Their web site declares Zaiya a “one stop shop for all Japanese delicacies,” all “handmade,” to boot. Whether you crave innovative bakery items—tuna and corn baked on what looks like a Danish, or a French sandwich with cod roe, homemade mayonnaise and butter—or more standard Japanese fare, such as sushi, onigiri, bento boxes, ramen and rice bowls, you’ll find it here and on the cheap.

Photo by: Daniel S. Burnstein

Zaiya began as small, but popular, Parisienne Bakery in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and you’ll still find dozens of items made with Parisienne-brand delicate white bread and cakes, such as snack-sized sandwiches ($3.75-3.95) or, fans’ favorite, strawberry shortcake ($2.75). Hot dishes are mainly DIY; I microwaved my shrimp chili don ($5.75) in its black plastic bowl. Over a dozen shrimp, soft eggy bits and cauliflower were piled on white rice in a sauce more sweet than heat, its taste reminiscent of Pad Thai. Between bites of shrimp, I ate a cold Brie/ham crepe ($3.25) and a green tea pudding dessert with red bean paste and gluey mochi cubes ($3). Nay to the pea-green pudding, but yea for the oozy Brie, thin ham and fresh tomato and lettuce in the spongy crepe wrapper.

Note: Zaiya is busy at lunchtime. Go early. Choose quickly.
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Café Zaiya
18 E. 41st St. (betw. Madison & 5th Aves.)
212-779-0600
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“I’m in Park Slope,” my son said when I called to assess his after-school whereabouts.

“What are you doing there?”

“Hanging.”

“What are you eating?”

“A slice.”

Photo by: Daniel S. Burnstein

“He went all the way… to Brooklyn… to eat pizza?” my daughter asked, incredulous. But anyone with a teenage son knows that pizza and “hanging” go together like mozzarella and tomatoes. And those ingredients are about the only ones you’ll likely find on a teenager’s slice, whether it’s from Pino’s in Park Slope or Coronet on my corner.

While I appreciate a plain pie, I also like a grown-up pizza, with grown-up toppings. That’s what you’ll find in Two Boots, now, happily, on the Upper West Side. I ordered The Bella ($3.75), named for hat-wearing Congresswoman Bella Abzug. It is slathered with spinach/artichoke dip and cream cheese—the kind of dip you’d avoid in a hollowed out bread bowl, but which is luscious on top of the sturdy, crunchy crust and when freshened with chopped jalapeño and a sprinkling of cayenne. Another adult-rated choice is the Bayou Beast, which features BBQ shrimp, crawfish and andouille sausage.

With its adventurous pies and ’60s-themed folk art and music, Two Boots appeals to food-obsessed Boomers, but it’s teen friendly-too: $2.50 for a plain slice/soda from 12-5.

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Two Boots
2547 Broadway (at 95th St.)
212-280-2668
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I always feel triumphant when I happen upon a genuine greasy spoon in the tony Upper East Side, and Burger One epitomizes this venerable tradition. Don’t sit at one of the six stools at the tiny counter if you’re bothered by the sight of fries sizzling in rust-colored oil or fat burgers oozing, well, fat, on the big metal grill. Judging by the number of customers lined against the wall, reaching over your shoulders for foil tins of take-out burgers, however, Burger One is considered “The One” by many.

Photo by: Daniel A. Burnstein

It also has multiple personalities—part burger joint, part Mexican taqueria, part “wrap house.” I had heard about their famous wraps, containing everything from a burger to B.L.T. and egg salad, but I opted for a hybrid: the burrito wrap ($6), which comes with your choice of chicken, steak or carnitas (pork) and mozzarella cheese, rice, red beans, avocado and hot sauce, if you wish. The fellow next to me, an Arizona transplant, vouched for the burrito’s authenticity, saying the tightly wrapped cylinders bested Americanized “bricks” that take a knife and fork to tackle. What’s more, these babies have everything you need from the food pyramid, with just enough grease to meld the flavors together and get you coming back for more.

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My friend Lydie stopped into Patisserie Margot in her never-ending quest for the perfect pastry. My friend Caroline went there for sustenance to brace herself for Fairway’s pre-Rosh Hashanah shopping madness. Both gave me glowing reports of the pastries—none over $4, from traditional éclairs and Napoleons to rustic raspberry crumb—and told me there were snackworthy items, such as soups (today’s is French lentil), quiche and sandwiches.

Photo by Daniel S. Burnstein

But how to find? Patisserie Margot does not even have a sign, and you sense it’s the kind of place regulars love but want to keep a delicious secret. Hidden within the Ansonia hotel, it is a sliver of a café with eight round marble tables lined against one wall, two chairs at each, perfect for a French tete-a-tete with un ami, and, indeed, the room is packed with women talking between bites of simple, ample sandwiches. Several are $5.99, including the tuna salad and the brie/tomato/mesclun. It’s hard to say which is best—the dense but crunchy French baguette enclosing the brie or the brie itself, which seems to be a quadruple cream. I feel the fat cells multiplying, but with the thought that “French women don’t get fat,” I order a light, buttery Madeleine, which will conjure Proustian memories of this very moment.
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Patisserie Margot
2109 Broadway
(at 74th Street across from Fairway)
212-721-0076

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Swirls of something resembling tan Cheez Whiz decorated the hardboiled-egg slices on thin, dense bread studded with sunflower seeds ($3). “Swedes like tubed food,” said Fisk’s owner Annika Sundvik, referring to Kalles Kaviar, smoked fish roe that comes in a kitschy blue tube.

Photo by Daniel S. Burnstein

When reading the hottest Swedish mystery authors, you never hear about Swedish cuisine, tubed or otherwise. Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist exist on coffee and cigarettes, and Henning Mankell’s Detective Kurt Wallander has a junk food habit. There must be a café like Fisk on Wallander’s beat, but he’d likely only go there on a date. This Swedish newcomer not only sells nine flavors of herring—including blueberry and jalopeño—but also offers fanciful open-faced sandwiches (Fisk is open 11 a.m.- 7 p.m., Tuesday-Sunday). I sampled several, delighting in the spare rustic setting and the burble of Swedish around me. While novel, Kalles Kaviar was too salty and overpowering. I preferred the smoked peppered mackerel sandwich with tomato, chives and red onion ($4) or herring swathed in a delicate mustard sauce plopped on a potato slice and a round of pumpernickel ($2). As I was leaving, the ubiquitous Swedish meatballs appeared on the counter, topping cucumbers, creamy majenta pickled beets and homemade bread ($6). Salander, Blomkvist and Wallander: Get to Fisk!

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Fisk
77 Delancey St. (at Allen Street)
212-334-0913
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Even though BBQ joint Rack & Soul downsized its Upper West Side outpost, the giant orange sign eclipses next-door-neighbor Saji’s. Yet out of this tiny, authentic Japanese storefront come some big flavors, like that of the agedashi tofu appetizer ($4.25). Saji’s takes a block of aged firm and silken tofu and fries it in the lightest of batters—perhaps just a dusting of cornstarch. The hot tofu comes out wearing a lacy camisole of batter, floating in a bowl of cool, strong, smoky Japanese soy broth. Green frills of scallion tips as well as pink pickled ginger strips decorate the top. No workaday tofu, this: It has the texture of crème brulee custard.

Photo by Daniel S. Burnstein

The intricate layers of flavor and texture belie the gigantic hokey menu, which, like Teriyaki Boy and all Japanese fast food spots, is composed entirely of garish, grainy photos. The counter men only speak Spanish, but fortunately, Saji’s has a following among Columbia’s Japanese students, so you’ll easily find a translator. No translation is necessary for “bargain,” which you get with the $5.99 lunch specials (served from 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m.)—from the chicken teriyaki/gyoza combo to the avocado salad with soba noodles. All specials are ample and come with rice, salad and homemade cold Japanese barley tea.

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Saji’s Japanese Restaurant
256 W. 109th St. (betw. Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.),
212-866-5926

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The race to find the next cult burger shows no sign of stopping, but I’m getting weary of ground beef done every which way in a soggy bun. And while enthusiasts kvell over the fresh beef (“Nothing Frozen!”) in a Five Guys burger ($4.79 for a “little burger”), the “Famous Fries” are much more noteworthy than the beef in this spic-and-span franchise, which now boasts 625 outlets nationwide.

Photo by Daniel S. Burnstein

No match for the Shake Shack’s juicy, fatty burgers, the leathery patties could also do with a dose of the Shack’s special sauce. But focus, instead, on those fries in the wire baskets, sizzling in peanut oil. Unlike ones that look like they were cut from some generic starch product, these boast their potato provenance in taste and texture: thick cut, golden and dappled with crinkly brown skins. If only they were a wee bit crisper, but why complain when you get so many? A regular portion ($3.29) of feisty red-peppered Cajun or plain fries comes in a tall paper cup, and they’ll throw the equivalent of another order in the seemingly bottomless brown paper bag. An upbeat vibe, free salty roasted peanuts in the shell and endless drink refills make Five Guys the place to get your fries fix.
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Five Guys
690 3rd Ave. (betw. East 43rd & 44th Sts.),
646-783-5060

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After an inexplicable hiatus, the Dosa cart is back in Morningside Heights, but in a new incarnation. The bigger, spiffier cart touts a tantalizing list of vegetarian Southern Indian staples—from varieties of dosa and uttapam to flavored rice, aloo tikki, samosas and exotic drinks like tamarind and guava.

The jaunty owner and I have a little game going. I ask him for the enticing lemon or coconut rice dishes, and he laughs and says, “Tomorrow. Tomorrow.” An Indian Columbia graduate spoke to the owner in Tamil and confided to me that the cart was so like ones in India, in which the “whole universe” is advertised and yet only some dishes are really available at any one time.

However, uttapam are available—with onion, cheese, masala potatoes and spices, or vegetables ($5). Uttapam is a bright white pancake made with urad dal and fermented rice, the latter giving it a light, bubbly texture. Ingredients are cooked into it, not layered on top—except the fluffy, spicy turmeric-yellow potatoes of the masala version. Then the owner cuts it into four pizza slices, perfect for sharing on a hot summer evening. So far from Flushing or Curry Village in the East 20s, it’s wonderful to have access, again, to healthy, Southern Indian street food.
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Vegenation
Vegetarian Indian Food Cart
Broadway (Betw. West 114th & 115th Sts.)
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Would getting a Philly cheesesteak in New York City be like getting a New York bagel in Philly—inauthentic and ultimately unfulfilling? Well, my Philly cheesesteak was not only filling, but it was fulfilling in an “I really need some red meat in a bun” kind of way. Nothing like watching be-suited businesspeople stalking along Park Avenue to make you feel like tucking into some steak. I had thought a real Philly cheesesteak used some special cheese, not the slabs of American that were slapped onto the foot-long crusty bun holding ample amounts of frizzled steak and grilled onions ($3.99). Later, I asked my mom, whose late boyfriend was a Philly cheesesteak aficionado. She told me the real deal is topped with Cheez Whiz. Ew!

Just yesterday I had attended a beer and cheese tasting at Stinky’s in Brooklyn. Could the same person who oohed and aahed over Taleggio and Zamorano be relishing steak blanketed by the rough equivalent of Cheez Whiz? The answer is an emphatic, “Yes! Nothing artisanal on my cheesteak, please.” But do drizzle with NYC Halal cart white sauce, however un-Philly. And for $2 extra you can get waffle fries, which steak truck fans say are wonderfully crisp.

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Steak Truck
East 47th Street and Park Avenue (NE corner)

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There’s always a line and nowhere to sit at Stumptown Coffee Roasters. Yet, you can eye the cute, tattooed wait-staff in their jaunty hats and bring your robust cold brewed coffee ($2.50) and small savory sandwich ($4.50) into the Ace Hotel lobby. Like the New York Public Library reading room, albeit with food, a bar and chatting, the space features an oblong table with brass lamps where a line of patrons sat tapping at their laptops—except for one man who bellowed into his cell:

“ANNIE LEIBOVITZ… You know THE PHOTOGRAPHER. YES, she’s going to be the stylist.”

An Aussie business exec, a blond screenwriter and I rolled our eyes in unison and continued chatting about NYC real estate and great public places in which to write—like the highly cool, both in degrees and design, Ace Hotel lobby. Another patron confessed that the Ace is her client and that they encourage hanging in the lobby to make it lively and convivial—not the dead space most hotels have. I was chatting so much I almost forgot my mini-sandwich with its soft pretzely bun. By the time I’d finished savoring the gooey cheese and butter, smoked meat and salty bread, my tablemates were tapping again and the cell phone bellower was saying, “I have SPATIAL issues.”

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Stumptown Coffee Roasters
18 W. 29th St. (near Broadway)
212-679-2222

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