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The halal chicken cart
Southeast corner of Broadway and 23rd, across from the Flatiron: fast, cheap, good, and if you take your food back to your office, everyone within sniffing distance will be wanting to know what you got. Also, I’ve been eating grilled chicken from that cart for years, and never suffered so much as an upset stomach.
The vendor’s a nice guy. He appears to be doing the whole immigrant success thing. This spring he traded his battered old bismillah-stickered cart for a shiny new one twice the size, so now along with spicy grilled chicken-and-rice, chicken-on-pita, and kebabs he’s doing falafel, Italian sausage sandwiches, and a spicy vegetable and rice thing.
It’s all good.
Queues and celery salt in the park
There’s an American-style burger shack in the park across the street from the halal guy. The good part is that it does classic pre-McDonald’s burger shack-style burgers. Even better, it does Chicago-style hot dogs with the full salady presentation.
What’s less good is that if you get there any later than 11:30 or so, there’ll be a line, and by 12:15 it’ll stretch halfway to the edge of the park. Some days, when you really want a Chicago-style hotdog, it’s worth it.
Kickshaws at Eisenberg’s
Eisenberg’s is a deli that’s across the street from the other side of the Flatiron. I think the only bits that date from later than the 1950s are the delivery boys and the textured coating on the north wall. The rest is a time capsule—like, not only can you get an egg cream there; you can get a lime rickey. They’re said to make the best standard tuna sandwich in New York, but I’m not big on tuna sandwiches so I wouldn’t know.
I’m curious about the terminology on their takeout menu, though. The section for side dishes is labeled “sidekicks.” Now, I know the etymology of sidekick has never really been nailed down. The word showed up in American English around the time the Flatiron was built. There’s a theory that it derives from a term for side-pockets on one’s pants, but that’s a best-guess no-real-connection kind of explanation.
Eisenberg’s has me wondering whether sidekick is derived from kickshaw: an interesting word in its own right. Kickshaw is an English repronunciation of quelque chose, which is French for “thingy.” It has two main meanings: a trifling, trumpery thing, or a side dish—what they used to call a “made dish.”
Kickshaw may have contributed genetic material to kicky-wicky, a term for “wife,” which Shakespeare used in All’s Well that Ends Well, II iii.297:
To the wars, my boy, to the wars!
He wears his honour in a box unseen,
That hugs his kicky-wicky here at home,
Spending his manly marrow in her arms,
Which should sustain the bound and high curvet
Of Mars’s fiery steed….
Kickshaw has never fallen out of the language.
Meanwhile, in America, the recorded terms for a person we’d call a sidekick were side-pal (1886) or side-partner (1890). I find it very easy to imagine that kickshaw, “side dish,” collided with side-pal or side-partner and came out sidekick.
Trust me on this one
On the same block as Eisenberg’s are three deli-plus-salad-bar places. I strongly recommend the two southernmost ones. They never get shut down for penance and cleanup.
Achieving authenticity the hard way
Finding bits of historic New York is always a matter of knowing where to look and being able to recognize what you’re looking at. The Old Town Bar manages to look just like a nineteenth-century New York bar by dint of being one. If you want to hang out and pretend you’re waiting to meet a guy who’s with the Five Pointers, this is the place for you. It has good beer, good burgers, and good potato salad all the time, and other stuff that’s usually pretty good too. The food comes down from the second-floor kitchen via one of New York’s few operating dumbwaiters.
On a quiet afternoon in the summer, the Old Town’s first floor is one of the best places in the city to hide out: dark, cool, easygoing, with deep booths, and a very high hammered-tin ceiling that swallows up the heat and noise and holds it far away from you. The height of that ceiling makes the climb to the second floor surprisingly long, but the upstairs dining area is very pleasant.
Why I decided I liked the Old Town: Back before computers, before Selectrics with their swappable type balls, when an Underwood Electric Typewriter was about as good as you got, copy typists learned all kinds of little tricks, protocols, and maneuvers to make documents look as good as possible.
The first time I went to the Old Town, I opened their hand-typed menu and realized that (a.) it had no typos in it whatsoever, and (b.) the person who’d typed it—on a machine with nice clean keys and a new cloth ribbon—had used all those old-fashioned copy typist’s moves, the likes of which I hadn’t seen in thirty years. I immediately conceived a good opinion of the place, and it’s never given me any reason to change my mind.
Where it is: You know the big Barnes & Noble on Union Square? Okay, imagine you’ve set up a cannon facing it. If you fired a shot that crashed through the front wall of the B&N, flew across the store, and punched through the back wall, your cannonball would come to rest on the sidewalk in front of the Old Town. Which is convenient, because by then you’d really need to sit down and have a drink.
I thought sidekick was cowboy term out of the Great American West. Roy Rogers' sidekick was, I don't know, Chill Wills, I think.
I'm sure it's derived from the combination of horseback riding and rounding up cattle, Rawhide-style.
Sorry, Slothrop. The first recorded instance of sidekick is 1906, well into the era of barbed wire.
Roy Roger's sidekick Pat Brady and his jeep Nelly Belle
Incidentally for reasons that will forever escape me even after someone here explains them all the Roy Roger's gang shows up as yarns and associated with knitting?*
Giving directions via artillery fire. I like that.
"Reo's Ribs? Well, you stand on the northwest corner of 185th and TV Highway, and you aim a bazooka at the sewing machine and vacuum cleaner repair shop . . . "
But "recorded use" would have been among non-cowboy (or cowgirl) dictionary-types in East Coast locales such as New York and Boston.
The term might not have migrated eastward until 1906.
Am I right?
TNH: I strongly recommend the two southernmost ones. They never get shut down for penance and cleanup.
That's one of the absolute-best endorsements an eatery can have. I've had lunch with food inspectors, and the stories they tell - even over meals - will have you brown-bagging it for months afterward.
pie in Wisconsin has cheese for a sidekick, according to law (1955? The Complete Book of Cheese - Brown, Robert Carlton (1886-1959).
Faust (Max Brand) used sidekick in a western setting early 20's. Karl May (died 1912) has things translated as sidekick but I have no idea what the original German is and no ready access to May in German - likely a translator's usage rather than a coinage.
There's a place near here that makes great barbeque, but the owner sold it to a Korean couple and since then, they've had at least two critical violations all the time. For a while I convinced myself that the bbq was good enough, but not anymore. Check out the health records of Virginia restaurants.
Right now, I'd do anything to secure myself a Chicago-style deepdish pizza. Local chain outlets leave much to desired.
( Well, anything BUT submitting to Publishamerica. That's just sick. )
Hey, I used to live within artillery range of 185th and TV highway! I didn't discover Reo's until about 2 weeks before I moved away, alas.
Bill -
I take it you're not on Lou Malnati's practically pr0nographic email list? (visit www.loumalnatis.com) If you're in the continental US, they'll send you (damn good) deep dish packed in dry ice overnight. If you're not in the continental US, I have no advice. When I call my parents in the dead of winter, gloating about wearing shorts whilst xmas shopping, they taunt me with pizza.
I did enjoy a good NY slice last week - more than once, I'm afraid. The availability of riccota and spinach in addition to my usual pepperoni, and garlic knots makes me crave New York pizza almost as much as Chicago. I've found only one good place in LA for pizza (Casa Bianca in Eagle Rock) but console myself with the several Thai restaurants within walking distance.
With all the smoke and smashed timber, you'd think Reo's had already taken a direct hit.
Also, Reo appeared a bit shell-shocked. All that heat and smoke . . .
nerdycellist:
The closest to New York pizza in Pasadena is Domenico's. The most sincere California Cuisine pizza in Pasadena is Avanti (the whole garlic cloves pizza is amazing). Wood-fired ovens, all that.
There's the Golden Pizza Award in New York (or used to be). Imagine the shock when the first victor was Goldberg's Chicago Style. Queen's, in Brooklyn Heights, came in 2nd; it was the very definition of pizza to me, always will be, though the seriously obese cook probably expired long ago.
I speculate on the invention of Hawaiian pizza, not that I dislike it. Just one of those things like canned asparagus, nice enough as its own thing, unrelated to its namesake. Maybe an interior decorator. "I think we need something to contrast with the reddish-orange tomato sauce and the pinkish ham. I know! Some nice chunks of pineapple, for an off-yellow, sort of an effect, perhaps even nice circular annuli from a can, to reprise the circle motif..."
Any truth to the urban myth about white cheese, red sauce, and green basil to symbolize the Italian Flag?
Ah. Thank you. For years, I have had no clue as to the origins of "sidekick" and -- this is the odd part -- I really wanted to know.
Until now, the best guess I got was that it was your pal, who kicked his horse into a gallop just when you did.
I don't know why, but I just can't bring myself to eat anything that ever came out of a pushcart.
The guy who runs a halal chicken cart is selling Italian sausage sandwiches? Did I read that right?
pardon me, sir, but is your cannon loaded?
Non.
(sticks head in barrel)
BOOM!
that is not my cannon.
Ah! I've eaten at many a sidewalk street-meat cart, but that one on 23rd & B'way is the best I've ever had. Middle-eastern style, that is.
For Chinese, there used to be a cart in Chinatown (the Manhattan one) I'd stop at sometimes on the way to Crossover back in the day. Scallion pancakes the size of my hand, fingers and all.
Bill, I think Suparossa will deliver anywhere in the country.
Apropos of Chicago dogs, one of the best parts of moving to Indianapolis is the cuisine proximity allows me to find them easily. Along with Italian beef. There's actually a local place founded by some expatriate Chicagoans that is fast becoming one of my favorite places.
My sweetie had never had celery salt before we got dogs there.
JVP: I speculate on the invention of Hawaiian pizza
Which, IMO, is neither.
The first time I encountered it, it was on a round pie cut into square pieces. I'm told this pizza-divvying method is SOP in certain midwestern states. boggle
OED's entry for sidekick has a note, saying it's a back-formation from the term sidekicker. They say it's from an O. Henry story in McClure's Mag, Feb 1903 ("Billy was my side-kicker in New York."). O. Henry (AKA William Sydney Porter) lived in Texas for a number of years before coming to New York, so he might've picked it up there. And OED requires dating terms from when they first appear in print, not oral tradition. Question is, how long would it've taken a cowboy slang term to migrate into respectable press?
p.s.: I am now extremely (and inexplicably) hungry for a kebab.
Larry: that is, in fact, the proper way to cut regular, thin crust Chicago pizza.
I prefer it that way. It gives you pieces with and without crust, including the 'corner' pieces. Plus I find them easier to hold on average.
Leftover middle (crustless) pieces, served cold, make great breakfast. IMO and all.
I grew up with this, so the first time I encountered a pie-cut thin-crust pizza I thought it was veddy strange.
As a 27-year resident of Hawai'i (and counting), I'm pretty sure Hawaiian pizza was made up out of whole dough and canned rings somewhere on the Mainland. We don't even like pineapple in rings out here; we like ours fresh, sliced into wedges and dripping with juice. If you've eaten pineapple properly you need a shower or a crate of those towelettes United used to hand out after long flights.
Jon Hansen:
"Question is, how long would it've taken a cowboy slang term to migrate into respectable press?"
You have NO idea how hard I'm resisting a post of Cowboy Vocabulary from my draft paper on Westerns & Science Fiction.
Tina: Hmmm - I guess I've limited my Chicago pizza experience to deep-dish. (My surprise pineapple pizza moment was in Indiana.) It does make me wonder how you could sell square-cut round pizza by the slice. Perhaps pricing is per square inch, or the way the Europeans do it - by the gram.
You can get the crust/no crust option on a Sicilian slice in NYC, but that's a rectangular, thick-crust pie cut into rectangular pieces. My pref is the edge piece from the short side.
"Resistance is useless! Bring on the vocabulary lesson!" he cried, all the while remembering this isn't his netspace.
Thanks for the tips, since I'm often in the nabe. Some (e.g., Old Town) I'm quite familiar with, some not.
Speaking of W.S. Porter, I saw a book just the other day, a bilingual Chinese/English edition of Ethan Frome printed in China, that had among the other titles on the flyleaf a collection of stories by "O'Henry"...
Recent discovery of cheap, unpretentious but incredibly delicious food: Veselka, over in the East Village. Yow what great food.
Oddly enough, I just read a pretty interesting profile of what I assume is the same burger place in the park this morning,
The first time I encountered it, it was on a round pie cut into square pieces. I'm told this pizza-divvying method is SOP in certain midwestern states.
Also in New Haven (well, vaguely oblong pizzas cut into approximately rectangular pieces, anyway).
New Haven is, of course, home to pizza wars that are almost as intense as those between lovers of New York thin-crust and Chicago deep-dish styles. In this case, the arguments are between partisans of Sally's and Frank Pepe's (links are to a pizza weblog, and you just knew there had to be one, didn't you?). Of course, they both do basically the same style (thin-crust like New York, only the bottom crust is usually burnt...), but they make up for the lack of major culinary difference by being located two blocks apart on Wooster St.
Damn it. Too much food over here today. Between the halal chicken cart and the Gulab Jamun mercenaries, I may have to actually cook.
*wonders if there're any falafel fixins in the house*
I am confused.
What makes a hot dog Chicago-style?
Celery salt?
nerdycellist:
Lou Malnati's on-ice is something I've had before, but the cost is... prohibitive. I long for a local supplier of deepdish. The dominant style of pizza locally is thin crust, square cut, toppings to the edge--- aka 'Dayton Style', or 'midwest style' pizza.
( Donato's pizza is the biggest purveyor of the stuff in this area, followed by Cassano's. )
Only two of the non-chain pizzerias in town actually do thickcrust pizzas...
Tina:
Suparossa may offer shipping anywhere--- but they ain't Lou Malnati's.
Regarding Chicago deep-dish pizza, I ate at Gino's East one night. Other than some cafeteria stuff it was the only pizza I had in Chicago, so I don't have much of a baseline on whether it's typical or not, but ohohohohohoho it was *good*.
They'll deliver. However, the prices are a touch beyond my reach, so it's a good thing they only deliver in the 48 contiguous states.
"What makes a hot dog Chicago-style?"
A Vienna Beef dog (that's a particular brand, and it's an important detail) on a sturdy hot dog bun, topped with lettuce, tomato, hot "sport" peppers, green peppers, inedible-looking "neon" relish, cucumbers, pickles, onions, mustard, and the all-important celery salt. Lots and lots of celery salt. Mmmmm.
Also known as "dragging a hot dog through a salad."
They're delicious. This New Yorker, who views Chicago "deep dish" pizza with alarm, regards the Chicago dog as a pinnacle of junk-food civilization.
(To be fair, the Chicago pizza place in the Loop that Erik V. Olson dragged us to in 2000 served some really good eats. I wouldn't call it "pizza" but it was fine stuff and I went back for seconds.)
"The guy who runs a halal chicken cart is selling Italian sausage sandwiches? Did I read that right?"
I dunno, maybe he's using all-beef Italian sausage. I haven't had one yet.
Or maybe his idea of "halal" has become...flexible. That's what happens in the big cosmopolitan city. One minute you know not to eat of the swine or of creatures that crawl on the sea floor, and the next minute you're knocking back bacon-and-oyster milk shakes and making eyes at the gentile bass player. Cities are like that.
Avram: I know that Chinatown cart! It was run by Lo Mein Guy. Good lord, heaven help the girl who succumbed to the temptations of Lo Mein Guy. No need to eat for a week after that.
For all lovers of the Old Town (which would include me, natch), might I humbly suggest the Ear Inn, as well? It's a little out of the way (waaaay over on Spring Street on the West Side), but worth the trip for the ambiance and history alone (the food's not bad, either).
I think the Old Town has one of the best veggie burgers in the city, oddly enough.
Sorry, Slothrop. The first recorded instance of sidekick is 1906, well into the era of barbed wire.To be fair, that's true of most of what we associate with the old west.
PNH, that pizza place; did it have a *lot* of graffiti on the walls? I mean floor-to-ceiling, and along railings too? If so, that was Gino's. *sigh* I regret not eating more there.
That was because we'd already filled up at a Brazilian churrascaria called Fogo de Chao earlier in the week, just a block away. Oh, man, that place made me want to set up a wood-fired BBQ on my balcony, fire ordinances be damned. If you can, and you like meat a LOT, do go. Unlimited quantities of superbly-prepared skewers of meat (fillet mignon, picanha, a top sirloin cut called alcatra, beef ribs, leg of lamb, bacon-wrapped chicken breasts, a kind of parmesan-coated beef, and so much more...) brought to your table and carved to your specification by gauchos who stop by frequently to offer another serving... just one more; it's "wahffer thin"... The price looks steep at $30/plate for lunch, but it's actually worth it.
D'oh, now I'm hungry again.
The Old Town's veggie burgers are so good that I've ordered them, and I'm not remotely vegetarian. Their turkeyburgers are good too. Both have that essential burger quality of savory grilled-ness, without the bloopy sliminess of most faux burgers.
While we're on the subject, however, allow me to recommend--no, allow me to urge you to RUN OUT OF YOUR HOMES AND CONVERGE ON--the utterly unpreposessing Dumpling House on Eldridge Street, which will sell you fried dumplings, five for $1, which approach the quality of a religious experience. And that's not even their best offering. For that, we yield the floor to sometime ML commenter Andrew Willet:
[I]f the dumpling was heaven, then superlatives fail to describe the beauty of my own lunch. A ‘sesame pancake with beef,’ they called it: it started with a pizza-sized round of soft dough, white and chewy and dusted with sesame seeds and then fried like a dumpling. The dough was cut into sectors (again, think pizza here), and then split through the middle, so the top could be peeled back from the bottom. Into the middle they layered handfuls of fresh grated carrot, fresh chopped cilantro, and cold roast beef flavored gently with anise. Over that, they squirted a peppery-vinegary red sauce. Then they close the thing back up, slip it into a pale wax-paper envelope, and there you are. For a dollar freakin’ fifty.
That was maybe three hours ago, and my taste buds are still all twinkly. We walked from Chinatown to Chelsea and I had a big goofy smile on my face the whole time.
More on Chicago pizza:
Pizza-by-the-slice is cut pie-style, but I consider that distinctly different than 'a thin crust pizza'. It's its own animal.
Suparossa is a reasonable place to get pizza. Kind of like Gino's East. Neither of them are what I consider the pinnacle of Chicago pizza, but they'll both do nicely.
I feel about New York pizza roughly the way Patrick appears to feel about Chicago style pizza: it's not what I consider 'real pizza', but it's certainly not without its merit. I sha'n't argue about it, though; it's a matter of opinion.
I actually am a far bigger fan of Chicago-style thin crust than I am of deep dish, which was a hell of a problem when I lived in California, where 'thin crust' is actually closer to what I think of as pan.
Even in Chicago there's debate over which is the true Chicago pizza, of course. For my 20 yen, it's Aiello's thin crust.
About Chicago dogs:
There's actually two Chicago dogs: the basic, and the dredged-through-salad type Patrick mentions. A basic has a slightly lighter ingredient list. The mustard, onions, nuclear relish, pickle, tomato, sport peppers, and celery salt are required. The additional veggies are a nice touch but they are optional. The local place serves the stripped-down version, and that's the style I tend to make.
But definitely the celery salt must be used in quantity.
BTW, another good use for celery salt is on a cottage-cheese stuffed tomato.
I don't know if Lipton's Sidekicks (dehydrated starch based dishes in a pouch) are sold in the States or not, but they're approaching staple status in Canada, although still well behind Kraft Dinner. In fact, I just checked the back of a cupboard and found a package of Farmhouse Chicken & Vegetable Brown Rice. It may be older than the Burmese at my feet, but it's probably still edible. Well, as edible as it was when I first bought it.
This stuff is marketed via vaguely ominous commercials showing a suburban Mum cooking in her kitchen while the sounds of kids at play, mixed with an odd crinkling sound, drift in the window. Cut to a shot of the backyard, where a pair of grinning children are playing soccer with a six foot tall Sidekicks package guarding the goal. That poor bastard is going to block shot after shot in that hot, airless sack, and then they're going to bring him in the house and eat him.
Only in Canada? Pity.
One of my coworkers, just back from two weeks in Europe, taunted me with the perfection of the pizza he had in Italy.
Thin crust, sauce, and cheese: minimalism at its finest.
Those familar with old school David Letterman will recognize the Old Town as the bar that the camera went through. And yeah, it's a great palce to eat. Good service too.
I still have yet to find a San Francisco style burrito in NY. I hear Chipotle comes closest. Sad. We used to sneer at them in San Francisco.
Thanks for the Flatiron food tips. My office moved two blocks south of yours in March, and we're all still exploring the neighborhood.
I've been to Eisenberg's enough times to know that I vastly prefer the chicken salad and bacon sandwich over the tuna, but I hadn't figured out what was the difference between all those generic-looking delis.
The halal cart serves Italian sausage, and Eisenberg's serves BLTs. Clearly, it's a conspiracy.
Chipotle's? There are a couple of actual decent imitations of the SF burrito in New York (Moe's in Chelsea, and La Taqueria in Park Slope) -- they're not in the same league as the Mission District, but they're a whole hell of a lot better than Chipotle's. Try chowhound for more recommendations: they'd know.
Also, we got ridiculously quick service at the Snack Shack on a Saturday evening, but that's not very helpful for someone who works in the area weekdays...
My roommate (also from the Chicagoland area) prefers Chicago thin crust, which Casa Bianca does get pretty close to. My pizza preference is for 1. Deep Dish 2. New York Slice and 3. Chicago Thin Crust.
I haven't had Malnati's in awhile (no, it's not cheap to have it shipped) but I'm visiting the 'rents next month, and they live about a mile or so from the Lou's in Schaumburg. It is always a condition of my visit that they take me there.
For Angelenos craving a good Chicago dog or Italian Beef, there's a place in Burbank called "Taste Chicago" that does a damn good job. I'm pretty excited that Portillos is going to open a franchise here, but I'm still wondering if there's some sort of law against deep dish in this area.
And now I'm hungry again! Damn you literate food people!
Has anyone compared the best deep-dish commercial pizza in the Bay Area (Zachary's, in Oakland and Albany-maybe-Berkeley-depending-on-who-draws-the-line) to Chicago? I've given my heart to their deep-dish sausage, mushroom and artichoke heart offering.
i'm still not understanding how one serves square slices from a round pie!!!
May I recommend Rizzo's pizza in Astoria Queens (Steinway street and 30th avenue) as the best NY-style thing crust in NYC?
You get square slices from a round pizza by cutting in a grid pattern, not radially. (The edge pieces will of course have a curved side.) At most of the pizzerias I know that cut this way, it produces small slices that will fit on saucer-sized plates, which can be good if you're serving party snacks rather than dinner. It won't suit the (nominally) "New York style" of buying a slice, folding up the edges, and dining on the move.
I shall take the opening to speak well of the Zyliss pizza cutter, which has a wheel blade as usual for home cutters, but puts a large blade inside a half-circle clamshell, so that you press straight down on the axle. The shell comes apart for cleaning (it does require a bit of caution with the open blade), and it'll cut lots of things besides pizza -- cookie bars or brownies, f'rinstance. Cook's Illustrated claimed they couldn't get the hang of using it, in which case I would hate to be in the room when they tested a stick blender.
Old Town Bar is a splendid place to meet people, because you can with small effort imagine that you're in a Scorsese movie, and at any moment DeNiro and Cathy Moriarty . . . or John Garfield and Marie Windsor . . . or Bill the Butcher, for that matter, will come in and things will get all plotty. And with real beer, which you can't usually have on a shoot.
Maciej wrote a eulogy to NY pizza.
What exactly is "celery salt"? Salt and celery mixed together? Salt that's been packed with celery, but is now by itself except for the flavors it's picked up?
The rest is a time capsule—like, not only can you get an egg cream there; you can get a lime rickey.
You can? Oh, damn: the only time I was ever in New York, the only place I found that claimed to sell egg creams was a stall in a building near Grand Central station, and it was closed. I wanted to drink an egg cream and think of Harriet the Spy... and I never got to.
Delurking to share my junk-food reflections.
I grew up in a town in Connecticut that's about 60% Sicilian (almost all from one town in Sicily!), but I never had "Sicilian" pizza until I moved to New York. We did get some extremely delicious square-cut-from-circle pizza, at a place run by creepy old Greek guys. Was it Chicago-style? I don't know. The crust was thin, hard, and crunchy. My favorite pizza from home has a thick, soft crust and very sweet sauce; it's like no other pizza I've had. Generally, I don't really like New York pizza at all, or brick-oven pizza, or "fancy-restaurant" pizza... Or, rather, it's not that I dislike it, but it's not what I mean when I say I want Pizza, just like Patrick and Tina, if I am reading them right.
My dad grew up in Chicago and now and again he would get a hotdog and get everything the vendor offered piled on, but he would always seem discontented; I think he sought the real deal, which was just not available in Connecticut.
It's interesting to me that when it comes to these junkier foods, regional differences really become obvious. I was never more miserable abroad than when I found myself hungry for potato chips in France. Nothing tasted right at all. Maybe it's because when I'm eating "good" food, I'm appreciating the differences and subtleties, but when I'm eating junk I want it to always taste the same?
Oh yeah, and I've never been to a diner in either Brooklyn or Queens that didn't offer an egg cream. But I don't really know what they are, so I'm not sure if they were the real thing or what.
That stuff we had at Grimaldi's (IRRC) was might fine eats, and I've suggested the place to travellers many a time.
It's not pizza, mind you. But it is good eats.
Scale: Three healthy SF fans can take down 2 large NY pizzas in twenty minutes, then head off for dessert. Same three fans, faced with a Medium deep dish, take half back to the hotel.
That was the same trip that I bought you the hot dog on Navy Pier. First hit's free...
Note that while a Vienna Beef is canonical, any all beef is acceptable. And it's a sturdy hot dog bun *with poppy seeds.*
It's the details, as you know, Bob.
Tom: Artichoke hearts are too Californian, they're barred from Chicago Pizzas by custom. However, there is the lovely spinach and tomato pizza. Note that, as a class, tomato sauce is barred. You want tomatos (and who doesn't?) you put tomatos on the pizza. Ditto, the hotdog, lo the heathen who asks for ketchup. You want tomatos, and just tomatos? That's cool, the vender may well wink and admit he likes 'em that way on a hot day.
Chicago pizza is a trinty: The deep, the thin, and the mighty stuffed. (Amen.) A peice of thin is a nice snack. A slice of deep dish is a nice dinner. A slice of stuffed will get you across the continental divide, and halfway back. Chilled, the mass of cheese forms a self sealing barrier.
The crust variations are complex, as well. Due's crumby, Reggio's butter crust, Gino's breadcrust, and so on. Mike Pins nailed it. "The best Chicago pizza outside of Chicago is Eduardo's, the best Chicago pizza inside of Chicago is a holy war."
I wont point out that TNH wrote on the booth with a black marker. Well, not like she was the first. Or the thousandth. It was that Ginos -- rough, raw, and the pizza was fine. I'd say we should have gone to the one on Superior, but hey, we had hot doodling action!
I will admit some crogglement in this thread. We keep talking about Chicago Food and Old Town, but those words doesn't mean what you think they mean, at least to me. Old Town was a huge part of my life, for reasons that have nothing, and yet everything, to do with music. To me, it was just part of home.
Travellers! If you should be flying to Chicago, in Terminal G, Chicago O'Hare International Airport, in the rotunda, you will find a Gold Coast Dogs. It's a bit cleaner that most, but the dogs and beefs are spot on, and the burger and fries are first rate as well. I've been known to give people connection information at ORD that carefully routes them by this dog stand. I think my goal is to hook every Tor editor on the proper hotdog.
Why? It's part of being Evil and Good, actually.
Wait, I'm flying to Chicago today. Thus, the eternal question. "Dog, or beef?"
All I want is a proper kind of hot dog,
made with the proper dash of celery salt.
I may not want a malt,
but I want my proper hotdog
with a proper dash of salt.
Kosher red hot dogs and
onion covered dogs
they are not good to me
If I can't have a proper kind of hot dog
with the proper color mustard, then
I'll have Italian Beef."
(Patrick, walking into a museum in New York, finding that, because of a baseball exhibit, there are Chicago hot dogs in the basement. "I'm there!" Then they tried to put cheese on one of them. Odd.)
Last food bit. At SMOFcon a couple of years ago, I called in a tactical pizza drop. Most were too busy with stuffed pizza to say anything (part of my evil plan.) Tammy Coxen was amused at how I managed to nail the budget perfectly. (Google up "Fermi Piano Tuners", and learn. Hey, that's even a Chicago Reference.) Tom Veal merely said "Smart of you to order Giordanos, and not the really good stuff."
I shall take the opening to speak well of the Zyliss pizza cutter, which has a wheel blade as usual for home cutters, but puts a large blade inside a half-circle clamshell, so that you press straight down on the axle.
Park Tools, favorite of Bike Geeks Everywhere, sells, of course, the PZT-1
It's very sharp. Do treat it as the fine tool it is.
Steve, it was indeed Gino's. Erik Olson took us there. When he told us Father Greeley sometimes eats there, I knew what I had to do. I got out my fat-tipped indelible Sharpie and drew a Tor logo in a prominent spot.
The food there was good. Not what I'd call pizza, but darn good.
My favorite pizza place -- I haven't been there in far too long -- is in Brooklyn, down at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's called Grimaldi's, for its founder Patsy Grimaldi, and the first several times I went there, the placemats were covered, in multiple columns of small type, with an account of the long-standing feuds and lawsuits between the people who own the right to call a pizza parlor "Patsy's," and the owners of Grimaldi's who had to settle for the surname.
There's a lot of art depicting Frank Sinatra on the walls, and the jukebox is a mix of Sinatra, opera, and misc. other.
Grimaldi's has a mighty coal-fired brick pizza oven, and if you ask they'll give you a piece of coal. You can watch the pies being made. The dough has a lot of gluten in it, and gets spun out into thin disks that bake up crisp and tender. On top of that, a thin layer of spicy tomato sauce with a nice herbal aftertaste. Then, dead fresh mozzarella (made several times a day), and if you've ordered it, large perfect basil leaves laid on.
Yeah, you can get sausage or pepperoni or onions and olives. As soon as I get tired of the pizza margaria, I'll try adding the other toppings. Any year now.
It bakes fast. It's served fast, with attitude. It's ambrosial. And by the way, the right way to eat a wedge of pizza is to grab the crust end, give the slice a little extra strength by giving it (one-handed) a lengthwise pleat with your fingers, and eat it out of hand. If it flops over, you're either in the wrong pizza joint, or you're eating it cold for breakfast the next day, so it doesn't matter that it flops because it's congealed and won't fall apart.
Slothrop, the phrase might have migrated eastward from the plains, but that's not the way to bet. Cowboys made new language for their work, but they didn't need a new term for "friend and minion."
Bob Oldendorf, I wouldn't have wanted to speak ill of the third deli.
Clark: Aha, sidekick used to describe side dishes again! I think I'm on to something.
I suspect we retroactively imposed "sidekick" on a bunch of Westerners who didn't use it.
Pfusand, my explanation isn't official, but I think it makes as much or more sense than any of the other explanations that've been tendered.
Alan Hamilton:
TNH: Sorry, Slothrop. The first recorded instance of sidekick is 1906, well into the era of barbed wire.I'm not sure what you're saying here, since by 1904 the Old West had long since gone out of business. Do you mean all that Hollywood cowboy gimcrackery? If so, yeah -- not that I associate that stuff with the Old West.AH: To be fair, that's true of most of what we associate with the old west.
Fran, we don't get Lipton's Sidekicks here, but I'm delighted to know they exist: more fodder for the sidekick/kickshaw theory.
Bill Humphries:
One of my coworkers, just back from two weeks in Europe, taunted me with the perfection of the pizza he had in Italy.Exactly! That's the stuff you can find in NYC if you know where to look for it. It's amazingly good. All those gunky toppings are what you put on inferior pizza to disguise its shortcomings.Thin crust, sauce, and cheese: minimalism at its finest.
That was because we'd already filled up at a Brazilian churrascaria called Fogo de Chao earlier in the week, just a block away.
Obligatory Simpsons Quote: "This man died of beef poisoning."
Fogo de Chao is evil. EVIL. BWHAHAHA. ahem.
However, I admire someone who dares to take on the Fogo de Chou *and* a Chicago deep dish in one week. That's like carrying a mailsack on a marathon.
Haven't tried the Chicago one, I'm sure it's evil as well. As to the Gino's, yes, that was the one, as alluded to, above.
Erik: However, I admire someone who dares to take on the Fogo de Chou *and* a Chicago deep dish in one week. That's like carrying a mailsack on a marathon.
No mailsack was ever so pleasant to carry. Besides, we did a lot of walking; probably the only reason I didn't gain a few tons on the trip.
(Photos of Fogo and Ginos and a few other sundries on my Livejournal, if anybody's interested.)
Sadly, here in London, ON, the options are a touch more limited... however, less than a block from my office at work is Sammy's Souvlaki, a London fixture for decades in trailers but now with a new sit-down location. Real pork souvlaki, from an authentic Greek recipe, though the fries are merely okay. For pizza it's mostly the big chains but Tony's (four locations) has truly mastered the panzerotti experience. Not for the cholestoral-challenged, but delicious.
Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn't run down London cuisine; we get a lot of refugees from around the world, and half of them seem to want to start restaurants. You can track world crises by the founding dates on our local eateries and subtracting 3-5 years. Korean, Thai, Vietnamise, Lebanese, Somali, Balkan, Hallal... I think I should be a bit more adventurous when going to lunch.
Oh, and the Lipton Sidekick thing... they're perfect bachelor chow up here. Pasta or potato flakes in a sealed pouch with powdered sauce or gravy or whatever; just empty into boiling water (or water/milk mixture if it's a cream sauce) and stir. Hey, it's better alfredo than I'd be willing to make.
But the ads can be kinda creepy.
Of course Chicago deep dish pizza is real pizza. You folks sound like socker fans complaining about real football.
Seriously, a choice between Gino's East and Grimaldi's is difficult. Still, in terms of Maslovian peak experiences, one of the finest I've had was eating by myself at Gino's East. A pepperoni and mushroom deep dish pie, a pitcher of beer -- Berghoff, I think -- and a Chicago Bulls playoff game during the glory years of Michael Jordan. I hadn't eaten anything since 4 AM that morning, and had been running on adrenalin and coffee -- a whole day of craptacular air travel, hotel mishaps, missed important phone calls, et cetera.
[food porn deleted]
Finished the pie, the pitcher, and the game all about the same time; went back to my hotel room and slept like a baby.
The Chicago pie... it's a pie. People forget that. It's exactly what you'd expect malnourished Sicilian peasants to come up with when faced with the agricultural bounty of the American Midwest.
It's like the classic Midwest Italian steakhouse (a dying breed, sad to say). Salads worth eating. Steaks rubbed with a little garlic, a big plate of spaghetti instead of a baked potato, and a decent house red. Italian cheesecake for dessert, lemon zest and ricotta. Coffee that you can't see the bottom of the cup.
Anyway. I have to plan an expedition to the burek places in the Bronx, since my co-blogger is raving about the cheap eats in Tirana.
Erik, if it were me, I'd get the beef. The dogs are easier to assemble at home, except for finding sport peppers.
OTOH, one can always have Portillo's ship a box of fixings for either. Or both.
One of the best holiday presents I got while stuck living in California was a box of Portillo's beef.
And yes, stuffed pizza is the third part of the trinity. It's also the one in which, conflating several ideas, I am most likely to get spinach. A good stuffed spinach pizza is... actually sounding really good right now... hrm. Wonder if there's anywhere around here I can get one...
One thing I can say about New York pizza: it's the one I enjoy most as cheese-only. I'm generally more a fan of the garbage pizza than the plain, but for the NY style it works.
Teresa, I've been meaning to check out Grimaldi's for some time now, and I think you've just inspired me to do it tomorrow.
I like Lombardi's on Spring Street in SoHo/NoLita for just the same reasons. Coal-fired pizzety goodness. (And you can go across the street to Rice to Riches for dessert.)
Best egg creams in the city (there are lots of inferior ones to be found) are at the Ukrainian newsstand (some say it's nameless, some say it's called Ray's) at 113 Avenue A, just north of 7th St in the East Village. And you can get cherry-lime rickeys. But the egg creams are celestial...rich and creamy, with a nice thick head that takes a spoon to eat.
>Southeast corner of Broadway and 23rd
Thanks! I've been sniffing these things for years now and have always been too scared to try 'em. Somehow the whole "I have walls" thing makes me feel more secure eating food. But now I know where to go, even if it is a 10-block hike. :)
Lime rickeys!
The other place in Manhattan that still sells them (that I'm sure about) is not so preserved in amber as Eisenberg's. However, I actually watched the miraculous transformation of the Mill Candy Shop into the Mill Korean Restaurant (Broadway just below 113th) over the course of a decade.
Briefly:
1979: Mill Candy Shop. Space last painted probably right after the war. Dented wire paperback & comic revolving racks. Wall rack of mags, half porn. Small lunch counter with soda fountain, stools and grease-coated backbar/grill area. A couple of tables with tape-repaired chairs. Front counter with wooden register, slots for candy, i.e. Goldberg's Peanut Chews, Choward's Violet Gum etc.; all candy needs dusting. Owners: elderly couple, husband wears sleeves rolled up, tattooed camp number clearly visible on his forearm. One young man (never the same for longer than two weeks in a row) working the counter. Lime rickeys and other soda treats served at counter fountain. All lit by front window light and a 40-watt bulb in lamp by register.
(In 1979 there were still probably a thousand places or more almost exactly like this in New York.)
c.1981: young Korean guy hired to work counter, doesn't leave.
c.1985: Owners retire; young Korean guy takes over the store from them.
c.1986: wire racks gone, interior painted, better lighting, cleaner, no porn in mag racks.
c.1987: Tables added. Magazine rack cut back to single rack. New stools at counter.
c.1988: Counter removed, all tables now. Menu has many more Korean items on it. Youngish Korean guy hiring waiters and waitresses.
1990: Tranformation complete with further remodeling (i.e. front candy counter, peanut chews etc. finally removed).
2005: Still in business as fine Korean restaurant owned by middle-aged Korean guy and the only one in town where you can get a fresh-made lime rickey with your bibimbap. It's good, too.
All these comments about food and not one detailing typistical tricks?
I beg to differ about the trio of delis on 5th ave (west side) between 23rd and 22nd.
Marino's (northernmost) actually has really good pizza by the slice, which is surprisingly hard to find in the neighborhood (forget Maffei's on 6th and I don't even know what's up with Mozzarelli's on 23rd; that place is garbage).
City Market Cafe (southernmost) is over-priced but makes good sandwiches.
Deli Marche (in the middle): those are my peeps. Orange juice and croissant represent, what what.
Some other things you should try in the 'hood include:
J'Adore (tiny-ass little bakery on 23rd around the corner from the BoA atms)
Uncle Moe's (mexican, 19th bet. 5th and 6th)
Toasties (7th Ave bet. 22nd + 23rd)
Everything else is, how do you say, CRAPPY.
Word question -- if "kickshaw" came from "quelque chose", then had we kept the Chaucerian "belle chose", meaning female genitals, that would presumably have ended up something like "belshaw"?
Hoom hom, mustn't be hasty, but maybe I could use that in the same story where they call a gun a gavelock.
One of the few ways in which I have not New Yorkified in the 23 years I've lived in the NYC Metropolitan Area is my taste in pizza.
I still think any pizza that can be folded in half lengthwise without gooshing all over is for the birds. Moreover I've never had crust here that was anywhere near as tasty as the crust we had at Bell's in East Lansing, or the even-better pizza joint I can't remember the name of, where "extra crust" was an item, and worth ordering, because the crust was so good as to make the sauce and cheese seem almost like an afterthought.
I think New Yorkers like their pizza with superthin crusts because the crust just isn't very good. And I like getting toppings, especially bizarre ones like avocado and sundried tomatoes (how yuppie, I know).
That said, one of the many One! True! Original! Ray's! had some pretty damn good slices. You couldn't get more than one topping because they wouldn't FIT. If you got mushrooms (as I invariably did), you were eating a pretty big heap of them. Yum.
Teresa, there's a Grimaldi's in Hoboken, too. It also used to be a Patsy's, and (we maintain) was the original Patsy's of great fame. The people who wound up with the rights to the name had 800-pound lawyers, that's all.
TNH - If memory serves, Grimaldi's also offers homemade roasted red peppers on its magnificent wood-fired pizzas.
The speed of pie prep and serving there is such that one can be nearly finished with the first, or appetizer pie, and order the second, or main course pie, and experience no particular delay.
Grimaldis, along with Triple Eight Palace (beneath the Manhattan Bridge) for dim sum were on my "Dining Under Bridges" mini-tour. Glad to hear that Grimaldi's is still good. Anyone know about Triple Eight?
The burger shack in Madison Square Park is called Shake Shack. It's run by Danny Meyer, the guy behind Gramercy Tavern, Blue Smoke, etc. They also serve St Louis-style custards and concretes!
(I went soon after they opened last year and put up a review with photos, if anyone wants to see what the place and the food look like.)
"Erik, if it were me, I'd get the beef. The dogs are easier to assemble at home, except for finding sport peppers."
If you get a chance, Erik, stop at any grocery store where you can buy jars of sport peppers and hot dog relish (Vienna brand, even).
For lunch, I no longer have a choice but to stop at Max's for a hot dog.
Xopher - The Brooklyn Grimaldis was also formerly Patsy's, which is how I still think of it. I have to remember to call it Grimaldi's when I send people there.
I'm pretty sure that the Lipton Sidekicks are what they market Down Here as Rice & Sauce/Pasta & Sauce. (There's certainly a Pasta & Sauce Alfredo.) Perfectly okay sides/casserole bases. Give us this day our Unilever, as I kinda hope not too many people are saying.
Must add that I'm looking for a chance to say "sport peppers" aloud. Sport peppers - lovely to say and so evocative.
I'm suppressing a picture of anthropomorphized pepperoncini surfing, playing tennis, snowboarding...
I am such a barbarian on pizza. . . I blame it on the suburbs, somehow.
I liked St. Mark's Pizza, next to the Continental, but can't explain why. It's been replaced by something froofy; if punk wasn't dead before, it is now.
(I have a twisted urge for homemade pizza with fresh, fresh mozz on it now. I hate you all. )
Aw, fer corn sakes, you're in Boing Boing now, for this post.
Do they think I have time to keep reading the same post on different blogs all day?
Oh well. I'll just get on with life, I guess.
Food Post!
First, a reponse:
Best egg creams in the city (there are lots of inferior ones to be found) are at the Ukrainian newsstand (some say it's nameless, some say it's called Ray's) at 113 Avenue A, just north of 7th St in the East Village. And you can get cherry-lime rickeys. But the egg creams are celestial...rich and creamy, with a nice thick head that takes a spoon to eat.
You're close, but I hold that you're about three blocks off. Gem Spa (corner of 8th(st.Marks) and 2nd) has the best egg creams in the city. As to the ease of finding an egg cream at all, one wonders where the searcher was looking.
Halal Food Carts:
My favorite is the one on 55th and park. The one close to me is only so-so, unfortunately.
Pizza:
Chicago Pizza is properly a casserole. As far as NYC pizza goes, I do like one of the called-Patsy's Patsy Grimaldi-descended stores: The brick/coal oven one up on 118 and 1st. The actual name settlement is quite complex, but this is an old-line store, with what I feel is the best of the lot. Crisp, smoky crust, not too much cheese or sauce, and all of it very fresh.
Dumplings:
I like the store that seems to actually be called "Fried Dumpling" -- it's on a street whose name I actually didn't know until very recently: Mosco, which runs from Mott to Mulberry, and is how I get from the courts to Wo Hop or Fried Dumpling when I'm downtown. $1 gets you five fried dumpings or four buns. Insanely fresh (made in front of you), insanely good.
Chinatown Food Cart: I love those guys. I once bought a container of tripe from one and MAN was it good.
Mmm...falafel. Andy and I have just found a place that delivers falafel in Waltham. It's not freshly cooked, but man, it's nice to have a guy ring your doorbell and hand you falafel.
Falafel pizza. An idea whose time has come.
Give us this day our Unilever, as I kinda hope not too many people are saying.
Can't... resist...
Ye Broadcaster's Prayer
Our Sponsor,
Who art in the boardroom,
Hallowed be Thy brand.
Thy market-share come
On the street, as it is in forecasts.
Give us this day our daily feed,
And forgive us our dead air
As we forgive those who drop us.
Lead us not into insolvency
But deliver us from creditors.
For Thine is the contract, the rider, and the amendment,
Forever and ever,
Amen.
Sorry to double-post, but I swear that I didn't see the "Astroturf" article until after writing the above post.
Synchronicity weirds me.
Falafel pizza. An idea whose time has come.
Yes, but with any luck, it'll pass quickly.
Lime rickeys are also available, along with several best-of-category-available-in-NYC items, at Yonah Schimmel's Knishes, on Houston near Chrystie.
Thanks for the knowledge about Dumpling House -- I am looking forward to next time I am downtown. Two other Chinatown places everybody should know about: New Green Bo on Bayard, best Shanghainese in Manhattan and I think in NYC; and Sweet and Tart Cafe on Mulberry (If I am remembering my street names correctly) for excellent Dim Sum -- their original location is in Flushing but I think the Manhattan place is on the same high level.
Erik- Wait, I'm flying to Chicago today. Thus, the eternal question. "Dog, or beef?"
The proper answer, of course, is yes. One on the way in, one on the way out.
I've never heard that verse. Is that bit of doggerel a variation from a TFiA performance, or did somebody besides them filk it?
Xopher - Felafel and pizza is the mark of a Kosher pizzaria. Felafel pizza is the mark of the beast.
For people a few hours north of NYC, lime rickeys are ALSO available on Star Island, part of the Isles of Shoals, off the coast of New Hampshire. The kids make the simple syrup during lulls. The snack bar's only open during the summer, but it's a lovely day trip.
I'd never heard of rickeys when I started working there, and wondered where they came from. The way history invades the island, they could have been made accidentally by a Richard 30 years ago, and tradition instantly took root. I'm glad to know the truth.
I'd guess at a relationship to the usage Ace - kicker in cards for both usages and nothing to do with working cattle.
For what it's worth, Old Town also has the best urinals in the city: enormous porcelain receptacles fit for a swaggering swell from the early part of the century (the 20th, that is), when New Yorkers were still glamorous. Sneak in and check 'em out sometime, Teresa.
—Matt
One of the things I miss most about the East Coast (Philadelphia in my case) is food from pushcarts. Not just hot dogs and soft pretzels, though the latter were $.25 in Philly when all you could get elsewhere were doughy imitations for $2 (I think they're up to $.50 now) but Chinese food, sandwiches, bowls of incredibly fresh fruits, some of the best Mexican food I've had in Philly (at a time when that wasn't saying much, admittedly) and pizza at Le Bus, when it was still a bus. Cheap and plentiful and you wouldn't get sick if you were careful to pick the Chinese carts that had a few people waiting in line.
Tina, et. al. Of course you can make them at home. But that's not fun. For one thing, you won't wrap the paper correctly, and it's hard to find the right relish, since most groceries don't have adequate hazmat licenses.
Plus, you miss the performance. Stand, counter or actual restaurant, half the fun is the assembly. (The Gold Coast at ORD fails this -- kitchen in the back. Sigh. Airports, they dehumanize everything.)
Ask TNH about Windycon, Portillios, and the guy running out a dozen red-hots at a shot. Like me, she admires professionals, not matter the realm. Get a scanner radio, and listen to the ORD tower controllers sometime. You'll either grok, or you wont.
Well, I'm sure that the LGA and JFK controllers are just as good -- but the Chicago controllers sound like Chicago Cops, in all their disorder preserving glory. One of the treats of Summer Chicago Life is watching the traffic cops berate people who forget what the basic rules are. It's not just that the lawbreakers are punished, it's the artistry. And, hey, which would you rather have? A bit of humilation from a cop who's hat makes him look like a cab driver, or a big ticket and points on the license?
Jenn - won't have a chance inbound, need to dash to the El and meet up with Dave and Helen (Yes, I'm going Inbound to go Outbound, but it means they don't have to go out to ORD, then over to Naperville. It's a win for them, and I avoid the cab.)
I can always get both on the way back.
Tina: Yeah, Portillo's sends kits (god bless 'em) -- but I typically hit Carm's out in the 'burbs off Roosevelt when I drive to Chicago, and get five pounds of beef, a pound of sweet peppers, and a quart of juice. One things St. Louis does have is bread, Italian, perfect (I will now summon expat St. Louisians with the holy trinity: Fritz's, Drew's and Ahmigettis'. Told you I'm evil. EVIL. Bwaha hack hack cough. Ahem. Sorry.) So, I don't need to haul the bread.
Then, I invite the family, and we sort of stop talking and start eating. It's not pretty, but what little charm the Olson's have has little to do with looks.
Besides, it's a beef. And it's much easier to cook at home than the pizza. The Frugal Gormet acutally has a very good version of the Due's crust for home cooking that works very well, but make sure you take all of them out of the oven when you're done.
The neighbors still talk about "burntzas."
I'll see you a falafel pizza and raise you a donair pizza. When my husband and I went to Nova Scotia a couple of summers ago, I thought the local pizza sounded pretty intriguing. I waited inside a dingy Pizza Delight for over 40 minutes waiting for them to put one together, then pounced on it once we got back to the hotel.
Well, the base of the pizza was adequate, and meat was sufficiently meat-ish. But why, oh why, had no one warned me the sauce was made from a mixture of evaporated milk, sugar and white vinegar?
Santos L. Halper writes:
"Some other things you should try in the 'hood include:
"J'Adore (tiny-ass little bakery on 23rd around the corner from the BoA atms)"
Good coffee and excellent pastries. I have a problem with them--I cannot, for the life of me, make myself understood to the two women behind the counter, and after multiple iterations of having to re-state my order a half-dozen times, I kind of gave up. Teresa still goes in there, and sometimes brings me one of their marvelously carmelized cookies.
"Uncle Moe's (mexican, 19th bet. 5th and 6th)"
This one is entirely unknown to me, but I'll check it out!
I've been gradually realizing that I don't think I'm familiar with the Chicago object being referred to by various people as "a beef". Erik?
I did very much appreciate Jack Womack's social history of modern New York as expressed through a single storefront business.
I just now heard a horrified scream from the next room.
"Are you reading Fran's comment?" I asked sweetly.
"Aaaaaaaaaugh!" he confirmed.
There was a pause.
"Have you looked at the page she linked to?" Patrick said. "Apparently that's a regular Halifax thing."
"It's - it's - it's - what?" I said; then "What?" again, two octaves higher. "It's real?"
Condensed milk, white vinegar, sugar, and powdered garlic. I will show you terror in a handful of dust? Hah. I will show you horror in a slice of pizza.
OK, I finally realized that I am not unfamiliar with the workings of my oven, nor basic cooking technique. Therefore, it is silly of me to sit here in lovely California, whining about the lack of decent pizza. This month, I will be personally testing various proported Chicago style pizza recipes found online, including one from a Mark Malnati, of Lou Malnati's pizza (although I am skeptical of any deep dish pizza recipe which calls for "tomato sauce" - will have to substitute).
I will be facing two things for the first time: working with raw tomatoes, and making a raised crust. I have thus far avoided any actual breadmaking as it's generally time-consuming and yeast is, when you think about it, kind of weird. (you make it all fat and happy feeding it sugar, and then you shove it in the oven! very Hansel&Gretel.)
Wish me luck!
Patrick, 'a beef' is an Italian beef, which is slices of beef simmered in seasoned juice, served in a sandwich roll (which should be moistened/dipped for maximum flavor) with either sweet peppers or a hot garden mix. I favor the latter, but they're both good.
The next closest thing I can think of is a french dip, but the seasonings are very different.
Ah. If I've had one of those it's lost to memory, but it sounds like something I'd like.
Todd Larason,
Celery salt is dried celery seeds ground together with sea salt in approximately a 1:2 ratio.
Speaking of finding food by artillery fire, one of the main armament turrets on HMS Belfast, moored in the Pool of London, is laid on a motorway service area on the fringes of London.
This should not be taken as a recommendation.
You could, when I visited the ship a decade ago, go right down into one of the forward magazines, with dozens of six-inch shells on the carousels ready to be run up to the turret.
Nobody is likely to walk off with a six-inch shell but, watching the video of those young seamen loading the guns, you could understand why the Royal Navy made a sport out of racing field guns.
Paula, you will be horrified to hear that the University of Pennsylvania has systematically devastated the food truck ecosystem. Their preferred method involves destruction of habitat by lobbying for "quality of life" improvements. In the past ten years, all the food trucks have been removed from Walnut street by Penn-backed legislation. Initially, there was some notion of a food truck court, in which all the trucks would be sequestered. The food truck courts were located far from anyplace with substantial foot traffic, with predictable results.
Most of the trucks are gone now, including Penn's only Thai truck. (I miss Jow's Thai truck something terrible— he used to serve a dish called Crying Tiger that was so hot that he had to add a note to the menu saying, "No refund if too spicy.") My "quality of life" has not been improved.
When last I was in Singapore, they'd done a really good job of rounding up their street vendors in such a way that you could still get excellent street food.
But a lot of stuff that works in Singapore doesn't seem to work as well when exported.
Years ago I worked nights for a bank just seconds from Halifax's "Pizza Corner" -- four Lebanese-owned pizzerias on a single intersection -- and I'd often succumb to a demented 2 a.m. craving for a donair slice.
It's a sweet-sour-meat-dairy-tomatoes-bread-and-grease bus crash with enough calories to stun an ox. Don't let it drip on your pants! The whole idea nauseates me now, but back when I was keeping vampire hours, donair slices seemed somehow plausible.
Honolulu has lunchwagons all over the place; raise our taxes to fix the sewers if you must, but if you try to eliminate lunchwagons there'll be a citizens' revolt.
Here's a good example. Note that one of the items has the legend "no refund if too hot."
... back when I was keeping vampire hours, donair slices seemed somehow plausible.</
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