07.20.07
Posted in Italian, Manhattan, Seafood, West Village at 8:52 am by Administrator
You’ve got to understand something. I’m not a cab driver. I’m just a guy who drives a cab.
If I were a cab driver – one like most of those guys you find behind the wheel when you open the door to your yellow chariot in New York – I’d be working six days a week. So I’d have many more stories with which to update this blog.
Have you ever gotten into a cab and it smelled AWFUL, like the cabbie has been living in there? Well it’s because the cabbie has been living in there. Cabbies can make the most money by leasing the car for the whole week and just driving 18 or 19 hours a day. I’ve never done that, but I’ve considered it. I did try a 24 hour shift once but a little over half way through I realized those hours didn’t agree with my constitution. I managed to enjoy taking 5 or 6 lunch breaks on that shift before I quit around hour 20.
If I were an average New York cab driver, I’d have a family to support, maybe in Jackson Heights. And I’d have an extended family to support, maybe in Karachi. But I’m just a guy who drives a cab. I have just myself to support, so I drive only when I am broke, or I need money to pay the rent. If you want to sit there outside your building telling me about your favorite soup dumplings in Queens, I’m all ears. Try to do that with a real cab driver. He’d act like you’re taking food out his children’s mouths. Because time is money, and when you have people who depend on you, you’re not doing this job for fun.
If I had to drive for a living, I’d probably not be in a chipper mood chatting you up about the food in your neighborhood anyway. I’d probably be on my hands free device all the time (which are illegal for yellow cab drivers to use, so if you want your cabbie to stop talking on his, he should stop- but first ask yourself why you find it so annoying. Is it because the sound of a language you can’t understand bothers you? If that’s why, then maybe you ought not live in a city in which most of the residents weren’t even born in America). And on my hands-free, I wouldn’t be talking to my friends about where everyone is hanging out tonight, I’d be talking to other cab drivers who speak my language about which bridges are jammed, what avenues are open, which airports need cabs. I’d be working.
But I’m just a guy who drives a cab. I drive when I feel like driving. I used to drive more than I do now. But it’s a terrible job. I’ve been robbed. I’ve been attacked by a junkie. They told us in Taxi Academy that driving a cab is the second most dangerous job in America aside from being a deep sea fisherman off the coast of Alaska (I never looked it up, I could just feel in my gut that it’s true).
There is a reason that it’s only immigrants who usually do this job. The muscles in your back and legs stiffen and knot as you sit for 12 hours at a time. And there are no health benefits for cab drivers. When you have to go to the chiropractor after twenty years on the road, take a guess who pays for that.
The old timers tell me that there used to be a union, but the only thing it did for drivers was if you had a flat or broke down and you couldn’t work for a minimum of three hours, you’d get $5. Now, the Taxi Workers Alliance speaks on behalf of cabbies, but I’ve never witnessed them achieve anything significant either. They were against the GPS system being put into cabs. But all cabs have to have GPS by October.
I haven’t driven a cab in well over a month now. And I’m so happy about it. I haven’t had to scarf down my meals in five minutes so I could get back on the road to try to scratch out a profit on the night.
To me, that is one of the defining differences between people who are cab drivers and guys who drives cabs. Cab drivers always have to eat and run (not to mention pee and run) because every minute spent lingering over a meal is a minute not making money. Guys who drive cabs every once in a while have the luxury of eating like a European.
My new favorite place to kick back and enjoy a meal like a man who has no place to be (or a European who has nothing to do but eat dinner for three hours) is Palma on Cornelia Street. I’d eaten lunch there on a number of occasions and enjoyed the homemade gnocchi with ricotta salata, an inexpensive, fresh-tasting rindless cheese which happens to be one of my all time favorites from my days working at Murray’s just a few steps away from Palma.
And the green cerignola olives that arrive at the table just after you’ve been seated might be the most perfect olive I’ve ever eaten. They’re firm, yet it’s easy to pull the meat off the it. I usually ask for seconds and thirds on my olives until the waiter makes fun of me (although he always brings me more).
But when I went for dinner for my first time a couple months ago, right about the time I starting really slacking off on driving the yellow cab, I found that they serve linguine with clam sauce on the dinner menu.
Now, I love linguine with clam sauce. Rather, I LOOOOOVE linguine with clam sauce. It’s the first thing I order at any Italian restaurant. I’ve lived in Italy. I’ve lived in Italian neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I’ve eaten more linguine with clam sauce than a lot of native Italians have (I’d like to imagine). And Palma’s linguine with clam sauce ranks as some of the best I’ve ever had. Top three maybe.
I’ve eaten it about five times now, and every time the linguine is boiled perfectly al dente, the clams are plump and fresh, and the sauce is light and delicious.
Last time I ate there I never felt less like a cabbie. I spent hours relaxing and eating. I lingered over my espresso.
While I sucked on my sugar stick like a lollipop, I gawked at Tom Brady and Gisele as they dined next to us (Melissa’s email to Page Six is quoted word for word here). You could see Gisele’s ribs through the back of her shirt, but I think she was eating. Apparently, she’s known as one of the bigger models, but she looked half dead.
The waiter/manager, who’d noticed how many times I’d shown up and ordered linguine with clam sauce in the past few weeks, was starting to think of me as a regular I suppose. So we chatted as I was on my way out of the garden in the back. “What do you do?” he asked. “I do eating tours . . . And I write . . . And I’m going to grad school,” I told him. “. . . Oh! And I’m a guy who drives a cab.”
Palma, Cornelia Street Between 6th Ave and Bleecker, West Village
Visit FamousFatDave.com for fun and food tourism
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06.08.07
Posted in Latino, On The Open Road, Seafood at 5:18 am by Administrator
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.
Five Borough Eatings Tours at w w w. Famous Fat Dave . c o m
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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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05.18.07
Posted in Astoria, Middle Eastern, On The Open Road, Queens, Seafood at 8:01 am by Administrator
I’m no innovator. Famous Fat Dave’s Five Borough Eating Tour On The Wheels Of Steel may be one of a kind in this town, but the concept of cabbie-as-tour-guide is not unique. In almost every country I’ve visited, I’ve found cabbies who double as tour guides. It’s only natural. Who knows a city better than the people who drive all over every inch of it, talk with every person in it, eat at a different place for lunch every day?
When I blew into Cairo in February of 2005, I’d already been doing my eating tours for friends and family (and friends of family and family of friends) in New York for years. But I met a cabbie there who took me on a tour that made me realize I should be Famous Fat Dave for real.
As far south as Abu Siembel (40 clicks north of the Sudan border) I’d heard rumors of this cabbie in Cairo who gives pyramid tours. On the way to Luxor I ran into a friend I’d met back in the Sinai, and she gave me his name and number. So the minute my train stopped in Cairo, I called this Ibrahim and within an hour he met me at the station cafe just as the sun was coming up.
He was a huge man with a huge smile. After he made sure I was well fed at the cafe, we were off. His cab, a classic black and white taxi (the yellow cab of Cairo), was comically small. I couldn’t bring myself to dream how this big guy squeezed into his tiny 1975 Peugot with 3,000,000 km on it all day long. But he did.
We spent the day cruising around the 22 pyramids of the lower Nile region. He stopped at all the amazing views. He gave a running commentary on everything from Egyptian history to Cairo traffic.
And his jokes were priceless. Before we stopped for lunch, he said that his cab was “hungry too.” At the gas station he pointed to the oil palms lining the Nile, turned to me and said, “But David, we don’t have much oil here. Only a little” and then made a gesture as if to ward me off. “Mr. Bush can smell oil,” he said (he never knew that I was crying inside). When a man pulled his donkey into the gas station, Ibrahim let out a belly laugh and told me the donkey was there to get gas too, “IN HIS ASS!” I’m not sure if the pun was intended.
I wanted to go native for lunch. I’d never tried Egyptian seafood, and I saw some people eating it at a stand. But Ibrahim warned me not to eat anything out of the Nile. Instead Ibrahim took me to a super touristy spot because he got to eat there for free (this was not an eating tour after all, we had 22 pyramids to squeeze in). Still, the meal was delicious. The babaganoush, tahina, hummus, and pita were nothing less than fantabulous. And the mixed grill and pickles were okay. But I could have eaten for three days in Egypt for what it cost me.
By the time we reached the Great Pyramids at Giza, he’d taken a real shining to me (I’d like to think). I told him about the Famous Fat Dave tour I conducted back in NYC and that I drive a yellow cab, so, naturally, he saw a little of himself in me. He pointed to my burgeoning pot belly and said that in 30 years, I’d have a belly like his. I told him I hoped to have a tour like his as well.
So when I returned to New York, I began promoting my tour in earnest. I’d already discovered a great Egyptian spot to take people on Steinway Street called Kabab Cafe. The food there is better than most I had in Egypt, and Ali, the owner, with his larger-than-life personality and bold opinions reminded me of Ibrahim.
My cousin Aaron, the swingin’ violinist who played on my theme song, moved to NYC last week (his first gig will be as the lone violinist at a Stephane Grapelli tribute at Lincoln Center on June 1), and I took the drive out to LaGuardia to pick him up. Afterwords, I stopped off to see Ali on Stienway Street for some falafel and a chat. But his store was shuttered for renovations. I considered going to his brother’s restaurant Mombar up the street which is just about as good, but I noticed an inviting place called Sabry’s across the street.
Sabry’s bills itself as an Egyptian seafood restaurant. Because Ibrahim warned me not to eat any fish out of the Nile, and it’s illegal to fish out of the Red Sea, I never ate any seafood during my month in Egypt. So I was intrigued.
This place had some beautiful looking fish on display in the middle of the dining room:
And all sorts of interesting fish were being pushed across the counter to the frenetic waiters like whole Red Snapper:
And fish heads:
We got it started with some of best, hot pita I’ve ever tasted:
A strawberry smoothie that would have hit the spot if I were in the Sinai:
And some fried shrimp to gauge how good the place might be compared to any old seafood shack:
We could tell we were in for a treat, because we’ve both had our fair share of fried shrimp, and these were especially good. They were plump and fresh, fried just to the point at which the freshness was still evident.
Our main courses were amazing. The talapia special that the waiter pushed blew my freaking mind. The meat fell off the bone like bbq pork even though it was grilled fish. And it was loaded with all sorts of amazing herbs and spices that gave it the flavor of Egypt with the quality control of America.
The other dish they called “fish cake” because it came piled high like a wedding cake. I’d never had anything like it. I didn’t get the name of the fish from the waiter whose English, though better than my Arabic, was a little weak. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the delicate fish mixed with steamed vegetables immensely and I’m glad the waiter convinced me to order it.
Egyptians must just be a gregarious bunch, because this waiter, like Ibrahim in Cairo and Ali across the street, was nothing but smiles and jokes the whole meal:
Ibrahim, from the driver seat of his black and white cab, took it upon himself to explain to me that the Jews refuse to live in peace and must always make war, so the Arab-Israeli conflict will never end. There were billboards all over Cairo proclaiming “Egypt is the Leader of Peace.” Our waiter, however, told us that he thinks terrorists are crazy. I didn’t bring up the subject, and I felt sorry for him that he felt the need to clarify that to me, as though if he’d left it unsaid I’d assume he agrees with terrorism. But mostly, he just joked around with us and smiled a lot.
Even the guys preparing the fish and making that delicious pita behind the counter were friendly:
So I’ve got a cab like Ibrahim’s and a tour like Ibrahim’s. My belly still isn’t quite like Ibrahim’s. But now, unlike Ibrahim, I’ve even got a place for Egyptian seafood.
Sabry’s, 24-25 Steinway Street at Astoria Blvd, Astoria, Queens
Visit www.FamousFatDave.com for five borough eating tours
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05.02.07
Posted in Belmont, Bronx, Cannoli, City Island, Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tours, Fruits and Veggies, Hunt's Point, Italian, La Pizza, Pelham Bay, Seafood, Sweets at 5:47 am by Administrator
ABC News Now just aired a piece on my famous “Boot Of The Bronx” eating tour, one of the countless, customized, culinary tours I have to offer over at FamousFatDaveDotCom. We got Oprah’s camera man (!) and took a wild romp through The Bronx chowing down on Italian food the whole way through.
Unfortunately, they cut a scene showing those delicious Little Neck Clams Possilipo at Artie’s in City Island. But they’ve got great shots of the broccoli rabe at Fratelli’s in Hunt’s Point, the fried calzone at Louie and Ernie’s in Pelham Bay, the Italian Ice next door at Teresa’s, and the cannoli at Madonia Brothers on Arthur Ave. Classic food porn. Enjoy.
Click here for the story.
Click here for the video of “The Boot Of The Bronx Tour” With Famous Fat Dave
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03.01.07
Posted in All-U-Can-Eat, Manhattan, Seafood, Sushi, West Village at 2:37 am by Administrator
“If you will it, it is no dream.” Theodore Herzl. State of Israel. If you will it, Nigiri, it is no dream.
And that is precisely what Nigiri did. He willed it. His eyes, just moments before glazed over and drooping nearly shut, lit up. His posture improved. His upper lip literally stiffened. And he began to eat once again.
“Did I blow it?” The Big Vashinsky mumbled as he bit off half a yellow tail. I studied my cell phone’s stop watch. It had been more than a minute. Jack counted the pieces remaining on the plate. It was still possible to break the record. Because he started out so strong, because he downed about 30 pieces in the first seven or eight minutes alone, Nigiri still had an outside shot.
“No, you can still do it,” Jack told him as he rubbed his shoulders like a prize fighter between rounds. And so Nigiri ate. And ate. And ate. He’d hit his brick wall, and he’d smashed through it. True, he’d come out slower on the other side, but he was still downing pieces, one after the other. No time for chop sticks. No room for soy sauce. Nigiri was running on pure will power.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, a problem arose. The buzzer that George the sushi chef and the waitress brought out was running fast. Compared with the stopwatch on my cell phone, it was a good two minutes off. This could pose a problem. Do we contest the clock during the heat of competition? That might break Nigiri’s concentration. And even if we did challenge the false clock, we still might end up like the American basketball team of the 1972 Olympics (not to compare Yummy Village to the Evil Empire).
Jack made the decision: don’t let our champ know. Just tell him to keep eating and have him beat the official clock.
The water, which was just a luxury at the start, became a necessity between each bite. The remaining pieces, which ranged from average to slightly larger than average, looked gigantic even to me. And then came the final thirty seconds:
VIDEO OF THE PANDEMONIUM (with an unfortunate audio delay I cannot fix)
With no time left on the clock (yet just over 2 minutes on my clock) Nigiri did it. He swallowed the last piece as the clock hit the buzzer. Pandemonium broke out at Yummy Village.
I couldn’t believe what my eyes were telling me. It was the most impressive thing I have ever witnessed. No, I ain’t never seen no queen in her damn undies. But I have seen the Sistine Chapel. And I have seen the great pyramids at Giza. And I have seen the 1998 Yankees. And I have even seen Takeru “The Tsunami” Kobayashi eat a similar number of hot dogs in just 12 minutes.
But The Big Vashinsky is not a professional. Yummy Village, though it should be, is not on the competitive eating circuit. What Nigiri did that night was something no one could ever take away from him, even if his record falls which, like sands through the hour glass, it surely will. Takeru, a Japanese man, came from Japan to eat a record amount of the ultimate American food- hot dogs- in Nigiri’s neigborhood. And now Nigiri, a Brooklynite, comes to Manhattan to eat a record amount of the ultimate Japanese food. The irony should not be lost.
Nigiri faced a Wall of Fame full of dozens of challengers, some losers, some champions, and he defeated each and every one of them by sheer force of will.
VIDEO OF THE WALL OF FAME
He did not come out of it unfazed. After achieving his sushi immortality, he stumbled out onto MacDougal Street and tried to throw up (I told you I refuse to sugar-coat what we’re really dealing with here). But he couldn’t. It was as though he stomach was saying to him, “NO! We’ve come this far, we won’t lose our honor now.” When he returned from the frigid lower Manhattan elements, he couldn’t get warm for ten minutes. Clearly, all of Nigiri’s blood was in his belly.
During the ceremonial pinning up of the Polaroid, he was still in extraordinary pain.
VIDEO OF THE PIN UP
But even after all that, Nigiri abides.
Nigiri abides. I don’t know about you, but I take comfort in that. It’s good knowin’ he’s out there, Nigiri, takin’ her easy for all us sinners.
PART II OF THIS TALE IS ALSO PUBLISHED ON SUPERSIZED MEALS DOT COM,THE DIRCET LINK IS HERE
YUMMY VILLAGE SUSHI IS LOCATED ON MACDOUGAL STREET BTWN BLEECKER AND MINETTA LANE IN THE WEST VILLAGE, MANHATTAN
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01.24.07
Posted in BBQ, Chic, Chinese, Hamburgers, Italian, Latino, Meats, On The Open Road, Sandwiches, Seafood, Sushi, There's A Beverage Here Man at 1:15 pm by Administrator
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:
Visit www.FamousFatDave.com
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12.15.06
Posted in BBQ, East Village, Jewish, Manhattan, Meats, Posts For Not For Tourists, Seafood at 7:24 am by Administrator
If your Jewish mother puts the chicken through the deflavorizor, read today’s Not For Tourists Guidebook New York page for renewed hope. Also read it if your Jewish mother cooks a mean brisket like mine does. Go ahead and read it even if you don’t have a Jewish mother at all.
Mara’s Homemade
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