Magazine articles

It’s three o’clock (where do we get the expression “o’clock” from, anyway?) in the morning, and we have to have pierogi. Not just any pierogi, but a fresh, hot fried dumpling with tender onions and butter on the side. A nutritional nightmare, without a doubt, but at three o’clock in the morning, who cares? Besides, we just want one apiece… We bundle ourselves in defiance of the elements and trudge our way up Second Avenue to Veselka.

We enter the brightly lit (perhaps too brightly lit…) coffee shop atmosphere and quickly wend our way past the lunch counter, past the kitchen where Polish and Ukranian specialties are sizzling and bubbling away, past the wait-station, and plunge into the back room. At times in the past, this haven of quiet was kept dimly lit, now it glows with the rainbow of colors from the neon “24-hours” sign on the window. We settle into our favorite corner and prepare to argue over the selection of meat, cheese, potato and cabbage-stuffed delicacies that are the object of our quest. Shortly, finding ourselves deadlocked, we agree to order a plate of each.

We barely glance at the menu, but of course, the potato pancakes catch our eyes. Mentally, we halve our order of pierogies and throw in some plump, crisp, golden brown latkes. A moment later, still not really looking, we remember how we all enjoy the soups. Besides, it’s cold outside – a bowl of vegetable, split pea, or mushroom barley wouldn’t hurt any of us. Our waitress has yet to arrive, so we decide to peruse the rest of the well-memorized menu. Just in case, you understand.

One of our number remembers fondly a recent devouring of the combination platter, laden with kielbasa, stuffed cabbage, a bit of this, a bit of that. Our vegetarian comrade counters with the vegetarian combination, a platter of much the same, though, somehow, meatless. Bigos, a rich hunter’s stew, is a special of the day and suddenly becomes tempting. My personal favorites, the stuffed cabbages, both meatless and meatful(?) are ordered on a mixed plate, much to our waitperson’s consternation. These are, you understand, just side dishes to our pierogi.

She returns soon, laden with plates bearing enough food to feed the populus of both Poland and the Ukraine for a week. Piling them atop our table, she announces she will return with our main courses shortly… We dig in, remembering, of course, to save room for dessert. As always, Veselka provides homestyle cooking at reasonable rates.

Midway through this orgy of degustation, we know that dessert is not a possibility. This is a shame, since we could have sampled a scrumptious carrot cake, chocolate pie, fruit pies and ice cream. Well, perhaps next time. We waddle our way back down Second Avenue, our pierogi urge completely satisfied.

Veselka, 144 Second Avenue (at 10th Street), 228-9682. Open 24 hours, 7 days a week. Cash only. Anywhere from $5 on up, depending on just exactly how may pierogi and “side dishes” you think you can eat.

CaB magazine was one of the first publications I ever wrote for. Published by my dear friend Andrew Martin, it covered the Cabaret, Theater, Music and Dining scene in New York City, long before slick publications like Time Out NY and Where NY became popular. We had great fun writing it, and some wonderful writers contributed to its pages. When the magazine folded in the mid-90s, Andrew disappeared from the scene, and rumors had it that he departed from this existence not long after. I was thrilled to find out in mid-October 2005, a decade later, that the rumors were just that. Andrew contacted me after finding my site via that omnipresent force, Google. He’s alive and well and a member of a comedy troupe called Meet the Mistake. Somehow quite fitting!

For some time now I have been convinced that there is only one kitchen in Little India. If you’re not familiar with the region of our city, it hangs about on a one block section of East 6th Street stretching between 1st and 2nd Avenues, and trailing off on each of them for a block to the north and south. It shouldn’t be confused with the other Little India up near Gramercy Park. Regardless of which of the couple dozen dens of Indian cuisine we have entered over the years, the menu was nearly unvaried, the plates arrived the same, and the same waiter could often be found in a rival establishment on another venture. We were quite sure that they merely ducked out the back door to a communal kitchen in mid-block and ducked back in to whichever eatery struck their fancy at the moment.

Decor often seems the most differentiating factor, with the gamut run from handwoven rugs, saris and sitars to one upstairs eatery that looks like a warehouse full of Christmas tree decorations exploded across its walls, ceiling, and yes, even floor. Over time, we’ve paid little attention to one enterprise on the corner of 6th and 1st, as it looked more like a chi-chi bistro than a Bengali beanery. However, on a recent, rainy night, we ventured inside this sanctuary of Indian haute cuisine, Windows on India.

We settled in a back corner and began our usual perusal of the menu. To begin with, the selection is much farther ranging than the usual Sixth Street fare. Selections from all over the Indian subcontinent are available, the most interesting, which we haven’t seen elsewhere, are those from the southern tip of India. Even a short list of Indonesian dishes make it onto the back page. The English descriptions of dishes actually make sense, another novelty.

Beginning with a sampling of breads and appetizers was, of course, a must. There are the usual nans, pooris, parathas, papadams and chapatis, with the addition of versions like mint and roasted garlic, but also a tempting whole wheat rooti and a mouthwatering spring onion, clay oven cooked kulcha.

Hot and cold appetizers abound, from basic salads to a spectacular dal papri, a cold salad of potatoes, yogurt and tamarind sauce topped with crunchy diamonds of fried lentil fritters – almost as addictive as goldfish, the cheddar cheese variety, of course. Hot dishes include banana fritters, eggplant fritters and vegetable fritters (somebody in the kitchen must love that word…). Pakoras and tikkas and kebabs vie with lentil donuts and sauteed chicken livers.

A large selection of main courses come from the tandoori, or clay oven. These are always among our favorites, and here they are done to perfection. Not only that, but in addition to the usual chicken, lamb and beef, there are delectable steaks of salmon and swordfish and even marinated shrimp. Vegetarian dishes are not shirked, with a list that will keep even the most jaded grain and bean fiend in your clan happy. Tangy curries, madras, kurmas, kashmiris, bhunas and vindaloos are only the start to lists of chicken, lamb, beef, fish, shrimp and lobster dishes. The Indonesian sampling is heavy on coconut, but a winner nonetheless. And to top it all off, Windows offers a half dozen combination dinners that allow you to sample several dishes at once!

Although we make it a practice to avoid desserts in Asian restaurants, as New York versions are rarely worth saving a trip down to Little Italy, this place goes beyond (though includes) the usual firni, or rose water pudding and ice cream to show off some traditional desserts like fried sweet cheese balls in rose water syrup, rice pudding with fruit and cardamom, and a homemade pistachio and saffron ice cream.

We’ll be back, we’ve been back, and you should give it a try too. It’s worth walking all the way to the end of the block.

Windows on India, 344 East Sixth Street (at First Avenue), 477-5956. Open 7 days a week, lunch and inner. Cash or credit cards. $10-20 for dinner, depending on just how far you want to go.

When I first moved to New York City I began hearing about this place in Grand Central Station. The station itself was worth the trip, back in those days we still had the giant Kodak photo mounted in the main waiting room. It’s a shame that all they could find to replace it with was a parade of musical artistes panhandling with the city’s blessings. Not to knock some of the talent, and the acoustics are great, but I miss the view. Anyway, I used to hear about this “little place” down in the depths of the station called Oyster Bar. It was years before I got around to checking it out, all I could envision was a lunch counter with a bunch of commuters slurping down oysters on the half shell and washing them down with cold beer. Not bad way to head for home, but who wanted to go down in the basement for that?

Happily, I finally got around to checking this place out. Now, it depends where you walk in on Oyster Bar as to what kind of impression it’s going to make. I happened on the saloon entrance first, a dark-wood paneled stairway leading down into a just as dark-wood paneled, well, saloon. A huge L-shaped bar dominates two sides of the room, the tables are covered with red and white checked cloths, there are swinging saloon-style doors on the entrance and the only thing missing is sawdust on the floor. Of course you could enter into the room with the giant lunch counter that reminds me of nothing so much as a floor plan of the Atlanta airport. And indeed, there are folks sucking down mollusks and quaffing ale. Or then there’s the tile bedecked dining room…Need I go on? This place is huge. Oh, I forgot, there’s this long table displaying the desserts of the day laid out to dazzle the eye. It does.

The menu is something of a chore. First, it’s the size of a page from a large tabloid, say, The National Enquirer. Second, while basically the menu itself never changes, what portion of it is actually available does. What I mean to say is, well, and nobody else will tell you this (our first time in we ordered half a dozen things that weren’t available before the waitress explained), the only things available are the things that have prices next to them. And those change daily. Not just which things have prices, but what the prices are. Yup, they just handwrite in the prices of the day next to the catch of the day. And catch of the day is right on target because the menu is fish. This is not a place for steak or fried chicken. Fish. Okay, and shellfish.

Soups are winners here. Unanimous thumbs-up for the New England and Manhattan clam chowders, mixed reviews on the she-crab soup. The cold poached trout with horseradish is a big hit with our entire clan, but even better, the oyster pan roast, my personal favorite. However, the keys to Oyster Bar are the oysters. While not cheap, ranging from one to three dollars apiece, this is the place to sample those raw delicacies from all over the world. It gave us a chance to really begin to appreciate the diversity of flavors and textures that these things come in. My own preferences lean towards those from the cooler waters around Alaska and Washington states, where they grow plump and juicy so slowly that some of them have probably been there since Cornelius Corneliszoon invented the wind-powered sawmill (look it up, he really did).

Fish is generally prepared simply. You select which of the half dozen to dozen species came in that day, the chef fillets it, cooks it, and serves it to you. No fancy, schmancy sauces or phallic towers of gewgaw perched amidst a moat overrun with flotsam and jetsam. Just delicious, simply prepared, fish.

Oh, and for years, this place has had one of the best American white wine lists in New York, if not the country. And to make it even better, they’ve just opened a wine bar – sixty plus samplings by the glass. Can’t beat that with a grapevine.

Finish up with a trip to look at the dessert table. If nothing catches your eye, your stomach, your heart, you’re probably comatose. Get thee to a surgery. When they have it, I love the fig forte. Give it a try. Head for the depths of the station, and please, at least give a smile to the musician plugging away outside the doors.

Oyster Bar, Grand Central Station, 490-6650. Open Monday to Friday only, for lunch and dinner. Cash or credit cards. Lunch $20-25, Dinner $30-40.

CaB magazine was one of the first publications I ever wrote for. Published by my dear friend Andrew Martin, it covered the Cabaret, Theater, Music and Dining scene in New York City, long before slick publications like Time Out NY and Where NY became popular. We had great fun writing it, and some wonderful writers contributed to its pages. When the magazine folded in the mid-90s, Andrew disappeared from the scene, and rumors had it that he departed from this existence not long after. I was thrilled to find out in mid-October 2005, a decade later, that the rumors were just that. Andrew contacted me after finding my site via that omnipresent force, Google. He’s alive and well and a member of a comedy troupe called Meet the Mistake. Somehow quite fitting!

There are places that we go to where we don’t go for the food. That’s not to say that the food isn’t good, it just isn’t what we’re there for. On those nights when we’re feeling like drinking a bit of wine, we head for the closest wine bar. For us, that happens to be SoHo Kitchen and Bar. Located on Mercer, a couple blocks south of the Angelika Film Center, this cavernous establishment is a must stop for anyone interested in sampling the basics of wine.

The decor is modern bar, and indistinguishable from any of a dozen other places, with two exceptions. A massive hundred bottle dispenser for wines by the glass dominates the center of the space, a polished wooden bar encircling (well, actually, en-ovaling). The other is a huge relief mural just inside the entrance of what appears to be a Spanish village, with matadors, bulls, food, drink, and the like intertwined.

When seated, either at bar or table, we are presented with the standard menu, the specials of the day, the wine list and the beer list, all stuffed neatly into a standard plastic menu cover. The food, for us, is secondary to the wine, but consists of a nicely prepared selection of salads, sandwiches, pastas and simple entrees. We’ve never had anything we didn’t like, but we’ve never shouted “Eureka” either. The pastas tend to be our favorites, my personal one a penne with prosciutto and peas in a light cream sauce.

We turn first, and I suppose last, however, to the wine list. The hundred wines offered are organized into “flights”. That is, they are grouped by either region or grape variety, or some criterion that the owners judged appropriate. Each flight contains anywhere from three to eight wines. You can order any wine by the bottle, or by the standard glass (5 ounces), or by a smaller tasting glass (2½ ounces), or, for those who are serious about their sampling, by flight. For the flight, you get a small amount of each wine (1½ ounces). From our samplings so far, we have yet to have a wine we didn’t enjoy, and each flight has contained at least one outstanding wine.

Examples of flights – a Pinot Grigio (one each from Italy, the U.S. and Alsace); French Chardonnays (7 white wines from Burgundy); and Italian Reds (4 top contenders from all over the country). If you’ll indulge me a moment, and hopefully without intruding too far upon our wine columnist’s arena, I’d like to take you through a sample flight.

One of my favorites has been the French Chardonnay flight I mentioned above. It’s a great way to see the difference that both the style of winemaking and the climate and geology of differing areas make when using the same grape. The seven wines arrive on a placemat with adorable little circles on it. Our waiter places a glass in each of the first seven circles and lets us know that from left to right they follow the flight list.

The first wine is a 1991 Domaine Dampt Chablis, from perhaps obviously, Chablis, in the north of the Burgundy region. The wine tastes of peaches and a buttery flavor, and just a hit of stone (Chablis aficionados look for a “flinty” character in the wine). It is light, refreshing, and a nice start to the flight. The second wine we sample is the 1992 Georges Duboeuf Coupe-Dailly, from Saint-Veran, in the southern Maconnais region of Burgundy. This wine is light, refreshing and tastes of apples, with a “woodsy” character to it. Continuing on, we sample 1991 William Fevre Montmain Chablis Premier Cru – now back to the northern end of Burgundy, and a higher quality Chablis, tasting of the obligatory flint, along with oranges and a touch of nutmeg. We move on to the 1990 Vaudoisey Les Vireuils, from the Meursault region, down at the south end of Burgundy. This wine tastes of pears with hints of hazelnuts and toast.

Moving to the 1989 Domain Chauvo from Chassagne-Montrachet, we find the peach and hazelnut flavors combined, along with an earthy or mushroomy character that is typical of this southern Burgundy area. The 1990 Joseph Drouhin Les Folatieres from the next door Puligny-Montrachet area is our favorite, with an immediate aroma that reminds us of banana-pecan waffles, and then hints of mint and pepper. We end with the 1992 Georges Duboeuf Pouilly-Fuisse, a trifle on the light side with flavors of raspberries and honey and a hint of rose petals.

Okay, now I admit that all the flavors and aromas are purely subjective, that you might taste something totally different, and that you might think that all this wine stuff is too silly for words. Just order a bottle of your favorite whatever and enjoy the atmosphere. Or drop by the table and join us in the fun…

SoHo Kitchen and Bar, 103 Greene Street (between Prince and Spring Streets), 925-1866. Open 7 days a week for lunch and inner. Credit Cards accepted. Figure on your meal running around $10 to $15, plus whatever damage you do in wine…

CaB magazine was one of the first publications I ever wrote for. Published by my dear friend Andrew Martin, it covered the Cabaret, Theater, Music and Dining scene in New York City, long before slick publications like Time Out NY and Where NY became popular. We had great fun writing it, and some wonderful writers contributed to its pages. When the magazine folded in the mid-90s, Andrew disappeared from the scene, and rumors had it that he departed from this existence not long after. I was thrilled to find out in mid-October 2005, a decade later, that the rumors were just that. Andrew contacted me after finding my site via that omnipresent force, Google. He’s alive and well and a member of a comedy troupe called Meet the Mistake. Somehow quite fitting!