tasty business

feeding my brain (and my tummy) in NYC, part 2

LORDY lord i hope you all are ready for the enormity of tasty business that’s in this post. like, i am not even kidding. i think wordpress might even crash cos NO ONE HAS EVER PUT THIS MANY DELICIOUS PICTURES IN ONE POST. in fact, the entire internet might be at risk of explosion, let alone MY PANTS!

with that said, this post may look long, but it’s mostly just pictures. cos really, a blogger can only write “NOM!” so many times before she loses all artistic credibility. ha ha LIKE I HAVE ANY LEFT. anyway!

when i woke up on sunday morning, i could barely contain my excitement cos henri and i were about to embark on the “come hungry” tour with calvin trillin, which is like, this Big Freaking Deal. if you’re not familiar with mr. trillin, check out this bio from the new yorker festival website:

Calvin Trillin has been a staff writer at The New Yorker for more than four decades. His gastronomic reporting pieces have included, in recent years, articles on Ecuadoran soup, Singaporean street food, and the best barbecue in Texas. He has published twenty-six books, among them comic novels, nonfiction, and memoir. Three of his books on eating are collected in “The Tummy Trilogy.”

um… anyone who names their books “the tummy trilogy” is pretty much my greatest hero of all time. and also my new best friend. but actually, the first time i really heard about calvin trillin wasn’t because of food– it was because of the untimely death of alice, his beloved wife. he wrote an incredible (and heartbreaking) piece in the new yorker about alice and their extraordinary marriage, and my eyes *still* get teary every time i think about it (check out this salon piece for a more articulate explanation of why alice and calvin’s story is so wonderful and compelling).

needless to say, i couldn’t decide what i was more excited about– meeting calvin or eating crazy amounts of delicious food (i think that may be the highest compliment i’ve ever paid anyone, btw). even the disgusting, rainy, FREEZING weather couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm (although it did dampen my feet BOO).

we met up at father demo square, which featured some lovely autumn foliage:

since the entire point of the tour was to walk everywhere, the new yorker gave us big, sturdy umbrellas, which was v. nice of them.

ok y’all are going to kill me for this but they gave us a card with all of the stops on it (and the food items) and uh… i can’t find it. I KNOW, I KNOW. THIS IS A TERRIBLE CRISIS IN JOURNALISM. i have looked EVERYWHERE. fortunately, i take a zillion pictures, and i managed to capture the storefronts of *most* of the places… but not all of them. I’M REALLY SORRY. i’ll just try to do a super good job of making you feel like you were actually THERE, and then if you ever go to NYC you can just… go back! cos you were there!

so let’s begin with the tour!!!!

stop #1: a super charming bakery/meat place somewhere near greenwich village (SORRY!!!)

food item: fresh baked bread with parmesan and pancetta

it’s truly a holy miracle that something so small and simple can be SO DELICIOUS!!!

on the way to the next stop, we passed by henri’s cafe!!! and there’s a dog on the sign!!!

but we didn’t stop there on the tour, so i guess it’s not THAT great.

stop #2: blue ribbon bakery

food item: seasoned flatbread. again, it looks basic but it was incredibly flavorful!!!!

i should stop here and tell you a little bit about walking around with calvin. because yeah, obvs, the food was tasty and it was exciting to pop into all of these random places and emerge with a fuller belly, but i think what i enjoyed the most about the tour was just hearing calvin talk. he talked about the restaurant, the evolution of food in the neighborhood, and just his own little anecdotes about different eating experiences.

isn’t he cute? don’t you want to adopt him as yr grandfather so he can take you to his favorite restaurants and give you good advice? i do!!!!

one of my favorite tidbits came when he was talking about this building that used to be a police station:

i know, that is REDIC. since the building is pretty ostentatious for a police station, calvin said people used to call it “st. john the fuzz.” i found this incredibly endearing for some reason.

stop #3: well, we actually didn’t stop at this place, cos they had a box of sandwiches that they gave us so, as calvin put it, we wouldn’t have to walk more than two blocks without eating. but these sandwiches came from somewhere in chinatown.

food item: green sandwich (and no, that’s not my faulty memory, that’s actually what he called it)

OMGGGGG THIS WAS AMAZING!!!!! i think calvin has cornered the market on plain-looking food that turns out to BLOW YR MIND. this was basically like a hamburger bun with bok choy in it, but it was so fresh-tasting and spicy and NOMMMM.

stop #4: grandaisy bakery

food item: potato pizza and cauliflower pizza!

the potato pizza had onions on it (GROSS) so i stuck with the cauliflower option, which was absolutely scrumptious!!! i know it sounds weird to put the brain of the vegetable family on a pizza, but it was thinly sliced and well seasoned and YUM.

stop #5: a spanish food store

food item: spanish tortilla!

i didn’t think this one was THAT great, but it also had onions in it, so i COULD be biased.

at this point in the tour, we were on the edge of chinatown…

(henri was NOT a fan of the goldfish, btw)

and little italy! MAMA MIA!

(henri is to goldfish as sarah is to that creepy leering chef guy)

stop #6: saigon… something?

food item: spring rolls

i wasn’t that impressed with these rolls either, but they featured lots of mushrooms, which i’m ALSO not a fan of (i know, and i call myself a foodie, blah blah blah, MUSHROOMS ARE GROSS AND I CAN’T HELP IT).

while we were munching on the rolls, calvin talked a bit about the history of immigration and its effects on NYC food:

don’t you just want to share a banana split with him and talk for ages and ages?

stop #7: di palo’s italian cheese shop

i REALLY loved the feel of this place. it was super charming and old-world-feeling and IT SMELLED LIKE CHEESE!!!

food item: FRESH MOZZARELLA WHAT WHAT!!!!

SWEET MOTHER OF TASTY BUSINESS. this cheese is totally tied with the green sandwich for my favorite food on the tour. MELT IN YR MOUTH RIDICULOUSNESS.

step #8: saigon bakery

food item: vietnamese sandwich

DIZANG this sandwich was delicious. i do want to point out, though, that i didn’t eat the whole thing, nor did i actually finish most of the food on the tour cos y’all i gotta maintain my tummy endurance. i am, after all, a professional athlete of tasty business.

stop #9: some dumpling place

food item: pork dumpling!

this dumpling was pretty good, but i’ve had better in houston FACE HARD NAMELESS NYC DUMPLING PLACE!

stop #10: (FINAL STOP) the restaurant at the east broadway mall

you have NO idea how INCREDIBLE it felt to a) enter a warm, dry environment b) get to SIT DOWN. at this point, the east broadway mall felt like a freaking five star luxury restaurant to me.

food item: dim sum!!!!

oh dim sum, what an adventure you are! overall the food was good, although we didn’t get to pick out our own items from the cart, which is half the fun. oh and there were no sesame balls CALVIN WTF?!!!

and that, my dear pantsers, is the “come hungry” tour with calvin trillin, aka one of the greatest moments of my stomach’s life. like, if my stomach lived in a house, it would have a framed picture of calvin trillin above the fireplace, sort of like how catholic grandmas hang pictures up of the pope, cos this tour? it showed my stomach a glimpse of heaven and pretty much guaranteed my eternal foodie salvation.

ok i know i said i would finish up the trip in this post but I AM EXHAUSTED FROM ALL OF THE NOMMING. plus i really don’t want to break the internet cos that would be rude. so… stay tuned for part 3, featuring even MORE tasty business (i know, you’d think i wouldn’t need to eat for days except DO YOU KNOW ME AT ALL?).

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