The Eating Adventures of a Checker Cabbie
As so it was written. When the sun sets on the eighth day of Passover, G-d’s children shall prepare for yet another feast. And the feast will be a Mexican one. And it will be good.
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Take a wild guess at who gave us our best restaurant rec while we were in Zihuatanejo. Nope, not Andy Dufresne. It was the cabbie who picked us up at the airport and drove us to our hotel.
I sat through 4 years of Montgomery County Public School Spanish between 7th and 10th grades. And I lived in Madrid for 4 months while I interned at the US Embassy. But I didn’t pick up a lick of Spanish until my stint working with a bunch of Mexicans as a cheesemonger at Murray’s Cheese Shop.
And I didn’t realize how much I’d picked up until I got into that cab and began carrying on a conversation with that cabbie. I surprised myself – and Melissa – at how much I was able to communicate, because I’m borderline retarded (no joke; just ask Dr. Rita Brown from a town known as Oyster Bay Long Island who administered the tests) when it comes to language skills. I spoke enough to ask where to eat, and I understood enough to hear our cabbie say, in no uncertain terms, “La Sirena Gorda.”
But La Sirena Gorda is in downtown Zihuatanejo, and we were staying at Playa La Ropa up the coast from there. So for the first week, we mostly just ate what was within walking distance. Dona Prudencia, the restaurant attached to the super fancy Villa Del Sol Hotel, served the best food we found on the beach. Their jumbo coconut shrimp, with crusty shavings of coconut and a sweet mango dipping sauce, tasted like one of the amazing Thai dishes Melissa’s mom makes. Their ceviche came warm, and it looked and tasted as though the fish had been blanched before the lime juices cooked it. The menu claimed that it was prepared in the “traditional” way, but I’d never heard of warm ceviche. Either way, it was bomb.
And their shrimp in white wine and garlic sauce with mushrooms and rice put a smile on my mamasita’s face despite the intense nighttime heat and humidity.
Aside from that restaurant, the food on Playa La Ropa was uninspired. La Perla (the restaurant that people on the series of tubes that make of the interwebs said was the best on the beach) served fish taquitos that tasted like they were filled with comida gato.
To be fair, the chips and salsa were not only inspired, they were divinely inspired. The salsa was freshly chopped, not too spicy, and bursting with cilantro. Even the chips were better than I’d ever had. They were thicker than the chips I find in El Norte, with a bit of grease to them that gave them their own flavor. In fact, pretty much everywhere we went had the best chips and salsa of my life.
And I can’t express to you how blissful a feeling it is to order guacamole and
A: Not get charged $4 for a spoonful of it
Dos: Find great mounds of it beneath your pile of chips, so that you feel silly for having rationed it at the start
Quatro: Realize that even cat food tacos taste okay with a shit ton of guac and fresh salsa on top
When we finally made it into downtown Zihuatanejo, we were planning on hitting La Sirena Gorda, but the cabbie who brought us to town said it was touristy and that we should eat at this other place that I don’t think had a name. We gave it a shot because we were in no mood to search, and it looked like Mexicans were eating there. But, ONLY Mexicans were eating there. For some reason, we did not take into account what a place like this would do to our lower GIs.
The food was tasty though. We had fried chicken taquitos (the idea was brilliant although it could have been executed much better. Still, someone had better serve fried chicken tacos in New York because there is a market for that). We also had these messy soft corn tortilla things covered in beef, mayo, and tomatoes, and chicken enchiladas with verde sauce. Everything was covered in oaxaca cheese and shredded raw cabbage. I went crazy, ignoring the fact that I’d been brushing my teeth with bottled water in an effort not to get sick, and ate more raw cabbage (most likely not washed in Evian) than prudent. And I paid for it. Still, I maintain that it was worth it.
When we recovered a couple days later, we headed back into downtown Zihuat for dinner. And without even trying, we happened upon La Sirena Gorda.
It means “The Fat Mermaid” as you can see from the wooden sign in the foreground pointing tourists toward the Fat Mermaid Shop. Usually, tourist restaurants with gift shops are not where I like to eat when on vacation. But when I looked inside, I saw only Mexicans. And when I looked at the menu, I saw about a dozen varieties of fish tacos. Now, I think fish tacos are the greatest idea in the history of ideas. I can imagine that a truly great fish taco could be one of my favorite eating experiences ever. The concept is perfect. It is as though the guy who invented fish tacos was thinking of me when he did it.
But I’d never found that Platonic fish taco I imagined when I first heard about them a few years back (I’m an East Coaster. We’re lucky to get good Taco Bell). So when we sat down at La Sirena Gorda, I went all out. I basically ordered one of each taco on the menu.
The three types pictured above are Pibil (the two on the top left), smoked fish (middle), and carnitas (bottom right). The pibil tacos, with red onions, were the most impressive. The smoked fish tacos tasted Jewish, which, in my book, is good, but certainly not the Platonic fish taco for which I was searching. The carnitas fish taco won the award for weirdest as the menu proudly declared that it was fish perpared as though it were pork. And that’s exactly what it tasted like. The serenita taco had THREE types of chillis mixed into the fish, but it was, somehow, not very hot.
The white hot habenero hot sauce that the waiter warned us was “mas caliente” (he also warned us the Corona was mas fina) was, as Wolf Blitzer would say, so white and so hot. I loved it. Melissa LOVED it. . . maybe a little too much.
She paid for that too.
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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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There is something fundamentally wrong with a country in which a man has to work for 20 years before he gets to take 5 weeks of vacation. Every time I travel, I run into Europeans, Australians, Argentinians, Congolese who have been on the road for months. Sometimes years. And the Americans feel lucky to take advantage of a four day weekend.
I consider it my civic duty to travel (or vacation, whatever you want to call it) as much as possible. As a yellow cabbie, I don’t get paid vacations. I don’t get dental. I don’t even get a refund if I rent a cab that breaks down twenty minutes into my shift. But I do get to make my own schedule.
So over the new year, I headed out west. Melissa, my sweet, Khmer-style Thai girlfriend, put her vacation days from 06 together with her vacation days from 07, and we managed a fairly lengthy west coast swing.
And even though my job has me logging a lot of hours behind the wheel, I intended to do California right by making it into a classic Highway 1 road trip. We had family and friends to see (crash with) all along the way. We had nature to experience. We had nerves to calm. But mainly we had bellies to feed and taste buds to please.
Jeremy, my very talented and chic Hollywood editor of a cousin, took the first week of our journey off of work so he could join in the festivities. He promised to show us around LA after exploring a little more of his adopted state together. He also promised to let me drive as much as I wanted. And with a plan to NOT make any plans more than half a day in advance, we took off in his souped up Honda Accord heading north along Highway 1.
But before we left, Jeremy introduced me to a Santa Monica Italian (possibly Sicilian because I saw a big map of the island up on the wall) institution called Bay Cities. In addition to ridiculously big and delicious heroes that would make any New Yorker blush:
(the other half was bigger)
I was overwhelmed with the selection of Italian cheeses, olives, jarred imports, salami, (Jewish) pickles, and fresh bread. I decided to stock Jeremy and his roommate Mike up on some Bay Cities delights:
And neither of them wasted time tearing into the particularly tasty sopressata (though Jeremy had a hard time remembering what it was called, nice Jewish boy from Chicago that he is):
Every single thing we bought was nothing short of great. An old woman I chatted with as I waited for the counter man to scoop my artichoke hearts proudly informed me that Bay Cities used to be a tiny little shop with saw dust on the floor that smelled overwhelmingly like parmesan. Now, they had hit the big time with a much larger location.
There was a sign claiming that Bay Cities makes fresh bread all day long. I didn’t believe it until I saw someone come out of the back with a cart full of piping hot filone (pictured above on the table and in the sandwich). All I had to do was look at him, and he handed me a loaf that was literally too hot to hold. Try finding filone too hot to hold at 4 pm in New York City.
From the way people, particularly New Yorkers, talk about LA and its food, I didn’t think a place like Bay Cities existed there. But if Bay Cities were on Bleeker Street in Manhattan, there would be a line out the door all day long and tourists would be coming in from every corner of the globe to take a picture in front of the garlic hanging from the ceiling. Right then and there, I realized I didn’t know ANYTHING about LA. I also thought I might be able to live there.
We put LA many dark hours behind us. Most of the first leg of the journey was done in the pitch black because we’d spent the daylight eating Bay Cities and playing Mike’s Guitar Heroes II. My internal clock felt like we had until 9pm before the sun went down because the weather was like summer. Highway 1 north of LA FELT beautiful even though we only saw the first 15 minutes of it at dusk. And we spent the rest of the night at a lodge in Big Sur.
There, we found Monterey Bay beef jerky. And on a roadtrip heavy on jerky, that bag of Monterey Bay proved to be the tastiest. Even though we all commented on how amazing it was (”I think this is the best beef jerky I ever had,” Jeremy said during our inaugural game of Rummy 500 at the lodge), we somehow managed not to take a picture.
We did, however, take a picture of the famous dungeness crab I had in the actual town of Monterey at a strip mall spot called Sea Harvest Restaurant and Market:
And it was tasty indeed. It was much easier to find big bunches of meat than back home near the Chesapeake. But I have to say Monterey dungeness crab, if that was a typical example, doesn’t compare to Maryland blue crab for taste or overall experience. But hey, no one ever told me they were competing.
Next stop: San Francisco. We stayed with our extremely generous friends Lily and Levi in their beautiful apartment in Twin Peaks with an insane view:
(okay this is the view from the hill just up the hill from their apartment, but apparently building a city on a series of steep hills has one advantage: abundant views)
We actually managed to have not one, but two mediocre burritos in The Mission. The first spot’s lackluster performance could be explained away by the fact that our visit to La Taqueria Corneta came just before closing the day after Christmas. Their hearts must have been with Jesus rather than refried beans.
But we went to Poncho Villa’s in the middle of day on December 29th, and it was WEAK. Both burritos were dry and lacked flavor. Pictures were taken in wild anticipation only to be deleted in genuine anger. I’d had incredible burritos in the Mission on past SF trips, and I don’t know what went wrong this time.
Chinatown, on the other hand, did NOT disappoint:
The Peking Duck at Great Eastern was perfect. Super crispy skin. Super tender meat. Not too much fat in between. And the steamed bun vehicle is so choice. If you have the means, I do suggest you try it. I’ve never had that option back east, but I found the buns add a wonderful texture to the duck that pancakes never could. And they are much smaller so you could easily handle three or four or five sandwiches, while I usually have to stop at two pancakes.
And everything else we ate – Mongolian beef, fried rice, the lemoniest lemon chicken ever, mussels– was about two notches above what passes for great in New York’s Chinatown. We sat there eating like kings and queens of the Ming Dynasty until midnight. We even got a spot across the street (unHEARD of according to Levi, who was born and raised in SF). It truly was a blessed meal.
Next, Jeremy and I went across the Bay for a meal with our beloved Aunt Francis and dear cousin Sandy. They wanted to show us Sausalito. They claimed it was much more beautiful in the daytime, but I thought it was plenty nice at night.
Aunt Frances can be picky, and she shot down Sandy’s suggestion of Thai food saying, “Too spicy.” But when Sandy suggested sushi, Aunt Francis agreed saying, “I love anything Chinese.” Classic Aunt Frances.
We arrived at Sushi Ran ready to eat, and we had a feast. My white tuna sushi (top right) was, hands down, the best I’ve ever tasted, and white tuna is my bar none favorite piece of negiri. So that’s saying something.
Jeremy and I both loved his citrus salmon roll (top left) as well. They sliced the lime so thin that the rind didn’t take away from the melt-in-your-mouth experience in the least. The California roll (bottom left), which I ordered on the logic that I ought to since we were in California after all, were the only thing mediocre on the table. Aunt Frances popped the entire ball of ginger (bottom right) into her mouth before we could stop her, sucked on it for ten seconds, spit it out, and shouted “Wa Wa Weeeeee Wah!” I guess Borat did not invent that, because Aunt Frances told us, after we finished laughing, that Wa Wa Weeeeee Wah is just something people used to say.” She then declared the restaurant to be shabby even though her teriyaki was admittedly great.
For dessert, Jeremy ordered a tea which had hundreds of tea leaves stitched together by hand with silk thread. The tea leaf flower, when it arrived at the table, blossomed at the bottom of the glass of hot water before our eyes:
I can’t say it was the best glass of tea I ever had, but it was very California.
Then we found ourselves in Sacramento. The “annoying hipsters” call it Sacto, according to my friend. Andy and his girl Jess, with whom I made fast friends while we all lived in Spain a couple years back, call it “Sac Town” or just plain “Sac.”
Anyway, I had no idea what Sac would be like, but I knew that I never would have gone if it weren’t for Andy and Jess. And I knew that they would show us a good time no matter what. They are the type of people who attract all sorts of wild characters, they surround themselves with genuine folks, and the fun is just bound to follow:
(That is Andy is on the upper right, Jess is squished beneath him, and that’s his friend Phips with ZA CRAZY EYE in the middle in “Old Sac”)
We hit 3 bars in three hours, all of which were fun in their own way, and then made it back to Andy’s place for some Spain-style late night partying. There, amidst the drunkenness and insanity at Andy’s house at 230am, Andy introduced me to my single favorite treat of the entire roadtrip:
The Sacramento Salsa Company makes a garlic salsa that blew away every other salsa I ever tasted (I’ve never been to Mexico). They claim to use tomatoes from California’s “tomato country” which I didn’t know existed (could it be as good as Jersey tomato country? apparently). And the plentiful garlic comes from Gilroy, a mythical town Jeremy told me of where everything is made from cloves of fresh garlic including the ice cream.
Andy and Jess swore that making nachos out this Sacramento Salsa would change my life. I was reluctant because I enjoyed eating it straight out of the container so much. But Andy argued that cooking the garlic brings out the flavor, and did his bidding.
(Jess couldn’t decide on the international sign for ROCK or the the international sign for WEST SYIIIIDE to show off the Sac Town specialty)
Yes, I admit, it may have been because it was very late at night, I may not have been entirely sober, and I was RAGING with my old friends from my crazy days in Spain, but those nachos really did change my life. At that moment, in that town, no treat could have been more perfect. And I’ll never look at salsa the same way again.
The rest of the roadtrip was a bit of a blur. But we did continue to search for delicious tastes of the golden state.
I recall going for breakfast the next morning bleary eyed. Andy led us to the tastiest “Mexican food cooked by white people” in all of Sac. It was called Nopalitos, and Melissa finally got a great burrito there:
I had a bold salad with vinaigrette on top and chile verde beneath:
We encountered the most pitiful salad bar in history at our hotel in Yosemite. And I ended up trying to drink of one of the park’s impressive waterfalls:
We visited with my cousin Bo and his family in Santa Cruz. We pretended it was Santa Carla and we were vampires. Jeremy even had the sound track in his car. “Eat this David and become one of us.” On the pier, we ate surprisingly stellar fish and chips and fried calamari (that gave Melissa and me surprisingly nasty burps for our cruise back down through Big Sur that made Jeremy both love and fear us more):
(I didn’t read the signs saying “Don’t Feed The Seagulls” until AFTER I fielded an array of dirty looks from the locals who should be so lucky that I didn’t feast on their flesh. I’m tryin’ to watch the Lost Boys.)
And Melissa and I later stumbled upon the best diner food of our young lives. She knew she was going to be happy with the food in California because her two favorite meals are sushi and burritos. But I’d have to say chicken fingers are a very close third.
While we were spending a couple days in Palm Springs testing out what life would be like if we were already retired (I consider this my civic duty along with vacationing as much as possible), we were told to try Ruby’s Diner. We were shocked by how amazing the chicken fingers were:
(Melissa is laughing because she can’t believe how good such a simple diner menu item could be, especially when you’re retired)
We also enjoyed Ruby’s Kobe sliders. Normally, I would never order Kobe anything, but I figured as long as I was retired, I may as well:
Sadly, the roadtrip had to come to an end. But once we returned to LA, the good eats just kept on coming. Our meal at Roscoe’s House of Chicken N Waffles was all I ever dreamt it would be and more. We were overwhelmed with our choice of high quality fast food burger joints, any of which would be the best of its kind back east. And we eagerly wolfed as many as we could.
But the most distinctively LA eating experience we enjoyed came when Jeremy’s mom/my Aunt Linda told Jeremy to take us all out on her credit card. Jeremy wasted no time heading straight for The Ivy.
Oh yes, that’s Sharon Stone dining right next to where we waited for our table on the sidewalk. It was an odd sensation standing next to a woman I’d never met but whose beaver I’d seen (and examined closely on slow mo and freeze frame when I was 12). And the woman she is with is wearing sunglasses ON HER HEAD. I love LA.
The maitre d’ thought he knew Jeremy. And Jeremy responded, “Yeah, you’ve seen me before.” So we got a table right quick.
The calamari app came quickly too, but we were too busy being fabulous to think about it too much.
(That’s us/Melissa still being fabulous by dessert with our super fluffy key lime pie)
My entree, a mixed seafood pasta caught my attention though.
The pasta looked hand cut. And they do NOT skimp on the seafood at The Ivy. I was extremely pleased with the dish. But after Angelica Houston meandered past (she wasn’t even there WITH Sharon Stone), I couldn’t concentrate on my food anymore. There was just too much external stimulation:
We managed to fight through the gauntlet of paparazzi trying to take Melissa’s picture:
Only to find Jeremy’s souped up Honda Accord’s hood covered not only in bird shit, but feathers as well when the valet brought it back. I don’t think Angelica’s Houston’s car came back that way.
I was still coming off the high of the roadtrip, and I was going through driving withdrawal. So Jeremy let me drive to dinner that night, whereupon I BUMPED the car behind me while parallel parking. Jeremy and Mike gasped in audible horror when I did it. “What, you don’t bump people’s cars out here?” I asked innocently. “No, Dave, you definitely don’t bump people’s cars out here.” Makes sense. I could go with that flow. But you should see the bumper on my car here in New York.
Thankfully, we were parked outside of Baby Blues BBQ. Jeremy declared it to be his single favorite restaurant in all of LA. And, AGAIN, we were greeted like old friends by the staff. Jeremy, the waitress let me know, is the “sweetest kid.” But I already knew that.
He’s also got great taste, because the food at his pick was so good it made me wish we’d eaten there every night we were in LA. It’s southern bbq, which is a risky venture to undertake anywhere outside of the south (I admit I was skeptical before I sat down and smelled the array of bbq sauces). But this meal turned out to rival anything I’ve eaten down south.
My “Memphis ribs” (above) were supple on the bone, crispy at the edges, and bursting with smoky, meaty flavor. I was surprised they called them “Memphis ribs” if they weren’t dry rub like at Rendezvous (a famous rib joint in Memphis that made remember how happy I am to be alive). The waitress said they start out as a dry rub, but Baby Blues likes to bring them to the table with a little sauce.
No matter what style the menu described them as, they were some of the best ribs I’ve ever tasted. And mine were served on a Yankee plate?!? What a pleasant surprise to find after ripping through half my rack. Baby Blues is truly a restaurant after my own heart.
As you could see from the size of my Yankee plate, I only ordered half a rack and sauteed okra (I’d filled up on cheese from Bay Cities before we left). Jeremy, on the other hand, ordered a whole rack of Texas style beef ribs. And he challenged himself to eat them all:
(On the left, Jeremy is a man on a mission; On the right, he feels like he hit a brick wall with two to go, but I think I recall him polishing those off as well before we stood up from the table)
Before we knew it, we had to catch our flight back. We knew we loved California. But we had, to our surprise, grown quite attached to LA. We agreed that we’d live there if the drivers weren’t so NUTS. People turn their wheels like they are making a turn from an avenue onto a street in Manhattan just to change lanes on the Freeway. I saw the fresh aftermath of THREE different apparently fatal accidents in the few days I was in the LA area. That is not normal to see back east. Jeremy seems unfazed. He also seemed unfazed when a drunk in an SUV nearly smashed into us head on just a block from his place in West LA. To me, the drivers seem more dangerous than the earthquakes and the mud slides and the wild fires and the gangs. I tried not to let it bother me. I was on vacation.
Before we left, I wanted to eat something that I couldn’t get back in New York. So Jeremy and Mike took us to Wahoo’s:
Fish tacos are almost never an option where I usually eat. In fact, I’d NEVER eaten an authentic one. The fish tacos at Wahoo’s in Santa Monica sealed the deal for me. I couldn’t have done my public service of going on vacation in any more appropriate of a locale. California is certainly a spot that makes me feel like I’m getting some serious vacation time in:
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On August 20, 2001 my brother Josh moved in with his special lady friend Tracy in Boreum Hill Brooklyn. Soon thereafter, I began driving a yellow cab. Two of the first three garages at which I worked were located in Brooklyn, so it quickly became something of a tradition for me to stop by their apartment on Mondays (Josh’s day off) to relax and eat before my night shift began.
And what a neighborhood in which to eat. Less than a block off Smith Street, the world was our oyster when it came to ordering. I’d always spend the first chunk of my Monday shift gleefully stuffed with pannini from Pannino’teca, a rueben from Salonike, or a burger from Bar Tabac.
It was a perfect setup for me. Relax and eat, eat and relax, and then go out and face the city being of sound mind and full belly. But then some ominous developments began to occur. Josh and Tracy got engaged. Josh and Tracy got married. Josh and Tracy began talking about moving to the suburbs. Josh and Tracy had a baby — Milo. Josh and Tracy bought a station wagon.
I tried my hardest to convince them that Milo would grow up to be much cooler if he grew up in Brooklyn rather than the ‘burbs as we had. But Josh countered with some nonsense about sending Milo to a good public school and giving him a backyard to play in. As well as Josh and Tracy are doing, you’ve pretty much got to be a millionaire to buy a place with a backyard in that part of Brooklyn and send your kids to private school.
Before I knew it, they’d bought a house in Westchester, and they were packing their things. I’d grown quite attached to their neighborhood in the five years they lived there together. But I guess I could understand them wanting to give Milo a backyard and a good school. Plus, I fully admit that it’s nice to be a little further away from the Gowanus Projects than a quarter block.
It was with a heavy heart that I drove over to Josh and Tracy’s for my last Monday lunch. Tracy was at work, but Josh and I decided to head over to Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights to do our final lunch right. We took Milo to Teresa’s where he was an instant hit with the Polish waitresses. And they were a hit with him.
The blintz was a hit with me. I ordered the pierogies, which I’d had many times before and never left me disappointed. Boiled and served with apple sauce and onions, Teresa’s pierogies are as close to the gut-busters I had in Krakow as any I’ve tasted in New York.
But I’d never orderd their blintzes before. I’m used to blintzes being mediocre at best. The filling always seems to be too sweet for me, as though some uncaring cook just stuffed it with Smucker’s jelly. And the outside is always too mushy.
But the blintzes that Josh ordered that day were a thousand times better than any blintz I’ve ever tried. The outside was just crispy enough to change the entire texture of the treat from the usual “blah” to the rare “delicate and gourmet.” The sweet farmer’s cheese filling was by no means overwhelmingly sweet. So much so that it benefited from more sweetness being shaken onto it from above in the form of powdered sugar. And the plum butter gave the whole thing a down home flavor.
Milo dug it the most:
Josh and I had never eaten at Teresa’s together, and that meal just made me more wistful than ever. Now, when I drive the cab on Mondays, I’ve got no anchor to throw before I start working. I just have to dive right in.
I’ve been up to Westchester a few times already. They’re supposed to have great Mexican food on North Avenue. But the burritos we had at El Jalisco were merely pretty good, though they were clearly authentic. Milo loved them because they were covered with two slices of melted Muenster – his fave.
Watching Milo enjoy them so much made me like them a little more. But he won’t remember the superior burritos at California Taqueria on Court Street. Maybe we’ll find better burritos somewhere else in Westchester.
The whole family went out for some Turkish food one evening at Turqoise in the next town over from Josh and Tracy’s house. The meal was delicious, especially the stuffed grape leaves jammed with pine nuts. But Milo enjoyed the milk more than anything else:
I still prefer Kapadokya in Brooklyn Heights for Turkish food. I took Josh there for his bachelor party, and we ordered from there a few times afterwards:
I was starting to wonder if Westchester was going to yield any great food. We heard there was great whitefish salad at one deli, but when we went they were sold out. We heard Walter’s has the best hot dogs in the whole New York area, but when we went they were closed.
Yesterday, Josh threw his first barbeque at the house. Melissa and I brought some Merguez sausage and a whole wheel of parsley and cheese pork sausage from Pino’s on Sullivan Street. The wheel, once unwound, went over big:
Milo couldn’t resist it.
So there we were, deep into the suburbs. Brooklyn was already a distant memory. Milo won’t ever remember it. I took stock.
Josh was firing up the grill. Kids were running around the backyard as we played football and baseball. The sun was shining through the clouds, and the shadows were short. People were spread out across Josh and Tracy’s big house. Parking was plentiful. And everyone was relaxing and eating, eating and relaxing – including me.
Teresa’s, 80 Montague Street at Hicks, Brooklyn Heights
Kapadokya, 142 Montague Street at Henry, Brooklyn Height
Pino Prime Meats, 149 Sullivan Street, SoHo, Manhattan
Turqoise, 1895 Palmer Ave, Larchmont, Westchester
El Jalisco, Somewhere on North Avenue 576-4008, New Rochelle, Westchester
Famous Fat Dave, 5 Borough Eating Tours, New York City
I hear YouTube.Com just changed hands for a billion and half dollars. I’m betting that at least a buck of that was because I posted a 17-minute Famous Fat Dave’s Faves Tour this summer. Even though we shot it in my Maxima rather than a yellow cab and we only hit two boroughs, you’ll get a pretty good feel for how a Famous Fat Dave tour goes down.
Josh Ozersky, also known as Mr. Cutlets, listed the clip as one of “America’s Amusingest Food Videos” in New York Magazine’s Grub Street. My cousin, Jeremy Weinstein, also known as Joe Hollywood, edited it, and rumors are already flying about a long-awaited nod from the Academy for his work.
Click Here For The Famous Fat Dave’s Faves Five Borough Eating Tour On YouTube
I’m not talking about the Restaurant Row you went to with your parents before they took you to see Glengary Glen Ross. Visit Not For Tourists Guidebook to read my piece on the downtown Restaurant Row at:
www.famousfatdave.com/FoodWriting/NFTCornelia.pdf
Visit www.famousfatdave.com for a laugh or to book a five borough eating tour
The dog days of summer are not a good time to be a cabbie in New York. It seems like everyone who has the means has already taken off for breezier locales. Business is dead. Gas is more expensive. Profit margins are squeezed.
So it’s a good thing that I’m conducting more and more Famous Fat Dave’s Five Borough Eating Tours these days. The more you read The Hungry Cabbie, and the more you tell your friends, the less often I have to drive my yellow cab for street hails. Reservations for tours are pouring in (August is almost booked), so call now. Operators are standing by.
This weekend I was planning on heading to Rockaway Beach for a filet of sole hero from the 101 Deli, a stroll on the boardwalk, and a dip in the Atlantic. But I was busy with two eating tours I booked at the last minute. One was a Midnight Munchies Tour like the one I did with David Wain and Ken Marino in June. The other was a Best of Brooklyn Tour I conducted for the Sorey family of Richmond, VA.
Rachel and her boyfriend have a few years in New York notched on their belts, but the rest of the fam came up for the occasion, a surprise gift for Mr. Sorey. With dad in the passenger seat and 4 in the back seat, we were breaking all sorts of Taxi And Limousine Commission rules, so there was a nice touch of extra added adventure whenever we saw a police cruiser and had to have one person slink down in the back seat to hide.
We only had four hours for the whole tour, but the Sorey’s were real champs, and we did a lot of eating on the run so as to fit in more chow time. I didn’t take a picture of the Ewephoria Sheep’s Milk Gouda from Murray’s, but that’s what held us over during the drive to Tom’s Diner in Prospect Heights:
We called ahead, so our piping hot Belgian waffle with strawberries was waiting for us. We felt like the smart ones as we slathered ours in syrup and cinnamon butter while we sat outside in the chairs meant for all those people waiting in the line that stretched out the door:
Click here to read what I wrote about Tom’s in Gothamist.
After we (I) finished our waffle (this was when I explained that Famous Fat Dave always gets the last bite), we stopped at El Gran Castillo de Jagua for a Cubano. The mercury was pushing 100, so the heavily forested Prospect Park was the ideal spot for everyone to dig in on the pressed sandwich:
Click here to read what I wrote about El Gran Castillo de Jagua in Gothamist.
The kids ran into Culpepper’s to grab a Bajan (that means ”from Barbardos”) flying fish cutter with hot sauce while the rest of us relaxed in the A.C. from my 2001 Ford Crown Vic with 200,000 miles on it. Then we all took turns devouring that sandwich while we drove down Nostrand Avenue:
Click here to read what I wrote about Culpepper’s in Gothamist.
Stuck in a bit of traffic on Nostrand and Glenwood, we noticed the overwhelming smell of smoky bbq filling the air above the avenue. I switched on the hazards in a no parking zone in front of a church, ran across the street, and returned with some jerk chicken from a Guyanese man bbqing on the sidewalk:
And my nose served us right. It was delicious:
Next stop was the Irish-style, soaking wet roast beef sandwich from Brennan and Carr that took a beating in my Gothamist column last week. And guess what creepy Gothamist commenters: The Soreys all LOVED it:
Like father,
Like son.
After a taste test comparison with the Roll N’ Roast beef sandwich with cheez whiz and onions in neighboring Sheepshead Bay, we took our Roll N’ Roaster lemonades and hit Brighton Beach for a while. We had time to get some sun, feel the breeze, and take a gander at some Little Odessa’s summer street culture:
No Famous Fat Dave tour is complete without eating off the big yellow table:
And that’s how we enjoyed our shawarma from Sahara in Gravesend. Mr. Sorey wasn’t impressed. I wish we had time to hit Zaytoon’s (they put pickles in their shawarma, and the meat has the more complex flavor Mr. Sorey was looking for), but we had time constraints:
Click here to read what I wrote about Sahara and Zaytoon’s in Not For Tourists Guidebook.
L&B Spumoni Gardens in Bensonhurst is always a crowd-pleaser though. No one can deny the glory of a steaming hot thick slice of pizza and a steaming cold squeeze cup of spumoni on the outdoor patio:
Click here to read what I wrote about Spumoni Gardens in Not For Tourists Guidebook.
Zipping up the Gowanus Expressway that never has any traffic on it, we found ourselves in Red Hook as the time grew near for me to return the cab to Cha Cha in Greenpoint. Frozen, chocolate-dipped mini key lime pie on a stick really hits the spot at the end of a muggy, sticky day of eating and driving. Everyone was grabbing for it:
Click here to read what I wrote about Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Piesicles in Gothamist and Click here to read how I discovered Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies
So how could we possibly cap off a tour like that? We did it with deep fried, crunchy, dill, sour pickles, rolled in Cajun spices, and dipped in tartar sauce. A heavenly treat straight out of Elvis’ cookbook. And it was a big hit:
Where do you find something so scrumptious you ask? I’m keeping that one a secret for now. But if you take a tour, I’m sure we can arrange a tasting.
I’d like to use this space to thank the Soreys for their enthusiasm. You really ate like pros. I’m sure it is clear from these pictures, the Sorey’s enjoyed their Best Of Brooklyn Tour immensely. But more importantly, they really did save Famous Fat Dave the last bite:
Visit www.famousfatdave.com to book an eating tour. And if today’s post wasn’t enough Best of Brooklyn for you, take an almost entirely different virtual Best of Brooklyn Tour with the Dolgens.
