09.25.09
Posted in Jewish, Meats, On The Open Road, Sandwiches at 5:47 pm by Administrator
Let’s talk about beef. Pastrami to be specific.
Doesn’t that look delicious? Doesn’t that look ridiculously, mouth-wateringly, delicious? You’d think I was showing you a picture from some great New York deli. Or, I suppose, I’d think that.
But this isn’t that. This?!? This isn’t even American. It’s smoked meat. It’s viande fume. It’s Canadian. It’s from Montreal. And my world is shattered.
And it’s not even a super famous place. It’s from a local chain called Dunn’s that was started in 1927 and, according to the people I talked with, it’s average. “Used to be better,” people told me (they sounded like New Yorkers where everyone says everything “used to be better”). But I’m here to tell you. It was plenty good.
Then we went to Schwartz’s. . .
The moment I sunk my teeth into that smoked meat at Schwartz’s, I had to reevaluate my entire world view. Half the reason I live in New York City is for the pastrami. But when I tasted that viande fume, I realized I was living a lie. I thought you couldn’t get pastrami like New York’s anywhere else in the world. But it turns out, Schwartz’s smoked meat is, dare I say, TASTIER than any I’ve had in New York.
The cut at Schwartz’s is almost identical to the cut at Katz Deli. It’s a thick, rough hand-cut. And they’re both piled high. Although Katz’s pastrami IS juicier than Schwartz’s, Schwartz’s spice rub just has more flavor. There’s more to it. I have to admit it: it tastes better.
Even the pickle and slaw are as good as crack.
And not only that, but there seems to be MORE places in Montreal for good smoked meat than there are places in New York City for good pastrami. I couldn’t believe it.
Right across the street, the Main:
It’s open later than Schwartz’s and, although it’s not as good, it is legit. You can see them smoking the meat right there in the restaurant and then displaying it proudly in the window.
Again, I was a happy customer.
And we treked out to what felt like an outer borough of Montreal for Snowdon Deli. The smoked meat there was a little different. And much juicier. They serve “regular” and “old fashioned” and basically it’s just the difference between corned beef and pastrami in New York. Here they are side by side:
It is so juicy it tastes as if the meat had been dipped in au jus or something before hitting the rye bread. It makes for a super delicious riff on what I’d come to expect as a classic Montreal smoked meat sandwich. And at Snowdon, the kreplach soup on the side might even have outshown the sandwich. It tasted . . . cozy. It made me feel like I was curled up inside . . . a womb.
If I were an old Jewish man (which I pretty much am in my mind and pretty much will be in actuality very soon), and I had to pick a city – New York or Montreal – to live out my twighlight years enjoying Jewish comfort food, I might just have to pick Montreal. Hey, I’m as surprised as you are. But I was clearly wowed by the delis there.
One thing I AM secure about though, is that I’ll take a New York bagel over a Montreal bagel any day of the week. That IS a debate that people are having, and I was very excited to taste a Montreal bagel for myself. So we walked through the snow to St Viateur:
But one bite and I knew I was living in the right place for bagels. I respect Montreal bagels. I appreciate that they’re hand-made and all. But they’re sweet, almost like a cake. And they’re dinky (which the people in Montreal I spoke with thought was a good thing, and I can see how you wouldn’t want a big ass bready thing for breakfast) but I prefer my big New York bagels.
I’m not saying they weren’t good. They are. But they are no Ess A Bagel.
I had to try Fairmount too in the interest of fairness. But again, I was not impressed (with anything other than the old school sign).
And neither was Melissa:
Hopefully, I missed out on some great Montreal bagel that’s less famous but more scrumptious than these places. I’ll make sure to try again next time I’m in that great city. I’ll have plenty of time when I retire there.
Eat Your Way Through NYC On A Famous Fat Dave Five Borough Eating Tour
Permalink
04.15.08
Posted in Jewish, Lower East Side, Meats, Posts For History.Com at 7:46 pm by Administrator
Before you watch today’s Holiday Foods webisodes I want you to know that nobody makes a better brisket than my mom. When I say, “It’s like my mom’s brisket PLUS” I don’t mean it tastes better, I just mean there are more flavors because of the Italian twist. Both of them are really good but I can’t wait to have my mom’s brisket at the sedar next week:
Famous Fat Dave Video: Passover Brisket
And take a long hard look at the matzo webisode because Streits’ Matzo Factory – on the Lower East Side for more than 80 years – is moving to New Jersey soon where everything will be computerized so the matzo will cook evenly. Today it looks like a Jewish man’s vision of the future in 1925. In Jew Jersey . . . who knows?
Famous Fat Dave Video: Matzo
Don’t forget
Famous Fat Dave Website: Eating Tours
Permalink
01.06.08
Posted in Jewish, Manhattan, Meats at 11:04 am by Administrator
I keep having this same dream. I’m driving my cab down 5th Avenue. Just as I’m getting ready to take a right at the park, I look through the arch and there’s the twin towers downtown plain as day. They’re back. Good as new. I smile from ear to ear, and I feel okay. Then I wake up and remember an empty sky.
And nearly every time I walk out the door to my house, I instinctively spin around into a hockey goalie position to keep my cat from running outside. For a second or two, my mind still tells me Sugar is going to come sprinting out from a well-planned hiding place, juke me with a head fake, and dart between my legs. It doesn’t take me long to remember that she’s gone.
Each time I went to Yankee Stadium last year, as I looked out into center field between pitches, deeply engrained instincts expect to find number 51 standing there with his shoulders slouched, his head cocked forward, and his belly gently protruding. But Bernie Williams was forced into retirement, and he’ll never play again. It took me a long time to come to terms with that.
When I walked by the Second Avenue Deli to find it shuttered that day, I accepted it. It was gone. . . forever. I figured I’d taste that corned beef again in the next life just about the time I see my grandma again. In fact, we’d share a sandwich. Nevertheless, the bank on the corner of 10th and 2nd Ave surprises me every time I see it.
(admittedly, the East Village was in desperate need of another Chase, but 2nd Ave Deli did give a little more life to the neighborhood)
Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.
Second Avenue Deli has reopened. It REOPENED. Back from the dead. The story NEVER turns out like this. Never in my life has something I loved so much been taken from me so callously and then returned to me so unexpectedly. Actually, one of my fares likened it to the time Family Guy was cancelled and then came back on the air. And I agree it’s similar. But the Second Avenue Deli is so much dearer to me it’s hardly comparable.
Just two days after it’s grand reopening, I went for dinner with Melissa and my friends Jack and Doug. We were apprehensive. We didn’t want to get our hopes up in case the new deli was a shell of its old self – a very real possibility that none of us wanted to admit. We were all as giddy as Ukrainian schoolgirls skipping school to hang out at Pommes Frittes.
As soon as we tasted the chopped liver that they passed around to the folks standing on line in the cold, we knew we we’d traveled back in time. The wait was long, but the atmosphere was electric. It felt like everybody in line was a true New Yorker. The thrill in the air was palpable. The feeling of camaraderie was overwhelming.
There are very few situations in this town when you feel like you can talk to anyone who’s gaze meets yours. This was one of them. A rare moment that left me with fond, uniquely New York memories I will keep forever. It kind of reminded me of the blackout in that everyone was looking at each other in disbelief, excitement, and a even a little brotherhood. It was actually more like those glorious October nights when the Yankees won World Series after World Series. I could have hugged a stranger (or tipped over a taxi cab in jubilation).
When we passed through the threshold and smelled the distinct aroma that already filled the air (but not yet permeated into the wood), we all knew we had come home. I recognized half the guys behind the counter as if I were in a dream. Even our waitress was one we’d all had a million times in the old joint.
And it wasn’t just people working there we recognized. My best friend Nate and Julie who I’d know for more than a decade had a seat in the corner. When I went over to say hi, Nate’s response was, “OF COURSE I’d run into you here.”
(the blur of this picture reflects the pandemonium of the moment, and the fact that I don’t know how to work my new camera)
Most importantly, the food too was familiar. Immediately, we were plied with pickles and health slaw as good or BETTER than before. I ordered the mazzo ball soup with noodles and a half a corned beef sandwich. The soup was perfect, just as I remembered it when my mom used to order it for me when I got sick (or homesick) as a freshman at NYU.
The corned beef was, admittedly, a tiny bit dry. But that didn’t sour the mood at all. We could all tell Second Avenue Deli would soon hit its stride in that department (and it did when I went back at 3am just a few days later). Doug actually fell deeply, desperately, borderline inappropriately in love with his corned beef:
Jack’s old standby – pastrami and eggs with crinkle cut fries – was right on the mark:
And the waitress brought us complimentary shots of egg cream, a practice I hope becomes a custom but was probably just a celebratory gesture:
We toasted to life and to rebirth, once with our pickles to begin the meal and once with our egg creams to end it. It was as though we’d created a new religious ceremony.
We all agreed that it felt like we’d died and gone to deli heaven. But we hadn’t. We are alive. And so is Second Avenue Deli. This story ends differently than those other ones. This story ends with rebirth, renewed life, and a greasy smile.
2nd Avenue Deli, 33rd St Btwn 3rd Ave and Lex, Murray Hill, Manhattan
Visit www.FamousFatDave.com for five borough eating tours on which 2nd Ave Deli is a favorite stop, especially on the midnight munchies tour now that the deli is open 24 hours
Permalink
12.09.07
Posted in Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tours, Jewish, Middle Eastern, New Jersey, Posts For History.Com, Sweets at 4:28 am by Administrator
Chanukah is almost over. But keep the festivities alive with another HistoryChannel.Com video. It’s about Sufganiyot. Never heard of them? Neither had I. Look and learn:
Holiday Food: Sufganiyot
Eating Tours: Famous Fat Dave
Permalink
12.04.07
Posted in Dave's Faves, Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tours, Jewish, Posts For History.Com at 8:11 am by Administrator
Chanukah is upon us. I’m gonna ask for my own tv show. In the meantime, take a look at today’s installment of HistoryChannel.Com’s Holiday Foods Series as we fry latkes at the Clinton Street Bakery. And if my antics aren’t enough for you, Buster Poindexter fans will be excited to hear that the Checker Cab I drive in this series is the very same one he drove in Scrooged.
Holiday Foods: Latkes
Come back here this week for a second Channukkah episode. And go to www.FamousFatDave.com to book your five borough eating tour
Permalink
09.07.07
Posted in All-U-Can-Eat, Jewish, Lower East Side, Manhattan, Meats, New Jersey, Pickles, Sandwiches at 7:06 am by Administrator
I try not to spread the rumors I hear in my cab. These are just schlubs I pick up off the street, and I usually have no way to corroborate their stories. The internet is a powerful weapon which, according to my America Online Terms Of Service Agreement that I e-signed in 1994, I have sworn to use responsibly.
But I heard a particularly nasty rumor a little while back that I just had to investigate. I heard that Katz’s Deli is going to be turned into luxury condos. “No no no, you got it all wrong,” I retorted when those words violated my ear holes. “They’re turning the parking lot and Yarakovsky’s container store across the street into condos. That’s already happening.” My brain wouldn’t allow me accept the possibility that it might be true. But my fare told me that he’d read it in Time Out New York, and if James Oliver Curry says it. . .
Apparently, the plan is to close down Katz’s (for the first time since 1888), build condos on top, and then reopen Katz’s underneath. To me, this is terrifying. This is like the “grandma is on the roof” joke. They are setting me up to to let me down easy. So that I won’t just wake up one day and find Katz closed forever, the way 2nd Avenue Deli met its demise not so long ago.
(A close up of Katz’s as it has been for well over a century)
(A wider shot reveals the luxury condo trend on the LES visible just a block away on Orhard, and this shot was taken from the luxury condo construction site mentioned above)
No luxury condo on earth would allow a stinky deli on its ground floor. I think it’s a New York State Law that if there’s anything other than a bank on the retail level of a luxury condo, it’s got to be a Whole Foods.
Guss Pickles as we know it ended the same way. One day, the building’s owner decided to make luxury condos out of the Essex Street location. One morning, they went to open up the store and there was a lock on the gate and an eviction notice. Guss had to move to Orchard Street, but the joke’s on the gentrifiers because I guarantee that first floor will still smell like full sours for at least a decade. Katz’s smell, however, won’t linger if they tear the whole structure down to make way for high rise with floor to ceiling windows on every floor (which look great from the inside, but is starting to make the Lower East Side look like a suburban office park).
I decided to go into Katz’s Deli to do a little snooping . . . and eating. It was late on a weeknight, so there was no line. I walked straight up to that old meat cutter with the white hair and the tatooed forearms (if you eat at Katz’s you know who I’m talking about). As he made me my reuben, I made small talk (and made sure that he saw me put a dollar in that upside down paper cup that acts as a tip jar on the Lower East Side). His name, I found out after eating the meat he cut me for 10 years, is Peter. He’s Russian, and he’s worked at Katz for longer than Bernie was a Yankee.
“So . . . what’s the deal with this luxury condo business?” I asked as if I were Jerry Seinfeld setting up a joke. I wanted him to look at me like I was crazy. I wanted him to flick his wrist and wave his knife dismissively. I wanted him to say that it was just a rumor, a dirty, rotten lie.
But he didn’t. His face dropped. His eyes narrowed. And as he pushed a slice a warm pastrami across the counter for me to nibble, he leaned in and motioned for me to do that same. “You have no idea the amount of money these people are dealing in. . . No idea,” he said in a hushed tone. “But they don’t tell us nothing. It might be a condo with the deli on the bottom. It might be a condo with a lobby on the bottom. It might stay the way it is. They don’t tell us nothing. But you have no idea . . . no idea the amount of money.”
Now, I’ve had more powerful religious experiences at Katz’s than I’ve had at my synagogue. I’ve never felt more Jewish – or more at peace with the world for that matter – than I did while eating my first Katz’s reuben, alone, facing one of the only blank spots on the wall. If Katz’s closes, I may consider moving out of New York. That, or become a Buddhist.
So with the possibility of Katz’s closing, and 2nd Avenue Deli and Pastrami Queen as much a part of New York history as the Checker Cab, I was in the market for a new deli. I’d already heard about this place in New Jersey called Harold’s from an college friend who used to eat at Katz’s with me. Then an old New Yorker in my cab told me Harold’s was the real deal. When I heard a couple of gay Puerto Rican thugs from Newark with their elderly Jewish trick on the Christopher Street Pier announce loudly that they were all going to Harold’s, it was the last straw. It was time for me to branch out.
(Harold’s immediately gets old school cred for the skyline on the sign)
On my last trip down the NJTP I pulled off at exit 10. And there my faith was restored. I found Harold’s everything I’d hoped for and more.
First of all, everything there is oversized. And I don’t just mean oversized the way the way white girls wear their plastic belts in Williamsburg. I mean oversized the way Barry Bonds’ head is oversized. One slice of cake is the size of an entire cake anywhere else:
And, as Harold’s sign boast, in this case “bigger is better.” My pastrami sandwich was delicious. It was moist and tender, fatty without being chewy, with a tempurature like warm apple pie. New Yorkers often claim it’s the city’s water that makes their food so special, so it can’t be duplicated in New Jersey. Granted, I like Katz’s more. And both 2nd Ave Deli and Pastrami Queen were better. So I guess I’m lowering the bar now that the pickin’s are slimmer. Either way though, Harold’s pastrami made me very, very happy.
Harold’s pickles made me even happier though. I’d heard that they had the world’s largest and only free pickle bar. But I assumed that that too was a rumor. A FREE pickle bar?!? Sounded too good to be true.
But there it was, as plain as the Jewish nose on my face. And the pickles were great. New pickles, half sours, full sours (although they call them half sours, sours, and kosher dills as though the others are not kosher and don’t have dill which I think they are and they do). The pickles were almost all crunchy. Not a mushy bloater in the bunch. And the health salad, hot cherry peppers, spicy pickle chips, and pickled tomatoes were all delicious as well. When the sandwich came, a small bowl of completely gratuitous cole slaw came with it, but it ended up being one of the highlights of the meal.
I made more trips to the pickle bar than was appropriate, but at Harold’s it is a culture of abundance and no one batted an eyelash. In fact, the menu encourages sharing at no extra cost. Melissa and I shared one “small” pastrami sandwich, and by the time we left the table we were stuffed. We each got a Dr. Brown’s, we brought home left-over pickles from the bottomless pickle bar along with extra rye bread to go with the extra sandwich and a half worth of left-over pastrami, and the whole thing cost $25 including the tip.
Katz’s will close one day. And I’ve come to terms with that. Maybe there won’t be condos. Maybe there will be condos. But I will most likely see Katz’s shutter its doors before the end of my life. So when that happens, there will be a lot less of this:
And a lot more of this:
Harold’s New York Deli Restaurant, Exit 10 on the NJ Turn Pike, Follow The Signs To Raritan Center until after the clover leaf under the highway, Take a left onto the street where you see the Holiday Inn and Harold’s in the back
Five Borough Food Tourism at FamousFatDave.Com for Katz’s and much more
(On the clock at Katz’s)
Permalink
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
Permalink
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
Permalink
« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »
