The "Good Bad Food" of NYC
Courtesy: Unsplash
New York City is the food capital of the universe. Whatever its specific ranking from year to year according to the blogolisticlesphere, The Big Apple will never not be a foremost global culinary destination.
There’s also a New York for the natives and a New York for everyone else. That doesn’t mean transplants can’t be true New Yorkers, for what is New York — or any city — without people from other places? (Answer: non-existent.) All it means is born and raised five-boroughers have their own, unique experience of life here. This extends, naturally, to food.
Especially to “good bad food.”
What is good bad food? Well, it’s not bad good food. This is eats on the margins. It’s the spectrum of food that every city and town has, the food each locus calls their own and is blissfully out of reach from the punditry of the wider world. It’s not spectacular, it’s not academic, it’s rarely healthy, and it’s seldom lauded, except in the distracted tummies of ingrained locals.
Hopefully, the list speaks for itself when it comes to defining New York’s good bad food. I didn’t include the iconic chopped cheese, because I feel it’s grown beyond a parochial bodega cuisine and made its way into food pop culture while being hipsterfied. So, while I go enjoy a chopped cheese I totally planned on eating before writing that previous sentence, dig into this list without shame or self-consciousness — just as you would the food itself.
Courtesy: Unsplash
CHINESE TAKEOUT FRIED CHICKEN
Here’s a question: Why is it impossible for me to avoid getting a half-fried chicken every time the wife and I order (as we call it) “cheap Chinese?”
We’re talking your random NYC neighborhood Chinese joint with the tiny storefront and the battered overhanging sign displaying the seemingly random smushing-together of English words. I don’t care where you are in the boroughs, a nearby place like this a necessity. The kind of establishment you pop into off the bus on a rainy Wednesday for a $12 sesame chicken combo and Coke. Invaluable.
The beauty of these eateries too? They’re chameleons, augmenting their conventional American Chinese menu with local staples, reflecting the cultures of the neighborhoods they service, like a stir-fried prism.
Speaking of fried things: that fried chicken. Greasy, crispety, inexpensive, shameful. In other words, its own kind of perfect.
If you prefer more authentic, sit-down, tablecloth Chinese, there are plenty of places out there. If you want elite, elegized fried chicken, there’s Koreatown and Bed-Stuy and Harlem.
But if you want unsexy satiation, load up on napkins and dig into what I assume will be pictured above. You’ll only slightly regret it.
Courtesy: City Data
BLACK AND WHITE COOKIES
Black-and-white cookies are, to me, every bit as New York as The Brooklyn Bridge or dodging clipboard people on the sidewalk.
Like so many good bad foods, black-and-whites are simple in makeup. A lemony-spongey cookie with a top layer of chocolate and vanilla icing, separated in two halves with stark, Piet Mondrian-like segmentation.
Although it was brought into wider cultural awareness by Seinfeld (“Look to the cookie, Elaine. Look to the cookie.”) it’s still something that a lot of people don’t realize is such a staple go-to for New Yorkers. Even a bad black-and-white cookie is life-enriching (and also, incidentally, a bad bad good food, according to the logic of this article).
An ideal black-and-white in my estimation, however, is a not-too-crumbly, not-too-dense cookie with a good lemony kick; icing with a nice glisten and slight over-spill onto the underside of the cookie; sized larger than a coaster but smaller than a vinyl record.
Not that I’ve thought about it too hard or anything.
Courtesy: Zabar’s
DOLLAR SLICES
This almost fell under the same principle I held regarding the chopped cheese. However, the working person’s New York pizza is still something very separate from the foodie world’s New York-or-otherwise pizza. There have been recent, new-fangled rankings of pizza cities in America. I invite the discourse and the debate, and the fresh looks at old, accepted conventions. Super terrific!
Unfortunately, it’s all irrelevant when talking about true New York City pizza.
Listen, one can take any kind of flatbread, varying in thickness and shape, and place whatever they want on top of it. That’s been going on a long time, far longer than “pizza” has existed. You can go to California and they’ll do their thing with it, you can go to Detroit or Chicago and they’ll do theirs, and of course tasty, scrumptious gems are going to come out of that and, yes, we can call it all “pizza.” “Pizza” is the perfect culinary shorthand, more a genre than a specification.
Again, irrelevant.
True New York City pizza is a particular thing – exemplified by the dollar slice places and their brethren, the food furniture of our zip codes.
What’s behind the glass when you walk into these pizzerias, the ones with orange cafeteria tables and window stools? Nothing more than, but including, a plain (cheese) pie, a pepperoni, another meaty option like sausage or meatball, white pie, maybe a square pie, a veggie, and something like a buffalo chicken or vodka or BBQ chicken or whatever. Then some garlic knots, some calzones and sausage rolls, oregano and garlic powder for the customer use, and biggety-schmiggitty-boop, that’s it, you’re golden. Pizzeria set.
It doesn’t invite variety or experimentation because, why? It’s like experimenting with the wheel. You’re only going to get a trapezoid or some shit. That would make a terrible wheel.
So, if your metric for great pizza is whatever people google in blank city you’re talking about, fine. But if your metric for great pizza is great pizza, then have some of New York’s good bad pizza. It’s great.
Courtesy: Vice
SOFT STREET VENDOR PRETZELS
We’ve all had those Ratatouille moments: a food instantly transports you back to your happy childhood.
The smell of soft, hot pretzels on a chilly Manhattan night is that for me.
Hot dogs get all the publicity and always have. Dirty water dogs are synonymous with New York. Unfortunately, they overshadow their equally ubiquitous food colleague, the soft pretzel.
One of the most incredible things about the soft pretzel, besides the pillowy texture, cozy taste, and easy shareability, is that it gives us something to actually thank Germany for. Thanks, Germany! (Feels weird.)
And where do they get those salt chunks from? Good lord, it’s like they ice-pick it right off the side of a fjord. You wouldn’t have a stronger salt experience if you mated with a narwhal. So, you cut it with the perfect compliment: mustard.
And voila, you have several soul-warming bites of carby bliss ahead of you. Take your time. Enjoy. Just move out of the middle of the sidewalk, will ya, you’re a damn obstacle.
Courtesy: Unsplash
ITALIAN ICES
Something I never realized was very regional until I ventured out into the U.S. of A., Italian ices don’t just scream summer in New York City, they damn near death metal wail it. It’s just not something that’s common in the rest of the country, for some bizarre reason.
As a result, I’ve had to describe what exactly an Italian ice is to people. It’s like a gelato and a snow cone had a baby? No, it’s like a slush puppy and ice cream mated for three generations? Not exactly. Sorbet and shaved ice and a slurpee had a threeway ending with complicated feelings amongst all parties?
Forget it. Whether you know what it is or not, head to a pizza shop, boardwalk, or standalone Italian ice purveyor like Ralph’s or Uncle Louie G, get yourself a lemon, watermelon, chocolate or whatever, consume, lick the residual stickiness from your lips and maybe a nostril, then, if you’re feeling particularly flagrant, chew the flavor-soaked paper cup like it was a wad of tobacky and you were a 1930s baseball manager. Repeat if necessary.
Courtesy: City Guide New York
