonte’s Sandwich Shop in Red Hook the moment I took my first bite of their signature sandwich. Homemade roast beef, fried eggplant, and fresh mozzarella on a big, long hero is exactly what my dad would have loved had he grown up in Brooklyn rather than Chicago. The sandwich is messy and gigantic, meant to satisfy your hunger quickly and your taste buds thoroughly without wasting time on presentation.
Defonte’s, at the edge of Red Hook near the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, has been serving the working class denizens of Red Hook since the days when the neighborhood was packed with longshoremen. When I went, there was a truck driver double parked outside chowing down on his roast beef sandwich before hitting the BQE. There were a couple contruction workers inside waiting in their hard hats for their orders to come up. And I know there was at least one cab driver in there. But that sandwich was so good I wouldn’t have been surprised to see an Under Secretary walk through the door.
379 Columbia Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn
As published in my weekly outer borough column in Gothamist.Com
And I give daily eating tours at FamousFatDave.Com
