New York Foods

You only have to look at the food on offer to understand why America has an obesity problem. I heard an ad on TV saying that two thirds of American adults are overweight. I thought that surely this must be a gross exaggeration, so one day when we were resting our legs on a park bench, we conducted our own non-scientific experiment by analysing the next 20 people who walked past our bench. Yup, you guessed it – 16 of them had had more than their fair share of pies! But what self control to be healthy in a city where you never have to take more than 10 paces between hot dog vendors and every corner has a pizza joint. Pizza by the slice is about the size of a dinner plate and is usually laden with so much cheese that there are puddles of fat collecting on the top. They aren’t too imaginative with their toppings either. You will search far and wide for a Super Supreme but Cheese or Pepperoni is always on the menu. Pizza joints usually double as pasta places too but by no means are these healthier alternatives to pizza as I discovered when the fat from my ‘filled shells’ seeped through 2 layers of polystyrene and paper. Fortunately for me fruit vendors were also quite common and funnily enough you never had to queue for these. Indian restaurants, which can be found in overabundance in Wellington, are practically non existent here. Instead there is plenty of Italian and Mexican. We tried a burrito from a place local to the Manhattan apartment. It was very tasty, pretty expensive and quite different from home. It was stuffed with all sorts of fillings including rice and you could barely wrap your mouth around it. And ofcourse in true American style, there was a nice, greasy puddle on your plate at the end.

After getting advice from our local New Yorkers we had our list of ‘specialist’ New York foods to try. A visit to Little Italy was definitely on the agenda and we managed a lunch and dinner here. The restaurant we selected for dinner was one of those semi fancy ones where they bought out 9 pieces of pasta elegantly arranged on a giant white plate. So we had plenty of room to finish off with a scoop of strawberry gelatti from a vendor round the corner which we ate under the shelter of our umbrellas as NY experienced a huge downpour complete with thunder and lightening. Our lunch restaurant was a much better selection. I had a vegetable penne, which lacked somewhat in taste but made up for it in quantity. Warren’s was much tastier.

Little Italy was a lot smaller than I expected but was still bustling with people. Apparently neighbouring Chinatown has slowly encroached upon its boundaries so it now occupies a much smaller area. Another ‘must eat’ of Little Italy is cannoli which neither of us were that impressed by. It’s a tube of crisp deep fried pastry filled with something that tasted like icing. Other oddly named treats were ‘Funnel Cake’ from Coney Island. Not at all like a cake, it tasted like donut piped into squiggles over the size of a lunch plate then dusted with icing sugar. Another New York specialty – black n white cookies were pretty average. They were like oversized cupcakes with chocolate icing over one side and vanilla over the other. I had my first pretzel that I purchased from an Egyptian street vendor who asked to go back to NZ with me! It was pretty tasty but the soft cinnamon sugar ones are much better.

Juniors Restaurant boasted to have the original cheesecake of America and all the locals we spoke to reinforced it’s claim of greatness. So when we were feeling peckish at 11.30pm one night we decided to wait the 30 minutes for a table to see if it lived up to it’s reputation (yes, you still had to wait half an hour for a table at 11.30 at night). Giving me a menu with a dozen sumptuous sounding cheesecakes and expecting me to be able to pick one is asking too much so I went with the waitresses recommendation of Devils Food Cake. This consisted of layers of chocolate cake, mousse and cheesecake topped with a thick layer of chocolate icing. I am a chocolate lover but this was too much for even me to handle. Warren enjoyed his burger and fries and commented that the chips were the closest he had had to NZ chips rather than French fries.

As previously mentioned, Krispy Kremes remained a firm favourite of mine but it’s a close competition between them and the cream cheese glazed cinnamon rolls of Cinnabon. I also rate the ‘cigars’ sold at many of the bakeries (croissant pastry spread with chocolate and rolled up).
Self service food worked a bit differently from home. Rather than paying the set price and piling your plate as high as possible, you would pay for it by how much it weighed. So places would be advertised as salad buffet $4 per pound or Chinese buffet $5 per pound. It’s hard to judge how much the food weighs you are putting in your container so you can get somewhat of a surprise when you go to pay for it.