Another Bye Bye NY Top Ten List. Eat your heart out Time Zagat. Or allow me to eat it, and then I will rate it very poorly.
Since I will not be able to take you, fantasy reader, to these restaurants once I’m gone, I hope these links will help you track them down so that they may blow your mind straight down into your satisfied stomach.
Pommes Frites: My favorite restaurant during college. Anyone who visited me in New York during my first few years here, this was the first stop on the tour. And they only serve one thing.- Burritoville: With their timeless moto, “We’re Mexcellent,” this chain gets the number two spot, de
spite the fact that they apparently went out of business several years ago. I wept big, spicy tears when their 2nd avenue location closed its doors. The food was great, the sodas were bottomless, and the atmosphere was unintentionally kitschy, just like I like it. Above all, they had the BEST salsa, and they let you have as much as you wanted every time, for free! Come to think of it, maybe that’s why they went under… - Sidecar: My dad said that this place served him “The most interesting club sandwich he had ever eaten.” That may b
e, but I keep coming back because I need the burger like a junkie needs his fix. I literally fiend for it. I sweat. It’s disgusting. They have a killer bloody mary too, with a pepper so hot that every time my girlfriend eats it she has to lie down in a dark room for two hours. And yet the very next week she’s munching on another one while I inject burger meat directly into my veins. - Al Di La: This is my favorite fancy Italian restaurant in New York. The atmos
phere is undeniably pretentious (they don’t take reservations, so you routinely see patrons outside the restaurant acting like teenage girls around Robert Pattinson in hopes of getting a table) but the food is truly transcendent. It’s not cheap, so I’ve been tricking people into taking me here for special occasions for the last 5 years. Get the saltimbocca, and realize what it is to love. - Aunt Suzie’s: This is my favorite UN-fancy Italian restaurant in New York. It’s
atmosphere is everything Al Di La’s isn’t, which is ironic because it’s right across the street. Our custom is to pound cheap wine at Aunt Suzie’s during the six hour wait for our table at Al Di La. However, for those occasions when you don’t have a rich relative in town, the food at Aunt Suzie’s is really top notch, for about 1/100th the price of its high-class neighbor. What’s more, there’s a TON of it. One meal at the Suz and you’re eating leftover gnocchi for a week. - Holy Basil: Best Thai Food in New York. Also best “Date Spot.” You just ask for a table
by the window, and their sound-proof glass enclosure on the second floor makes you feel like you have box seats for the nightly morality play that is second avenue. I recommend the duck, but then I always get the duck. My dream is to live in Duckburg (see left), where life is like a hurricane, and it’s apparently a “duck-blur.” But I digress… - Crif Dogs: Best Hot Dogs in New York. Doubtful? Three words: WRAPPED. IN
. BACON. Sound gross? You are wrong. The taste of these dogs goes beyond the sum of their parts. It’s like there’s a party in you mouth and, while maybe not everyone is invited (for example, not kosher people) those who are invited keep handing you twenty dollars bills and then making out with you. And it’s not weird or invasive either. It feels natural, and bacony, and you’re completely into it. - Two Boots: Best Pizza in New York. I realize that incendiary claim has led to more fist-fights tha
n actual meals, but I stand by it. It’s definitely not the cheapest, but the delicious thin crust and inventive topping combos set it apart from the rest. They have several locations, but the best one is in the East Village, a restaurant that includes videos for rent and a small movie theatre in the back, incidentally the site of my one and only movie premier in New York, a charming slasher film called “Pink Eye.” I played a dude who got slashed. Anyway, best pizza ever. - Mamouns: Best Falafel in New York. I vividly remembe
r first tasting it on April 20th, 2001, a day like any other, except that for some reason my taste buds were feeling especially receptive. That day would forever change the way I felt about fried chickpeas. “But it tastes like meat!” I screamed at my friends. “How can there be no meat in this? How?” As they wisely ignored my cries, I realized that I had found my favorite vegetation food of all time. And Mamouns serves up vegetarian impostor-meat just like it should be: out of a tiny, filthy, wooden stand, wrapped in tin foil and shame. - Fonda: All right, this is a little bit cheating, because this place is around the corner from my soon-to-be-former apartment, plus we go there once a week, plus they give us free stuff. But even if we weren’t regulars, this place would set the bar for Mexican food in New York. You know a dish is good when it ruins all other dishes of its kind
forever. Since eating the Enchiladas Suizas at Fonda, all competitors have turned to ashes in my mouth. Thanks a lot, assholes (I love you).