Famous Fat Dave: The Hungry Cabbie

Weekend Edition ran a story on the Famous Fat Dave experience.

To listen, click here.

To book a tour, click here.

And don’t worry. I am back from Zihuatanejo, ready to chow down.

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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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