A smorgasbord of some of New York’s favorite edibles and grazing grounds.
AMY’S BREAD: When your upscale bistro’s breadbasket has a black-olive twist or a raisin-fennel roll in it, it’s from Amy’s. In 1992 Amy Scherber and her five employees started selling handmade specialty breads from a storefront on 9th Avenue. Today she has 150 workers and three retail locations—one of them in Chelsea Market, where the bread baking is done behind a glass wall. Wave to the bakers!
BUFFALO WINGS: These chicken wings prepared with spicy sauce, served with celery sticks and blue cheese dressing were invented by Teressa Bellissimo at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo in 1964. Since then, they’ve become essential bar food all over the country.
CHOPPED LIVER: New York didn’t invent it—so what? From Brooklyn to the Bronx, chopped liver is as New York as the Yankees. Ingredients: sauteed chicken livers, schmaltz (chicken fat), hard-boiled eggs, salt, pepper, and onions.
DANISH: Actually danish pastry, but in New York it’s just plain “danish” with a lowercase “d.” Cheese danish, prune danish, maybe cherry, pecan, or cinnamon raisin. With a paper cup of coffee, the breakfast of New York champions.
ENTENMANN’S BAKED GOODS: In 1898, William Entenmann opened a bakery in Brooklyn and delivered door-to-door. Locals loved his layer cake, doughnuts, pies, and crumb coffee cake—but it wasn’t until 1951, when the bakery started supplying supermarkets, that all New Yorkers had the opportunity to get hooked. Entenmann’s is still going strong, with more than 100 products.
FAIRWAY MARKET: The grocery chain opened in 1976 on the Upper West Side, undercutting the competition with great prices on produce, cheese, and baked goods—and won a following so devoted that the place was (and is) jam-packed night and day. More branches have opened in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island, and Westchester; more stores in the works.
Before it became an immigration center, Ellis Island was an ammunition dump.
GOD’S LOVE WE DELIVER: This service was founded in 1986 by Ganga Stone and Jane Best to take nutritionally appropriate meals to AIDS patients. Restaurants contributed food, volunteers helped cook and deliver, and philanthropists gave funds. By 2009, the group had delivered its 10 millionth meal.
HEBREW NATIONAL KOSHER MEATS: In 1905 Isadore Pinckowitz began making high-quality kosher franks and sausages on the Lower East Side, first selling to delis and the (Jewish) Waldbaum’s grocery chain, then to supermarkets. His meats contained no by-products and no artificial colors or flavors, and the 1965 slogan said it all: “We Answer to a Higher Authority.”
ICE CREAM, HÄAGEN-DAZS: Despite the “Danish” name, this is a born-and-bred New York product. In 1960, Bronx resident Reuben Mattus took his popular “superpremium” homemade ice cream (which he’d been selling to local restaurants), gave it an exotic foreign name, packed it in fancy cartons, and started a multimillion-dollar company. Back then, he offered only vanilla, chocolate, and coffee, but the company carries 34 flavors today.
JUNIOR’S CHEESECAKE: The signature dessert of Junior’s Restaurant in Brooklyn. In the 1950s, people traveled from all over the city for a slice; it was as famous as the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1973, six judges unanimously chose it “Champion Cheesecake” in New York magazine’s cheesecake contest.
KOREAN GROCERIES: By the 1970s, Korean-run groceries were well established in most neighborhoods, open 24/7, selling everything from fresh produce and flowers to soda and snacks. They became convenient alternatives to supermarkets, but it was their lavish “salad bars”—the first ones in a deli setting—stocked with everything from salad to dumplings to mac and cheese that really pulled in the customers.
LI-LAC CHOCOLATES: New York’s oldest handmade chocolates, still prepared with the same recipes used by original owner George Demetrious when he opened his shop on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village in 1923. The store is still in the Village, and there’s another one in Grand Central’s Market Hall.
World’s largest globe: the 140-foot-tall Unisphere in Flushing Meadows, Queens.
MAYONNAISE, HELLMANN’S BLUE RIBBON: After Richard Hellmann opened a deli in Manhattan in 1905, his customers begged to buy tubs of his wife’s homemade mayo. Finally, in 1912, he began to manufacture and bottle it in Astoria, Queens. He gave up the deli in 1917 to plunge full-time into mayonnaise biz.
NESSELRODE PIE: Nineteenth-century Russian Count Nesselrode lent his name to this pie that was popular in New York City in the 1940s and ’50s, especially at Christmas. Now as rare as baked Alaska, it featured candied fruits folded into light, fluffy, rum-flavored Bavarian cream that was spooned into a piecrust and topped with chocolate shavings.
ONION BOARD (PLETZEL): A sort of Eastern European focaccia made of yeast-raised dough flattened to about 12″ by 15″, topped with sautéed onions and poppy seeds, and baked until golden brown. New York’s pletzel mecca is Kossar’s bakery on Grand Street in Manhattan, which has handcrafted its bagels, bialys, and pletzels since 1936.
PRETZEL, SOFT: The authentic New York soft pretzel, bought from a street vendor, is about eight inches across and is usually topped with a squiggle of neon-yellow mustard. It’s New York City road food, grabbed on the run, guaranteed to tide you over until your next meal.
For more foods, turn to page 280.
During the Great Depression, the New York Public Library ran a store in its basement, offering groceries, food, tobacco, and clothing at reasonable prices. (The lions outside the library were named Patience and Fortitude by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to remind New Yorkers that they could survive the Depression.)
Time it took Queens mountain climber George Willig to scale the South Tower of the World Trade Center in 1977: 3.5 hours.