NYC Dining: Pastrami Queen / Orwasher’s Bakery

Pastrami Queen
1125 Lexington Ave # 2
New York, NY 10075-0429
(212) 734-1500

Web Site: http://www.pastramiqueen.com

You’re definitely know you’re not getting Asian-Fusion cuisine when you see a sign like this.

The old school New York Jewish Deli is going extinct. We have perhaps less than a dozen notable places in Manhattan, let alone the five boroughs that conform to the classic Jewish Deli archetype where you can get a good Pastrami or Corned Beef sandwich, and I may even have to downgrade that dozen to less than a handful, including Katz’s, 2nd Avenue Deli (which re-opened in 2008 in a new location) , Carnegie, The Stage, Sarge’s and Junior’s (which has really focused on its cheesecake business now more than anything else, although they do a great burger). All of those landmark delis are either downtown or in Midtown. Other fine examples, like Liebman’s in the Bronx, are lesser known but are part of the city’s restaurant culture that is in rapid decline.

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NOW We’re Cooking with Gas, Cablevision!

As I mentioned in a post last week about broadband service outages, Last Friday, I was upgraded to Optimum Online’s Ultra service. Ultra is a new service offering from Cablevision which provides DOCSIS 3.0 service, which is rated at 101 Megabits (Mbps) or 12.53 Megabytes (MB) per second for download speeds and 15 Megabits or 1.85 Megabytes per second upload. Both of these speeds are advertised as “Up to”, in other words burst mode speeds in optimal network conditions.

Click to read the rest of this article at ZDNet Tech Broiler.

NYC Dining: Ann & Tony’s

Ann & Tony’s
2407 Arthur Avenue, Bronx NY 10458
(718) 933-1469

Web Site: http://www.annandtonysonline.com

Ann & Tony’s restaurant in the Arthur Avenue section of Belmont in the Bronx is one of the oldest continually operating Italian restaurants in the borough, dating back to the 1920s.

Twitter is a very interesting phenomenon. I’ve only really started using it in the last year, initially as way of sending automatic updates from OTB and Tech Broiler to people who actually cared about using the service. A year ago, I thought the idea was pretty pointless, with these limited 140-character messages that people send out that everyone on the Internet can see, which seemed to focus on fairly dumb, exhibitionist status updates such as “eating a Cannoli” or “This alfredo sauce is @#$%ing awesome dude!” so I stayed away from issuing my own updates because I didn’t want to look like a total ass. I knew a lot of people were LOOKING at Twitter, but I didn’t feel like engaging in it beyond the “let’s feed my blog updates into it and see how it goes” capacity.

But then something else happened. I joined FaceBook, which hooked me up with a lot of old friends and many other foodie and technology industry colleagues. But FaceBook, like Twitter, requires you to enter updates about what is going on with your daily life to make your friends feel like you haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. So if I was now committing to doing FaceBook updates, I might as well start updating my Twitter as well. So I downloaded Twitter software for my Blackberry and my PC and started sending updates to Twitter, and automatically syncing those to FaceBook.

So now I’m addicted to Twitter. I have TweetDeck running constantly in the background on my PC and whenever I’m traveling I have TinyTwitter running on my BlackBerry. When people have questions, such as when Eater “Retwittered” a particular person’s inquiry about where to eat in the Bronx on Arthur Avenue, I offered up some advice. No later than 10 minutes afterward, I get a message from Twitterer @RalphNapolitano:

@jperlow saw your tweet about Arthur Ave. When are you coming to eat in my restaurant…LOL!!!

So I look Ralph up. Along with this brother Anthony, he Co-owns Ann & Tony’s, one of the many Italian-American restaurants on Arthur Avenue. Normally, when restaurateurs want me to come visit, I usually get  an email extending an invite to an open house or a press event, or sometimes even a phone call from a publicist, but receiving a challenge over Twitter to come eat was a first. Okay, then, I’ll play. What kind of guy broadcasts a message like that to the entire Internet and not expect a serious foodie like myself to take him up on it?

I told him I was coming over that very evening, with hungry wife and friend in tow, and he had better be ready to face the consequences if the food wasn’t any good.

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2009 NASFT Fancy Food Show

Images and Text by Rachel Nash Perlow

I’m going to start this entry by showing  you my favorite picture from this year’s Fancy Food Show:

This is from the mushroom display at D’Artagnan’s very large booth. Feel free to make it your monitor wallpaper, I did. :)  D’Artagnan is very proud of the fresh produce they offer, which is more than just mushrooms, as you can see when we took our tour of their Newark, NJ, facility back in April 2009.

Click the link to see the many other vendors I visited at the 2009 Fancy Food Show.

NYC: 2009 Fancy Food Show

One of the many highlights of the 2008 NASFT Fancy Foods Show in New York City at Javits Center. The Summer 2009 Show starts Sunday, June 27 and runs through Tuesday, June 30th.

Web Site: NASFT Fancy Food Shows

NJ Dining: Fire & Oak at Westin Newport

Fire & Oak Restaurant / Westin Newport
485 Washington Boulevard, Jersey City NJ 07310
(201) 610-9610

Web Site: http://www.southcitygrill.com

South City Restaurant Group’s latest, Fire & Oak restaurant at the brand-new Jersey City Westin Newport.

Rachel and I were recently invited to dine at a press luncheon for Fire & Oak restaurant, a brand new casual dining restaurant attached to the recently opened Westin Newport hotel in Jersey City, which is conveniently located near the Jersey City PATH and only a block and a half away from the Port Imperial Ferry to Midtown and Downtown Manhattan.

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A 2009 Big Apple BBQ Block Party Montage

Website: http://www.bigapplebbq.com

The 2009 Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, held in New York City’s Madison Square Park, was a blast as ever. This year Rachel and I only went for a few hours on Saturday, but it was more than enough barbecue to last us for a while! You can still catch the second day on Sunday if these photos are making your mouth water (click for slideshow of full size hi-res photos).

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NJ Dining: Ultimate Banh Mi Sandwiches at Mo Pho and Saigon R.

Mo‘ Pho‘
212 Main St, Fort Lee, NJ
(201) 363-8886

Saigon R.
58 W Palisade Ave, Englewood, NJ
(201) 871-4777

Related Article: Saigon R. and Mo’ Pho’

If you’ve been following the latest trends in the New York City dining scene, no doubt you’ve read and heard about the most recent Vietnamese sandwich craze — also known as the Banh Mi – that’s sweeping the Metropolitan area. If you take trends at face value, you’ve probably also read the reports from Eater that the Banh Mi has “Run its course”.

The fact of the matter is, the Banh Mi is the right sandwich at the right time. And let’s face it, here in New Jersey, we’re a little slow on the uptake when following up on New York City trends. But I submit to you that when we set our mind to something, and when we get around to it, we do it better than anyone else.

A few weeks ago — prior to the publication of the New York Times article which catapulted the Banh Mi into the front and center collective foodie consciousness — Chef KT Tran (of Mo Pho and Saigon R. fame) decided that she needed to add some new offerings to her menu, and I suggested Banh Mi, particularly as I knew KT could put her creative skills and 30 years of Vietnamese cooking expertise behind it. KT’ and her family have operated Vietnamese restaurants since the 1970’s in the New York Area, and we’ve been very lucky to have her in Northern New Jersey, where her bold Southeast Asian flavors are tailored to meet the tastes of a very diverse customer base.

A typical store-bought Banh Mi from New York’s Chinatown. Usually these go for 2 or 3 dollars apeice. But there’s not much meat on this thing.

Fully aware of my past “Ultimate Sandwich” exploits with Chef Christine Nunn, at Picnic Caterers, Chef Tran knew she had to up the ante in over-thet-top sandwich insanity, particularly when competing with Nunn’s Rendevous at Burger Mountain, the Ultimate BLT and the Foie You.

We knew of one weapon in the Vietnamese culinary arsenal that could hold up to these giants: PORK. And lots of it.

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A Visit to D’Artagnan

D’Artagnan is one of the most important suppliers of luxury proteins and ingredients to many of the nation’s top restaurants.

My chef friend Christine Nunn, of Picnic Caterers in Emerson, was recently invited over to visit the D’Artagnan facility in Newark. For those of you not familiar with D’Artagnan, it is the premier supplier of luxury ingredients to many of New York City’s top restaurants. What D’Artagnan is most famous for, however, is that it is one of the largest (if not the largest) distributors of domestically produced Foie Gras in the United States. Rachel and I decided to come along and take some photos, so we could show you what this very impressive operation is all about.

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NYC Dining: Abbondanza on Arthur Avenue (UPDATED!)

With today being Good Friday, I thought I would bring back one of my favorite posts, that being a pictorial tour of Arthur Avenue. The Belmont section of the Bronx comes alive during the Easter season, and you can still get your fill of Easter Pies and other great Italian-American foods there this weekend. Check it out on Saturday!

Related food post not to be missed: A Christobal Colom Arthur Avenue Mission

– Jason

The Belmont section of the Bronx is by far one of my favorite eating and food shopping destinations — as I tell many people, if you’re looking for the real Little Italy, it’s not in Manhattan, but on Arthur Avenue between 184th and 187th street. It’s a neighborhood frozen in time, where you can get imported delicacies from the old country as well as fantastic Italian-American eats which prominently feature them.

The very core of Belmont’s Italian shopping are the stores within and surrounding the Arthur Avenue Retail Market, where Mike’s Deli, Pete’s Meat, and a number of green grocers are located.

Dave Grecco, the presiding capitan of Mike’s Deli.

And his dad, the legendary Mike Grecco, salumi purveyor to the rich, famous, the everyman, and everybody in-between.

If you catch Dave in the middle of the day, he might be doing his stretching exercises (2004).

Il Duce guards the cache of tuna cans.

You need salamis?

Arthur Avenue is the REAL Little Italy of New York City. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for some more mouth-watering Italian-American delicacies.