A Bite at Ben's

This summer I had the pleasure of dining at Ben's Chili Bowl, the landmark restaurant in Washington, D.C. By "dining" I really mean that I had breakfast, and by "breakfast" I mean that I ate two chili dogs, lots of potato chips, and a container of cole slaw washed down with a thick vanilla shake.

I had thought that one chili dog for breakfast would be fine.


But I felt like I couldn't leave without trying their signature dish: the half-smoke, named for it's half pork, half beef content. Smothered with chili sauce, raw onions, and mustard, of course.
*burp*

Excuse me.

As a consequence, and not surprisingly, I waddled out of Ben's Chili Bowl that morning, a belly full of one of the best breakfasts in recent memory.

Tony, on the other hand, had made a more traditional choice for breakfast-- french toast...


...with bacon and eggs...


...and a side of toast to boot.That Tony loves his bread. Yes he does.

That meal was three months ago, and I still think about that morning, and how blissfully I chowed down on those dogs. They were not only delicious, but they were also served up in a veritable D.C. institution. Ben's has seen its neighborhood through the last fifty years, from the Civil Rights Movement right on up to gentrification. It's a fixture of the community, a small, family-owned business that has found a way to survive and thrive through decades providing not just a hearty meal but a sense of constancy and stability.

They know who helps contribute to their success.


They let Bill Cosby and the Obamas eat there for free!


They're proud of their president.


They work really hard.


And their chili did, in fact, make my hot dog bark.


Though I've been there just once, I really grooved on the vibe of the place: the friendly service, the buzz of the workers, the stream of families coming in for breakfast on a lazy Saturday morning. So when I heard the news that the restaurant's founder, Ben Ali, died yesterday, I was sad. Restaurants like his, that serve not just as a place to eat but as a cornerstone to a community, are harder and harder to come by these days.


Thanks, Mr. Ali, for serving up delicious chili dogs with a little bit of history and good vibes on the side.

Beach Bums and the Last Hurrah

It's official: summer is officially over. Done. Eighty-six. No más.

In general, the onset of fall is very good news to me. I hate summer. Well, I hate summer in New York City. It's hot. It's humid. It smells awful. And it makes me very, very cranky.

But summer this year was just a bit more tolerable. Weather-wise, it was atypically mild. We had a few spells of sticky-hot days, but overall, I didn't feel like I would asphyxiate from the humidity every time I walked out of the house.

It's a refreshing way to spend a summer, free from the fear of asphyxiation.

Another refreshing way to spend the summer: go to the beach. A lot. Preferably with Tony. Which is what I did a lot over the past couple of months.

Jacob Riis was our beach of choice. It's known as The People's Beach, named for Jacob Riis, the journalist-photographer who helped expose the plight of the have-nots in New York City over a hundred years ago.
Tony and I have been there about a half dozen times now, on sunny days, on overcast days, on torrential storm days.

And on nap days, of course.


We took pictures of ourselves lying on the beach. Some were more successful than others. This is an example of a less successful one.


We also checked out Rockaway Beach, where the surfers hang out. It's just a couple of miles north of Riis.


And at Rockaway Taco, we ate chorizo tacos and deep-fried plantains with guacamole. But not before we took pictures of the menu.


The sun shone brightly on Rockaway that day. You can tell by the squinty faces. We were happy to be on the beach, but we sure were squinty.

It was a breezy day, and I needed my hoodie. The water was a bit too cold for swimming, but I played back and forth between the blanket and the shore, stopping to write in the sand along the way.
Rockaway Beach was nice, but with the boardwalk and the projects in the background, it felt a lot more urban than Riis.

At Riis, I could forget I lived in an urban center. There, I swam in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, playing in the waves and watching Tony do his best imitation of a dolphin, which he kind of looked like as he dove into the surf.
Wish I'd actually gotten a picture of him doing that.

While we did our fair share of lounging and soaking up sun, there was a lot of playing on the sand as well. Cartwheels, backbends, jumping up and down. And trying to get this shot, which is a lot trickier than it looks. I nearly fell over several times.
And not falling over just because I tend to do that. This was falling over with a photographic purpose.

There are many reasons to love Riis, but the basketball courts might put it over the top for me. We brought a ball and shot some hoops, and by shooting hoops I mean that I ran around the court, double dribbling and lobbing granny shots and missing 99% of my attempts.

Tony, though, shot for three.

While I flailed around a lot.


On Thursday we squeezed in one last trip to Riis, and under the hot sun, ate peanut butter sandwiches, took this season's final dip in the Atlantic, and shot a few more bricks.

I can almost see myself looking forward to summer again.

Almost.

Cello Mello

Tony and I had a very busy day.

We started off by zipping into Midtown to see the boy-geniuses behind Baked, possibly my favorite bakery in my favorite megalopolis, make an appearance at the Bon Appétit Supper Club and Café. That's Renato Poliafito on the left and Matt Lewis on the right. Long story short, it was easier to get a photo of them on the live-feed screen than it was to take a picture of them, even though we were sitting mere yards away from their cooking demonstration.

Samples of their yummy Peanut Butter Crispy Bars helped ease that disappointment, though. As did their warm, friendly dispositions. Nice guys, those two.

Now go to Baked and get a cupcake. Really. Go. Now. They're the best.

Maybe finish reading this blog entry first, though.

Now good and hungry, T and I raced off to Daisy May's BBQ in Hell's Kitchen. We ordered a tray full of mac and cheese, baked beans with burnt ends, pulled pork, creamed spinach, mashed potatoes with red eye gravy, and some Kansas City Sweet & Sticky pork ribs.

We ate mightily. We were already getting a little worn out from running around on such an unexpectedly warm day. And now we had a food coma to boot! But our day was only just beginning.

But wait. Let's look at those side dishes again. Creamed spinach. Oh. Yes.


Anyway, our bellies now brimming with barbecue, we shot up to Washington Heights, where Tony, who had just washed down lunch with a quart of sweet iced tea, was miraculously able to mount an elephant with practically no damage to his person.


Our goal in taking the A train all the way to 181st Street was to make our way to the famed Little Red Lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge. Which we did manage to do. Eventually. After a couple of wrong turns and a good amount of backtracking and hill climbing and trail navigating.

Not like we couldn't use the extra mileage given how much barbecue we needed to work off.

And at the end, we were rewarded with the sight of the cutest little lighthouse we ever did see!

Plus a beautiful view of the Hudson and the wilds of New Jersey.


We definitely busied ourselves. We took lots of pictures, including pictures of ourselves taking pictures...


... and of ourselves not taking pictures...


...and of us moving ninja-like (or surfing?) over the path...



...and of cartwheeling...


...and of reflections of things in sunglasses...


...and of the sky and trees as seen from lying on a picnic table...


...and of the George Washington Bridge from that same perspective.


Finally, after all our running around, we plopped ourselves down on the picnic benches to stop and take a long breath. And then, most unexpectedly, just as the breeze began to kick up and cool us off, we heard the faint sound of music-- of strings-- and, following the low, deep tones, we spied a cellist playing on the shores of the Hudson.

Ask me why I moved to New York, and this is the answer: Because here is where I will find a cellist playing on the shores of the Hudson, right next to the Little Red Lighthouse, in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge on a sunny, breezy Wednesday afternoon in September.


A mellow, magical end to a fun, bustling day. Thanks for the serenade, Samuel!

Gnocchi Dokey

When Tony was visiting recently, we made gnocchi.

Well, really, he made gnocchi.

And that was fine with me.

See, he's not terribly well versed in things culinary (his feelings are not hurt when I say this), but when I cook, he's always thoughtful enough to ask, "Can I help you?"

I always take him up on his offer. But what he doesn't realize is that I'm pawning off on him some of the more tedious food preparation tasks I'd just as soon pass on. Like grating mounds of cheese. Or halving a pint of cherry tomatoes. Or hulling a quart of strawberries. Or whipping cream by hand.

Yeah, that was a good one.

He thinks he's helping, which, of course, he is. Helping me free up my time in the kitchen to do the really fun stuff.


Like getting the dough together. I boiled the potatoes and smooshed them with a fork, and then I added in a little bit of egg and a little bit of flour and worked it lightly till I had dough. I rolled out long snakes of it, and then cut it into nubby little sections, and then I let my favorite prep cook take over.

He dutifully took each gnoccho, one by one, and rolled it over the gnocchi board, creating ridges in the dumplings that would eventually help the sauce to stick nice and good.


He did it over and over, channeling his inner Italian grandmother and becoming more proficient with each roll of the dough.


With occasional pauses to re-flour the board, T had all that dough worked in no time. Like he'd done it his whole life! Like a pro!


This left me open to do the fun stuff, like taking pictures of him making gnocchi.
Remind me to make him wear an apron next time.

We had a lot of dumpling going on.


And all I had to do was warm up the pork ragù that I'd made earlier, dust some freshly grated parmigiano over the top, and tear up a few leaves of basil.
And then dig in, of course. With my indispensable right-hand-gnocchi-man.

Bridging the Gap

It's not like I don't spend a lot of time on the Manhattan Bridge. My two favorite subway lines, the B and the Q, which I ride frequently, both run right over it. I go to DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) with some regularity and, when I'm there, always look up at the bridge in awe and admiration. And if I walk just a block away from my apartment, I can see it from Flatbush Avenue.

It's pretty cool, that Manhattan Bridge.

But until this week, I'd never actually walked on it. It's just one of the eighteen million things I have on my ever-growing list of things to do here in my favorite megalopolis. This week, though, having Luis here as my houseguest provided just the right impetus to finally make it happen.

We'd spent the morning in Chinatown eating dim sum, buying pork buns, and sipping bubble tea on Canal Street. And finding rambutan. Rambutan!
He had a plane to catch in a few hours, and it was a warm, lovely day, and heading back to Brooklyn over the Manhattan Bridge seemed like the perfect last-minute sightseeing expedition.

So I snapped a last couple of pictures and headed to the bridge.

One of my favorite things about riding the subway over the bridge is that it runs right over Chinatown, and the views of the rooftops and graffiti are sooo New York.

I've always been fond of this particular act of graffitum, and now I have my very own picture of it!


The Manhattan Bridge doesn't get the notoriety of its sexier big sister, the Brooklyn Bridge. But it should. It's all gorgeously suspension bridgey, a little more industrial looking and sort of stoic but with all kinds of pretty detailing.



It was a perfect day to walk the bridge. There was lots of sun. And lots of really, really loud subway trains running right by our heads and causing a slightly unsettling amount of vibration underfoot.


But that didn't stop us from doing our best Spider-Man impersonations...


...though we kept web-spinning to a minimum.


From the Manhattan Bridge, the view of the Brooklyn Bridge is quite grand. I cut it down to size a little in this picture, though. It's nothing personal. I was just playing with my focus a little.


And since it would have been silly to walk the bridge for the first time and not cartwheel on it, of course I cartwheeled.

Wheee!

Now who wants to walk the Williamsburg, George Washington, and Triborough Bridges with me?

Initiation

Sometimes it's hard for me to believe that there are people in this world who have never been to New York City. Okay, maybe I can fathom that there are people in this world who have never been to my favorite megalopolis, but people I know who haven't?

Just how did I become friends with people who have never been here?

Take Luis, por ejemplo. We've known each other for many years now, having toughed it out on the restaurant front together way back when. When I saw him on a recent trip to California, I learned he is, now in his early thirties, one of those people who had yet to see New York.

Oy. Vey.

Burnt out from a full summer of working double server shifts to pay for his college tuition, he sent me a message a few weeks ago: I'm fried. Can I come crash at your place?

¡Claro que si! was my reply, as it generally is with my (mostly) open-door policy for friends and family landing in town. Plus it was about time this boy got initiated to the Manzana Gigante. So after he arrived Tuesday morning, I did something I absolutely try to avoid at all costs when it's four thousand degrees outside with a million percent humidity: I ventured out of the apartment to participate in a non-essential activity.

We wasted no time (well, no time after taking a four-hour nap post-red eye flight) in zipping off to the City. We took the B train, which not only got us there fast but afforded us a lovely view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

(Just not a view of the Brooklyn Bridge in this particular picture.)

Our destination was the Upper West Side where Luis was immersed in his first Shake Shack attack, complete with the flashing buzzing beeper thing that, alas, due to a slight human error, neither buzzed nor lit up.



No matter, though, because we procured our lunch anyhow and headed to Theodore Roosevelt Park on the back side of the American Museum of Natural History. Despite the oppressively hot, humid weather, we sat on a shaded bench and ate our lunch while Luis pondered this new-to-him city.


I like it, he declared.

Good answer, I thought.

Post-lunch, we headed into the museum, one of my very favorite places in New York, to see the dinosaurs, and hey, I'm not going to lie and tell you that the idea of being in a heavily air-conditioned space didn't sound mighty appealing as the sweat moustache dribbled off my lip.

Much more comfortably inside the cool, breathable museum, we met right away with the dinos.
Not exactly recently plucked from the turnip patch himself, Luis was born and raised a city boy. But I watched as he craned his neck upward and smiled with awe at the gorgeous ceilings and murals and fossils and Teddy Roosevelt quotes all over the walls.

I love to watch New York bring wonder to the faces of its first-time visitors.

A couple of floors up, the welcoming committee sent out the stegosaurus to meet and greet Luis.


They might not be the most welcoming wagon given the massive, scary spikes on their tails, but this sauropod was pretty low-key.


I love dinosaurs as much as the next guy, and this guy here was really taking in the triceratops. What's not to love about dinosaurs?


We spent a good few hours taking in the exhibits, but when I saw the display explaining dinosaur "Feeding Mechanisms," I don't know what happened, but I have to say I found myself getting a little hungry.


Shortly thereafter, we took off to The Hummus Place, one of my favorite spots for cheap, delicious eats.


We split a bowl of hummus with favas and hard-boiled egg and two warm, thick, whole wheat pitas. Wait, what? Split one dish? Well, as you will soon see, this was a prudent choice given what more we had to come.


Because right after that comforting bowl of hummus, we headed a block down the street to get scoops of ice cream at Jacques Torres. There was raspberry sorbet for him and chocolate chip cookie ice cream for me. Not that you can see mine as it was melting at an alarming rate in my big waffle cone.



After rubbernecking at the site of a bad accident in which a taxi ran into the 72nd Street subway station, we decided to, despite the sweltering nature of the weather, walk down to Riverside Park, where, I imagined, it might be a bit cooler right on the Hudson.

Sad for me, as we faced west, the soon-to-be-setting sun felt like it was blazing humongous sun holes in my face, and the only escape was to retreat back a little to a shaded playground area, which, oddly, was almost devoid of children.

But this was totally my kind of playground. There were old-school slides, see saws, swings, and a jungle gym, all simple, steel equipment held together by fat bolts and painted black. No frills. No flashy colors. None of that ugly plastic recycled yogurt container crap that always gives me electric shocks when I'm within ten feet of it.

Luis teetered...


...and I tottered...


...and then we swung a bit.

But I made him keep swinging so I could take pictures of it.





Wheee!

I gave a shout out to the five-ten from the two-one-two and hung upside down off the jungle gym...


...and cartwheeled...


...and had so much fun playing like a grade schooler that I actually stopped kvetching about the weather for a few minutes. That is until I stopped playing like a grade schooler, and the one-two punch of heat and dehydration came and bonked me on the nose.

So we retreated back inland and stopped at Gray's Papaya, where Luis got his first New York hot dog as well as...


...some snappy service. Because that's how they rock the dogs at Gray's.


But if you think we were quite done, well, we weren't. A quick trip to Buttercup Bake Shop yielded a vanilla cupcake with chocolate frosting and a chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting. And a lemonade. For hydration.



And then, finalmente, I was pooped. Tuckered. Wiped out. Done for the day. Luis went off to gawk at the lights and the tourists in Times Square, and I headed home to edit photos.

Lucky Luis. He's only just scratched the surface of what this fine hamlet has to offer. He's got plenty more moments of wonder-- and yummy things to eat-- ahead of him.

¡Bienvenidos!

The Pilgrimage

I've lived in my favorite megalopolis now for about three and a half years. And even long before I moved here, I knew about Di Fara Pizza in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. It's one of those old timey, iconic restaurants that, particularly in the last few years with the rise of extreme food fetishizing and the escalating pizza wars, has become a must-go destination for the food-focused of this fine city.

Yet somehow, I've managed to go this long without a visit there.



All that changed when I hopped the Q and rode the short ride to the shop last week. Having made a last-minute decision to go, I sent out a flurry of texts to see if I could round up some company, but I ended up going at it alone, which only meant one thing:

More pie for me.

I arrived fifteen minutes before opening to join the other twenty pizza seekers on the sidewalk. That meant there was time for me to take pictures of the rosemary growing in the window.


A small debate has raged recently about the price of a slice of pie going up to five bucks, six with one topping on it. A five dollar slice of pie in a working class neighborhood in Brooklyn? Really?

Even in Manhattan you'd have to do a good deal of searching to pay that much.

But there we all were, completely undeterred by the prospect of paying that much for pizza. Not for this pizza anyway.



Di Fara's big draw is the pizzaiolo himself, Domenico DeMarco. Having made pizza for many dozens of years and now in his mid-seventies, he is the sole pizza maker, crafting each pizza by hand, one by one. There is nothing pre-fab about the process; he snips basil and grates Parmigiano for each pizza before drizzling olive oil atop each one. His ingredients are premium, imported from Italy and other parts of Europe.

He makes each pizza with intention and focus.


And he smiles the entire time. While he cuts basil...


... or sprinkes a handful of Parmigiano on each pie...


...or runs the pizza wheel over the masterpiece.


He slices one way...


...and then another...


...giving the pie a spin between swipes.

If ever there was restaurant food made with love in it, this is it.


The wait can be long at Di Fara. From what I hear, some people wait upwards of two hours. Two hours! I can assure you that if my wait had been anywhere near that long, I would have been out of there pizzaless and without regret. But lucky for me, I only sat around for about ten minutes, long enough to take pictures of people taking pictures.



When I was called to the counter to retrieve my slices, I felt a surge of hunger. Here's why:


That was my sausage slice. And here it is a little closer up:


My anchovy slice was just as mouth-watering:

Both were made-to-order and came to me piping hot, which was great because it gave me time to take pictures and let them cool off. Otherwise, I'm sure I would have started shoveling pie and burning the roof of my mouth with all that oozy buffalo mozzarella cheese.

I ate every tiny scrap of pizza, including this bit of crust, chewy and tender with a bit of crunchy bite on the outside.

I've become accustomed to a truly classic Neapolitan style of pizza-- very thin crust, wood-fired, charred, light toppings of the finest quality, unsliced. And this wasn't exactly it, but hot damn, it was delicious and totally gratifying.



And to watch Mr. DeMarco create each pizza with as much good juju as he does, well, that's totally worth the price of admission.