Food. Glorious Food.

There’s something very beautiful about the food here. First of all, the presentation is like nothing I’ve ever seen: piles of tiny cut cucumbers in shiny metallic pans, deep red cranberries in pristine white bowls, overstuffed clouds of cream cheese, walls of apples stacked like bricks. The desserts in a typical deli are so beautiful they don’t even look edible. The shine on a mini cheesecake offset ever so slightly by a light sprinkling of powdered sugar. If it wasn’t for the rat / cockroach problem, I would take one of them home and use it as a desk ornament. It would be the most delicate, beautiful thing in my apartment.
Everywhere you go is a constant, overwhelming stimulation of food. In addition to the visual displays there are a hundred different scents in the air. Some not pleasant (more about that in the summer, I’m sure), but some are magnificent. Freshly baking bread early in the morning, sautéed garlic outside the corner Italian restaurant, the effervescent tang of ginger in Chinatown, food permeates all senses. It’s no wonder New Yorkers eat out more than anywhere else in the country – nearly 13 times a week on average. Temptation is everywhere. What people in other parts of the country only see in grocery stores – piles of oranges, piping hot croissants, cases of fresh almonds – people in New York see just by walking down the street. Good thing we walk so much (nearly 2 miles a day on average) or this would be a city with an obesity problem!
New Yorkers are passionate about food. If you give them the chance, they’ll talk your ear off about it. Where is the best pizza? Knish? Egg roll? Ask 100 different New Yorkers and you’ll get 100 different answers, all impassioned without a hint of doubt or question. I asked my broker where to get a good slice in my new neighborhood and he immediately went into spots where I could not only pick up a great pizza, but where I could get a great meatball sub, who had the best brunch, and where to go for barbecue. People are always eating in this town. There is no time that is off limits for consuming food. There is a small French bistro next to my apartment open 24 hours a day and the restaurant is never empty. Never.
I ran into a woman at a local pub and we started talking about New York. I asked her what she liked best about this town – the museums? The parks? The theatre? No. Her answer: “You can get any type of food delivered to your door day or night. Want pie a la mode at 3:00 in the morning? You can get it…..at your door!” Here eyes lit up when she was telling me this like a kid seeing his first Christmas tree. Here was her favorite thing about the most famous city in the world – food delivery.
This is another New York-ism: the delivery of food. Nearly every single restaurant on this island will deliver to your home. Old bikes with oversized baskets sit at the ready in front of the nearly 20,000 restaurants in this city. When you combine the variety and quality of food in New York with kitchens the size of a car trunk, you get a lot of people eating a lot of food made by others. Take in, drop in, order out…it’s all good here in New York. Maybe they should name it New Fork.