24 Hours of Eating in NYC

Day 8: memories made

A pattern has meandered its way into life as we currently know it: indulge to excess on food the day before, wake up in the morning in desperate need of protein and fibre, and fall by the sugar-sprinkled wayside come noon. I guess that’s to be expected on a holiday/research trip/elopement. What’s curious - or perhaps not curious but more like typical and predictable bullshit human judgement - is that a small handful of folk have messaged on Instagram to tell me there’s no point abstaining from alcohol if I’m going to eat so much junk food and sugar. Well, to those people, I respectfully say that I’ve never woken up in a stranger’s bed after a croissant (I’m not saying it’ll never happen, I just haven’t yet had one good enough to forget my morals and engage in risky behaviour). Neither have I had an emotional breakdown or existential crisis because my blood glucose level was alarmingly high. I get it: we are what we eat, I know that as much as the next food obsessive, but give me a break when I’m on my bloody holiday. The other 50 weeks of the year are for me to be neurotic and controlled.

So day 8 followed that new-found pattern. We promised ourselves we’d stay local and calm, instead of tear-arsing around the city in pursuit of the perfect brownie. To that effect, we booked a table at the restaurant of the nearby Ace Hotel. Koloman is a European-style cafe dipped in Manhattan monochrome. Quiet corners and low lamplight are a refuge from the throbbing sidewalks. For an hour or so, you could be anywhere: a Parisian bistro, a Viennese coffee house, or the sitting room of a great aunt or grandma, with swathes of patterned fabric flying the flag for times gone by.

Just as a maternal figurehead could compel you to finish your plate of food, we found our arms twisted while we decided on the omelette filling; the manageress, with what I think was a South African twang, insisted we try the pain perdu (French toast). When we told her about the disappointment with the one we had at Pershing Square a few days before, she smiled knowingly and took our menus.

We started out with good intentions: sharing a mushroom omelette with herb-spiked home fries on the side. The cheese was so stringy it travelled, unsnappable, with my hands out of comfortable reach. As we ate our protein with a contended smugness, the melting pool of whipped cream atop the golden pain perdu glistened in the corner of our eyes - a siren calling us. We dug in, Paul cutting through the delicate crust to a squishy, soaked interior: just as it should be. Adding to the pool of cream, we poured over the apple butter sauce (made, I believe, from apples, brown butter, vanilla and a touch of sugar or maple) and topped it with the anise-scented poached pear. It was triumphant. The devil on our shoulder had a good point.

The righteous, protein-packed omelette and the fall-from-grace pain perdu at Koloman

Trusting the judgement of our adopted auntie, I asked her where I might find a fudgey brownie in New York. She concurred that they tend to be cakey here, but advised we try ‘Billy’s down on 9th Avenue’. With that in mind, we hatched a plan and drew up the ‘route of the brownie pursuit’. On the way to Billy’s we stopped into a Whole Foods supermarket (seeing as Trader Joe’s was, so far, leading the race, it made sense to try another store-bought), hunted down a Magnolia Bakery (to no avail) and returned to Mah-ze-Dahr, which we found had closed early a few days before.

Unwilling to give up the chase, we hot-footed it (in an Uber) to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and had the driver deliver us right at the door of the highly recommended (on Instagram) Martha’s Country Bakery at 263 Bedford Avenue (there are five stores across Queens and Brooklyn). It was a stab in the dark, because this place isn’t known for its brownies. In fact, they lurk in the shadows, behind the counter and under a veil of clingfilm - not like the other cream-clad confections basking in the limelight of the never-ending glass counter - it runs the whole length of the store. They only had walnut, so we took one. I’ll talk about how it went down (if at all!) when I do my ranking of New York’s best brownies; though, spoiler alert, at this point I think that may be somewhat wishful thinking - I’d probably have more chance of finding the Holy Grail.

I have to give it to good old Martha, though, because her pies looked remarkably good. There wasn’t a sliver in sight, these were vast wedges that could cast a shadow on a small village - deep-filled, too. I felt drawn to the apple crumb pie, which arrived at our table to wide-eyes, a blob of squirty cream swooping and swirling delicately out-of-place beside it. With the first mouthful I felt the goosebumps on my arm make themselves known: just like grandma would have made. Except, my grandma never baked. She was far too busy doing crosswords and jigsaws, and tutting at recordings of Loose Women. This bewitching pie, so cinnamon-spiked, so soggy in the pastry, had the power to fabricate a longing for something that never was; Anemoia, is the name of such phenomenon, apparently.

The mile-long (not quite!) counter and apple crumb pie at Martha’s Country Bakery

By this point I couldn’t have cared if Martha herself manifested with a desiccated brownie and slapped me around the chops with it, because in a single giant serving of apple crumb pie, I felt warm and protected by (false) memories. Perhaps that is why food is such a wonder - it can make us see the world how we wish it were, in spite of how it really may be.

Propelled by that warm, fuzzy glow (and possible hyperglycaemia) we marched a mile and half across town to Radio Bakery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Thankfully, the expected queues had already dispersed into the bright spring sunshine, leaving just slim pickings on the counter. It turns out that brownies were never on offer, so I made do with one of the last brown butter corn cakes, and boy, it alone was worth the pilgrimage. It tasted just like a butterfly cake mum might have made, but baked for too long so that the edges were caramelised and chewy yet the inside was still so moist and tender. It’s a recipe I’m determined to emulate when I’m back home.

The brown butter corn cake from Radio Bakery, Greenpoint, Brooklyn

We got back to the hotel and I was filled with a desperate urge to move to New York. As I do on most holidays, I wanted to extend the trip, to put our house up for rent, to get a doggy passport for Abel and ship us all here to start a new life. And while, as I get older and more sober, I’m aware of this childish longing for the thrill of a new life, in spite of my rational, psychoanalytical mind, the desire still sparkles with lustre and lure.

But that night, at a dinner thrown by dishy Jake Cohen and his husband Alex, they said something that made me feel immediately reassured: ‘of course you want to move here. New York is the centre of the universe!’ It was in that moment, making memories with new friends, on the 20-something floor of this Long Island City apartment, overlooking the intoxicating night-time cityscape of Manhattan, that I remembered something someone told me (or perhaps I read) a long time ago: no matter where you go, there you are. New York may be to these beautiful boys (and to us for this delicious 10 days of lives) the centre of the universe, but my damp, 1970s bungalow that still needs a new roof and a lorryload of weedkiller pouring about the garden, isn’t just the centre of my universe, it’s my entire universe. And when I’m snuggled up in my creaky bed, with tatty old sheets, scruffy hound and furry husband, I wish to be nowhere else in the world. Lustre wanes and patterns of mundanity emerge, so if you can’t find thrill in the day-to-day, you remain unthrillable. I want to feel a profound gratitude regardless of whether I’m washing my family’s clothes or watching the clouds through a high rise windowpane.

Jake’s honey cake - a recipe, from his next book, that we were lucky enough to sample.

On the closing note of gratitude, I thank you, dear reader, for coming on this food-filled expedition of New York with me (and for your kind messages of love about our wedding day). I’ve really enjoyed sharing this with you and can’t wait to do a little more here on Substack. But for the last two days of our trip, I’m switching off and focussing on my hubby. If you’re enjoying my work, do please share it far and wide, and don’t forget you can become a paid subscriber to access even more of my work and recipes (gosh, I’m already a hard-faced New Yorker expecting a tip! Perhaps I’ll fit in well here).

With love,

John x