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Chefs
in the City This
is the New York tour food lovers have been waiting for. Simon Willis gets the inside track on
the best eating places in Greenwich Village, and finds out where the cooks go
to eat. It is the
culinary equivalent of searching for a needle in haystack. There are thirty thousand eating
establishments in New York City so until now the mathematical chances of a
visitor accidentally stumbling across one of the best are lower than catching
Santa Claus tucking into a plate of venison. Guide books go out of date, well intentioned
recommendations suit other peopleÕs tastes, but gastronomic gambles can be a
thing of the past because visitors are now offered a food lovers version of
Òthe knowledgeÓ, a behind the scenes walking tour of some of the best
eateries in Greenwich Village. DonÕt make
my mistake of confusing a food walking tour with an eating tour, I skipped breakfast and
went hungry. The group met on
Bleeker Street, a name known around the world, and home to some of the cityÕs
best food outlets. Our guide
Cindy unfolded the cityÕs culinary history step-by-step, shop by shop, our
progress marked by the trail of saliva on the sidewalk. We learnt about the butcher who has
served top restaurants for decades and has now diversified into buffalo and
bison meat. We heard about the
scandal of the upmarket patisserie where, after a furious row, its most valued
chef stormed out... and promptly established his own rival business right
next door. At ZitoÕs
bread shop Cindy announced she was going to give her mouth a rest and put
ours to work (at last!). New
York bread is special, bagels and pizza in particular, and Zito reckons itÕs
because of the water. He told me
he makes the most of that unique flavour by baking his bread in traditional
coal ovens. These would be illegal
to install today but, since his date back to the civil war, he said ÒtheyÕre
classed as an historic monumentÓ.
ZitoÕs stories may be doubtful but his focaccia is a mouth-watering
meal in itself. Best of all,
Zitos bread shop just happens to be right next to MurrayÕs Cheese shop, from
which Cindy emerged with a huge plate of cheeses and olives. The whole street seemed to have been
laid out by a planner with an exquisite taste for deli sandwiches, and in the
next few days I made several pilgrimages to buy ingredients for superb picnic
lunches, having adopted a principle of economic gastronomy whereby I used the
money saved at lunch to buy better wine each evening. (I was
e-mailed in September 2004 by a food tour guide to say Zito's closed in May
2004. Shame!) Despite the
fame of Bleeker Street, there are even some native New Yorkers who have never
heard of the road that runs at right angles to it, Cornelia Street. And yet learning about it was the
most important morsel I picked up on the whole tour, because it contains
fabulous sensibly priced restaurants.
We called into the Cornelia Street Cafe, allegedly a haunt of the
singer Susan Vega, where the walls are lined with interesting art all of
which is for sale. Across the
road we looked around a restaurant called Home, which is decked out like an
Iowa farmhouse and proudly serves ÒAmerican Comfort FoodÓ. It being lunchtime, the Pearl Oyster
Bar was too busy to welcome us all, so Cindy dived into this fast-seafood
joint and emerged with a Òlobster rollÓ, an upmarket version of the
traditional hotdog. A French
bistro called Le Gigot was next to a Cuban Restaurant named Little Havana - a
world of flavour in less than one hundred yards. Our tour visited most, and while (sadly) we ate at none,
we devoured menus, sniffed around, asked questions and planned our return
visits. However, I
would definitely not go back to the last dining establishment on the tour. WeÕd been promised an exotic finish
and so could hardly suppress our laughter when it turned out to be a
hole-in-the-wall kebab stall!
While Cindy did her best to explain the subtle delicacy of meat carved
direct from the spit, the other English people on the tour bit their lips and
swallowed their guffaws, eventually pointing out that this ÒexoticÓ fare was
regularly sampled in towns and cities all over the UK, usually after a Friday
night on the beer! On the Food
of New York Walking Tour, expect to gorge on information, not actual
food. ItÕs a buffet of inside
knowledge and itÕs up to you return later and help yourself to a slice of
whatever suits your taste. That
night I went back to Cornelia Street, to an excellent Italian restaurant
called Po, which has just thirty nine seats, doesnÕt take Visa, but which IÕd
later learn is considered one of the New YorkÕs finest. The following night I was around the
corner at Fish, tucking into the freshest oysters and heavenly seafood. Late at night itÕs not uncommon to
find chefs from other restaurants among the diners, itÕs that sort of
place. Both are in guidebooks,
but without actually going into each place and poking around a little, I
would never have picked them. I
might have missed lunch on the tour, but I certainly made up for it later. Travel
Brief Food of
New York Tel: (732) 636-4650 e-mail:
foodtours@aol.com |
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