Tuesday, October 2, 2012.
New England-Canada Cruise Journal, Day Twelve: New York City. Guy Fieri's Place. Gallagher's Steak House. New Camera.
Overnight, with lighter headwinds, the Queen Mary 2 managed to make up almost all of the time it lost two days ago, and was in the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal just a half-hour late. We rolled off the ship carrying all our bags (by far the easiest way to disembark) at a quarter to ten. After Mary Ann investigated a dozen taxi and limo drivers, she found one to her liking and we climbed into his limo (of course it was a limo). He took us to the Hotel Strand for $51.
The Strand is a new hotel, having been built from the ground up on the site of a former parking garage on West 37th Street just off Fifth Avenue. Mary Ann, a collector of fine hotels, has shifted her taste away from grand hotels like the Plaza and the Ritz-Carlton to these smaller, hipper hostelries. We agree on every part of that except the price, which here was over $400 a night. The next time we get an urge for Autumn In New York, I will remember that the high season in New York begins on October 1.
We were too early to expect the room to be available, so we dumped the bags and headed out into the misty streets. They would soon turn rainy, forcing me to buy an umbrella. Mary Leigh had a raincoat, and Mary Ann didn't seem to care that it was raining, and just plunged ahead as usual.
I had only one goal, and not an urgent one. New York is full of camera stores, and I am looking for a new camera. I haven't given up completely on the camera I left in the taxi in Boston two weeks ago, but getting it back is certainly a longshot. And I need a camera. (A lack of one is why not many photos have appeared in this department for the past few days.)
As for restaurants, I know better than to ask the girls to try anything exotic. The limo driver was from Hong King, and gave me a couple of good leads in Chinatown. But although his uniform and car passed MA's inspection, no Chinese guy would be telling her where to eat.
The Marys were, as usual, thinking about pizza, hot dogs, and hamburgers. I guess I could put up with that. Pizza and hot dogs are major New York specialties.
However, they found something worse. Much worse.
By luck, our random walk took us in front of Guy Fieri's American Kitchen and Bar, just off Times Square. Fieri is the host of the wildly successful and borderline gross Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives show on the Food Network. The girls watch that kind of pap all the time, and began screaming with joy at the prospect of having a little Guy rub off on them. There was no escape. I just went along, hoping for gratitude later.
Guy Fieri's is made for the kind of Guy he is. Muscle-car memorabilia dominates the decor. Big place, with lots of open space. Room for 600 diners, I heard. The menu was loaded with all the stuff my girls love: burgers, fried everything, ribs, wings, cheese fries, a few faux Cajun, Italian and Mexican dishes.
Here's what I registered:
1. It's part of a chain of brewpubs--ten of them in New York alone.
2. It was open three weeks when we tried it.
3. The background audio fit in a category I call "head-banging music."
Yep, all the things I love.
I kept my mouth shut. I expected to have a major meal in a real restaurant tonight, and a snit might endanger that. Instead, I ordered a half-dozen grilled oysters, a hybrid of Drago's style (the magic reaches all the way up here!) and Rockefellers (after all, were were just a few blocks from Rockefeller Center). They were pretty good, actually, but even atrocious restaurants have a sleeper good dish on the menu somewhere. The girls ate just what I imagined they would. They thought ti was just okay. But what did that matter? We escaped after about an hour and a half, the Marys very happy.
It was raining even harder now, so we moved faster at first, then--finally--in the direction of the hotel. Along the way, we passed in front of Gallagher's Steak House. It's an oldie, dating back to the 1920s. I peeked through the front window and was taken aback by what I saw. I expected tables and chairs, but saw shelves full of whole sirloin roasts. It was a dry-aging room, of this there was no doubt.
This, I decided, would be our dinner spot tonight. A number of listeners over the years have said they liked the place. A scan of my guidebooks when we got back to the room showed that it wasn't any writer's first choice, but they all kind of liked it. And steakhouses are an easy sell with the Marys.
A half-block past Gallagher's, we finally encountered a camera and electronics shop. These are a lot like the ones on Canal Street, where if you know what you're doing you can get exactly what you want at a good price. Unlike the New Orleans camera shops where I've bought just about everything most of my life, these guys will deal.
I talked to Ed. There was a small Nikon I saw on the ship back in February. It sold for $200, and I should have bought it then. Ed knew exactly the camera I was talking about, but he also knew there was a reason no display model was behind the camera's card in the window. Out of stock.
We dickered around for the next forty-five minutes. Ed persuaded me of something I already knew, but was too cheap to act upon. I needed a bigger lens, a better camera, and a macro lens for my food shots. He pulled out camera after camera and we discussed. Mary Ann stood by and kept encouraging me to step up my ambitions. "This is what you do for a living!" she said. "You need a better camera," she said.
We passed the $600 mark for a Canon EOS. I told Ed that I would think about it. He threw in the macro lens and a bunch of accessories. "What time do you close?" I asked. Seven. Same as our reservation at Gallagher's was. Ed gave me his cod.
Back at the hotel, I showered and took a nap while the Marys--of course--went back out into the rain. Not a moment of New York could be wasted, no matter how miserable it made you! They were back in barely enough time for them to get ready for dinner.
The cab pulled up in front of the camera store at seven sharp. Ed wasn't there. I guess he didn't trust me to return. Well, another Greek got the sale. I had to talk him into the deal the Ed had talked me into, but we had the new camera. And I felt good about it.
Especially after having a Gibson at Gallagher's. Where we were seated at what looked to me the best table in the house. Mary Ann thought it was a tourist table. On the other hand, she showed not the slightest disapproval of the camera purchase, even though with tax it came to almost $800. What's done is done. I now unboxed, assembled, and began using the camera to record our dinner.
I started with a half-dozen Blue Point oysters, the prize of the New York waters. (Which in its heyday was the best oyster area in the world.) They're the same species as Louisiana oysters, and were just right with the Gibson's oniony flavor.
Salads all around. Then a filet for ML, a crabcake for MA, and--of course--the large, bone-in sirloin strip, dry-aged for three weeks. I was surprised that the price for this was a shade less than what I've paid in a few New Orleans places. The dry-aged flavor was present and satisfying, and the beef had the chewiness of a strip but the tenderness I expected from a slab o' beef with this kind of marbling. But my customary thought whenever I eat a steak welled up. Good as this is, it would have been twice as good with New Orleans-style sizzling butter.
I got into a discussion about steaks with the waiter, an Irish guy with a friendly, classic New York personality. I tested him with an unusual request: Don't give me a steak cut from the vein end. He nodded. "Want to see the kitchen?" he asked. Yes!Some fifty steaks were roasting over a coal fire, set into a deep brick wall.
I was happy, what with the Gibson and my new toy and this old, masculine joint. Gallagher's, I think, may have been what the founders of Smith And Wollensky had in mind when they opened their New York place, more than fifty years after Gallagher's opened theirs.
On the other hand, the Marys were not pleased. They agreed that the filet was mediocre, and the crab cake not the equal of, say, Keith Young's. It went without saying that they didn't share my enthusiasm for time-worn, old-fart restaurants. But if they thought I was getting even for the Guy Fieri massacree earlier in the day, they didn't say so. I myself have not had that notion until writing these words right now.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
