Borough Bites
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
From Delmonico’s and Schrafft’s to knishes and cheesecake, New York City’s impact on America’s culinary history is undeniable.
Food writer Arthur Schwartz chronicles that rich, delicious past in his glossy new cookbook “New York City Food: An Opinionated History and More Than 100 Recipes” (Stewart Tabori & Chang, 400 pages, $45).
Organized chronologically, the book takes a joyful, expansive look at how and what this city has eaten since the days of the Dutch settlers. With chapters devoted to such disparate elements as Grand Hotel Dining, Hot Dogs, The Glamour Years, and Soul Food, plus seven separate chapters on the influences of various immigrant populations, this book leaves no crumb unturned.
In setting out to write the book, Mr. Schwartz had a leg up. “I’m a third-generation Brooklynite,” said the Park Slope resident. “A lot of this is my history, and my family’s history. I remember hearing all about these places.”
But even so, this former food critic for the Daily News had to dig for menus, photographs, recipes, and former owners or their family members in order to build on his recollections. And he learned a few things along the way.
“Over the course of writing the book, I realized there were the places that had a lot of nostalgia for people and some great places that people didn’t really remember anymore,” he said. One such place was Sollowey’s restaurant, which was on Seventh Avenue across from Penn Station.
“It was one of those places where everybody went in the 1940s and ’50s,” he said. “It was at the height of New York diversity. On the menu was lobster newburg and gefilte fish.”
In selecting the recipes to include in the book, Mr. Schwartz used a few key criteria. “A recipe had to be something that was created in New York and had great nostalgia, or became a national phenomenon.”
So in the book there are recipes for classics like egg creams and Waldorf salad, as well as for Union Square Cafe’s grilled filet mignon of tuna. “Nobody was making steaks of tuna until Union Square Cafe made it really popular,” said Mr. Schwartz.
There are also a few surprises. “It ends up that crumb cake is a really New York thing,” said Mr. Schwartz. But when all the recipes he tried came up short, he did what a good New Yorker would do: he made up his own.
