Grand Central cuisine

We had just left Radio City and had only enough time for lunch before heading to the airport so thought that one of Grand Central's eateries would be a good thing to do as our hotel was pretty close by.  As we wandered into the main atrium we saw the sign "Cipriani Dolci" on our right and thought it looked pretty nice and chic and probably a good place for a cocktail and a casual lunch.

I think Americans on the whole make very good cocktails.  Better than British bartenders at any rate.  And Cipriani's made very good cocktails indeed -- Viv had a Negroni whilst I settled for a simple vodka martini with olives.  Both were very well executed indeed.

As for the food, I had a lovely home made pasta dish with veal ragout whilst Viv settled for calamari with another light and lovely fish dish.

Terrific location and view over the central hall of the great station.  The service was excellent and the food all round very good indeed.  So good that Viv and I agreed we should go to the big restaurant on 42nd Street next time we're in New York.

Oh yes, the dolci.

Very nice espresso macchiato

Cipriani's Dolci
89 East 42nd Street
New York 10017

Tel: (212) 973-0999
http://www.cipriani.com/en/services/restaurants/cipriani-dolci

The First

I'd discovered that Delmonico's Restaurant was near to the office where I had a meeting in New York's financial district.  It was on one of those 3D type diorama maps that picked out half a dozen landmarks. I was excited because Delmonico's was in every book about old New York and in every movie or TV show about old New York.  The bigwigs would always end up going to Delmonico's for a steak.

Some old time New York bigwigs

I'd thought it had closed down years ago so this was worth investigating. This is what the current Delmonico's say about themselves:

"Before Delmonico's opened, diners ate at cafes and boarding houses (inns), where the food was simply the food available that day from the farms. Diners had no choice of dishes but ate the food that was served. Delmonico's changed all of that."

Now who doesn't like the sound of that?

But first Viv and I had to get there from our Times Square theatre.  Endless subway journey and thankfully brief stroll down Broad Street to Beaver Street through the blizzard that was dumping snow on New York all day.

It was worth it though.

Delmonico's list of firsts is very lengthy.  I liked the stories of how they'd changed the name of one signature dish -- Chicken a la Keene to Chicken a la King -- as it sounded classier and besides Mr. Keene was a thorough rascal.  The Delmonico brothers also did that to a ship's captain called Captain Wenburg whose lobster favourite became a staple.  Trouble was they fell out over something so banned Wenburg but the clients still demanded the lobster so they changed the name from Wenburg to Newburg which of course is how Lobster Newburg got its name.  So there!

The signature steak is the Delmonico steak which is an aged rib eye.  This is my favourite cut so I had no problem making my classic selection.  Viv chose the special steak -- an aged Porterhouse.  And of course the Caesar Salad to start -- and no, not a Delmonico creation.  It was still very good.

The signature Delmonico Steak

Only trouble was that our table was not out front in the iconic part of the dining room, rather it was through the bar, round the corner and on a table next to a couple of other diners who'd under estimated the size of the dishes and had ordered 4 or 5 sides, so much food in fact that they couldn't fit it all on the table and which they ended up taking home.

Good steak though.  Very tender and delicious.

Delmonico's Restaurant
56 Beaver Street
New York 10004

Tel: (212) 509-1144
www.delmonicosrestaurantgroup.com

Wall Street Chop House

Our meeting was in Broad Street in downtown Manhattan.  Broad Street runs from the very bottom of Manhattan up through what is now the financial district ending at the New York Fed building on the corner of Wall Street -- the other corner of which is the New York Stock Exchange.  After we'd finished Ken suggested we go to lunch.  It was 11.00 am.

"I get in at 7.15," Ken said. "I get hungry about now and so do others so the restaurants open early for us."

OK then so we walked out of Ken's skyscraper to an old 3 storey building Ken said during Superstorm Sandy had been completely flooded out.

"Many of these old buildings housed established businesses that were simply washed away.  They never opened again.  This place though did renovations and re-opened."

This place is Harry's on 97 Pearl Street.

The original Harry is a Greek guy who came to America like many others to seek his fortune, in his case a wealthy business man relative who unfortunately turned out to be a coffee shop counter man.  So Harry had to do it himself.  Ultimately he opened the original Harry's and ran it for 30 years but when his wife died, he closed the doors.  Fortunately his son re-opened and now runs 22 restaurants city wide but old Harry still comes to the original restaurant 6 days a week to greet clients.

Great steakhouse.  Wood paneling, decent hunks of perfectly cooked meat, robust red wine.  Who could ask for more?

OK, its iconic, THE place for Wall Streeters to lunch, drink and dine, and is always jammed.  Because it's good.  Very good.

Harry's
97 Pearl Street
New York 10004

Tel: (212) 785-9200
www.harrysnyc.com

All you can eat… Cockles!

It's been a while since this landmark event but in my defence I took pictures on the phone I left with Viv and wasn't able to download them until now… so here we are!

It all happened in my home town and in particular the area called Old Leigh, a marvellous old part of town right by the water where the fishing boats came in and dropped off their catch at the famous old cockle sheds -- the most famous being Osborne's which has been there for generations.  Once a year Old Leigh holds a regatta, one cornerstone of which is the cockle eating competition.

My brother Jan won this competition a couple of years ago so had convinced his son, Rupert, and myself to enter as a group.  The rules were fairly simple: eat a pint glass full to the brim with cockles without pepper or vinegar or indeed any other seasonings faster than the others.

Now cockles aren't my favourite shellfish.  I far prefer whelks but covered with pepper and vinegar. Cockles are OK but like I said not my favorite.

Jan said we should arrive around 12 noon, eat a couple of bowls of local shellfish, maybe oysters, have a beer from the wonderful Crooked Billet pub and then stroll down to the competition.

So that's what we did.

The cockles were awful.

I don't know how you can take fresh shellfish which are inherently moist and make them taste as dry as Jacob's Cream Crackers.  But without seasoning, they were inedible.

For me, that is, for the chap across from me who'd shown up late (and who Jan later said was last year's champion and the guy he'd beaten out into 2nd place a couple of years back) was swallowing them as though he was simply pouring them down a drain.  He couldn't have tasted them but again he didn't chew either.

Next to me Rupert was trying to chew and I felt for him as that was absolutely the wrong approach -- it was my approach too -- as I could also see Jan open his throat and pour the things straight down his throat too.  Clearly this would be a 2-horse race as the 2 other guys were adopting the entirely wrong gulp/chew approach too.

And then it was all over.  The guy across from me finished with Jan close behind.  Rupert and I quietly thanked the graces that it was all over and surreptitiously emptied our squirrel like cheeks filled with half chewed cockles back into the pint glass.  I think all in all I probably finished no more than a quarter of a pint.

It certainly taught me a lesson though.

Great time through!

Osborne's Cockle Sheds
Old Leigh
Essex

http://www.osbornebros.co.uk

2 Fried Eggs on top, please

I'd watched a Food TV programme on deli's and included was Caplansky's in Toronto, on College Street near Kensington Market, so I had to try it out for myself.  Mind you I decided for some reason to go in the evening rather than daytime but wasn't going to be deterred as apparently their smoked meat hash was the bees knees.

It isn't an imposing building or that neat really either.  Its sort of long and thin with a bar at the back (that I missed until I saw someone else slurping on a beer) and the counter taking up most of one side behind which was a sweaty young guy, not the guy that's on the website, carving up large chunks of meat with aplomb.

It was pretty busy as being a deli its not a place to break the bank as most of the customers appeared young, college types no doubt from one of the universities that dot the city and surrounds.

I ordered chicken soup with matzo balls and the smoked meat hash -- "We do it differently here so we can't really call it corned beef or pastrami although its closest in flavour to corned beef" said the waitress.

The chicken soup was just great and the matzo balls really nice and doughy.  Call them what you will, they're only a different type of dumpling but they taste really nice in that soup I can tell you.  Real comfort food.  Had I been sick, I'd have felt better already.

The hash came after quite a long wait -- "We ran out of one of the ingredients so had to do up a fresh batch" was the reason.

Now I consider myself not quite an expert but definitely a devotee of hash.  I will always eat it if its on a menu so I was looking forward to it coming as it did with a couple of fried eggs on top.

This last I think is the perfect accompaniment to any meal.  If you like the meal, add 2 fried eggs on top and that will elevate it to all new heights.  One word of warning though, it doesn't work that well on top of a chicken curry, but that aside there's precious little that fried eggs won't enhance.

It worked well here though as the hash was yummy.  So yummy that I bought a pound of the smoked meat to take home with me.

Caplansky's Delicatessen
356 College Street
Toronto

Tel: 416 500 3852
http://www.caplanskys.com

Hey!

I like the TV food programme Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives because I like the presenter, Guy Fieri, and the no nonsense way he digs into the food.  Also the places he frequents aren't fancy fine dining by any means, just simple no nonsense fooderies which won't break the bank.  Any time I see a place triple-D frequents, I make a note so I can try it myself.  Hence my visit to Hey Meatball in Toronto a couple of days ago.

The TV programme made it look like the place was big and jammed with people all of who could give 5 minutes on any food items major ingredients.  I can't do this very well.  To me its just yummy or not.  How it gets to that point escapes me in the main so don't expect much in the way of detailed analysis of this ingredient or that technique.  Just yummy or not.  OK?

Its on College Street in the Little Italy district and I did expect it to look slicker than it was.  It actually looks a bit like an old launderette from the 1980's -- pretty bare and white.  What gave it away was the big red Hey sign out front.  I missed the small clapboard sign on the pavement and wandered in.

"Hi, man," screamed out one of the guys from the back.

Notice I didn't say 'the kitchen' because there wasn't one.  Simply an L-shaped counter behind which were a couple of sweaty looking cool dudes, one of whom had called out to me.  No table service.  You order at the counter.

It was also empty.

Mind you it was around 1.45 pm so after the lunch rush but if it was that good you'd expect there to be someone there most if not all of the time.

"What's your name, buddy?"  Now I'm English so reserve comes naturally to me.  This was a shock but I did confess my name was Mark.

"Whaddya want Marky-Mark?"

I hate it when people call me that.  My mum called me Marky when I was in my thirties and it was agony.  This wasn't going well.  But I persevered and asked what was good.

"Meatballs are good."  Well of course they are, or rather have to be.  This is a meatball shop for goodness sake.  If they were rubbish you wouldn't be in business.

I asked for spaghetti and meatballs as that was what Guy Fieri had on DDD along with a side salad and home made soda.  I asked which was nicest.

"They're all nice of course.  Mind you lime is probably my favourite," which rounded out the meal.

I sat myself down and few minutes later Marky-Mark's salad appeared soon followed by the spag + meatballs and soda.

The salad was half a lettuce chopped into 4 parts with blue cheese dressing and bacon bits drizzled over the top and was really nice.  The lime soda was great and the spaghetti and meatballs simply awesome.

It wasn't a big bowl to be sure but it was really hefty so very filling indeed.

I asked the guy about the TV show and he was vague about it.  "That was months ago now.  Yeah, they came in with about 20 guys and pretty much filled the shop.  They hung around for hours too filming all over the place.  Our customers couldn't get in.  The guys seemed OK to talk to."  Not really that informative then!

Mind you he did offer that business was so good they're opening another store out East, presumably near the Beaches in eastern Toronto.

Pretty good for $20!  You go here for the food not the decor!

Hey Meatball
719 College Street
Toronto
Canada

Tel: 416 546 1483
http://www.heymeatball.com

The Walrus and the Carpenter

My home town Southend is many things, none of which are genteel or refined.  It has an edge to it.  Lots of cheeky chappies and kiss me quick hats.  But things have started to change including on the culinary front.  Mainly for the better too.

A short while ago, my brother Jan suggested we go to a newish restaurant called Toulouse on the western esplanade on the Southend sea front, just down from the pier.  They'd converted the former public toilets into a restaurant so this I just had to see.  Typical Southend indeed!

Former public loos

They did a pretty good job too as the restaurant was sleek and nice with no evidence of its former history either!  Mind you the Southend sense of humour remains.  The following is a note on the menu for patrons.

Following advice from the Food Standard Agency we feel it our duty to warn you, that by consuming raw seafood, there is 1 in 1000 chance of it causing a tummy upset. We also advise not to eat oysters and drink spirits as it can also cause a tummy upset.

Did that deter us? Not in the slightest!

On the menu were Maldon Oysters yet again!!  And of course we just had to have them by the dozen this time.  Jan is a big fan and Viv helped me out too.  The waiter asked if he could produce just one big tray but knowing my brother, I asked him to keep the orders separate as Jan's counting is notoriously patchy at times.

The evening was splendid and the restaurant did a great job of keeping all happy!

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?"
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

Thanks of course to Lewis Carroll for the magnificent inspiration!

Toulouse Restaurant

Western Esplanade

Westcliff-on-Sea

Essex SS0 8FE

Tel: 01702 333731

http://www.toulouserestaurant.co.uk