Eating Manhattan

There’s a lot to eat in New York.

Well, there’s a lot to eat in just about any city (maybe not Darwin; that’s basically KFC, McDonalds and a crocodile burger place that smells suspiciously of chicken). But I’ve never been anywhere that food is so readily available. The hotel doesn’t have its own restaurant, café, diner or anything else that makes food, but every exit has a side door that leads into a restaurant. Or a café. Or a diner. Emerging onto the sidewalk and crash-tackling your way past the tour spruikers (“Getcha touaz, getcha hellycopta ridez, rightere!”) exposes you to the, ah, nutwagon: a hotplate-on-wheels attached to an inscrutable old Japanese guy busily scraping candied cashews around a bowl so old the sides have worn through. Past him there’s a hot dog wagon next to a halal cart (seriously, that’s what they’re called; it’s a thing here).  Cross the street to the pizza place with the dining room backing onto the subway (like, trains, not foot-longs), or go past that to the OTHER pizza place, where the pizza’s more expensive, but your drink doesn’t spill every time the Q trains hammers past on the way uptown. Keep walking, McDonald’s.  Then Wendy’s, TGI Fridays (awful name, worse atmosphere) and a Dunkin’ Donuts to top you up on sugar before you hit the M&Ms shop (it’s Pick ‘n’ Mix heaven in there. Provided you only want M&Ms. Stop short of the plastic toy ones or there’ll be tears). And on to Times Square, where the gigawatt jumbotron screens keep your styrofoam (seriously) tray of ‘fish on rice’ warm while they sear Nike logos into your retinas.

I didn’t try them all. But I tried a lot…

HOT DOG

Bread so light and fibre-free it gives pigeons the squits. A hot dog so overprocessed it was once in a pipe. Sauce and mustard barely distinguishable from congealed red and (ew) yellow cordial.

Even the napkin is artificially coloured

 DELICIOUS!

I don’t know why. But it was great. Sure, I was straight off 29 hours of alternately flying and sitting around a airlocked transit terminal, but this thing was GREAT. Cost me two bucks, threw it down in less time than it took to buy it and thought about going back for another one. I was walking past FAO Schwarz as I finished it though, and the lure of giant pianos and life sized stuffed tigers and bears and Rush Limbaughs was too much.

CHILLI DOG

An extension of the above. Take a hot dog. Add grated mystery cheese. Slop in a dash of so-so chilli and exchange for three well-worn dollar bills: 

Huh, wonder what I did with that top...

EVEN MORE DELICIOUS!

I couldn’t blame jet lag for this one. I was fresh from a walk through Central Park, and hungry thanks to spending the entire day meandering around The Most Amazing Art Gallery Ever. Whatever the reason, it tasted damn fine. Sure, there was sugar enough to keep a six year-old bouncing off the ceiling until high school, and the chilli was so rich it had a share portfolio, but whatever, shut up. Damn good. Pro tip: grab extra napkins. Or eat it naked and plan on a shower.

PRETZEL

Another New York staple. I grabbed one of these near the Brooklyn Bridge, one of my must-see sites for this trip. Subway down to Wall Street, quick stroll through the-where-the-hell-am-I district, pop out on the approach to the bridge. A wagon on the ramp blocked my path, so I figured on nailing a culinary mission as well as a geography one.

“Hey bud (‘bud’?), how much for a pretzel?”

“THREE!”

They way he said it gave me the feeling he wanted to behead me with a fishstick. I nodded and made the universal ‘I accept your price and wish to purchase said goods’ gesture. He did something out of sight and moments later a head-sized pretzel was thrust menacingly towards me. I took it, paid without breaking eye contact and backed away before hurrying onto the bridge.

Now, these things are around in Australia. In fact an old friend ran the first Wetzel’s franchise in the country. I had them several times: they were warm and stretchy and salty and as good as buttered bread straight out of an oven.

This. Was. Not.

The pretzel was sticky. Not like melted-butter sticky, more sort of tacky rubber cement-sticky. The weirdly opaque salt crystals looked like the fur that grows around old chemical drums. And when I took a bite, the texture was somewhere between stale candy floss and building plaster.

I managed three bites. Then I hurled the remains into a bin, scattering the pigeons looking for a snack. On their return, they stood on the pretzel while they pecked at styrofoam.

"Trials of the new road-surfacing material were going well, the pretzels showing no signs of wear."

KNISH

If you’ve been keeping up, you’ll k’now I planned to order one of these just for the pleasure of using the word. Say it with me now, k’nissssh. You can chicken out and pronounce it kerNISH, but if you’re Aussie, if you take the nasal twang seriously, if you’ve ever said the words Fnord or f’tang, you’re right there beside me, brandishing your three bucks outside Central Park and declaring “I’ll have a k<exhalethroughnose>NISH thanks!”

Bam, three seconds. Hot and foil-wrapped and steamy and what the hell did I just buy?

Experimental nibble at what appears to be a deep-fried pastry case. Rumour confirmed: lobbed in the fryer about two hours earlier based on the texture. A little chewy-stale but clean and hot and retaining at least a memory of crispness. Press on deeper: squishy off-white interior. Smooth, creamy…potatoey? Ahh, and stringy-cheesy! Oops, bit of foil there: wait for teeth to stop singing, peel back and lunge at its steaming heart.

Good, good, good.

Look, it’s basically mashed potato, wrapped in dough and deep fried. But…yeah, hot and squishy and easy to eat and just what I wanted after a day of staring at mammoths and giant Egyptian statues and endless broken pots covered in naked orange Greek guys. I strolled along the path watching joggers puff by and trainers bark at their victims to do ‘One more! Come on, push it!’ and a bunch of people play what looked like American football with a bean bag, and enjoyed every bite of my deep-fried carbohydrates. And dammit, I would do so again. Maybe once my arteries unclog.

CHICKEN GYRO

There’s some linguistic shenanigans around this name. In Adelaide we call it a Yiros (pronounced YEE-ross). Perth they’re kebabs (pronounced “Uhhr f#$k I’m drunk. Let’s geddakerbab.”). Darwin I think they were chiros (chEYErows). Probably a common ancestor there. Except for kebab, but…yeah, Perth. We’re a long way from everything out there, and we kinda lose touch. (Anyone know any other names for them?)

Anyway, I went one of these after the Guggenheim letdown (see, there’s a great name for a greasy snack. Or an absinthe hangover cure). There was an Indian chap running a cart who looked less militant than Pretzel Guy, so I thought I’d chance it. There was a process: chicken was chopped, bread was warmed and salad was fetched from the bowels of the cart. Moving away from that challenging metaphor, I accepted his calm offer of ‘Hot sauce?’ and took the proffered meal, along with the phone-book ream of serviettes included.

A bad photo of a good meal

Of all the food cart challenges, this one was the closest I had to a genuine meal. Fresh, hot pita, smooth not-too-sweet garlic sauce, well-cooked chicken and salad with enough crunch to announce its presence over the other ingredients. The hot-chilli cohort amongst my friends would scoff at the ‘hot’ sauce (warm at most), but it added just enough tang for my liking. I orbited the Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis reservoir in the prescribed anti…sorry, counter-clockwise direction as I worked my way through it, pausing only to take scenery photos, capture errant warm sauce globules and fish out the last morsels of tasty from the bottom of the expertly-folded wrapper. All things considered, it was the finest work of art I experienced that day. Sorry Frank.

THREE-EGG TURKEY OMELET

That’s how it’s advertised on the menu. This was my first New York breakfast, so it gets a guernsey. I joined the rest of the hotel patrons in the Lindy café, the bar-cum-diner in one of the retail nooks on the building’s Seventh Avenue frontage. Of immediate interest were the staff: rather than the disinterested twenty-something girls an Australian equivalent would hire, every waiter was an old guy. Two were black, one was Hispanic, one was constructed entirely of wrinkles and bonhomie.

“Café?”

I looked around, wondering if wrinkle guy was asking me to confirm our location, but the proffered pot answered my unasked question. I got through two and a half refills by the time my omelet arrived (it was actually quick, but I was thirsty and damn he was handy with that pot).

Meh. Fruit with it though.

It was…adequate?

The ‘turkey’ was some sort of sausage, sliced and fried to a dark brown that masked any clues about its identity or origin. The omelet was a little overcooked for my liking, and perhaps could have used some cheese or something else to lift the flavour. But the toast was hot and fresh and it came with some sort of creamy butter stuff that added something more than just cholesterol to the experience. I didn’t eat anything else until about  four pm that afternoon, so clearly it did the trick. But for fifteen bucks I could have done better. And so could the cook at Lindy’s.

Pro tip: the closer to the hotel, the more likely they’ll take advantage of your price-and-quality ignorance. Stretch your legs, folks. Earn your breakfast.

TOASTED BAGEL

It’s a bread roll. Moving on...

"Dear Jewish community: what exactly is all the fuss about??"

PIZZA

You hear a lot about the ‘New York Slice’. It’s an institution or something, just like everything else in this city. There’s takeaway pizza in Australia but, much like zombie plague, you either get the whole thing, or none at all. New York is different (the pizza, not zombie plague; that works the same). Here’s how to get some:

Go to the pizza counter. A sweaty bloke who’s rolled around in flour a bit will gesture with a canoe paddle and say something. It may sound like ‘You killed my father. Prepare to die’, but remain calm. Inspect the array of pizzas on display and select one or two you like. Varieties will always include cheese, two cheese, three cheese, spinach (seriously, six pizza places and they all did spinach. Popeye would be bench-pressing cement trucks after lunch here), pepperoni, some mysterious thing that looks like lily pads on a white pond ( I have a terrifying suspicion it was Four Cheese plus spinach) and an assortment of vegetarian abominations. Point if you’re not sure, or tell him what you want. He will reply with his postal address in Naples, use the canoe paddle to pick up a slice from each of your selections and fling them into a furnace. Wait nearby while he loudly declares blood feud on other customers. Then watch his move: open furnace, extract slices with paddle, fling deftly onto paper plates hopelessly unprepared for a) heat, 2) grease and d) the weight of the mozzarella. Nod and smile as he shouts his children’s recent school grades at you, then head for the counter to pay.

"I'll have a slice of cheese, pepperoni and subway station thanks."

If you stay to eat, do not use a knife and fork. Taxi drivers with ‘Sopranos’ accents will appear from nowhere and devour you. The appropriate technique is to grasp by the crust, fold in half lengthways and consume it from the thus-formed spear tip, ensuring it is held low to ensure maximum cholesterol oozes onto each bite. Give it a few seconds to cool; the furnace is a pitiless taskmaster. If you eat on the go, follow the same approach, but do the ‘pizza navigation face’. Grasp, fold, raise to mouth. While crossing the street, tilt head back, eyes still forward, stick out tongue and engage the pizza tip with the tongue, then shuttle-dock it with your mouth. Your eyes will be horror-movie wide as you attempt to negotiate sidewalk traffic with two pounds of molten cheese attached to your alimentary canal, but do not be afraid. Others will allow you extra fighting room. Unless you bought vegetarian, in which case they deliberately  steer you into storm drains.

Oh yea, the pizza is pretty good. And ranges from wtf cheap ($1.50 for a pretty good pepperoni slice) to wait-what expensive ($6 for pepperoni and mushroom. The mushrooms were good, but they weren’t $4.50 good).

PASTRAMI ON RYE AT KATZ’S DELICATESSEN

This place is an institution. Again. The walls have photos of the cast of pretty much every gritty 1970s NY police drama, every whimsical 1980s rom-com, and a bunch of other shows, plus minor celebs like that Clinton guy from the show about the White House before Bush turned it into a war movie. I was under instruction to order a pastrami sandwich, so I lobbed just before lunch to try it out.

Madness. From the bloke at the door shoving a ticket in my hand, through the next bloke at the door warning they would trap my soul for eternity if I lost my ticket, through to the aproned mountain foghorning instructions from behind the counter. The place was wall-to-wall. And its location on Houston Street (SoHo by the way means ‘South of HOuston street’) means they had space: there are a hundred tables in there. I reached the front (i.e. the crowd forced me against the counter), where I shouted ‘Pastrami on rye with mustard please. To…’ quick look round, observe people piled three-deep on chairs, ‘…to go.’

A calm nod. He began slicing something in a curiously rhythmic manner. While still slicing, a small plate appeared on the counter, on which he deposited two slices of steaming flesh, black-crusted and glistening. Another nod. ‘To try.’

I tried.

Wow.

Pastrami, for the unfamiliar, is beef, brined, spiced, smoked then steamed for hours. It’s slightly purple with a black crust of spice. As presented by Katz's deli, it is the best meat I have ever tried. Tender to the point of flakiness, rich and faintly gelatin-sticky, just spicy and salty enough, there’s a textural joy and a confusion of flavours there that set it apart from the best steak. And I had a pound of it coming my way.

The black slabs are spice-crusted pastrami. That's a steamer full behind.

The ‘sandwich’ was in a bag with the (apparently) customary handful of pickles in minutes. I tipped, gave him my ticket to mark and made my escape, paying the door troll to gain my freedom.

One down side of Houston street, I discovered, is very few parks nearby. I found one next to a kids’ playground that looked straight out of the Sesame street credits and settled in next to three old Spanish guys, including the ubiquitous Angry Shouting One. The sandwich and pickles took up my impromptu backpack tablecloth nicely.

Cut in half, it’s still a two-handed job. Still plenty warm, the bread wash fresher than I was, the mustard was typical American-mild and the pastrami, which by some miracle of modern engineering, remained in the sandwich (I can see where New Yorkers develop the skills to make such big buildings)…where was I…oh, the pastrami. Yeah, hot and greasy and perfect.

I ate half, along with half of the pickles (there were six of them, each the size of a..hm, maybe not that comparison…the size of a pickle that is six inches long. Yeah). The other half went in my bag for later, and was devoured the next evening straight out of the fridge. As good as when I first bought it.

How good was it? On my last day I went back for another. Here it is:

Not a flavour out of place. This is good, good food.

It was  nice to soak up some of the vibe of the deli without most of the Village competing for the same air. The staff barely seemed to notice customers, working and shouting at each other as if we weren’t there. Most were old, all but one were men. And everyone seemed gruffly pleased to be working in the place that served me the best thing I ate the whole time I was here.

Katz's delicatessen, minus insane crowd. Look familiar? Imagine Meg Ryan, banging the table and screaming "YES! YES! YES!" at Billy Crystal.

Come here, try this. You will leave happy.

EVERYTHING ELSE

Not all the options are junk, signature food or outrageous carnivorous indulgences. There are enough people here that the retail market can cater for just about any taste. If only one in a thousand Manhattan residents was a gluten-intolerant vegan Muslim, there’d still be around thirty of them in every square kilometre. That’s enough for someone to decide it’s worth offering a halal tofu salad or whatever on the breakfast menu. Ratchet that back to slightly more probable food proclivities and you’re seeing a lot of vegetarian, kosher, wheat-free, nut-free, lactose-free and anything else-free choices. And if what you want is as simple as a fruit salad for breakfast, you don’t have to go far.

No turkeys were harmed in the making of this breakfast. Several melons did have a pretty bad day.

 I squeezed in my Central Park jog on Friday morning. Afterwards, while stumbling around looking for a subway to take me back, I decided to sort breakfast on the way. The first open door I tried had fruit salad, watermelon, mango, cereal cups and fruit-yoghurt-muesli cocktails for something like three dollars. I’d done enough mostly-melon-anyway fruit salads by then, and I felt like I’d earned a minor indulgence; I went the latter. So at 8.30 am I’m in shorts and Mossimo T-shirt and ten-year-old Nikes, herd-surfing down Broadway as I tuck in to my watermelon and granola and full-cream yoghurt, sweat still dark on my collar, heart still ticking up just a little from the track and feeling like everything I’d done so far that day was as natural as breathing taxi fumes in this place.

New York might make it easy to stray to the deep-fried side, but it makes it just as easy to go the other way. And by the look of the text-walkers and coffee-sippers and I-hope-he’s-on-the-phone street shouters I saw on my yoghurt stroll, they’re right with me on the salad thing. The food here is everything from appalling to amazing, and as healthy as you want it to be. I just wish I could figure out who’s eating all those pretzels.