Why, I’ve often wondered, is New York’s symbol a wholesome red apple, when the more obvious choice would be the blue and yellow umbrella of a Sabrett’s hot dog stand, an irresistible beacon shimmering in the wind?
That New York is the great American walking city is well known. It’s also the great American ruminating city: we think on our feet—chewing all the way. In Manhattan you’re never far from food, and for me, nothing about city life has quite the racy, almost defiant allure of eating on the street. With a hot dog in hand I become jaunty and carefree, young and blithe-spirited.
As a child in Brooklyn I dreamed of emigrating to Manhattan and imagined I’d have to acquire a suave urbanity in order to succeed there, or even to survive. I was not entirely wrong. But I was wrong in thinking urbanity was entirely suave. In fact urbanity, New York style, has its rough spots and leaves plenty of room for earthy indulgence
Eating on the street makes that statement as plainly as any T-shirt: it announces that I rate pleasure higher than dignity, that the cares and proprieties of adulthood haven’t beaten me down. Away with sedate lunches—napkins and silverware and waiters reciting the daily specials. I’m still a child of the streets.
Let me be very clear: this has nothing to do with the charms of al fresco dining, or gracious picnics in Central Park, or even the ubiquitous muffins (cake in disguise) and other sanctimonious snacks you can pick up in salad bars and carry out. I mean the real stuff: zesty food that’s prepared (“cooked” might be an overstatement) and served—I use the word loosely—from big aluminum carts by vendors, nowadays many of them Middle Eastern, bringing a touch of the exotic and sautéing their savory, aromatic dishes with deft, swift movements. They’ve wheeled their carts through perilous traffic to their assigned corners and can sometimes be seen trudging home with them at twilight or attaching them to the backs of small cars, having nourished our reveries yet another day. For street food is the comforting companion to a solitary walk: it’s right there when you want it, and unlike a human companion, it enlivens your daydreams and never interrupts.
My déclassé tastes may be partly nostalgia for the days when food vendors would traipse over the sands of Brighton Beach with trays slung from their shoulders by wide canvas bands and resting on their stomachs, like cigarette girls in nightclubs, also a long-gone amenity. They’d stop right by your blanket: rarely has hunger been so readily appeased. Or when George the Good Humor man’s white truck turned the corner every afternoon at four thirty, scattering our punchball game and supplying pops or Dixie ice-cream cups to get us through the hour and a half until dinner. (The Good Humor truck permanently parked alongside the Guggenheim Museum can still instantly evoke my childhood, madeleine style.)
Nostalgia is far from the whole story, though. People gather in cities in the frank and urgent desire for company. And where people gather, food must follow. Every major city has its distinctive street food: in Amsterdam it’s raw herrings, in Paris pommes frites. In Mexico City, women sit at braziers beside heaped-up tortillas like stacks of giant coins, frying them one by one and wrapping up savory fillings. But only in New York, fittingly, has street food reached such a pitch of multicultural diversity.
If Henry James was aghast, over a century ago, at the pageant of raucous immigrants swarming his once-genteel New York streets, hawking their grubby wares in thick syllables, how much more horrified would he be at the motley bands surrounding the bright umbrellas that fringe office buildings and hospitals and universities, waiting to ease their souls with gyros or souvlaki, cheeseburgers, Afghan chicken, knishes, Philly steaks or Italian sausages, eggplant sandwiches, crushed ice oozed with a rainbow of Latino syrups, oversized bagels and doughnuts, or pretzels pimpled with salt and slathered with mustard?
Sixth Avenue is street food heaven. Heading east from Columbus Circle, then down Sixth to Bryant Park, the ruminating walker can make a meal from soup to nuts: six varieties of soup (all natural, no preservatives) and roasted nuts whose honeyed, swoony odor wafts over a half-block radius. The fruit stands displaying everything from grapes to pomegranates for dessert are almost too virtuous to be included in any tribute to disreputable food. But virtue has its niche, even on the street.
A curious enterprise, Potato King, raises a philosophical question. Proclaiming “Potato Is Healthy,” it adorns that humble base with chili, spinach and cheese, sour cream and, for the incorrigibly pious, yogurt or cottage cheese. The potatoes look delicious but, alas, unwieldy. I would argue that they go too far for genuine street food. As do the stands that offer whole meals: chicken and beef with rice, lamb kofta, even salad. Not to mention the soup.
Cooking up stews and soups on the sidewalks of New York is clever and audacious, I must admit. And yet the appeal of street food is that it fits nonchalantly in the hand—no Styrofoam required. Its particular genius rests in design as well as tang: witness a moderately complex dish like shish kebab or falafel made suitable for strolling. But lamb kofta, salad on the side, demands that you sit on a stone ledge and use a fork, and while that has its pleasures, especially on warm days, it’s a far cry from a New York walk punctuated by munches. No, street food must be eaten with a devil-may-care airiness or in an absent-minded daze. It must give instant gratification with no effort whatsoever. Soup asks too much concentration.
For all its unassuming earthiness, though, street food keeps some mysteries. Where do the carts go overnight? Who fills them each morning? How does the unending supply of rolls and sausages and whatnot fit in those small spaces? What goes into that powerful brew from which the hot dogs are speared? And exactly how long have they been floating in it? Who knows? Who cares? Bon appétit.