I hope you’ve been checking in to Not For Tourist Guidebook every day. If you haven’t, may I suggest you do so today. Both the New York page (Randazzo’s Seafood in The Bronx) and the DC page (Roger’s Produce in Potomac, Maryland) have blurbs written by some crazy cabbie.
Also, I’ve missed a couple opportunities to link to my blurbs in the past few weeks, so you can belatedly click below for those as well.
Hi folks. Adam B. here, hoping to take a moment to go back in time with you and Famous Fat Dave. The month was March, the year was 2003: a tumultuous time for our nation. Scorn for America was building as the leader of the Free World abondoned reckless diplomacy in favor of a cool, calculated blitz to Baghdad.
Things were tense between worldwide anti-war protests mounting and Nicole Kidman duking it out with Rene Zellweger for best actress. With iTunes still a month away, what better way to escape reality than a trip to Portland, Maine to vist our friends Ian and Marin.
FFD and I hopped in the Maxima and headed to Maine from Maryland via Philadelphia, where we stopped for piping hot soft pretzels . . . and cheesesteaks . . . oh yeah, we stopped for hoagies too.
Once we got to Maine, we knew that no reunion with auld-tyme friend would be complete without a feast. And no feast in Maine is complete without lobster. So by the transitive property, Dave and I made it our mission to find the most succulent, meaty, fisty lobsters that we could afford. We set out on the streets of Portland on a cold, crisp, sunny day. Blue jeans and sweatshirts. Hand and hand.
We ended up at the creaky Harbor Fish Market where freshly caught seafood practically dances from the boat to your plate. Dave and I persevered through the anti-tourist tactics of black flies and ridicule (in a thick New accent) for lack of lobster knowledge. We emerged from the store with a cardboard cornucopia of crustaceans.
We arrived back at the house, and while the rest of the feast was being prepared, a pang of conscience came over us while staring into the box. We decided to give our main course a few more minutes of dignity in the master bathroom (unbeknownst to our hosts).
When the time came to transfer the lobsters to the kitchen, any dignity that remained was quickly erased by Dave in one fell schwing:
Thankfully our host Ian knew what the hell he was doing and took charge of the operation. With Cheshire grins, the three of us proudly pose with our prize catch just before the boil:
And a few minutes later, viola! The well-deserved reward for a hard day of deep sea shopping. The lobsters are served prete-a-mange along with all the fixin’s (don’t worry Marylanders, the Old Bay Seasoning was present but off camera).
Famous said grace. Then we toasted to health, good cheer, and a merciful Jewish G-d who hopefully understands the complexities and difficulties of abiding by all laws of kashrus in a modern, predominately gentile society.
Amen
Harbor Fish Market, 9 Custom House Wharf, Portland, Maine
If Virginia is for lovers and Maryland is for crabs, the Lower East Side is for smoked whitefish. But check out today’s Not For Tourists Guidebook New York page to learn where else one might find a niiiice smoked fish:
All-you-can-eat sushi makes some people nervous. But it just makes me excited. Check out the “Tracts” section of Not For Tourists Guidebook’s New York page for a long, sole-searching piece I wrote on a magical neighborhood deep in Brooklyn where all-you-can-eat sushi is a way of life:
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
Everyone who has the means gets out of New York City for as much of August as possible. The city empties. Traffic lets up. Business is slow. New Yorkers generally head out to the Hamptons in Long Island or down the shore in Jersey. Cab drivers often head back to the old country to see the family they left behind in Senegal or Bangladesh or Hungary.
But I am not a typical New Yorker. Nor am I a typical cab driver. My family hails from Chicago, but I spent my formative years in Maryland. And, like a good Marylander, I vacation in Delmarva (the DELaware MARyland VArginia peninsula).
When I was a kid, it was Ocean City, Maryland. But the family has moved on up to Bethany Beach in Delaware. So Melissa and I drove the five plus hours down through gnarly traffic last week, and we hit the beach. Melissa isn’t the one who dubbed the Freedenberg family “The FEEDenbergs,” but she knew what she was in for.
We aren’t the kind of family that sits on the beach drinking beer all day and then goes in for a sandwich or orders a pizza. We spend most of our beach time discussing what to eat next. In fact, we spend most of our eating time discussing what to eat next.
And being Marylanders for the three decades, a crab feast was the first thing on the list. For the past few years at the beach, we’ve dined at Mickey’s:
Mickey’s is officially north of the Maryland border, but it’s basically identical to a real Maryland crab shack. The only difference is that they don’t have Old Bay Seasoning on the table. However, that’s easily remedied by sneaking in a contraband container of Old Bay in my mom’s purse. The crabs are always steamed just right.
They’ve been getting smaller and smaller every year thanks to environmental degradation in the Chesapeake Bay and over-crabbing, but the meat is delicious no matter what the size. It just means even more work picking the meat during the only meal you can starve while eating:
Here, mother of Famous Fat Dave models some crabs and fried shrimp for the camera. Notice the open-mouthed pose at the right. You can see where I get it from. She’s the Hungry Mommy:
Not to be outdone, father of FFD tries his hand at some fried shrimp spokes modeling. A real crab feast always has a little fried chicken thrown in. My dad manages to model it without it actually being in his own hand.
I know they come out of waters a long way from the Chesapeake, but we ordered some King Crab Legs too. They are mentioned in the Famous Fat Dave theme song. Also, I just finished watching the second season of Deadliest Catch, so I considered it my civic duty to eat a few so that these crazy fishermen shall not have died in vain:
When the meal was done, this is what just one end of the table looked like:
Afterward, we were all ready to go into Ocean City for some frozen treats to wash the spicy Old Bay off our tickled tongues:
Now that she’s got the hang of it, my mom can’t stop modeling food. Although she didn’t realize that she was on camera in the photo on the right. While I was taking a picture of my mint chocolate chip scoop, you can see her in the back cheersing with her spoonful of ice cream:
We did spend a lot of time at the beach house though. The next night we decided to bring home a lobster dinner. Again, I know Maine is nowhere near Delaware, but we were all in the mood for seafood. Melissa was apparently in the mood to dance with hers:
She’s a Marylander, it’s true, but she’s also Thai. So she knows her way around a lobster. That, and she likes to eat the eggs. You can see her on the right searching for the tasty Eastern delicacies. Her dad would be proud:
Then she realizes she’s on camera so she decides to stop eating lobster eggs and just act cute, though I don’t think there’s anything cuter than eating lobster eggs:
Tracy, my sister-in-law, is originally from Massachusetts so we were hoping she’d bring some extra crustacean expertise into the family. She brings a lot to the table, but a knowledge of shellfish is not one of them. My mom, being a mom, picked Tracy’s lobster meat for her:
Alas, Tracy is not a fan of crabs. She tried gallantly to aquire a taste knowing she was marrying into a Maryland family, but she’s since given up. Still, we couldn’t resist having another crab feast:
Tracy got a filet of sole to eat as well as the spiced shrimp (we ate some of those too), and the rest of us had the pile of blue crabs and Old Bay:
My mom, being a mom, was in charge of handing out the crabs:
Tracy and Josh’s pride and joy Milo isn’t old enough to pick his own crab quite yet, but he seemed to like the little bits his dad Josh gave him (although he seems to like everything, including blue cheese). He is old enough to play with the hammer though. Looks like he’s going to grow up to be another crab-loving FEEDenberg:
Go to www.famousfatdave.com for fried whiting and king crab legs, egg cream ice cream and deviled eggs
What kind of son would I be if I posted those photos of my mom with all sorts of food in front of her face, called her The Hungry Mommy, and I didn’t put up at least one shot of her looking like herself
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:
