10.26.06
Posted in Boreum Hill, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Eastern European, Hot Dogs, Latino, Middle Eastern, Polish at 2:27 am by Administrator
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
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10.19.06
Posted in Brooklyn, Fried Chicken, Soul Food, Southeast Asian, Thai at 9:47 pm by Administrator
When I’m out there on the mean streets in my cab, I’m risking my neck for food tips. More than monetary tips or even a good story, I want to know where my fares eat. And I’ve got a long list of foods that I’m in the market for.
Second Avenue Deli closed, so I’m in desperate need of a tip on a good corned beef sandwich. I haven’t found too many great burritos in this town, so I often test my Spanish skills in hopes of finding one to rival a west coaster. And I’m slightly obessesed with pickles, so I tend to nudge the conversation in that direction if I sense someone might know his way around a full sour.
But I usually do NOT go out of my way to get tips on where to find fried chicken. Although fried chicken is one of my favorite foods on the planet, I get enough of it right here in the comfort of my own home. My special lady friend Melissa, drawing on the techniques of countless generations of Khymer-style Thai Muslim chefs from her mother’s “Neighborhood of Kitchens” in Bangkok, fries up chicken at home like no New York City fry cook ever could.
She guards the family recipe with her life, but I can tell you she fries it first and then puts it in the oven so as not to burn it in the oil but still cook it all the way through. She also makes a dipping sauce for it with lime juice, fish sauce, hot pepper, and some other secret ingredients. And she serves it over jasmine rice.
The results are heavenly every time. I’ve never had fried chicken with skin so crispy or meat so juicy, much less both factors combined perfectly. The eating experience Melissa provides makes your eyes light up, as evidenced by this shot of Melissa’s friend Melanie going in for her second bite:
But there is something about me that makes people think I want to know where to get fried chicken. Most likely it’s the shape of my face, which, precisely BECAUSE of fried chicken, is round. I used to be skinny, believe or not. My ribs actually showed until I was 8 years old.
It was then that I discovered the joys of that sacred deep fried bird and began riding my bike to Roy Rogers multiple per week. I used my allowance, and when that ran out, I sold baseball cards to finance my fried chicken expeditions. This continued unabated for a few months, and I steadily gained weight without understanding why. My mom noticed the startling weight gain too, but she didn’t know why either. I wasn’t telling her where I went after school every other day, and she chalked up the second chin to our purchase of a Nintendo, which occured simultaneously.
Finally, as I was chowing down on a drumstick one afternoon, my mom and brother walked in to my Roy Rogers on the way home from my brother’s swim practice. “What are you doing here?!?” my mom asked, very surprised to see my greasy face. “What are YOU doing here?” I replied. “I come here all the time.”
My body never recovered. My ribs never showed again. But I never lost my love for fried chicken. My mom took it upon herself to teach me well that I can’t continue to eat fried chicken two or three times a week if I wanted to live to see the next century. So nowadays, I try to keep my fried chicken consumption down to that Thai fried chicken that Melissa cooks when the mood strikes her.
Still, I cannot resist good old soul food style fried chicken every once in a while. I’ve been known to stop at Popeye’s from time to time (a step up from Roy’s, I believe). And, as I say, people tend to tell me where to get fried chicken without my asking. After I cross the Manhattan Bridge, I keep getting told to go to Ruthie’s Restaurant a couple blocks east of the Fulton Street Mall in Downtown Brooklyn. Not only did I get multiple recommendations from my fares, but the great Robert Seitsema of the Village Voice gave Ruthie’s a favorable nod as well.
Our friends Mark and Jack, who like to squeeze into our tiny apartment whenever Melissa is frying chicken, came along for the Ruthie’s run when they heard Melissa wouldn’t be cooking. We were immediately welcomed with open arms and friendly smiles by everyone from the counter girl to the waiter to Ruthie herself as she did the cooking in the back. We all felt right at home. And when the food came, we were feeling even better.
The chicken looked perfect. But it was too hot to eat, having just come out of the oil. It was practically still snapping and popping like it was in the pan. So we dug into the sides. PHENOMENAL. EVERY ONE OF THEM. The mac n’ cheese was cheesy and crispy just like i like it. The collard greens were flavored with bits of smoked turkey which made the vegetable as tasty as a good plate of meat. The black-eyed peas were delicious as well, exuding an almost pickled aroma. And the candied yams were better than any I’ve had during my 26 Thanksgiving dinners.
Finally, the chicken had cooled down enough to tear into without giving ourselves second degree burns. It was everything we hoped it would be. The skin was crispy and bursting with flavor. And the meat, even the white meat, was tender and juicy. I want to make clear that I still prefer Melissa’s Thai fried chicken, but I could see myself getting back into my Roy-Rogers-8-years-old-selling-baseball-cards-to-eat mode with Ruthie’s.
After all that, dessert didn’t disappoint. The red velvet cake might have been a little dry, but the sweet potato pie made up for it and more. I didn’t think anything could be sweeter than those candied yams, but this pie took the cake. The crust tasted homemade and buttery, and the filling was silky smooth and sweet like Melissa. Mark modeled it for me:
Even though we felt like we were at home, I have to say that eating at Ruthie’s isn’t quite as comfortable as actually eating at home. Her food is so good, it attracts everyone to her door, including the local junkies. As we ate, the man pictured here hovered in the doorway begging for some collard greens:
He wasn’t so much begging for them like a homeless person on the street would, but he was begging for them like a child would from his mother. They are that good. When he got to his feet, he stood in the doorway pleading with Ruthie, “Just a little a your greens Rootie. Pleeeeease. Just a little Rootie.” He seemed to know her.
One of the things I love about that woman is that she didn’t just say, “Get the hell outta here” like most owners would. She told him, “Don’t come here LIKE THIS. Don’t disrespect my place.” She wasn’t saying he could never have her collard greens. That would be cruel. Her greens are the stuff of life. She was just saying that he couldn’t have them “like this.”
Finally, he proved to be too much, and she took it upon herself to kick him to the curb. Take a look at this video (no sound necessary because you can’t understand what the junkie is saying), and watch closely at the end as Ruthie comes to our rescue: Ruthie To The Rescue On Youtube
Don’t tell my mom, but I think I might start eating more fried chicken.
Ruthie’s Restaurant, 96 DeKalb, Downtown Brooklyn/Fort Greene
Visit www.FAMOUSFATDAVE.com for five borough eating tours
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10.18.06
Posted in Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tours at 3:58 am by Administrator
Starving for Famous Fat Dave? Hungry for pickles? Grumbling for more Hungry Cabbie? Read an interview in the Village Voice’s Best of NYC edition. And come back tomorrow, because I promise to have a fresh post for you to read full of pictures and fried chicken and a video and the always crowd-pleasing shirtless junkie falling asleep standing up.
“Best of NYC: People We Love” Interview internet link
And if you didn’t pick up the hard copy off the street, take a look at it in my “Dave In The Press” section. The picture is comically huge.
“Best Of NYC: The People Who Make New York Fabulous” Interview newspaper spread
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10.11.06
Posted in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Chinese, Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tours, Jewish, La Pizza, Latino, Lower East Side, Manhattan, Pickles, Red Hook, Sandwiches, Sheepshead Bay, Sweets, There's A Beverage Here Man at 8:01 am by Administrator
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
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10.06.06
Posted in Astoria, Middle Eastern, Posts For Gothamist, Queens at 10:17 am by Administrator
Check Gothamist today for my column on Ali El-Sayed of Astoria, Queens. Be warned, he curses a lot, and I quote him a lot:
Kabab Cafe
Visit Www. Famous fat dave. Com for family-friendly five borough eating tours
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10.02.06
Posted in Lower East Side, Manhattan, Sweets, There's A Beverage Here Man at 4:53 am by Administrator
A little more than one year ago, I took a fare that seems to have damaged my diet irreparably. I didn’t take him far, and he was certainly not the type of person I would normally want to emulate. But since he rode in my cab, I can’t quite shake his influence.
I picked him up on 8th Street and 5th Avenue in the middle of day. He told me he was heading to the Cherry Street Projects deep into the Lower East Side. He spoke very quickly, and before we covered a long block, I knew half his life story. He’d just returned from L.A. where he’d spent the bulk of the last decade “making it big,” although he retained his thick New York accent. He was going back home to visit with his family who he’d barely seen since he’d left. Rocking the leather jacket, the tall black boots, and long Andre-from-Real-World-One hair, I figured he was some kind of Sunset Strip thrasher. And he confirmed my suspicions by telling me the name of his band by the next block.
I couldn’t tell if he was on coke or he just had the sort of personality that makes a guy seem like he’s on coke all the time. He acted as though he was genuinely excited to tell me everything that was going on in his life. And I was listening intently until he stopped mid-sentence to shout at the top of his lounges, “STOP!!! STOP THE CAR!!! STOP STOP STOP STOP.”
I slammed on the breaks, thinking something was terribly wrong either inside or just outside of the cab. Even after we came to a halt, I could hear him saying, “stop stop stop stop stop” under his breath, and I saw him staring hard at someone on the sidewalk. “WHAT!?!?” I asked him. “Oh. . . Oh, never mind dude, never mind. I just thought that chick right there was the hooker I was with last night. I wanted to stop and say ‘hi.’. . . But it isn’t. . . Let’s roll.”
“Alllllllll right,” I responded as I turned my head back toward the road in front of us. Now I was pretty sure he was on coke. “I promise I won’t do that again,” he told me. He did do something similar ten minutes later, but I ignored him. He didn’t seem to mind.
As we headed down Bowery just a few blocks from his parents’ project, he pleaded with me to change course and take a right onto Kenmare. “Why?” I demanded, thinking he was having another episode with a vaguely familiar figure on the street. “No, no dude. I need a drink,” he said firmly. “Why not stop at a deli on Bowery or Cherry Street, rather than go out of the way?” I asked. “Because this deli sells Yoohoo in cans,” he responded, as though that was reason enough.
He assured me he’d make it worth my while, so I took the right and waited outside while he ran in. Sure enough, out he came with an ice cold six pack of Yoohoo dangling from his finger. While he knocked back what appeared to be an entire can in one gulp, I simply said, “Yoohoo, huh,” as I eyed him in the rear view mirror.
That’s all it took for him to go OFF about Yoohoo. He sounded like a spokesman for the company, though he assured me that he wasn’t. “It’s so frosty and delicious. It’s so cold and refreshing. And you gotta get the can. YOU GOTTA. Don’t mess with the bottles or the cartons. Cans keep Yoohoo the coldest. And Yoohoo is best when it’s at its coldest. When’s the last time you had a Yoohoo?” he asked, as he cracked open his second can.
It’d been a while. I must have been a kid. “Long time,” I said. Before I knew it, he’d pushed an icy can through the window in the divider and let it drop to the seat below. “Taste it again for the first time,” he said, eyes wide with authentic excitement. The moment I stopped at the light and picked up the can, he dropped another one down to the seat. “You’re gonna love it so much you’ll want two,” he assured me.
I cracked it open and put it too my lips. “NOOOOO,” he screamed, as though he was Stephen Colbert and I was Helen Thomas. I didn’t say a word. I just lowered the can from my lips slowly and stared at him in the mirror. “You gotta shake dude. SHAKE IT. It says right there on the can. SHAKE IIIIT. Give that can back to me, because you can’t shake it right now that it’s open. Shake your other one up.”
I did his bidding. I shook it up hard, popped the top, and watched the milky beverage foam up around the lip. Some distant childhood memories trickled back, but nothing too nostalgic. I knew I’d had Yoohoo before. Then I tasted it.
AMAZING. PHENOMENAL. It was everything I love about milk, sugar, and cold beverages combined. It seemed to quench my thirst, though I know dairy products don’t do that. However, Yoohoo is so chemically it’s barely a dairy product anymore. It really did hit the spot. As far as I was concerned, that Yoohoo was the perfect drink at that moment. I’ve gone on Gatorade kicks, I’ve built a 365 can cokamid out of coke cans I binged on, and I’ve sucked on ice cubes all my life. But when that Yoohoo passed my lips, it was the perfect beverage.
“Am I right or am I right?” my fare asked as he gathered his things to get out of the cab. “You’re right,” I said, looking at my empty can. He gave me a sizeable tip, more than necessary. But what I loved most about this guy was that before he left, he pushed one last can of Yoohoo through the divider. Now, he’d given me half of his six pack. He really wanted me to have TWO cans of Yoohoo.
I downed that one too, but I assumed I wouldn’t really get into the habit of drinking Yoohoo. Still, I wasn’t surprised when, a couple days later, I saw a can of Yoohoo at the deli and couldn’t resist buying it. I wondered if that guy really was a spokesman for Yoohoo, because he’d done a good job selling me. But I ‘m pretty sure he just wanted me to enjoy a delicious chocolate milk beverage because he felt like sharing his obsession. He clearly had an addictive personality as evidenced by the hookers and the coke.
What surprised me is that I am now fully hooked on Yoohoo. A year has gone by, and I haven’t kicked it yet. There may be something addictive in the formula, but I think I can’t stop drinking them simply because they taste really, really good. I know they’re terrible for me. I can feel it about 10 minutes after I finish each can. But tonight I got it in my head to drink a can of Yoohoo. Before it even crossed my mind not to, I was driving out of my way to go to the deli that sells cans of Yoohoo.
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