As you might imagine, I have a gigantic soft spot for fries, gravy, meat and cheese.
Separately, each of these rocks my world. Faced with them together? I get instantly weak-kneed.
Recently, I’ve had the extremely good fortune of living near Mile End Delicatessen, a little New York City mini chain that specializes in poutine, that scrumptious Canadian dish that combines fries with cheese curds and meat gravy.
And so, on a recent Sunday, I just happened to wander over …
There are some people whose food instincts and advice I greatly respect. One of them is the voracious (and all-around awesome) Ed Lin, author of New York Chinatown thrillers “One Red Bastard,” “Snakes Can’t Run” and more.
So when Ed recently posted a photo of a bowl of noodles at his favorite Taiwanese place in New York, I immediately sat up. I trust Ed on all matters gastronomic — especially Taiwanese, a cuisine he knows inside and out.
Which is how a few days later, sous chef and I found ourselves wending down a narrow curvy lane in Chinatown, eyes peeled for one “Excellent Pork Chop House” …
There’s something to be said for a solid, old-school meal.
What this means varies, of course, depending on where you are. In the U.S., I’ve always relished the mom-and-pop low-key restaurants that still roll out unfussy, decades-old standbys — hot turkey platters, melts, meatloaf and more. (If you’ve read “A Tiger in the Kitchen,” you’ll know what a meatloaf obsessive I am.)
I find myself craving these meals when it gets a little chilly. And so on a recent rainy day, we found ourselves heading over to a little restaurant called Belle Harbor Steak House in Rockaway Park, New York.
I’d caught a glimpse of the menu a few days before and it seemed like just the place to warm you up on a cold drizzly afternoon …
It isn’t truly summer until you’ve had your first fried fish taco. (So I believe, anyway.)
Going by this policy, summer still hadn’t hit for me in early August. This late in the game, that certainly had to be fixed.
So on a recent morning, even though I had only just been to Rockaway Taco in New York‘s Rockaway Beach a few days before, I decided it was time to return …
Every few days or so, a craving will kick in.
If I haven’t been cooking or if I’ve been on the road, unless I’m in Asia, I’ll start to really need the taste of Asian food of some sort. So, after a few days of lovely fish sandwiches and hot dogs at Rockaway Beach, I started sniffing around for something a little closer to home.
And then I remembered a sign on a building by the water: “Thai Rock.” And off we went …