Despite the less than delightful weather (ie it's raining steadily), I also had my walking food tour of the Upper West Side, with NoshWalks.
My first impressions were not great, and the criticisms I'd read seemed accurate. Myra, our guide, thought I was joining her on a different tour/day, she didn't have enough maps, and at our first stop (the huge Cathedral of St John the Divine) she gave us neither a time or location to meet up afterwards. It was only when one of the other tour-ees came and fetched me that I was able to rejoin the group. (I couldn't ring her as I didn't have internet access to retrieve her phone number; she didn't think I was on this tour so didn't have mine, and I didn't have a copy of the tour plan so I could meet up with them.) The food wasn't pre-ordered, although she did have us wait while she rang ahead to order at some places. She didn't have any contingency plans to accommodate the less-than-wonderful weather, and the whole thing felt extraordinarily disorganised, particularly from someone who had been running these tours for over a decade. But then I didn't want a slick, touristy type tour, so I stuck with it.
So, with that out of the way, on with the food. The food ranged from the okay to pretty good, and covered a diverse range of cultures and styles.
We started with a sample of strudel from the Hungarian Pastry Shop (1030 Amsterdam @ 111th St). I tried a bit of the apple and of the poppy seed; having three pieces so I could try the cherry strudel as well seemed unnecessarily greedy. I've had apple strudel before, but not poppy seed. Black, sticky, sweet filling in the traditional thin layered pastry. I wasn't terribly surprised to hear that a Greek was now running the shop - it wasn't that far removed from baklava and similar greek pastries that I've had many times before.
Next stop was St John the Divine (aka St John the Unfinished). Myra did draw our attention to the statues around the main front doors, which I had overlooked on my earlier visit. But I'll include that with my post about the Cathedral.
I caught up with the others at Bombay Frankie/Roti Roll (994 Amsterdam @ 109th). She had ordered a couple of types of roti rolls, or 'frankies', which were roti bread wrapped around fillings - aloo masala (potato and peas) and palak paneer (spinach and cheese). They were pretty good, but again nothing I hadn't tried before, and pretty bland.
Next up were tamales from an Ecuadorian food cart, (NW cnr Amsterdam & 106th, Saturdays only). We ate these standing under the awning of the next stop. These were chicken tamales, which from the inside out, was strips of chicken, marinated, encased in corn meal/polenta type stuff, wrapped in corn husks tied with string. I'm guessing they were steamed for a long time. The green sauce that came with them had a good kick to it, and relieved the fairly bland taste of the tamale itself.
The shop we stood out front of to eat these (while Myra went inside to order) was a Dominican restaurant Ranchito (924 Amsterdam @ 105th). From here, she got sweet plantain and at the recommendation of one of the tour-ees, a serve of mangu (man-GOO). Now I really don't like banana, and plantain are a cousin to bananas, but I figured I should give it a burl. The sweet plantain were slices of plantain, that had been cooked somehow (grilled, baked, I'm not sure). They were sweet, and sticky and not at all banana flavoured; more like honey-coated sweet potato. The mangu (which we ate elsewhere) is made from green plantain, coarsely mashed with garlic, and topped with caramelised red onion. It was neither here nor there, not bad, not great.
Myra had hoped we could seek refuge from the persistent rain by eating in at our next stop, but baulked when they demanded a $5pp surcharge for the large group. She ordered two combos - one meat, one vegetarian - from Awash (947 Amsterdam @ 106th). The park where she'd normally take her groups offered no shelter from the rain. We ended up standing on the porch of the Youth Hostel (891 Amsterdam @ 103rd). We ate the mangu here, as well as the Ethiopian food from Awash.
Like food from many cultures, Ethiopian food is eaten with the fingers, using bits of flat bread (injera in this case) to pick up a morsel of filling. The fillings included collard greens (I'm still not quite sure what this is, but it was green and slightly bitter, with stem and leaves, possibly like baby silverbeet), green lentils in a thick sauce, beetroot and potato, an eggy/meal-y mix with peas in it, and some other things I can't remember. The meat combo had stewed chicken, lamb and beef, each still on the bone, as well as some of the same items as in the vegetarian combo. This was good and filling, with some lovely complex flavours. (The photo is of the leftovers - I was too interested in trying it to take pictures first.) Thankfully, by the time we finished, the rain had also finished.
The next stop was Krik Krak, a Haitian restaurant at 844 Amsterdam @101st. The house specialty is griot (meaty dumplings that the reviews stuck in the window raved about), and I think I might need to go back to try. Instead, we had finger-length fried things of manioc, served with a very piquant sauce. One of the tour-ees, the father in a family group of four from Italy, was given a heads-up on the spiciness of the sauce. Nonetheless, he dipped his piece generously into the sauce. We watched as his face registered the kick, and then chuckled as he came back for more. (He was the last, so double-dipping was of no concern.)
At this point, Myra showed us what was in the large bag she had lugged about with her all tour (it's not heavy, she kept assuring us). Carefully wrapped up in multiple layers of plastic bags, she had a large cake box. Inside were matzoh, large (12" diameter) wafers, toasted and slightly charred. This is a particular specialty at Passover (this weekend), and Myra was joining her family immediately after the tour for seder, for whom she had bought these from the place you buy matzoh from. However, she gave us each a taste. It's an unsalted, bland, crisp cracker, made from flour and water (strictly unleavened) and cooking must be completed within 18minutes of the flour being wetted, to remain kosher, or suitable for Passover.
Our final stop was El Malecon a Dominican restaurant at 764 Amsterdam @ 97th). She ordered four things she called caramel flan. Around 3" diameter, these were almost certainly made from caramelised sweetened condensed milk, probably with some gelatin added. Whatever they were, they were very nice. She also recommended the cafe du leche (or something), but me and the other two antipodeans chose tea. The tea was a Liptons tea bag in a paper cup with hot water. It took a few goes to convince them to bring some cold milk for us to add to the tea, but we all got there in the end.
While sitting in the restaurant, I grilled the two locals at our table, and got some suggestions for other things to try and where to try them. In particular, I will seek out challah (recommended by the Kiwi, who had lived with an orthodox Jewish family in Melbourne for a time) from one of the kosher bakeries on Kingston Ave in Brooklyn (note to self, take the 3 train, get off at Kingston; can walk to Brooklyn Museum from there). Another suggestion is to have a breakfast of grits, biscuit and eggs from Amy Ruth's, a soul food restaurant just around the corner from where I'm staying. Apparently, there are very few places that serve grits (white corn meal porridge, as best as I can tell) in NY, and that's the place to get it from. Whether I can forego one of Carlos' breakfasts for these grits is another matter entirely.
All but the beverage and tip at the end were included in the tour price, and I felt comfortably full (okay, slightly overfull, but not uncomfortably so) by the end. Despite the decidedly inauspicious start, I enjoyed it enormously and got to sample a lot of foods I would not have tried (if only because it would be impossible on my own to do so). All up, a very worthwhile three hours and $49, although I'm kicking myself I didn't take more photos. (In my defence, it was hard enough negotiating everything while holding an umbrella, so photo taking was not a high priority.)
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