01.01.08
Posted in Harlem, Manhattan, Posts For History.Com, Soul Food at 11:05 am by Administrator
The same 300 pound Harlem fare who told me to go to Londel’s for fried chicken and waffles told me I also must go to Spoonbread for Sunday brunch. But I loved Londel’s so much that whenever I was in the neighborhood I couldn’t imagine eating anywhere else.
So it wasn’t until I shot the New Year’s Day Holiday Foods webisode that I finally made it to Spoonbread just blocks away from Londel’s in Harlem. I am prettyyyyy pretty mad at myself for my reluctance to branch out because Spoonbread was amazing.
Watch as Miss Norma Jean and I dive deep into some black eyed peas and rice:
Holiday Foods: Hoppin John
Dive into food tourism at www.FamousFatDave.com
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10.02.07
Posted in Harlem, Manhattan, Soul Food at 9:50 am by Administrator
My relationship with Columbia University has been long and rocky. When I was first applying to colleges in the fall of 1995, I happened to rent both Midnight Cowboy and Taxi Driver for the first time. After watching them back to back, I felt dark and sticky, and all I knew was that I would go to school anywhere in America EXCEPT New York City.
Then I took a year off between high school and college during which I got over my fear (probably because I witnessed totally strangers embracing each other in the streets on tv after the Yankees won the 1996 World Series). So I applied to Columbia. And I got rejected.
After a semester down at NYU during which I endured one too many “fruit bowls” (my naked roommate loved surprising me when I came out of the shower – unbespectacled, dripping wet, at my most vulnerable – by jumping up and down bent over at the waist displaying his melons, apples, and banana), I decided Columbia might be a more cerebral environment. I applied on transfer, and I got ACCEPTED. But by the second semester I had settled into my new dorm where I shared a wall with an addictive diner called The Kiev and a room with slightly less naked roommates. So I rejected Columbia.
Three years ago I applied for graduate school at Columbia, and they rejected me again. The next year I applied for a different graduate program, and they accepted me. But then I deferred from them for a year so I could pursue my more immediate interests in eating and driving. I told you: the relationship has been rocky. It’s been almost as though Columbia has been Tommy Lee and I’ve been Pamela. No, it’s been exactly like that.
But there came a time in my life not too long ago when I realized I didn’t want to drive a yellow cab forever. An advanced degree might lift me out of that working class that I pushed my way into after college. And so, a month ago, more than 11 years after I first applied, I started school at Columbia.
No worries though. I told them that I am Chief Executive Officer, President, and also a member of Famous Fat Dave Industries so they let me into their executive program. I only have to go on Saturdays, and I have the rest of the week to occasionally drive the cab or conduct my five borough eating tours (operators standing by at www.FamousFatDave.com) I’m still living the dream.
I spent a good deal of the summer asking fares and customers where they eat in Morningside Heights, because, I admit, the Columbia area is a black hole in my map of good eats in NYC. I often take my tours through there on our way to Harlem to show them the famous Tom’s Restaurant facade of Seinfeld fame. And Koronet Pizza’s traffic sign sized slices have been known to impress the occasional drunk Midnight Munchies Tour customer. But I still don’t know where to eat when I’m at school, and I want something delicious.
Last Monday, on our way to see Showtime At The Apollo (it’d been my dream to be one of the white guys in the front row who gets made fun for driving like a white guy for as long as it’d been my dream to go to Columbia), my cousin Aaron, my cousin Jeremy, and his roommate Mike stopped at the campus gates to see what all the fuss was about with Ahmadinejad speaking. Would it be a perversion of freedom of speech, providing a platform to hatemongering? Or would it be a glimpse into the Iranian point of view and an open debate?
Either way, we felt like it might be an historic moment, like that time a bunch of the Weathermen from Columbia accidentally blew themselves up before class one day in the 60s. Except this time, we’d hear from a guy who pays for people to blow themselves up on purpose.
A couple hours before the speech, the scene was . . . festive? The Columbia kids had plastered the campus with flyers. One flyer had a picture of Ahmadinejad’s smirking punum with the caption, “Putting the Purr In Persian.” Another had his manscaped mug subscripted simply with “Bringing Sexy Back.” My favorite was this one (which I just had to have for myself, so I slyly tore it down and then posed for Mike’s camera with it). I think it cut through all the messy history and politics and religion clouding the issue and got right to the crux of the matter:
I had to leave my boys behind to see what was going down on campus because access was restricted, and when I came back I felt a little sad that I’d been missing out on the protest outside the gates. We’d come to protest the protesters, and it seemed like we were the only ones who thought the man should be allowed to speak.
But when I got back through the gate I found that Jeremy and Mike were getting along with the flag waving, New York Post reading, God fearing Americans who’d gathered to unwelcome the Hitler of Iran:
We spoke with a reporter from the Daily Telegraph (he assured me it was less of a tabloid than The New York Post, the inflamatory paper up on the sign in the picture above). We spoke for a while, and the main thrust of my conversation with the reporter was that I wish I were able to attend the forum so I could ask Ahmadinejad what he really thought of Brittany’s performance at the VMAs – I bet you he’d say he thought it was great he’s such a contrarian. Instead the quote made me sound like a serious and reasonable person. I also like that he dubbed me a “master student” which I most certainly am not (click here and read the whole story including Famous Fat Dave’s thoughts on the controversy because I know you care).
I later found out that President Bollinger, who “disrespected” America by allowing Ahmadinejad to speak and then “disrespected” Ahmadinejad by calling him a petty and cruel dictator, made his career as a first amendment scholar. So you can argue against Bollinger allowing him to speak, but you’d probably lose the argument if it’s on the grounds that this sort of thing shouldn’t be protected under free speech. If you start going down that road, you might realize that you just don’t agree with the first amendment.
Once this guy got up on his soap box about how Harlem is facing it’s own genocide and it’s called gentrification (people were REALLY throwing the word genocide around that day at Columbia), we remembered why we were really uptown.
Leaving the hullabaloo behind us, we walked down onto 125th. Now we were in my locale. I felt much more at home. The options for amazing food were boundless. After a brief stop at Manna’s for some devilled eggs, mac n cheese, and banana nilla wafer pudding, we were ready for Showtime.
We could have stayed at the campus to listen to the speech. But we would have had to just sit there and take it. At the Apollo, they understand free speech. And they know it works both ways. Anyone can get on stage , no matter how outrageous, during the Amatuer Night portion of the taping (so long as they rub the stump as they come out).
But when the crowd doesn’t like someone, they stand up at the their seats and in the aisles, wave BOTH hands in the air from side to side, index fingers extended, and the performer gets swept off the stage by a tap dancing guy wearing a top hat and white tails. I heard that Ahmadinejad seemed taken aback by the rude reception he got down on 116th Street. But from my vantage point on 125th Street, it was clear that he had no idea how good he had it.
Visit www.famousfatdave.com for food tourism at its most brazenly provocative
Manna’s, 125th And Frederick Douglas, Harlem, Manhattan
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06.01.07
Posted in Bronx, Caribbean, Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tours, Fried Chicken, Harlem, Manhattan, Seafood, South Bronx at 4:51 am by Administrator
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.
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09.05.06
Posted in Fried Chicken, Harlem, Manhattan, Seafood, Soul Food, Sweets at 1:10 am by Administrator
My two favorite minorities in the world are the Kurds and fat people. Although I’ve never picked up a Kurd, I’ve been hailed by many, many fat people. Some cabbies have told me that they refuse to pick up obese people on the grounds that they take too long to get into and out of the cab. My response is that it is just as immoral to refuse fat fares as it is to refuse black fares. But I’ve found that those weak-minded cabbies who won’t take the big ‘uns, generally don’t take black people either.
I, of course, jump at every opportunity to take both obese and black fares. My reasoning is simple. Both groups tend to take eating seriously. I’ve had a lot of luck matching taste buds with both fat people and black people. So when I saw a 300-pound black woman in front of Barnard College recently, I swerved across two lanes of Broadway to grab her.
Once she’d gotten inside my taxi, she told me to go to 137th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. PERFECT, I thought. Who better to ask where to find good soul food in Harlem? But it was a delicate subject, and I couldn’t decide exactly how I would bring it up.
We made small talk about traffic and the yellow cab business. “Used to be, just a few years ago, yellow cabs wouldn’t come to Harlem,” she pointed out. “Yeah, things are changing. Bill Clinton’s had his office on 125th Street for years now. There’s money to made up here these days,” I replied pleasantly. “Rents are going up. Black people can’t afford to live in Harlem anymore,” she said. The chit chat came to a halt, and we both just stared out the window as we sat at a red light on 132nd Street.
We were ignoring the fact that we’d both witnessed two or three empty yellow cabs pass her by before I swooped in to pick her up. We were also ignoring the fact that there wasn’t a single face on the street that wasn’t black.
Now we were fast approaching her house. I felt the opportunity slipping away. We caught some lights, and, before I knew it, we were there. She was paying me. She was slinging her bags over her shoulder. She was scooting to the curb side. We hadn’t really been totally honest with each other the entire conversation, so I didn’t know how to broach the soul food topic without sounding offensive.
I was worried that it would seem presumptuous. But I could tell she had the kind of body you get from eating fried foods and way too much butter, not Twinkies and Ho-Hos. Plus I’d run out of time. So I just went for it. “Where do you get your soul food?”
She stopped gathering herself, looked me in the eyes through the rear view, and stated very authoritatively, “The only place I go out for soul food is Londel’s.” JACKPOT. I’d never heard of it.
My friend Nate has been living in Harlem for a few months and told me he’d always be up for an eating expedition. I went off duty, picked him up, and sat down at Londel’s within the half hour.
I hadn’t asked my fare the price range, so I was a little thrown off when I saw that they charged more than $10 for the entrees. But it was the type of place at which the waiters wear tuxedos, so it made sense. Even though we were the only people in there at 5:45pm, we felt underdressed.
But the waiters, even the busboys, were so friendly that we felt right at home before our food even came. And when it did, we felt even better. I went with the fried chicken and waffles because I had a good feeling about the place.
I love the concept of chicken and waffles, but I’d never had a really great dish of it. I’ve eaten at Pan Pan, the old chicken and waffle lunch counter on 135th and Lenox, and I wanted to think it was delicious. But I couldn’t get past the fact that it tasted as if I was eating two things that didn’t naturally go together. Like peanut butter and hot dogs (I’ve had that too: Hagerstown, Maryland minor league game circa 1995), the fried chicken just doesn’t seem to go with the waffles, whether taken in the same or separate bites. I had been considering flying out west specifically for Rosco’s. And then I ate my first bite at Londel’s.
The taste sent me straight to the moon. The flavors and textures blended like I’d always wished they had. It made me reevaluate my whole worldview. If chicken and waffles could be this good, what else have I been missing? There must be so much else out there that I don’t understand.
Likewise, Nate fell head over heals for his mac n’ cheese and collard greens. I was right there with him once I stole my first fork-full. His cornmeal-dusted fried whiting was good too, though both of us had tasted better.
We didn’t really have room for dessert, but our waiter was giving us the hard sell. We almost went with the sweet potato pie, but Nate is a semi-professional pie chef and he nixed the order when the waiter admitted that the crust wasn’t homemade.
We went with the bread pudding instead, and it might be the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I’m not even a dessert person, but I went absolutely bonkers for the bread pudding. The consistency was like something from another planet. The sweetness would explode into every corner of my mouth with each bite. It was classic comfort food cooked in truly gourmet fashion. Nate and I sat in silence, occasionally shooting each other wild-eyed looks, until the plate looked like it came right out of the dish washer.
(notice the rum and caramel sauce expertly drizzled)
I knew that restaurant tip was going to pay off. I could tell how wise my 300 pound fare was. She clearly had a handle on good eating. But she also had a grasp on the subtleties of life.
After she’d gotten herself out of the cab, she leaned back in the window. With more than a bit of suspicion in her voice, she asked, “Why are you so interested.”
“Well, I love soul food. But I also take people on eating tours of the five boroughs,” I told her. “I call myself Famous Fat Dave.”
She sized me up with her eyes, looked down at her own body, and said, “Well Famous Fat Dave. . . Everything’s relative.”
Londel’s, 2620 Frederick Douglass Blvd. btwn 139th and 140th, Harlem
Visit FamousFatDave.com for five borough eating tours and we can hit Londel’s on a Sweet Tooth Tour, a Fried New York Tour, or a Famous Fat Dave’s Faves Tour
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05.09.06
Posted in Belmont, Bronx, Cannoli, Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tours, Fruits and Veggies, Gramercy Park, Harlem, Hunt's Point, Italian, Jewish, La Pizza, Latino, Manhattan, Meats, Melrose, Pelham Bay, Sandwiches, Seafood, Soul Food, Spanish Harlem, Sweets at 6:36 pm by Administrator
Be my guest on a virtual Famous Fat Dave’s Uptown and The Bronx Boogie Down. Come along on a double date from heaven with Rex and Steve and Sarah and Sha for deviled eggs, fried whiting, Littleneck clams posillipo, fresh mozzarella, maduros, broccoli rabe, hand-piped cannoli and MUCH more . You’ll get virtually hungry, then virtually full, then briefly virtually ashamed of yourself, and then virtually proud you virtually ate the whole thing. And visit the Famous Fat Dave’s Five Borough Eating Tour website to learn more about tour options or take other virtual tours.
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