INTRO TO TRIP REPORT
We are a couple from Toronto, Canada. We visit New York about every 5-6 years. This time we were partly here for a conference held at the Javits Center, so a few meal choices were out of convenience. For the rest of our eating, we tried to focus on the following priorities:
- NYC Classics – food that is emblematic of and/or indigenous to the 5 boroughs. We love everything from the holy to the clichéd.
- Food that we don’t see much of in Toronto. While our hometown has great depth and breadth of cuisines, there are some categories that New York covers better. We skipped some types that Toronto has in abundance.
- Previous favourites – there are some places that we return to pretty much every time we visit, many of which also fit into the Classics category above. Sadly some of our past favourites have disappeared, leaving room to find new ones.
- Recently acclaimed or recommended hotspots, particularly if they offer something a bit different than our usual places at home.
Although we love wine and I also love trying local beers, we mainly focused on cocktails on this trip. We also didn’t make many advance reservations, and thus limited ourselves to the places we could get into (we needed some method of winnowing down the list of possibilities).
We read many threads on this board. We also looked through various other websites (e.g., Michelin), New Yorker reviews over the past few years, and any other info source that seemed reasonable. I’m sure we’ve skipped many of your favourites and can’t-miss options, so your commentary and recommendations will be much appreciated as we will be coming back eventually.
NYC CLASSICS
We love smoked fish and were pleased to discover an outpost of Russ and Daughters near the Javits Center. Heeding recent commentary that the bialys were better than the bagels, we ordered both the Super Heebster (whitefish and baked salmon salad, with wasabi-infused flying fish roe, caramelized onions, and horseradish-dill cream cheese) and the Pastrami Russ (pastrami cured salmon, sauerkraut, mustard) on bialys. Both were immensely satisfying, with a nice balance of richness and acidity.
We also made a return to Barney Greengrass. Having sampled many items previously, including the delicious eggs with fish dishes, we opted this time for appetizer portions of the sturgeon, sable, and whitefish salad/Nova Scotia salmon, along with a variety of bagels. Although all remain superlative, we think our new favourite is the supple and rich sable.
Rounding out our deli experiences was Katz’s. We tackled the three-meat platter (pastrami, corned beef, brisket) and the brisket was particularly impressive - moist, fall-apart, and well-flavoured. We also enjoyed the half and full sours, but skipped ordering their tasty latkes as the platter was pretty massive. My wife has to have at least one egg cream per trip and so tried the vanilla version, which was OK. I reacquainted myself with Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray.
Although we have been coming to New York for decades, the chopped cheese had somehow escaped our awareness. Off we went to the supposed source Blue Sky Deli (Hajji’s). We liked the char on the ground beef, the grilled onions, and the toasted hero bun. It is a fine member of the hot sandwich family.
We are not quite sure why black and white cookies are in the cookie category, since they seem to be more like shallow cakes. We again enjoyed the mammoth versions at William Greenberg Desserts.
We know the current Delmonico’s is several degrees removed from the original restaurant, but we have still had fun trying its signature dishes, which are supposedly still connected to the original recipes. In a past visit we sampled Lobster Newberg, Baked Alaska, and Delmonico Steak. This time around, we went for brunch for the Eggs Benedict and the Chicken à la Keene (pic below). The former was very good, with a huge slab (and I mean slab) of bacon, though not life-changing. The latter was also very good, with a pressed half chicken, fresh peas, asparagus, and maitake mushrooms, served with a uncreamy sherry sauce over pasta.
On our day in the Bronx, we ate in the Arthur Ave. neighbourhood. For lunch, we stopped in at Joe’s Italian Deli. We shared the Bronx Zoo hero (prosciutto, mortadella, capicola, fried eggplant, fresh mozzarella, and vinaigrette), which was enormous and delicious. We saved enough room to have one freshly filled cannolo at Madonia Bakery - lovely crisp shell with creamy ricotta mixture inside. For dinner, we tried Roberto’s. The Antipasto alla Pescatore featured lots of fresh clams and mussels, served in zesty tomato sauce. We tried two pasta specials: 1) Mafalde in Cartoccio (grilled lamb, cherry tomatoes, shishito peppers, spicy sheep ricotta, served in a tin foil packet) and 2) Ravioli with Pistachio (mortadella, ricotta, with butter and sage). Both had vibrant flavours and nicely al dente pasta. We finished with the Pastiera di Grano, a moist and not-too-sweet egg and ricotta torte, speckled with nuts and dried fruit.
We have a soft spot for Shopsin’s, eating there since the days of Kenny. The version in the new Essex Market seems kinda sanitized and the menu appears truncated. However the OG Slutty Stuffed Pancakes (peanut butter, pumpkin, cinnamon, pistachio, ricotta) remains tons of fun. We also tried the Mo’ Better (pic below), with the classic mac and cheese pancakes sandwiching scrambled eggs and maple bacon - perfect with some homemade hot sauce. And now the staff seem perfectly friendly.
We have followed Patsy Grimaldi from pizzeria to pizzeria over the past few decades, enjoying ourselves at Juliana’s on our last visit. Although we had a trip’s worth of other pizzeria’s to try, we ended up going back to Juliana’s for another round of Margherita-based pies, one with meatball slices and the other with fennel-infused sausage (pic below). Still wonderful. And the chocolate egg cream was the best we had this trip.
