Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [54]
Katz’s
205 E. Houston St.
212–254–2246
New York, NY
BLD | $$
This relic of bygone New York operates like an old-time urban deli: you get a ticket when you enter and gather food at different stations along the counter, while the ticket is marked accordingly. Pay on your way out. It is a cavernous eating hall with lines of tables, the air filled with the noise of shouted orders and clattering carving knives and the aroma of the odoriferous garlicky salamis hanging along the wall. Pictures of happy celebrity customers ranging from comics Jerry Lewis and Henny Youngman to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly are everywhere.
Ordinary table service by waiters is available, but the better way to do it is to personally engage with a counterman. Here’s how: make eye contact with one of the white-aproned carvers who is busy slicing meats and making sandwiches behind the glass. Once you’ve gotten his attention, be quick and tell him what you want: pastrami on rye or on a club roll; or corned beef or brisket. They slice meat and assemble sandwiches with the certainty and expertise of Dutch diamond cutters.
Even if you don’t enjoy the sometimes exasperating process of getting your food, all will be forgiven when you heft a Katz’s pastrami sandwich: three-quarters of a pound of meat that has been expertly severed into pieces so chunky that the word “slice” seems too lightweight to describe them. Each brick red, glistening moist hunk is rimmed black, redolent of garlic, smoke, and pickling spices, as savory as food can be. You can pay a dollar extra to have it cut extra-lean, but it is hard to imagine these taut, pink slices any leaner than they are.
Beyond superb cured meat: Katz’s hot dogs just may be the city’s best all-beefers; omelets are made deli-style, meaning open-face and unfolded; there is matzoh ball soup and chicken noodle soup as well as potato latkes (pancakes) and blintzes. French fries are large-cut, creamy inside with skins that range from crunchy to leathery to parchment-tender. To drink you can have a classic New York egg cream, chocolate or vanilla.
Magnolia’s
21 Front St.
No phone
Patterson, NY
BL | $
Before K. C. Scott opened up the original Magnolia’s in Carmel in April 1999, it took a long while to come up with the right name. Then one day, standing in her kitchen, she found herself looking at one of the antique signs she had collected…for Magnolia Dairy Products. “I like Magnolia because it has a slow, Southern feel,” she explains, noting that her goal in starting this seductive little restaurant was to create a place that provided quality food at a reasonable price in a setting that was as relaxed as a friend’s kitchen.
“We have an aversion to anything pre-made,” K.C. says, noting that all the breads, the salad dressings, and the pastries are made right here in the semi-open kitchen. They smoke barbecue brisket and pork butts for hours, then bathe the meats in a house sauce that will snap taste buds to attention. At breakfast, the repertoire includes omelets, French toast, pancakes, an egg-potato-cheese-salsa burrito, and waffles (weekends only).
Sandwiches are swell, especially the “Local Hero” portobello mushroom and pepper sandwich on focaccia bread and the “Ludington” cheese and tomato sandwich on hearth bread (named after Revolutionary War hero Sybil Ludington). We are fond of two always-available wraps: the Catalina, which is an assortment of vegetables, including delicious roasted peppers, in an herb wrap, and the Cortland, which is grilled chicken and Havarti cheese and pieces of locally grown Cortland apple.
Margon
136 W. 46th St.
212–354–5013
New York, NY
BLD | $
Margon is a personality-plus hole in the wall around the corner from otherwise Disneyfied Times Square. Plush, it is not. A ramp leads downward to a long, narrow space with