"New York, New York it's a helluva town,
The Bronx is up and the Battery's down..."
This week my friend Shemetra turned 40. It is shocking when my own friends started doing this… turning 40 really seems like something one’s parent’s friends should be doing. To celebrate the event properly, Shemetra planned a mom’s getaway weekend trip to New York City to see The Color Purple and to eat good food.
We ate a lot of good food, and I will get to that, but first The Color Purple. It was great. Fantasia, was truly wonderful in the lead role, and Oprah Winfrey showed up at the very same show we were at, creating quite a stir and giving us a little extra thrill. Then at intermission we noticed that Jane Fonda was in the theatre too. What a night!
On the drive down from Boston, I warned Shemetra that I wanted to go to a new gelato place on the Upper West Side called Grom’s. She was up for it so we worked it into our thoroughly mapped out schedule.
We parked our car at noon on Saturday and jumped on the subway to go up to Sylvia’s in Harlem for lunch. All the guidebooks we’d read warned us off Sylvia’s with language like, “Sylvia’s is an institution and the food tastes institutional, “ but we wanted to go there and see for ourselves. As it turned out, between Subway issues – no Uptown trains were running from Columbus Circle so we had to go Downtown to go Uptown - and then the wait when we finally got to the restaurant it was 2 o’clock before we were at the table looking at a full plate of food. Boy was it ever worth the wait.
All three of us ended up ordering the same thing – the rib and fried chicken combo with collard greens and candied yams for the sides. The greens were absolutely delicious – I could have eaten a heaping plate of just greens. The menu claimed the collard greens were cooked with smoked turkey, but Shemetra and Sherina said they could taste some pickled pork in there. I’ll have to take their word on that, but oh they were good. We all agreed the fried chicken was perfectly seasoned and perfectly cooked – it was scrumptious. I liked the ribs – they had been rubbed with a sweet rub and roasted and then finished with a spicy peppery sauce… for me the flavor combination of subtly sweet and hot and peppery was great. The candied yam was okay, but had a cloying sweet flavor in it that I could not place until Shemetra said it had too much vanilla in it. Actually I think it was imitation vanilla and it was certainly too much which was too bad because the yam was perfectly candied and would have been delicious. Cornbread came with the meal and it was crisp and buttery – quite buttery actually, but not too greasy.
We were far too full to order dessert there although I was tempted to anyway – peach cobbler was on the menu, but we were headed to bargain hunting on Canal Street and needed to stay mobile so I restrained myself and we headed back downtown.
At 5:45 we found ourselves in Time’s Square looking for a place to sit down and watch The Preakness before it was time to walk over and get our tickets for the show. We had actually tried to take a train up Broadway to get our much anticipated gelato at Grom, but had accidentally boarded a train that unexpectedly turned sharply eastward at 59th and headed toward Brooklyn forcing us to jump off precipitously at 5th Avenue. We ended up walking back to Times Square, momentarily giving up on the gelato. We ended up in the basement of Rosie O’Grady's Saloon. As far as I could tell it appeared to be the perfect tourist trap. Therefore I was oh so pleasantly surprised when I ordered my chocolate mousse with Grand Marinier and it turned out to be excellent… just like I make it, in fact, which is my hightest rating. I ate the whole thing - only allowing Shemetra a little taste to verify that it was of the highest quality - with a glass of Shiraz. It was a great horse race even if my horse didn't win.
Sunday we took a walk around midtown and I picked up a dark chocolate dipped glacee apricot at the Rockefeller Center Godiva store. The apricot was sweet, but with little trace of fruit flavor and the chocolate was unremarkable – my general feeling toward Godiva. We had passed the Teucher boutique moments before but sadly it had not yet opened for the day.
We stumbled on a street fair on 9th Avenue with vendors and music and all kinds of delightful things to try. The food was okay, but the atmosphere was festive and fit in perfectly with our celebration weekend. I got an above average falafel sandwich with “the works” minus hot sauce. It was fresh and tasty, but it was very hard to eat while walking and I was too preoccupied with staying clean in the midst of dripping hummous and tahini to savor the flavors and textures as they deserved. Then there was some shrimp cocktail with a nice bright cocktail sauce and some fried green plaintains which were okay, but could have been thinner and crisper. Sherina and I both spotted a sign for “Thai Food $1.00” which lured us in to try a mediocre chicken satay with a one dimensionally sweet peanut sauce… less than adequate. You get what you pay for I guess. I passed up the Arepas (sigh) and the empanadas and the Asian Chicken salad because there really is only so much a body can eat at one time – no matter how sorely tempted.
We were back in our car pulling out of the hotel parking lot at noon when I brought up the idea of driving up to 76th and Broadway to get some gelato at Grom’s. “You know you do get kind of obsessive about these things, Sara.” Shemetra pointed out. Hey, I’m the first to admit it. I am obsessive about food… its food for goodness sake… what is it there for, but to be obsessed over? I didn’t actually step into the store because I had to wait in the car on the corner of Broadway and 77th in an illegal spot, but the gelato was a revelation and well worth the weekend-long effort to try some. Shemetra and Sherina went in and met one of the co-owners and tried ever so many flavors, settling on vanilla in the end. They brought me back a dish of Gianduja, a rich and nutty chocolate hazelnut blend, smooth and creamy and wonderful. I’ll be heading back there soon to try every single one of their flavors… yum. It was the perfect ending to our New York food adventure weekend.
Sylvia’s – the Queen of Soul Food
328 Lenox Avenue
New York, NY 10027
Closet Subway: 125th and Lenox Ave.
Rosie O’Grady’s Saloon
800 7th Avenue
New York, NY 10019
Open Daily 11:30am, Dinner until Midnight
Empanada Mamas
763 9th Avenue between 51st and 52nd
GROM
IL GELATO COME UNA VOLTA
2165 Broadway
Upper West Side
New York, NY
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