Famous Fat Dave Takes Us On A Veggie Food Tour of NYC

If you've been reading the food blogs for a while, you should be familiar with Famous Fat Dave, The Hungry Cabbie. If you have never heard of Dave, it is my pleasure to introduce you to him. Everyone, meet Dave.

Before becoming a New York City cabbie back in 2001, Dave worked for a variety of food stores: Orwasher’s Bakery, Guss' Pickles, Nathan’s hot dogs, and Murray’s Cheese. But Dave is probably best known for his wonderful food tours of New York, Famous Fat Dave’s Five Borough Eating Tour On The Wheels Of Steel.

Because I've long wished to experience Dave's food tours, I asked him if he could take me (and my young nephew Tyler -- you've seen him before on this blog) on a vegetarian tour, specifically the Chunky but Funky Monkey Package. Dave readily agreed.

Almost two weeks ago, Tyler and I took the train from New Brunswick, NJ, into Penn Station, where we met up with Dave and his wheels of steel.

After only seconds in his car, Dave surprised us with a cheesey appetizer -- Ewephoria sheep's milk gouda from Murray's Cheese Shop. It was mighty tasty. Tyler and I both enjoyed breaking off tiny pieces of the cheese because we knew we were just at the beginning of a foodie odyssey.



Dave explained our options to us as we munched on the Ewephoria.



We decided not to spend an inordinate amount of time in the lower east side's eateries, but to get a taste, our first stop was Kossar's Bialys. If you've never had a bialy before, you would think it was a cousin to a bagel. You'd be correct to a certain extent, except that bagels are boiled before baking and bialys are not.



Dave selected one garlic and one onion bialy for Tyler and me to try. We both enjoyed the chewy, doughy bits, but saved most of the bialys so we could use them to cleanse our palates between tastings. (And, we didn't want to fill up early. We had several hours of grazing ahead of us.)

Next came the pickles.





We drove to the Pickle Guys store and tried a variety of pickles (new, half-sour, three-quarters sour and full sour).



We also tried pickled garlic, which was surprisingly sweet, pickled green beans, and olives.



I liked the almond-stuffed olives the best.

We spent the majority of our time in Brooklyn after the pickle experience. First, we stopped at Waterfalls Cafe for a truly excellent sandwich of fried cauliflower and tahini. We didn't eat in the cafe, however, because Dave had a delightful surprise for us.



We dined by the Hudson River, Tyler and I, sharing the tasty, tangy pita sandwich. Way in the distance, we could see the Statue of Liberty.



Tyler and I agreed that one of the highlights of the dining experience was the pita sandwich. It was like falafel, but ten times better.



Next, we traveled to Ferdinando's in Brooklyn for some squid and octopus salad (for Tyler and Dave) and broccoli rabe (for me, primarily).



Next off to Red Hook...



We sat in this lovely greenhouse of sorts in front of the legendary Steve's Authentic Key Lime Pies in Red Hook, eating our seafood salad and greens.





Tyler really liked the seafood salad, but what about the broccoli rabe?



It was a bit bitter.

After we picked up a "swingle" for Tyler, we headed out to a nice little park with a great view of the Statue of Liberty. Yes, that's me on the left.



Here's Tyler's "swingle," the dark chocolate-dipped key lime pie on a stick.



He LOVED it.

Next, we headed out to Bensonhurst for thick pizza slices (Sicilian style) at L&B Spumoni Gardens. (My apologies for the poor audio in the next clip.)



Soft, yummy slices with the cheese under the sauce. It's very traditional and tasty.



Tyler also tried the spumoni.



It's served in a traditional Italian ice cup, but it looks more like gelato.



Probably my favorite new taste came when we headed back to the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan for a warm sesame bagel spread with fresh whitefish salad at Ess A Bagel.





It was like great tuna salad, but much less fishy and so much more tastier. I'm definitely going to have to visit a Jewish deli soon for another great warm bagel with whitefish salad.

Finally, we ended our trip at Pommes Frites, Belgian-style fries served with a huge variety of flavored mayonnaises. I'm not a big fan of fries with mayo. Too artery-clogging and rich for me, but the fries were pretty good. We tried parmesan peppercorn, horseradish and pesto mayos.



The fries are served at these odd little tables with holes to hold drinks and the fries, which are served in paper cones.



Overall, Dave's food tour was loads of fun, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone visiting New York City. Just remember that our tour was customized for us. He usually takes people to some of the places, but you can ask for exactly what you want, and I'm sure he'll accommodate your needs.

Contact Dave here. You'll be happy you did.

A Big Day for A Great Kid

On Friday, I had the honor of treating my older nephew to a day in New York City to celebrate his 12th birthday. Young Tyler's been a guest on this blog before, but it's been a while.

We had a bit of a foodie adventure between sightseeing. Our first stop was Rockefeller Center to see if we could secure tickets to an NBC studios tour. No dice, the next available tour was two hours away, and we weren't having it.

So, we had our first bit of food in the city.



We shared this sandwich at Bunchberries. We walked from Rockefeller center to 53rd Street, then east to 2nd Avenue for this sandwich. Well, not really. We intended to go somewhere else, but the menu was so uninteresting that we ended up a few doors down, at Bunchberries. The sandwich is made from multigrain bread spread with roasted garlic and stuffed with spinach, plum tomatoes, black olives, grilled portobello mushrooms and goat cheese.

The big news there was that Tyler had never tried goat cheese before and really enjoyed it. One of my favorite things about Tyler is that he's so open to trying new things, like goat cheese. I believe I was in my 30s before I tried goat cheese.

From there, we hiked to a subway that would take us all the way down to the Staten Island Ferry.



The thing about the ferry is that it's FREE. OK, that and it gets pretty darn close to the Statue of Liberty.



As we walked from the Staten Island Ferry terminal up South Street on our way to Chinatown for our next foodie stop, we saw the biggest police presence I've ever experienced. I later found out that it was due to car bombs in London that fortunately had been diffused.



These mounted police were kind enough to pose for the photo. Right afterward, the two in the middle gave me the thumbs-up sign and winked. Oh those wacky mounties!

From the seaport, we hoofed it another 2/3 of a mile up to Chinatown to dine at the Vegetarian Dim Sum House. Unlike typical dim sum spots, where the waitstaff brings you the little plates on a cart to your table, this one had us fill out a card with our choices, and they brought our selections to us afterward. This first dish was a "Mashed Taro Treasure Box." Inside a lightly fried shell was mashed taro and sweet bean paste. It was delightful.



Our other picks were "Mini Vegetarian Spring Rolls," "Vegetarian Mock Shrimp Dumplings," and "Bar-B-Q Pork." Reluctant as he was, Tyler did eat half the broccoli with me. Otherwise, we really enjoyed the spring rolls and the dumplings. The mock pork wasn't that great.



Here are the innards of the spring rolls and the mock shrimp, respectively:





Filled with dim sum, we headed back downtown to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was filled with tourists and their cameras. The walk over to Brooklyn and back is about 2 miles. Tyler was a trooper because we'd already hoofed it around town for a few miles prior to approaching the bridge.

If you've never done the walk, you should during your next trip to New York. On the bridge, you have fantastic views up the Hudson River and out to the Statue of Liberty. Plus, it's a pretty historic site.

Once we'd rested a bit, we headed over to Babycakes bakery for some agave nectar goodies to actually have cake for Tyler's birthday. He ordered the blueberry coffeecake, while I requested a raspberry lemon cupcake. We saved them for later, so John could visit with Tyler a bit after we'd arrived home.



Our final foodie destination was probably our favorite. I'd first heard of Han Bat Korean restaurant from Robyn.

Although I'll probably never get as good a photo as Robyn's, I gave it my best shot.



On her recommendation, I ordered the Pajun (above). It's a rice flour, shellfish and green onion pancake fried to perfection. We nearly ate the whole thing (about the size of a large plate).



A close-up reveals the shellfishiness of the thing. It was one of the tastiest dishes I've had in a long time. Tyler loved it and became an instant convert to Korean food.

On our train ride home to New Jersey, we looked at our Babycakes goodies and remembered what a big, fun day we had together. I'm truly fortunate to have such a wonderful nephew. Furthermore, it is a huge blessing that we had the time to spend together because you just never know...

Tour of Thomas Edison National Historical Park

Thomas Edison National Historical Park Entrance

Introduction

You might remember my nephew Tyler from other adventures we've had -- a Famous Fat Dave's food tour of NYC and a special food tour of our own devising. Tyler's now in the undergraduate engineering program at Rutgers University. With that in mind, I asked him if he would be interested in visiting the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange. "I'm all in!" he replied.

I quickly contacted the Park's archivist, Leonard DeGraaf, who very kindly made space in his schedule to give us a tour and show us some of archive's treasures. The tour was one of the most fun and interesting archives tours I've had -- not only due to DeGraaf's depth of knowledge and generosity, but also because Tyler had a great time learning about Edison and why archives are important to researchers and the public at large (from someone other than his Auntie Deb).

The big surprise came at the end of our tour when we sat down in the archive reading room to see some of the treasures DeGraaf had set aside to show us. Not only did we see some remarkable examples of Edison's documentation, but we learned that DeGraaf was about to publish a book! Since our visit, the book has been published (with a Forward by Bill Gates, no less), and it is called Edison and the Rise of Innovation. DeGraaf very kindly gave me select portions of the book which whet my appetite to read the entire text. The photos are beautiful, and the text is very well written.

About the Archivist

Leonard DeGraaf has just celebrated his 12th year as an archivist at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park's archives. DeGraaf says he became an archivist "because I enjoy working with original documents and making them available to researchers."

In addition to publishing his new book, his current project is arranging Edison's correspondence files for the years 1920-1931. Because the inventor was so connected to his businesses and interested in what the general public had to say about products, I can only imagine the linear footage dedicated to those correspondence files.

As archivists, most of us love what we do. DeGraaf is no exception. "I enjoy the diversity of archival work -- processing documents, writing finding aids, answering reference questions. I also enjoy learning new things. Edison was involved in so many different activities -- there is always something new to learn," he says. But as with any profession, ours comes with inherent challenges, mainly concerning storage space. At the Park, DeGraaf concurs, "lack of proper storage space to protect the collections is our biggest challenge."

When I asked DeGraaf what advice he would give a student or young professional, he replied,

I would advise students and young professionals to look for meaningful volunteer opportunities at cultural institutions and take advantage of free or low-cost training opportunities. Libraries, museums, and archives often offer workshops – a great way to learn new skills and meet other professionals. Anything you can do to enhance your writing and public speaking abilities – two important career skills – will also make you more competitive.

About the Archives and Collections at Thomas Edison National Historical Park

One of the most remarkable things about the Park is that "most of it is left as it was when Edison was here," says DeGraaf. The U.S. Congress designated Thomas Edison’s West Orange laboratory and nearby estate, Glenmont, as Edison National Historic Site in September 1962. In 2009, the lab and Glenmont were re-designated Thomas Edison National Historical Park.

The archive houses 5-6 million pages of material. While the Park has 29 full-time staffers, only two are archivists. The Park's patrons run the gamut from students and academics to all manner of media, park staff, and the general public. As far as the archive goes, most of its patrons contact the archivists by email or telephone. DeGraaf and his colleague respond to 800-1000 reference requests per year.

"Because Edison employed thousands of workers in his factories, we receive many requests from people doing family or genealogical research," DeGraaf clarifies. There are no personnel files, but there are payroll records. However, those records are not yet indexed or digitized (sounds like a volunteer opportunity to me).

Among the unsung heroes of the collection are Edison's business and financial records. Two examples are shown below.

The experimental accounts in particular are valuable because they give a snapshot of the work in the lab on a given experiment. Was is profitable? If not, why not? These are the relevant questions that researchers can answer by looking at the notebooks and account books. DeGraaf says, "We need more research on the operation of Edison's companies to understand why they succeeded or failed."

Another fascinating, but underutilized part of the archive "are the many letters Edison received from the public on a wide variety of topics. These letters offer an opportunity to study social attitudes about technology and invention in the early 20th century," says DeGraaf. 


Eighty of the collections have been processed, and he notes that while finding aids are sent out at request, the Park does need a way for researches to access a guide to the archives. Meanwhile "the Thomas Edison Papers Project at Rutgers University has published material from the Edison archives for the period up to 1919. Of this published material, documents for the period up to 1898 have been digitized and are available at the Edison Papers Project website: http://edison.rutgers.edu/," says DeGraaf.

In terms of use, the Park's collection of 60,000 historic photographs is the most popular. For example, here is one of the man himself that DeGraaf kindly sent me. Edison is sitting at the desk that still resides in library shown in the photo of DeGraaf.

Photo courtesy of Thomas Edison National Historical Park.

While the archival collection is mostly paper-based, the museum collection contains 400,000 objects and 35,000 sound recordings on disc and cylinder formats. When Tyler and I toured the museum, we saw where Edison would audition new musical acts for his recording label.

 

Tyler in Edison's Music Room

  

Edison's Music Room

Edison's Music Room

DeGraaf's favorite items are Edison's laboratory notebooks. He says, "They offer an intimate look at how Edison approached invention and provide details about how he designed the phonograph, electric light, and many other laboratory products."

Edison's communal lab notebook, 1880, Experiment No. 1.

It is especially illuminating to see the shared research and meticulous data collected at the laboratory. It is even more profound to discover the impact all this work had on the world. DeGraaf's new book points out the monumental affect Edison's labs had:

When he was born in 1847, there were no industrial research laboratories, no phonographs, no motion picture cameras, and no electric power systems, let alone practical electric lights. In 1931, the year Edison died, the United States produced 320 lightbulbs and consumed 110.4 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. Seventy-five million Americans attended the movies each week, spending $719 million ($10.6 billion today) at the box office.

When the National Parks re-open, I encourage you to tour the museum and outlying buildings. Along with self-guided phone tours, some of the park staff give tours. Also visit Edison's home, Glenmont -- it's a short ride away on a large piece of property that should be especially pretty with the leaves changing now.

The archive is not open to the public, so I appreciate DeGraaf letting a fellow archivist and her nephew have an inside peek at the Thomas Edison National Park's archival collections.


Contact Information

Since National Parks are closed at the moment, I recommend emailing so that any inquiry would be waiting when the furloughed workers return.

Leonard DeGraaf
Thomas Edison National Historical Park
211 Main Street
West Orange, NJ 07052
973-736-0550, ext. 22  
Leonard_DeGraaf@nps.gov
http://nps.gov/edis

Tyler and I Bake Pies

My young nephew Tyler likes to bake and cook, so I suggested that we make some little pies for him to bring home to his family after his visit with me. He wanted to make apple pies, so we walked to the store and bought organic granny smith apples. I knew ahead of time that I would use Elise's (from Simply Recipes' blog) pie crust recipe because it has almonds in it, and Tyler really likes almonds. I'm really glad he likes to cook and bake because it gives us something fun to do together.

This is Tyler, my nephew. We were standing by the sphinx in the lobby of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's one of my favorite places in the City. Did you know there's a rooftop sculpture garden? Well, we didn't get there, but I'd been there in the past, and Tyler just wanted to see the armor and armory exhibit. Then, I gave him a map and he navigated us all around New York for our day together. Below is a photolog of our lunch at Angelica Kitchen. Yum! Tyler also really enjoys baking and cooking, so my next post will be all about our pie baking experience.

About halfway through Tyler's cup of soup I remembered to take a photo. He had the minestrone, which was piled high with veggies and beans, with the pasta buried beneath. Tyler finished the entire portion.

A New Thanksgiving Favorite -- Smitten Kitchen's Butternut Squash and Caramelized Onion Galette

Oh such a delicious savory pie! Another Deb, aka Smitten Kitchen, created this marvelous dish that has become my family's newest Thanksgiving favorite!

Here's my brother at the end of the buffet table (after taking a large serving of the butternut squash and caramelized onion galette) showing his gratitude for the feast.



If you noticed a family resemblance, that's because he's Tyler's dad.

About the galette, I made a few alterations to the original recipe, including using non-fat Greek-style yogurt instead of sour cream in the crust, and mozzarella cheese for fontina in the filling. But, because I know you enjoy these, I made a movie of how I made the galette. I apologize for the clippy audio. No idea how that happened, except maybe in the upload from my camera to the computer. Also, it was my first time using the camera staged on a mike stand with a Gorilla pod. I will improve, I promise. For now, though. Hope you enjoy the movie below. It's divided into three segments because the whole thing is 23 minutes long.

Before we pre-baked the shells, Tyler glazed the edges with beaten egg yolk. He also used the same fork to poke holes in the bottom, hence the yolky spots in the middle of each of the wee pies.

Prior to baking the pies, I showed Tyler how to decorate the tops with the pie cut-outs. He really enjoyed cutting out the different shapes. Since he was making apple pies, he used a lot of apple shapes along with butterflies, suns and acorns. I also taught him how to make a glaze from some organic apricot and orange spread. You can see here that he and I glazed our pies prior to baking.

My new set of wee pie cutters had lots of butterflies and suns. Tyler wanted a butterfly pattern for his little sister, Becca, who likes butterflies. Isn't that nice?

The final pies. I made the ones on the right and Tyler decorated the ones on the left. In the upper left corner is a cookie he made from the remains of the pie shell dough.

After Tyler and I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we headed downtown to Angelica Kitchen (12th Street near 2nd Ave). If you haven't been there, it's an organic vegan paradise. For $6.50, you can have a "picnic plate," like I had, with a serving of hummus and pita, an interesting cold salad of roasted tomatoes and other lovely veggies in season, and my favorite bit -- the walnut lentil pate. Makes me want some right now just thinking about it, but since I'm an hour and change south and west of the City, that's not happening now. I have to commend my 11 year old nephew, who bravely tried everything. I wasn't crazy about the hummus, so he ate mine. I had his salad. But, he really liked the walnut-lentil pate, so I might just try to figure out a way to make it myself.

We each had "picnic plates," which were made up of three items from a select menu. Tyler's, shown here, had (in order from left to right) the simple salad, baked marinated tofu, and hummus.

Here's my young nephew, Tyler. He's standing on the steps in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It was his first visit to the Met, and I hope not the last. We only had time to see the armor and the armory before leaving for lunch.