04.29.07
Posted in Astoria, Bronx, Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tours, Fruits and Veggies, Hunt's Point, Italian, La Pizza, Manhattan, Middle Eastern, Queens at 7:38 pm by Administrator
The Famous Fat Dave experience has managed to attract a good deal of media attention. But until this morning, none of the stories delved into my psyche or explored my passion. Mark Phillips (the musical genius behind the pop sensation Sono Oto) worked for months on a New York Public Radio story that aired on WNYC 93.9’s “Weekend Edition.” Mark tagged along on a couple eating tours, rode shot gun in my yellow cab picking up fares late at night, and ate a LOT of food with me. In just four minutes and forty seconds, he manages to capture the essence of what I do, why I do it, who I am, and why I love this town.
You can listen to the New York Public Radio piece and download the mp3 here
Or you can listen on Www.FamousFatDave.Com by clicking here
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04.19.07
Posted in Hamburgers, On The Open Road, Sandwiches at 11:29 pm by Administrator
I get so many food recommendations in my cab. Pretty much everybody I pick up tells me to go somewhere. And when they don’t offer it up during the natural course of a conversation, I ask them flat out. I try to make it completely clear that I’m not interested just in what’s open right now, but what is the most delicious food in their neighborhood.
“I’m not hungry right now,” I tell them (even if I am kinda hungry) “I just want to know what’s the best place to eat around here.” Usually, people get it, and they let me in on a little neighborhood secret. Occasionally, I get people saying, “Well . . . I think the diner is still open. They don’t screw anything up there.” I have to tell them, “No, I’m not necessarily going now. I could come back. I just want to know what’s your absolute favorite thing to eat.” And if they stare at me blankly and say, “. . . Aaaapleeee Beeees???” then goodbye is too good a word babe, so I’ll just say fare thee well.
But when I’m really clicking with someone, we’re talking about life and love and sex and death and war and travel and family and, mostly, food. From those people I often get local recs as well as recs from around the country and the world. Lately, I’ve had a number of folks like that tell me about Louis Lunch. It’s up in New Haven, and it is, supposedly, where the hamburger was invented way back in 1900. Some controversy arose when a place in Texas made the same claim, but the publicity must have helped because everyone is talking about it.
With that in mind, I made a pit stop in New Haven on my way up to Boston so Melissa and I could try this prehistoric burger and see what all the hype is about (okay, we actually took the much slower route via I95 rather than I84 specifically so we could go through New Haven and eat at Louis Lunch).
(When we arrived, Melissa was chomping at the bit to have a taste)
It is well known that they don’t put ketchup on their burgers, so we didn’t make the mistake of asking for that. However, we were immediately greeted with an obnoxious attitude by the counter man. “What do you want?” he asked abruptly and with a sour look on his face before we even settled in.
Well, Louis Lunch is old fashioned, and maybe this guy is just old school, I thought to myself. No need to take his attitude to heart. “Burgers,” I smiled. With that, he gave me more unpleasant attitude about what I wanted on it. There was no schtick to his demeanor the way you get attitude at Pickle Guys on the Lower East Side or Weiner Circle in Chicago. He was just an ass.
As we waited for our burgers to cook in the beautiful old ovens dating from the turn of the last century, I noticed that all the tasty juices in the patties must be dripping off the meat in the vertical contraption. I also noticed that our burgers would be served on toast with cheese spread on it. I sort of liked the idea of forsaking the ketchup in favor of a slice of tomato. But eating my burger on toast instead of a bun felt akin to eating cereal with water instead of milk.
The whole affair made Melissa nervous. She likes her burgers how she likes her burgers:
They tasted good though. Not great. They certainly would benefit from better bread or a basic bun. The thin slices of bread did have the effect of highlighting the quality of the meat, but a small, soft sesame seed bun would have had the same effect and tasted much better. Still, I’m not going to tell them to stop serving burgers on toast if that’s how they’ve been doing it for a century and a decade. You gotta respect that.
I do not respect, on the other hand, that schmuck behind the counter. Although he was a man a few words (all of which came in a nasty tone of voice) with us, he had plenty to say to his coworkers. While Melissa and I tried to enjoy our burgers on toast, we had to listen to this man spew forth the vilest lies and obscenities about the Yankees I’d ever heard. We were on our way to Boston, and I’d been there many times before, but I’d never heard Bostonians say anything close to what this man was spitting up.
Maybe it was because New Haven lies almost exactly half way between New York and Boston so he had major STP. The man ranted almost the whole time we were there about how the Yankees just buy their championships (by that logic the Red Sox should have the second most championships because they spend the second most money), how Yankee fans are the most obnoxious in the league (I saw a Red Sox fan chuck a UNeaten slice of greasy pizza at a guy’s face the other day at Fenway just because he thought it’d be funny as a batted ball hit the poor guy in the hands and the left fielder simultaneously knocked his beer onto his jacket), and that Derek Jeter and ARod are “totally gay for each other” (this one may be true, not that there’s anything wrong with that, and there is certainly nothing wrong with hitting game-ending home runs twice a month).
We were the only ones in there at the time, so there was no ambient noise to drown out his curses and venomous rage. I actually just felt bad for him as well as his coworker who had to listen to it. I was wearing my Nationals hat at the time, but I got the feeling if he’d known I was a Yankee fan the whole experience might have been even worse.
Melissa didn’t even finish her burger. By the end of the meal, I was showing some leg in hopes of getting a ride out of there as fast as possible.
STP=Something To Prove
Famous Fat Dave Dot Com=Five Borough Eating Tours
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04.12.07
Posted in Brooklyn, Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tours, Sheepshead Bay at 4:41 am by Administrator
Big Rocky Allen and his hungry on air cohorts took a few minutes to chat with me LIVE about my gluttonous five borough eating tours a little while back. In case you missed it, click below to have a listen to what transpired.
Rocky Allen Showgram Interview
And in case you missed my Travis Bickle reference at the end of the interview, I was quoting Travis saying, “Each night when I return the cab to the garage, I have to clean the come off the back seat. Some nights I clean off the blood.” Except I was gonna say “tartar sauce” and “tobasco,” and if you listen closely I actually say tartar sauce as I’m shouted down like a lesbian at a Halliburton meeting (really they just asked me politely not to say it, asked me nicely again, and then told me firmly “Dave, we said no.”)
(Here’s my boy Travis Bickle with some tobasco on his hand and a little on his cheek there)
(And here’s my boy Travis Pickle talking about pickles)
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04.06.07
Posted in Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tours at 3:41 am by Administrator
Even if you’re not into cars, head to the Javitz Convention Center at 34th Street and 11th Avenue for the “Taxi 07″ exhibit downstairs at the auto show starting today. There, you’ll see “Cabbie Voices,” a five minute documentary film by Shravan Vidyarthi. Shravan jumped in my cab late, late one night this winter, and my scruffy face as well as my goofy commentary ended up all over the film.
At one point in the documentary which is playing on a loop, everyone’s favorite Famous Fat Dave theme song starts to play! Also the guy from Buddha Cab is in the movie, and so is my old friend Melissa Plaut from New York Hack.
Melissa (not the New York Hack Melissa but my Midnight Snack Melissa) and I hit the premiere party Wednesday night, and the exhibit was very cool.
I was glad to see that the Design Trust gave props to composer Jack Dolgen whose band Sam Champion just cut a new album with a sure fire hit single (which you can HEAR here) that got much love on Stereo Gum. They also credited my prodigy of a cousin Aaron Weinstein who is graduating from Berklee School of Music this spring and bringing his violin to New York City for good. Melissa was very proud of her backup vocals credit:
Very proud:
I was proud too. But after a couple-a-few vodkas from the three open bars that the Design Trust provided, I was more interested in fixing my hair in the side view of my dream car:
Very interested:
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04.03.07
Posted in BBQ, Brooklyn, Caribbean, On The Open Road at 3:42 pm by Administrator
It was midnight in Austin, Texas. My friend Gary – Brooklynite, sushi eating champion – and I were in the midst of a cross-country road trip. We just spent a lovely evening eating queso and drinking margaritas with some hospitable UT kids. But we had no place to crash because, contrary to my assumption that all of Texas is full of wide open spaces, these grad students were packed in like sardines. We may as well have been back in New York. There wasn’t even any floor space to spare.
(That’s my cousin’s husband’s little sister on the right modeling some queso with her friends. Talk about southern hospitality, we were already approaching a full 6 degrees of separation and she treated us like family.)
But we were in an open road state of mind, and we were happy to take on the driving challenge. “You think we can make it to White Sands, New Mexico by morning?” Gary asked one of our gracious hosts. “Sure, and you’ll pass through the darkest place in America on the way. You’ll see all the stars,” she replied in a slow, southern drawl as we looked at the Road Master together. “You gotta go through a shit ton a Texas first though,” were her only words of caution.
So off we went into the muggy Texas night. Gary drove first because he hadn’t had a margarita in a couple hours. I was used to driving my cab very late at night, so I’d take over in a few hours. I folded my arms and pulled my hat low over my eyes like I was Austin Millbarge and Gary was Emmett Fitz-Hume.
Very soon thereafter I was awoken not because we were surrounded by Mujadhadeen, but because Gary was howling with terror as we whizzed by a deer standing on the shoulder. Gary’s eyes were wild with fear, mostly because he loved his 2003 Hyundai like a son. I begged him to slow down, but even at 50 mph, deer would appear from out of nowhere, and we’d miss them by pure luck. When we saw the mangled carcass of a buck that looked as though it’d been creamed by a tractor trailer, we figured our chances of hitting something had risen to about 50/50.
In the first town we came across, we asked the gas station attendant why there were so many deer out. “This here is Hill Country you boys are in. We got a lotta deer in these parts,” he informed us. Why none of our hosts in Austin had warned us, we didn’t understand. They must not have known what dangers lurked to the west. “Well, how fast can you go?” I asked. “You can go as fast as you want. But I keep it to 40 . . . and that’s still pushing your luck,” he grinned.
Realizing we couldn’t get anywhere in Texas going 40 mph, we found a cheap motel for the rest of the night. We were both deflated. I knew Gary was in a weird place, because he was speaking fondly of the Gowanus Expressway as I fell asleep. I dreamt of queso and margaritas and venison jerky.
We awoke to discover that we were in a town called Llano. But even before we found out where we were, we were overwhelmed with the divine scent of barbeque. As we wandered out into the street like a couple a hobos, we felt as though we’d happened upon some sort of Garden of Eden (we actually weren’t far from Eden, Texas).
(Here I am later in the day in Eden, Texas)
The entire, tiny town was engulfed in smoke from multiple barbeque pits and smoke houses lining the main street. The locals weren’t batting an eyelash. We thought that this must just be the way it is in Texas all the time. We were wrong, but we knew there was nothing like Llano back in New York.
It turns out, we were wrong about that too. Recently, I was driving a plucky family of adventurous eaters through Brooklyn when we got caught in a traffic jam on Nostrand Avenue approaching Flatbush. We were overwhelmed by a familiar smoky scent. The whole street was filled with smoke, and the locals didn’t seem at all concerned.
I spotted the source of the smoke, pulled the cab over in a no parking zone in front of a church, and ran across the street to see what was cooking. “Jerk chicken, Guyana style . . . you know, the place where Jim Jones killed all those people,” the sweaty cook standing over the steel barrel full of chicken and charcoal on the sidewalk told me.
(It struck me as kind of sad that nearly 30 years after the kool-aid, this native son of Guyana still felt he had to invoke Jim Jones’ name to explain where he was from)
(The jerk chicken was to die for)
Before I saw what was on the grill, I hadn’t the audacity to dream I’d found Texas brisket or beef ribs on the streets of Brooklyn. But once I tasted that jerk chicken, it seemed to me that Shaborn Juice Bar must be the Brooklyn equivalent of Llano. That divine scent and that ubiquitous smoke brought me back to the heart of Texas. And the jerk chicken, tangy and spicy and custom drenched in jerk sauce, was as flavorful as any barbeque I had back in the lone star, though in a totally different way. We devoured it all right there amidst the smoke filling the air on Nostrand Avenue. It tasted as though we’d found the Garden of Eden.
(Usually we don’t try anything I haven’t had a million times before on the tour, but that day it was clear that whatever came out of that smoke would be delicious)
Shaborn Juice Bar, Nostrand Ave And Glenwood Rd (near Flatbush Ave), Flatlands Brooklyn
Visit www.FamousFatDave.Com 4 5 Boro Food Tours
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