Noshing
in New York
I take a bite out of the Big Apple on Famous Fat
Dave’s
Five Borough Eating Tour
I’m stuffing my face with the last
bite of what is unquestionably the best bagel to ever cross my
lips when my gastronomic tour guide imparts these essential words
of wisdom.
“My first rule on these tours—actually my only rule—is
to pace yourself,” explains part-time cab driver and full-time
foodie Dave Freedenberg as we began my personal quest to eat my
way from one end of New York City to the other. “If you do
it right, you can taste a little of this and a little of that all
day long and never get to the point where you couldn’t possibly
eat another thing.”
Freedenberg is a man who’s made it his mission—some
would say obsession—to discover all the best places to nosh
in New York. For years, Freedenberg grilled the passengers in his
cab about their favorite neighborhood eateries and then made a
point of personally taste-testing their recommendations. Now he’s
sharing the lip-smacking results on crosstown feeding frenzies
he calls Famous Fat Dave's Five-Borough Eating Tours.
Freedenberg admits his gastronomic gallivantings are organized
tours only in the loosest sense of that phrase. While he has several
established themes arranged around either a particular geographical
area (The Best of Brooklyn Tour) or type of food (The Sweet Tooth
Tour), he’s also perfectly comfortable making things up as
he goes along.
“If people tell me ahead of time what they’re interested
in I can come up with a rough itinerary,” he explains. “Or
I can just start throwing out suggestions once we get in the car
and we’ll see what sounds
good.”
I wanted to sample the most quintessentially New York foods I
could find. And I’m here to tell you the four hours I spent
with Famous Fat Dave quickly became one long and very delicious
blur.
We started our tour at H & H Bagels on Manhattan’s Upper
West Side with bagels so fresh they were steaming up the inside
of the shop’s glass cases. One bite and I knew I’d
never be able to choke down another store-bought version again.
From there it was plates of fried chicken and syrup-smothered
waffles (a better combination than it sounds) in Harlem, several
varieties of old-fashioned pickles in a Polish-speaking neighborhood
grocery in Greenpoint Brooklyn, homemade sausage slices in a Pelham
Bay pizzeria tucked away in the basement of an ordinary-looking
house, and kraut- and onion-laden hot dogs in Coney Island. All
washed down with a cup of the best hot chocolate I’ve ever
tasted in the D.U.M.B.O. section of Brooklyn.
As my time with Famous Fat Dave drew to a close, I had only one
thing on my mind: Trying to figure out how I could talk him into
going back for seconds.
Xtrordinary Xtra
While the majority of his tours last about four
hours and include 10-15 stops, Freedenberg says he once took a
particularly peckish group on a citywide munching marathon that
lasted more than 11 hours and included sampling the specialties
of 27 different grub-slingers.
The Facts
Name: Famous Fat Dave’s Five Borough Eating Tours
Location:
New York, NY
Phone: 646-496-6540
Website: www.famousfatdave.com
My Advice
- The most important words of wisdom here
are also the most obvious: Come hungry!
- Famous Fat Dave offers tours in his personal
vehicle or, for an extra fee, an authentic Checker cab. Larger
groups can be accommodated in a minivan.
- While adventurous types
may like the more spontaneous approach, we found it worked better
to give Freedenberg a general idea of the kind of foods we wanted
to sample.
- To get some ideas about eateries you may want to visit,
spends some time perusing entries in the Hungry Cabbie Blog on
Famous Fat Dave’s website.
- Famous Fat Dave’s advice
about pacing myself worked: At the end of our four-hour tour
I was ready to go get dinner. In other words, eat up and worry
about that groaning overstuffed feeling later!
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