Wednesday, March 26

What a Wonderful Town

What can I say about New York City that hasn't been said? We all know it's one of the world's great cities, a cultural and economic center, a place of determination and resolve. It can also eat you alive, unless you choose to eat it first: it is a foodie paradise of the first order.

The following is a timeline of twenty-four food-centric hours in the City. It was a quick and dirty visit, but not without a delicious payoff!

Noon – My party of two (my mother and me) arrive in Manhattan. We meet up with my cool younger brother, who is a newly-minted New Yorker, and check into a fab hotel right down the street from Studio 54 and around the corner from the Ed Sullivan Theater.

1:00 – Hit the Stage Deli (www.stagedeli.com), which has been open at its present location since 1943. I have a pastrami on rye "all the way," with coleslaw and cheese. There is at least one pound of pastrami on the sandwich, rimmed with spices and just enough fat. I slather plenty of the Deli's homemade hot mustard on the pastrami and go to town, but I can still only eat half. My brother gets the Bill Clinton sandwich: triple decker with corned beef, onions, and chopped liver. Delicious. Mom gets a salad named after a slimmer celeb, which she deems fine. We all split a truly decadent baby cheesecake, so named because it only contains about thirty-two ounces of cream cheese.

2:30 – Walk down Fifth Avenue. We gape in windows and act like absolute tourists when we sight Uma Thurman in Harry Winston trying on diamond necklaces. Check out "statement jewelry" on second floor in Tiffany's. Sigh.

4:00 – We meet up with my cool younger brother's brave bike-messenger friend, who gamely walks around Central Park with us. Say goodbye to younger brother's friend. The three of us take the subway to Museum Mile, walk around the Metropolitan Museum of Art until dizzy, and head back to hotel to sit exhaustedly on the rather low platform beds.

7:30 – Head down to Union Square to visit my brother's cool spacious hardwood-floored high-ceilinged apartment. We visit with his cool roommates. I begin to feel very jealous of my cool younger brother.

8:45 – Strike out for Mesa Grill, one of Bobby Flay's two cool magnets. Oops, can't get a table till at least 10:30. Disappointment strikes. All are starving and it smells yummy, but judging from the crowd four-deep at the bar, we'll be lucky to be seated before midnight. Head out into street to do some recon.

9:10 – A debate between Chat'n'Chew and Steak Frites ensues. I wrestle with my current general anti-French feeling, but we decide on the steakhouse anyway. We congratulate ourselves on finding such a friendly boite with a short wait. I thoroughly enjoy my goat cheese salad with roasted baby beets, mussels Provencale, and honey-thyme apple tarte Tatin. (In fact, I enjoyed the salad so much that I uttered this sentence for the very first time ever: "Wow, I wish I had some more beets!")

11:30 – We stumble out of Steak Frites to begin rolling home, amazed that a last-minute find could be such a pleasant experience. Back to the hotel to sleep like a log until morning.

9:00 – We finally get up and bag the idea of going down to see the World Trade Center site, electing to have breakfast with my cool younger brother instead.

10:30 – After managing to wake up at least one of my cool younger brother's cool roommates with the apartment buzzer, we go out into the East Village to forage for breakfast. Surprisingly, all of the many bars are closed, and there is not much else around. My cool younger brother points out their "home" McDonald's. We finally find a European-looking joint where everyone seems to be having cigarettes and coffee for breakfast, but we're too hungry to keep looking.

11:45 – We can congratulate ourselves again on a great find! Despite the Marlboro smoke everywhere, I manage to have a refreshing breakfast of organic granola, yogurt, and fruit laced with honey. My cool younger brother has baked eggs with goat cheese, and my mother a ham-and-cheese crespelle, all tasty. I sit and drink latte out of a bowl and become more jealous of my cool younger brother. When I threaten to move to the City, he blanches.

Noon – We go into the comically tiny grocery store that my cool younger brother has visited twice since moving into his apartment six weeks earlier. Forty-five minutes and $60 later, we have purchased enough staples to feed all the cool roommates for a week. My cool younger brother remarks that it will be nice to have some vegetables in the house. My mother blanches.

1:30 – Sadly, we leave. I spend the ride home dreaming of Zabar's and the Chrysler building, and of cheesecake like the one at the Stage Deli. I pledge to make more mussels at home using the recipe to the right, which closely approximates the ones that I had at Steak Frites, and to visit my cool younger brother frequently.