02.23.09
Posted in Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tours, Manhattan at 9:03 am by Administrator
We drank that whole boot of beer by the end of the shoot. So I really have no recollection of what transpired at Hiedleberg’s Restaurant in Yorkville. I know Tony convinced me to eat head cheese for the first time in my life and I loved it. And I know I ate a lot of pork off his plate because it was super delicious.
We also did a segment at Eisenberg’s Deli down near Madison Square (the fact that my last name is Freedenberg and the producers decided we’d eat at Eisenberg’s and Hiedleberg has got to be a total coincidence right?). We drank Lime Rickys and Egg Creams and spoke of New York past even though I’ve only been here for 12 years and I’m still discovering New York present. I can’t say for sure that part didn’t get cut. I do know that, unlike the episode I did with him two years ago, he’ll get my name right.
We also did a shoot in the Checker for the “Outer Boroughs” episode that should air this summer so look out for that. We did a mini Bronx tour and had some soul food, jerk shrimp, and rabe.
Check out www.FamousFatDave.com for eating tours at reasonable prices
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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
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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
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01.01.08
Posted in Harlem, Manhattan, Posts For History.Com, Soul Food at 11:05 am by Administrator
The same 300 pound Harlem fare who told me to go to Londel’s for fried chicken and waffles told me I also must go to Spoonbread for Sunday brunch. But I loved Londel’s so much that whenever I was in the neighborhood I couldn’t imagine eating anywhere else.
So it wasn’t until I shot the New Year’s Day Holiday Foods webisode that I finally made it to Spoonbread just blocks away from Londel’s in Harlem. I am prettyyyyy pretty mad at myself for my reluctance to branch out because Spoonbread was amazing.
Watch as Miss Norma Jean and I dive deep into some black eyed peas and rice:
Holiday Foods: Hoppin John
Dive into food tourism at www.FamousFatDave.com
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10.02.07
Posted in Harlem, Manhattan, Soul Food at 9:50 am by Administrator
My relationship with Columbia University has been long and rocky. When I was first applying to colleges in the fall of 1995, I happened to rent both Midnight Cowboy and Taxi Driver for the first time. After watching them back to back, I felt dark and sticky, and all I knew was that I would go to school anywhere in America EXCEPT New York City.
Then I took a year off between high school and college during which I got over my fear (probably because I witnessed totally strangers embracing each other in the streets on tv after the Yankees won the 1996 World Series). So I applied to Columbia. And I got rejected.
After a semester down at NYU during which I endured one too many “fruit bowls” (my naked roommate loved surprising me when I came out of the shower – unbespectacled, dripping wet, at my most vulnerable – by jumping up and down bent over at the waist displaying his melons, apples, and banana), I decided Columbia might be a more cerebral environment. I applied on transfer, and I got ACCEPTED. But by the second semester I had settled into my new dorm where I shared a wall with an addictive diner called The Kiev and a room with slightly less naked roommates. So I rejected Columbia.
Three years ago I applied for graduate school at Columbia, and they rejected me again. The next year I applied for a different graduate program, and they accepted me. But then I deferred from them for a year so I could pursue my more immediate interests in eating and driving. I told you: the relationship has been rocky. It’s been almost as though Columbia has been Tommy Lee and I’ve been Pamela. No, it’s been exactly like that.
But there came a time in my life not too long ago when I realized I didn’t want to drive a yellow cab forever. An advanced degree might lift me out of that working class that I pushed my way into after college. And so, a month ago, more than 11 years after I first applied, I started school at Columbia.
No worries though. I told them that I am Chief Executive Officer, President, and also a member of Famous Fat Dave Industries so they let me into their executive program. I only have to go on Saturdays, and I have the rest of the week to occasionally drive the cab or conduct my five borough eating tours (operators standing by at www.FamousFatDave.com) I’m still living the dream.
I spent a good deal of the summer asking fares and customers where they eat in Morningside Heights, because, I admit, the Columbia area is a black hole in my map of good eats in NYC. I often take my tours through there on our way to Harlem to show them the famous Tom’s Restaurant facade of Seinfeld fame. And Koronet Pizza’s traffic sign sized slices have been known to impress the occasional drunk Midnight Munchies Tour customer. But I still don’t know where to eat when I’m at school, and I want something delicious.
Last Monday, on our way to see Showtime At The Apollo (it’d been my dream to be one of the white guys in the front row who gets made fun for driving like a white guy for as long as it’d been my dream to go to Columbia), my cousin Aaron, my cousin Jeremy, and his roommate Mike stopped at the campus gates to see what all the fuss was about with Ahmadinejad speaking. Would it be a perversion of freedom of speech, providing a platform to hatemongering? Or would it be a glimpse into the Iranian point of view and an open debate?
Either way, we felt like it might be an historic moment, like that time a bunch of the Weathermen from Columbia accidentally blew themselves up before class one day in the 60s. Except this time, we’d hear from a guy who pays for people to blow themselves up on purpose.
A couple hours before the speech, the scene was . . . festive? The Columbia kids had plastered the campus with flyers. One flyer had a picture of Ahmadinejad’s smirking punum with the caption, “Putting the Purr In Persian.” Another had his manscaped mug subscripted simply with “Bringing Sexy Back.” My favorite was this one (which I just had to have for myself, so I slyly tore it down and then posed for Mike’s camera with it). I think it cut through all the messy history and politics and religion clouding the issue and got right to the crux of the matter:
I had to leave my boys behind to see what was going down on campus because access was restricted, and when I came back I felt a little sad that I’d been missing out on the protest outside the gates. We’d come to protest the protesters, and it seemed like we were the only ones who thought the man should be allowed to speak.
But when I got back through the gate I found that Jeremy and Mike were getting along with the flag waving, New York Post reading, God fearing Americans who’d gathered to unwelcome the Hitler of Iran:
We spoke with a reporter from the Daily Telegraph (he assured me it was less of a tabloid than The New York Post, the inflamatory paper up on the sign in the picture above). We spoke for a while, and the main thrust of my conversation with the reporter was that I wish I were able to attend the forum so I could ask Ahmadinejad what he really thought of Brittany’s performance at the VMAs – I bet you he’d say he thought it was great he’s such a contrarian. Instead the quote made me sound like a serious and reasonable person. I also like that he dubbed me a “master student” which I most certainly am not (click here and read the whole story including Famous Fat Dave’s thoughts on the controversy because I know you care).
I later found out that President Bollinger, who “disrespected” America by allowing Ahmadinejad to speak and then “disrespected” Ahmadinejad by calling him a petty and cruel dictator, made his career as a first amendment scholar. So you can argue against Bollinger allowing him to speak, but you’d probably lose the argument if it’s on the grounds that this sort of thing shouldn’t be protected under free speech. If you start going down that road, you might realize that you just don’t agree with the first amendment.
Once this guy got up on his soap box about how Harlem is facing it’s own genocide and it’s called gentrification (people were REALLY throwing the word genocide around that day at Columbia), we remembered why we were really uptown.
Leaving the hullabaloo behind us, we walked down onto 125th. Now we were in my locale. I felt much more at home. The options for amazing food were boundless. After a brief stop at Manna’s for some devilled eggs, mac n cheese, and banana nilla wafer pudding, we were ready for Showtime.
We could have stayed at the campus to listen to the speech. But we would have had to just sit there and take it. At the Apollo, they understand free speech. And they know it works both ways. Anyone can get on stage , no matter how outrageous, during the Amatuer Night portion of the taping (so long as they rub the stump as they come out).
But when the crowd doesn’t like someone, they stand up at the their seats and in the aisles, wave BOTH hands in the air from side to side, index fingers extended, and the performer gets swept off the stage by a tap dancing guy wearing a top hat and white tails. I heard that Ahmadinejad seemed taken aback by the rude reception he got down on 116th Street. But from my vantage point on 125th Street, it was clear that he had no idea how good he had it.
Visit www.famousfatdave.com for food tourism at its most brazenly provocative
Manna’s, 125th And Frederick Douglas, Harlem, Manhattan
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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)
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