Friday lunchtime we ate at the Chart House, a large restaurant at Pier D on the waterfront at Weehawken, next to the Lincoln Tunnel on the New Jersey shore opposite Manhattan. Poor road signing as is usual in NYC, poor maps but we found it. We got a table for two straight away and sat by the window with a tremendous view of the Manhattan skyline. Good fish menu, good service, in and out within an hour as we were tired, straight up and down food with some Brooklyn lager, a bit over-priced but then you're paying for the view as well.
http://www.chart-house.com/index.html
Saturday morning we went to the Spanish & Portuguese synagogue at W 70th Street. For lunch we were invited to some friends at W 64 Street. Saturday evening we drove to Little Italy and parked in Mott Street. Along Spring Street at number 45 we found Rockys. I had linguine alla putanesca and my wife had linguine in anchovy sauce. With a bottle of Samuel Adams and salads the bill came to $62. Same as in London. By the time they whack on the tax and a 15-20% service charge there's not much difference in prices, even at $2= £1. Next door Rockys we saw a rice pudding take-away store, specialising in all different combinations of rice pudding. Amazing how a business like this can succeed :
http://www.ricetoriches.com/fr...e.php
Sunday morning we drove down to Battery Park, over Brooklyn Bridge, along Flatbush Drive, round Prospect Park and ended up in Crown Heights by accident. What a dump, the whole of Brooklyn. Ended up on Metropolitan Avenue, loads of traffic due to the Lag b'Omer parade. We left Brooklyn on the Williamsburg bridge where there is a hanging sign saying ' Leaving Brooklyn, Oy Vey '.
Once on the Manhattan side I turned up the East Side highway up to the Bronx and well off the range of our map. Ended up near Yeshiva University and then back through Harlem along Amsterdam Avenue. We stopped for a convenience break and lunch at 113th Street at a place called Nussbaum and Wu or Wu and Nussbaum. I stood in a line and asked for a lox bagel with cream cheese. ‘What kind of bagel ?’ ’Plain’, I replied. ’Toasted ?‘. ‘No’ I replied. ‘What kind of cream cheese ? Low fat, high fat, no fat ?’ ‘I really don’t mind’ I replied. ’Lemon and pepper ?’ ‘ Look, I’m starving’ I replied. When I paid for it the cashier asked me ‘What kind of bagel is it ?’ and she started to ask the same set of questions again. Is it me or is London just saner ? Why do I have to go through the Spanish Inquisition twice for a lox bagel ?
Sunday evening I booked a table at Tevere, a kosher Italian restaurant along E. 84th between Lexington and 3rd Avenues. I had booked for 8.30 but we arrived at 6.45 and to their credit they sorted out a table for us within 5 minutes. Very attentive staff and service but that’s where it ended. Friends recommended Tevere to us. The best that can be said is that Tevere must have had an off day due to the big parade. My wife ordered the chicken in balsamic and me the rib-eye steak, medium. When I went up the back stairs to the toilets, I passed the wine racks and just followed the smell. Not well ventilated. After a fairly longish wait the mains turned up, the chicken portion a bit on the small side and the steak was, well, average. We ate our way through this mediocrity and then ordered an apple strudel for dessert. The top came up soft, not at all crispy and the base was too wet. It was awful. We asked for the check and were then advised that they only took American Express and not Mastercard which was all that I had. The last time that happened to me was in 1984 when Amex and Diners were omnipresent and Mastercard was not accepted in many places. I don’t use Amex any more, there’s no need to now. So we scraped together 80 or so bucks in cash and left. On the sidewalk outside was a couple a bit older than us who had just eaten. He was from New York and his wife from London. I asked him what he thought of his meal. His wife replied that it was awful. He said it must have been the Israel parade. Avoid this place. How did this mediocrity get mentioned in Zagat ??
Next Saturday was spent in Highland Park, a slightly down at heel part of New Brunswick in mid-New Jersey, but Moroccan meze for lunch at the home of Rabbi Bassous, who was born in London, was welcome.
On Sunday I went to Atlantic City. I did a detour through the back lanes to visit Lakehurst, intending to see the Hindenburg airship museum, but a guard at the entrance to the Lakehurst US Naval Reserve base advised me that there was a guided tour every other Saturday and I'd just missed it. However I did see one of the gigantic airship hangars, massive it was. I don't understand why Lakehurst was chosen as a transatlantic airship base in the 1930s. It's in the middle of nowhere, 100 miles from New York and 80 from Philadelphia -- who would have wanted to fly there ?
On to Atlantic City and I parked on Kentucky Avenue. I had not realised that it was only 30 years ago that gaming was first permitted in New Jersey. I went into Showboat, then I went to Caesars, then into Trump's Taj Mahal, a gaudy replica of the Taj Mahal on the outside and a vast gaming area inside. Then I went into Ballys and the Hilton Casino. Vast, vast gaming areas full of senior citizens. It's an interesting place, Atlantic City. They want to do the same in the UK except with 10 mega-casinos in different cities and 40 smaller casinos in the towns. The size of Trumps would fit into Blackpool.
At about 6 I headed back towards Princeton. On the way out of Atlantic City on route 40 I stopped at Shari's Steakhouse, a glatt kosher restaurant at 6821 Blackhorse Pike about 6 miles outside AC and to the west of Pleasantville. It is opposite Troki Hebrew School and inside the Clarion Hotel and Convention Center, a 1970s construction which looks like a third-rate convention centre. Incidentally why can't the US and State Governments do something about the terrible road signposting in the US ? Instead of clear and unambiguous signposting with town and city names as they have in Europe and in Israel, the US uses road numbers instead. I don't know if the road number dangling overhead in the middle of the road junction refers to the road I'm on or the road coming across. By the time I've worked it all out I can't turn round for miles.
I parked the car in the car park of the Clarion and the outside entrance to Shari's appeared to be shut. I was about to head off to the nearest Applebee's instead in some disappointment when I decided to go through the main hotel entrance and found the entrance to Shari's inside. The owner, Moshe Shinar, was there. He showed me to a table. There were three other covers. It is a large restaurant with shuttered windows and the tables spaced well apart. I ordered a chargrilled ribeye with onions and sweet potato. It was a large steak, about 14 ounces, and I did struggle towards the end to finish it. A far better effort than the awful food produced in Tevere in New York 5 weeks ago. With a Yuengling beer the bill came to 50 dollars. Not cheap in $$$$$ , but this equates to just a few pounds at the current exchange rate. Worth a visit. See http://www.greatrestaurantsmag...ew/91
From there it was cross country heading north across NJ towards Trenton and Bordentown. Around Bordentown I took a wrong turning and turned around. I was looking for 130 North but again the signposting was abysmal. A bored cop in a police car followed me after this, started flashing his lights so I pulled over and got out the car. " Get back in the car, get back in the car " he yelled, "I'll arrest you !" I showed him my UK driving lience after which he calmed down. " In the US, you have to stay in your car" he said, " we have certain kinds of people here ". Clearly not me. With the misunderstanding sorted out he asked me to follow him in his car to show me on to route 130. So with his lights flashing in front of me he escorted me back on to the right road.
