Broder - New Yorks One-Food Wonders

PRAISE FOR MITCH BRODERS DISCOVERING VINTAGE NEW YORK

A nostalgia-lovers guide, Discovering Vintage New York not only recalls some of the citys favorite restaurants and other hangouts but also reveals the people behind them.

Sam Roberts, New York Times

Mitch Broder is a journalist who is well aware of the transience of vintage New York. Even the places that you assume will be around forever can one day disappear. But this fun little book celebrates the classic New York restaurants, shops and nightclubs... places that form the heart of the city.

June Sawyers, Chicago Tribune

In an age when Times Square feels like Disney World and Manhattan is overrun by chain stores and franchise coffee houses, Broder takes readers to locales where the quirky charm of old New York still thrives.

Richard Liebson, Gannett Newspapers

Mitch Broder respects his elders: venerable chop houses, hot dog stands with aged neon signs, timeworn diners, classic bookstores.

Chris Erikson, New York Post

Discovering Vintage New York is a must-have guide to what remainsbefore it vanishes.

Jeremiah Moss, Jeremiahs Vanishing New York

If you long for a time forgotten and a guide to the bygone metropolis, read Discovering Vintage York. Your next visit to the Big Apple could be an unforgettable one.

Cristine Struble, Examiner.com

Hillary and I are delighted to have a copy.

Bill Clinton, former president of the United States

In memory of Mindie

An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright 2015 by Mitch Broder

Photographs 2015 by Jai Williams

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 978-1-4930-0642-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-4930-1741-6 (e-book)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

T he joy of this project, besides eating everything I ate, was talking to the people who made the project possible. As I point out in the introduction, this is not just a book about food, its a book about passion. In pursuing their passions, these people gave me one of my own.

So thanks to the owners, founders, managers, and occasional spokes-people who gave their time to tell me what I needed to know. And thanks to everyone who plays a part in peppering New York City with culinary concepts that are delicious in more ways than one.

Thanks to my editor, Amy Lyons, for having the confidence in me to say yes before I even finished explaining the idea. Thanks to my agent, Anne Marie OFarrell, of the Marcil-OFarrell literary agency, for always keeping me grounded, whether I want to be or not.

This book follows the success of Discovering Vintage New York, and the best part of that success has been the support of good friends. Special thanks to Rick Allen, Jeanne Chamas, the Greenhill family, Jeff Mangum, Debbi Porterfield, Lydia Ruth, Hank Shaw, and Mary Shustack.

Thanks to the writers and reporters who have covered that first book and to the many people who have come to the events for that book. And thanks to the talented people of Globe Pequot Press, who designed, edited, publicized, marketed, and otherwise cared for that book.

Loving thanks to my father, King Broder, who always believes that Ill succeed. And loving thanks to Patricia Greenhill, who is not only the light of my life, but also the chef of my life. Without her coaxing, I probably wouldnt have started this book, and without her cooking, I probably wouldnt have lived long enough to finish it.

N ew York is where you go to make it on your own. Especially if youre a single food.

Dominating a menu is tough to start with. And if youre, say, a peanut-butter sandwich, its just that much tougher. You need a city with people enough not only to seek out a peanut-butter sandwich, but also to presume that, as a dominator, youre one bodacious peanut-butter sandwich.

That city is New Yorkwhich starts out with around 8 million people and in annual visitors adds around 50 million more. Those people are enough to sustain not only a peanut-butter-sandwich restaurant but also, as it happens, an ice-cream-sandwich restaurant.

New York is a single-food paradise, and for more than those millions of reasons. Its unbeatable for walking. Its unmatchable for exploring. Consequently, its unquenchable for restaurants that are unimaginable. No wonder it made peanut butter think it could make it on its own.

The city has amassed scores of places that feature one food, and those places were getting hungry to be featured in one guide. They needed a book that would tell everyone about them alland all about them. Here it is. I hope they appreciate it. I hope it takes you to paradise.

I was the right one to write it, because Im obsessed with these places. Ive been writing about them for over a quarter of a century. Ive covered everything from the still-flourishing all-peanut-butter restaurant to the fallen all-blintz and all-potato-chip restaurants. My obsession is not just with food, though its considerably with food. Its also with faith, moxie, and monumental improbability. Im not at all sure that peanut butter had any better odds than blintzes, but I am sure that their respective restaurateurs scoffed at the odds.

This is my second book. The first was Discovering Vintage New York, which covers the restaurants and shops that have survived for at least 50 years. New Yorks One-Food Wonders might seem like a curious follow-up. But its actually the perfect companion. These spots are the other vintage. Most lack a vintage look, since most arent very old. But most have a vintage spirit, since thats what got them here. In a cityscape nearly eclipsed by multiple links of monotonous chains, these places collectively stand as a bastion of individuality and guts.

Of course, the one-food trend was hot even two centuries ago, when the city was rife with oyster cellars, oyster saloons, and oyster stands. By the late 1800s, pushcart vendors were pushing specialties including sausages, hot dogs, chestnuts, peanuts, and New York pretzels.

Today the food at a one-food restaurant is most likely to be hamburgers, subs, tacos, pizza, or covertly named fried chicken. This book takes you to the less likely food. In here you find restaurants with names like OatMeals, Porchetta, Caracas Arepa Bar, and Caviar Russe. Youll find the spot that sells gourmet chicken fingers, the spots that sell Australian meat pies, and the Home of the Original Meatball in a Cup. Youll find a few places that sell grilled cheese, a couple that sell mac and cheese, and one that sells everything it can think of with cheese.