Food/restaurant rant

My favorite mid-priced chains:

Texas Roadhouse: Good food. Great prices. Busy but dozens of waiters, busboys, etc. working. Better than Longhorn.

Cheddars: Food is good and you get plenty for your money. Maybe best value overall.

And screw you olive haters. I can easily eat a whole can of black olives as a snack.

 

My recent discovery is Peter Luger steak sauce instead of ketchup. Tastes good with fries, too.

 

Speaking of ketchup on bratwurst, I used to write an occasional general-interest news column a few lives ago, and I got to have a little fun with McDonald's abomination of a bratwurst, which came with ketchup. Cone to think of it, most of my columns involved food.

 

I'm guessing you've been to Barney Greengrass?

I used to live across the street. Scrambled eggs with lox and onions, with a scooped, toasted bagel, and cream cheese on the side was my go to.

 

Yep. Best I can tell it's the deli of choice for the new money folks on the upper west side. Can be crowded at times, but you can usually get a seat on a weekday. I don't normally drink soda, but I like to have a Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray whenever I'm there.

 

My ex's family had three units in the Mitchell-Lama building across the street. (We went from a studio to a two bedroom. Her brother had a 5-bedroom duplex. Never saw anything else like it in Manhattan.) We definitely were not new money. I left there in 2000, but even then, the neighborhood was changing.

Has always been a busy, crowded place. They really jam people in.

Even now, if I see a Dr. Brown's I'll grab a Cel-Ray or Black Cherry, and I never drink soda either. It's just nostalgic.

 

Never really came around to black olives but I can fuck up a jar of green olives. Never really liked them until I had one in a bloody mary.

 

#fuckolives

 

For you olive lovers. For their cocktail parties in the '50s and '60s, my parents used to take a jar of those pimento-stuffed olives, empty out the brine and marinate them in gin instead for 24 hours. Very popular snack.