Tag Archives: bronx

Lunch at the End of the Line: New York’s Key West

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buttery shrimp“Usually I’m not so talkative,” John told us gruffly. I’m not certain if he meant this as an apology or a warning. He was the proprietor of the Marine Supply Store on City Island, which was, essentially, a fabulous disarray of fishing equipment and knick-knacks in a ten by ten room, with a mountain of propellers, outboard motors, plastic Santa Clauses, ropes, buckets and other flotsam occupying the side yard. John had owned the place, on a little strip of land in the Long Island Sound, for over fifty years. After reeling through a list of every restaurant on the island and passing on some bits of information that seemed loaded with meaning that we couldn’t quite interpret (“Some people, they love the Crab Shanty. Some people, they don’t like the Crab Shanty.”), he ended by saying, “Look: they all pull out the fresh seafood. There’s not a place here that’s bad.”

end of the island

The end of the island

A few weeks ago, I had never heard of City Island. But this isle of tree-lined, waterside seclusion was definitely, definitely at the end of the line, a long 6 train trip from Brooklyn with a bonus bus jaunt at the end. Since it was, I’d heard, famous for its seafood and since I haven’t eaten much seafood in the decade-plus that I’ve been a vegetarian, I decided to bring along Jason as a more expert second opinion.

With all of the suggestions from John, we felt even more confused than when we’d first stepped off the bus, but we decided to press on to the very tip of the island, for a look at the water and two of the establishments that John had mentioned: Johnny’s Reef and Tony’s Pier. The names alone seemed to call for a showdown. Continue reading →

Lunch at the End of the Line: Making Frankie and Albert Proud

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Sinatra's MugI’d heard Morris Park, near the end of the Eastchester-Dyre 5 line, was sometimes called the Little Italy of the Bronx. Given that, there were certain things I expected to find there (pizzerias, Italian bakeries, cigar shops with young Sinatra’s mug shot blown up and displayed prominently), and I was not disappointed. When I spoke to a couple of Morris Park natives, they gave me some tips about the longstanding neighborhood favorites like Patricia’s (a classy Italian joint famous for its Spaghetti à la Frank Sinatra), Emilio’s (a pizza place that they assured me was “cheap but really good”), and Hawaii Sea (an Asian fusion restaurant where one of them had worked as a busboy when he was sixteen).

What I hadn’t anticipated was that the entire eastern side of the neighborhood would feel like an urban university campus because it was home to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Students are notoriously good at ferreting out good and inexpensive lunch spots, so I did some asking around. A young man of imposing size and thoughtful sincerity told me that “everybody” went to the pizza place named Coals. Several others had mentioned the same place, and when I walked past, the fragrant promise of copious amounts of garlic coaxed me inside.

This, perhaps, is a good time to address the problem of pizza snobbery that is rampant in New York. Continue reading →

Lunch at the End of the Line: Woodlawn Odyssey

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flying colors of katonahThe dead people of Woodlawn are a lot easier to find than the living and eating ones. Step off the end of the 5 line and the mammoth cemetery is right in front of you, shrouding most everything else from view.

I knew nothing of Woodlawn, but I thought I should make some trips away from the more southerly subway ends with which I am more familiar. So I plucked Woodlawn pretty much at random from the Bronx possibilities and took care not to look too much at a map—that seemed like cheating. Surveying the vast empty expanse of the cemetery on one side and Van Cortlandt Park on the other, however, I was having second thoughts. I had a vague memory that civilization lay somewhere to the northwest, on a street that started with a K. I struck out in that direction.

I like walking, but walking with the nagging possibility that you are going the wrong way is not so fun. I decided that if I kept the cemetery always on my right, like Captain Vancouver hugging the Pacific Northwest coast, I couldn’t get too lost. But there really weren’t many landmarks save for a giant sign reminding me that I could get special “under construction” pricing on mausoleum crypt space. Continue reading →