Being a tourist can be infuriating. You’re just not in the know. You’re not an
insider. You’re not a local. So you wander around doing things you think are
the right things to be doing, but you’re never 100% sure. The locals, on the
other hand, march around doing things they know are the right things to be
doing.
You can see the smug look on their smug faces as they elbow you into the
gutter. It says: “My day is going to be better than your day because I’m in
the know and you’re not, tourist loser. Now get out my way or I’ll be late
for my exclusive gig/ restaurant opening/guerrilla-art performance. Have a
great time at Madame Tussauds. Snigger, snigger.”
There is a solution that doesn’t involve violence. You buy your way into that
local knowledge. No, not by offering locals money to be your friend. By
signing up for a tour. No, not one with an umbrella, a coach party and some
students paid to dress up as ghosts and scare the bejesus out of you with
their terrible acting. A proper local tour for local people. And in New
York, that would be a Savory Sojourns, which combines the two best things
you can do in the Big Apple: walking and eating.
Savory Sojourns is run by Addie Tomei, who is as ged-outta-here effervescent
as her Oscar-winning daughter Marisa. She is a Brooklyn Italian born and
bred, and when you’re walking around town with her, you couldn’t be more in
the know. She does food walks in all the most interesting parts of the city:
the Bronx, Chinatown, SoHo, Hell’s Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Little Italy
and the Lower East Side, so the only real dilemma is deciding which one to
go on.
Each one has its own ethnic culture and accompanying array of food
specialities. So you can pick your walk based on your appetite. This, like
going to Waitrose, is not advisable on an empty stomach. I was starving when
I called to book and ended up on a hard-core Lower East Side-Little Italy
combo: bagels and salt beef before elevenses; ice cream and risotto for
afters.
We met in Katz’s Deli, New York’s most famous cafe because it’s where Meg Ryan
had her fake orgasm. There’s even a sign that reads, “This is where Meg Ryan
sat”, and you have to pay just to have a look around. It’s the Madame
Tussauds of the Manhattan cafe scene, so it felt good to leave the loser
tourists behind for stop number two, Russ & Daughters. Specialising in
every kind of lox, sable and sturgeon, the store has been open for 92
American years, which is the equivalent of 920 English ones. As such, it’s a
venerable institution, and you won’t find a better wild-Baltic-
salmon-and-cream-cheese bagel anywhere on the planet, not even in the
Baltic. It was, as Mary Beth said, “to die for”.
Mary Beth was one-third of a trio of glamorous West Virginian ladies up for a
foodie weekend in New York. They were enthusiastic to the point of
spontaneous combustion. I was this close to performing the Heimlich
manoeuvre on Mary Beth at our next stop, the Yonah Schimmel Knishery, when
she began convulsing halfway through her potato knish. Just before I
embarrassed us both by grabbing her firmly from behind, I realised she
wasn’t choking at all. She was just in raptures about her potato knish.
Maybe the Meg Ryan thing had rubbed off.
I know what you’re thinking, you miserable bunch of Brits: three
overenthusiastic Virginians sounds like a headache first thing in the
morning. Far from it: their enthusiasm, stoked regularly by Addie’s brassy
observations, was as infectious as Ebola. But in a good way.
By the time we reached the Economy Candy Store, a dentist’s Dante’s Inferno of
atomic fireballs, Mary Janes, tootsie rolls and lollipops so large they’d
stop traffic, I was behaving entirely out of character, matching every
Virginian gee and crikey with a home counties gosh and cor blimey.
I FIRST saw the Lower East Side back when New York was mad, bad and dangerous
to buy postcards in. I’d promised my parents I wouldn’t stray from Midtown
or go on the Subway, and then, like any self-respecting teenager,
immediately disobeyed them and took the Subway to Essex Street. The Lower
East Side was a rundown, threatening place. Even the graffiti was
graffitied. I wandered around until someone demanded my shoes or my life,
then scurried back shoeless to meet my parents for tea. These days, it’s all
change. There are stylish bars and minimalist hotels, and tenement
apartments selling at Notting Hill prices. And nobody demanding your shoes.
So it’s no surprise that the Essex Street Market, formerly a collection of
largely Hispanic food stalls, now has a touch of the Borough Markets about
it. Jeffreys the Butcher might have been there since 1929, but Saxelby
Cheesemongers, purveyors of fine American farmstead cheeses, has been there
less than a year in the form of Anne Saxelby, a young New Yorker who partly
learnt her trade with the Slow Food producers of Italy and France. Another
excellent place to snack.
NEVERTHELESS, by half eleven, even Mary Beth’s enthusiasm was meeting its
match. In a particularly gruelling half-hour, we tasted the finest doughnuts
(at the Krispy-Kreme-smashing Doughnut Plant), then the finest pickles (at
where else but Guss’ Pickles), then the finest ice cream (at the pretentious
Il Laboratorio del Gelato), then the finest parmesan and prosciutto (at the
this-could-be-Bologna Alleva Dairy). If I have one criticism of the tour,
it’s that it followed a geographical logic rather than a gastronomic one. I
would gladly have zigzagged more if it had meant I could have had the
pickles and parmesan before the ice cream and doughnuts. As it stood, I
tried to stop sampling the wares altogether after the pickle store, but
Addie and her proprietor friends all looked mortified every time I shied
away.
“You no want my prosciutto? You hurt me. You hurt my family. You hurt my
grandmother. You kill my grandmother. You spit on my grandmother’s grave.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll have the prosciutto.”
“Good. Eat more. You eat the cheese. Eat, eat, eat. Mozzarella. Artichoke.
Here, try the bolognese. Issaspecialrecipe.”
By lunchtime I was full, which is a terrible state to be in in the heart of
Little Italy. As Addie pointed out Umberto’s Clam House on Mulberry Street,
where Crazy Joey Gallo got plugged five times by three hitmen halfway
through his 43rd birthday meal, I tried jogging on the spot to earn some
room for lunch. It didn’t work: I could only pick at my cannelloni in the
bright main room of Ristorante Il Cortile. After the calamari, I was praying
for a hitman myself. “Enough food, already.” But what’s a trip to the Big
Apple if you don’t, at some point, feel like a balloon in need of a pin?
Between courses, Addie secured us a VIP pass into the kitchens to witness real
Italian chefs preparing real Italian food in the heart of real Italian New
York. It was brilliant. Thirty-odd streets to the north, thousands of
tourists were no doubt milling about in midtown, wondering forlornly where
all the New Yorkers were going in such a hurry.
“Nice skyscraper, Shirley.”
“Yeah, shall we go and look at another one, Bob?”
“S’pose.”
Who cares if I’d eaten so much I was praying for a mafia hit to put me out of
my misery. At least I wasn’t Bob or Shirley.
Travel brief
The food walk: this combo tour costs about £85pp, with lunch. Tours
start at £60pp (00 1 212-691 7314, www.savorysojourns.com).
Where to stay: the Shoreham (247 6700, www.shorehamhotel.com, doubles
from £188) is a stylish mid- Manhattan boutique option. Or there’s the
trendy Hotel QT (354 2323, www.hotelqt.com), 10 blocks south, with titchy
but lovely rooms from £100. Or immerse yourself in the Lower East Side at
the super-designer Hotel on Rivington (475 2600, www.hotelonrivington.com
doubles from £220).
Getting there: British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com)
flies from Heathrow and Manchester from £249. Or try Virgin Atlantic (0870
380 2007, www.virgin-atlantic.com) or Aer Lingus (0818 365000,
www.aerlingus.com).
More information: NYC & Company (020 7202 6368,
www.nycvisit.com).
