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
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03.20.07
Posted in Brooklyn, Greenpoint, Italian, La Pizza at 7:34 am by Administrator
I’ve never had that Puritan work ethic Americans so revere. If I don’t absolutely have to work, I don’t. I never saw the point in going to work for the sake of going to work. That’s why I only drive the cab when I need the money.
Yesterday, I needed the money. But it’d been so long since I drove the cab that I’d gotten myself into a rut, and I really didn’t feel like leaving the house much less driving to Brooklyn, waiting for a cab, driving for nine or ten hours, returning the cab, and driving back home again.
I thought I might mitigate the pain and injustice I was about to face by taking my lovin’ spoonful of a girlfriend Melissa along with me. She gets a kick out of riding shotgun in the cab and talking with my fares. Once she put in a full eight hour day at her job, and then spent twelve hours with me at my job all the way from picking the cab up to dropping it off again.
We arrived at the garage before shift time, so there was time to kill. Neither of us had eaten a thing yet, and I suggested going across the street to Casanova. I’d been LOVING their grandma slices since I started working at Cha Cha’s garage almost five years ago.
I’d made it into a minor tradition (more like Chinese food on Christmas than apples and honey on Rosh Hashana) to down one of their crispy, thin square slices while I waited for Cha Cha to serve me up a trip sheet and cab keys. Sometimes, I make two trips to Casanova when it’s a particularly long wait for the cab. The grandma slice is irresistible.
I almost had a heart attack a couple months ago when I saw their doors were shuttered and their windows were covered in brown paper for a long while. Thankfully, they were merely undergoing an unexpectedly lengthy renovation. When I saw they were open, I knew we were going for a Casanova run. But we were in the mood for pasta, so Melissa and I walked right past their new oven, making a bee line for the refurbished back dining room.
It was closing in on five pm and neither of us had a single bite of food in our bellies. We splurged and ordered mozzarella sticks as an app:
It very well may have been because we were starving, but they were so freaking good that all we could do was stare at each other with wide eyes as we devoured the lot of them (an odd number so we split the seventh mozz stick like the high cal Lady and The Tramp). Then we filled up on toasted bread with olive oil, so I’m positive that our entrees really were as tasty as they seemed.
I’d only ever eaten grandma slices, garlic knots and such from the front counter at Casanova, but I had a strong premonition that the dining room would yield some classic southern Italian, red sauce delights. My plate arrived with a generous portion of baked ziti (the only thing on the menu for less than $10 although I was in the mood for ziti regardless), which we enjoyed immensely. Melissa ordered spaghetti Bolognese, and it was exactly what she had a taste for. There was about a ten pounds of pasta, the sauce was meaty, and the bottom of the dish didn’t get watery (a pet peeve of mine that is very common at the expensive red sauce joints on MacDougal near our abode). At first Melissa was acting a little coy toward her meal:
But once she tasted it, she lost all inhibitions:
Like real Italians, we sat for a long leisurely meal. I’d say it took about an hour for us to polish off all that food. We were totally satisfied, but Melissa was bummed that we had to go to work now. I needed to make some money. She was being a bad influence on me, trying to convince me not to go back to the garage to lease the cab. By that point though, I was so late to start driving, I probably wouldn’t have made much money anyhow. But this look she gave me sealed the deal:
Maybe I’ll go back and pick up the cab tomorrow. . . Maybe. And I’ll definitely grab a grandma slice while I’m there.
Casanova, McGuiness Blvd and Green Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn
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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:
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