Eating your way through New York
Matt Rilkoff wishes he’d remembered a looser pair of trousers as he eats is way through the Big Apple.
There are 26,642 restaurants in New York City and this is a story about two of them. And a bagel bar, a burger bar, and a food court. But not that type of food court. A food court that makes you wish you had three stomachs.
While millions of people travel to New York every year for the monuments, museums, and sheer vitality of the city that never sleeps, I was mainly there for the food. The giant slabs of pizza, the bagels, the burgers, bakeries, and those restaurants where the waiters leave you in awe of how lowly they regard your ability to properly use a menu.
I had not prepared for this trip as I should have. A week-long fast before arriving or an obscenely loose pair of pants were both sensible precautions that I didn’t take. As luck would have it, my complete bamboozlement of the much vaunted subway system meant I nearly burned off more calories walking than I did eating.
For a genuine New York breakfast experience, and to fit in with everyone else, one thing I really wanted to do in the Big Apple was eat an overstuffed bagel. But I also had to be powerwalking down a busy street and talking loudly over the phone to my doctor about extremely personal details. I’ll admit, for a Kiwi it was a complex food fantasy.
There are bagel shops everywhere and, if you don’t know which one to trust, choose the one with the most people in it. If you have time to find the best, one of them is Black Seed Bagels on Broadway.
I choose the Sable on the black seed bagel, mostly because Sable sounded like a real New York bagel style and I figured the black seed bagel had to be the best because they’d named the bar for it.
The Sable bagel was stuffed with lox (cured salmon), onion, lettuce, and cream cheese. It was a powerful bagel. Lox, as it turns out, is extremely salty and retains a stronger fish smell than cold smoked salmon.
It was delicious but I now understand there is such a thing as fish breath, the lesser known but more offensive cousin of onion breath.
If you’re not planning to eat while you walk, the bagel bar is not far from Madison Square Park, which has two things going for it apart from being a place to sit and eat.
It’s right next to the iconic wedge that is the Flat Iron building, and it puts you just metres from another New York food experience, the Shake Shack burger bar.
I’d been warned not to miss this by numerous people. While I didn’t go there straight after the bagel, I did sneak down there the next day, an embarrassingly short time after lunch.
My arteries and life expectancy regretted the gluttonous decision, but my stomach did not. Shake Shack isn’t fancy or complicated, it’s just really good.
Its beef burgers are top ingredients put together so well you can’t believe anyone puts them together another way. The fries make you cry for all the ones you’ve eaten that didn’t reach the mark.
No trip there is complete without also ordering a shake and some of the signature frozen custard. Like lox, I had no idea it existed until I was eating it. New York really does broaden your horizons.
Later that night I found myself in a group heading to Mercado Little Spain in the newly developed Hudson Yards. You know you’re there when you see a massive sculpture about 10 storeys high that you won’t be able to describe. It’s called the Vessel, but that doesn’t help.
Mercado is a labyrinth of three restaurants, 12 food court counters and two bars. You could stay there for a week and still miss something.
It’s the brainchild of Spanish-born chef Jose Andres, a restaurateur and humanitarian.
In 2012 and 2018, he was named by Time magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people. So, that means something. I think.
The atmosphere at Mercado is relaxed but it’s New York – everyone in there appears to be wildly successful and extremely good-looking. Don’t be surprised if you feel intimidated.
We started at the Spanish Diner, which served simple tapas-style dishes that initially seemed unappealing. But, with a bit of help from the waiters, we got there and, after a long dinner that included such things as fried potato with spicy
tomato sauce, squid ink croquettes, pressed ham and cheese sandwiches, and a tomato salad, we were pleasantly satisfied.
Then we discovered the rest of the complex and realised we weren’t satisfied enough.
The next night was another experience altogether, at the Australian-owned Gran Tivoli on the border of SoHo and Little Italy.
Set up a little more than a year ago by Australian celebrity chefs Rob Marchetti and Jason Scott, the Italian restaurant has fast become a local favourite. We arrived at 6pm on a Friday and it was buzzing.
We were immediately served a cocktail and then put ourselves into the hands of the wait staff, who did not disappoint. The standout had to be the extravagant foot-long flame-grilled lamb chops. Who knew they came in that size? There is something to be said for eating meat off such a big bone. I’m just not sure what it is.
After a dinner that included such delights as mushroom dumplings, handpicked crab meat, and sea bass carpaccio, we headed downstairs to the cocktail bar Peppi’s Cellar, named after Rob’s dad from the Marchetti region of Italy.
It was then that I regretted wearing my practical running shoes/chino combination, because Peppi’s makes it clear not everyone in New York thinks Seinfeld-style sneakers and trousers is a good look. That is to say, Peppi’s was cooler than I have ever been, and as close to an authentic speakeasy as you will get in 2020. If you get the chance to go, take it.
Order the Negroni and be forever changed. I was.
And so to the last restaurant – New York legend, Scarpetta. Luckily, this institution of Italian dining had recently relocated to the James New York – NoMad, where I was staying, so there was no need to wear my walking shoes.
This was the restaurant with the genius waiter I had been looking forward to the whole trip.
Fortunately, our waiter summed us up immediately, and even before we’d finished asking for his recommendations he had ordered and taken away our menus. We were all quite happy to be treated with such culinary contempt because the results were magnificent.
There were delicate rolls of tuna stuffed with carrot, chive and preserved truffle, gentle slices of yellow tail tuna topped with pickled onion, duck and foie gras ravioli, and a mound of fresh pasta and tomato sauce that made you realise that sometimes simple tastes are the most rewarding.
And it just kept coming – wagyu beef, muscovy duck, scallops, and a sorbet dessert that brought it all to a happy conclusion. The bill, which I didn’t see, would not have been cheap but the experience was unforgettable. We tipped our waiter US$100. He deserved it and he absolutely knew it.