Met and pastrami

I love being able to catch up with friends when I'm overseas.  One of the nicest types of catch up is when you somehow manage to run into friends who are also traveling to the same place you are.  By a stroke of luck, I found myself in New York at the same time as Jimmy and Eva.  They were traveling as part of Jimmy's work to California and had decided to stretch out the trip with a visit to New York.  They had seen on facebook that I was also in the city, so we quickly arranged for a day out together.

They hadn't been to New York before, so I thought it would be best to immediately introduce them to my personal favourite, Barney Greengrass.  We arrived on a very full morning, excited and happy to see each other.  The dining room was packed, so we sat down at a table in the front room next to the groceries.  The huge menu was put in front of us, and I felt like an established old pro as I guided them through the different options.  The service was quick as always, and our table was soon covered with the heavy diner style plates and cups.  Jimmy and Eva delighted in the eggs, lox and bagels.  All of it was "simple" fare, but done in the way that only Barney Greengrass is capable of.  The eggs were fluffy and not greasy.  The lox was all mixed in just enough to keep its form and to still give the intense salty bursts of flavour.  For me, this was what spending time in New York was about, far more so than merely visiting the tourist spots.

After the very filling breakfast, we went for a walk through Central Park.  New York in the autumn is a lovely time and there is no better place to experience that than in Central Park.  The leaves were golden and there was a light breeze in the air.  Since we were all full, the walk was needed for our collective digestion.  On the other side of the park was the Met.  I still remembered how overwhelming the Met was when I first went there.  The sheer volume of exhibits inside was like nothing I had ever experienced before.  Others clearly had the same idea as us that day and we found the foyer to be a crowded mass of people.

Once we moved inside, the crowds dissipated a bit and we were able to walk through the halls at our leisure.  Jim and Eva were traveling with their baby, so we had the additional task of pushing the stroller everywhere.  People were generally well mannered and the presence of the stroller didn't seem to cause any delays or annoyance.

The Met is truly enormous.

It isn't just the huge collection it owns, the space itself is cavernous, so much so that it holds smaller disassembled buildings within its confines.  There are temples and small buildings which are located throughout its interior.  Deep within the centre, there is even an old American colonial house which has been completely relocated.  You can wander around inside and look at the recreation of how life would have looked for those who lived in the past.  I also remembered the Egyptian temple which had been rebuilt inside of it from my last visit and Jimmy and Eva had a great time exploring it as well.

The Met's building itself is quite classically designed, but they've been smart enough to incorporate modern touches and renovations throughout.  I enjoyed sitting with the stroller in the Egyptian temple hall while Jimmy and Eva had a closer look inside.  Looking out of the huge windows, I could see out towards the park and the natural light filled the room with a brightness that you would never see in the stuffier old museums in Europe.

The collections inside were just as incredible as the best places I had visited in Europe.  The wealth of New York's elite had helped to build this place and so it wasn't surprising at all that they had managed to gather up some of the most incredible pieces from around the world.  Every room we walked through held treasures from various times leading up to the modern day.  It was a great way to spend a day, looking through all of the different wonders our shared history has managed to produce.

The long day of walking through the Met had reinvigorated our appetites.  Anyone who claims that old cliche that American food is "terrible" has never been to New York.  This is one of the gastronomical centres of the world.  Every time I've been here, I've been amazed by variety and quality of the food options.  It ranges from the simple food carts by the side of the street, all the way through to some of the best fine dining restaurants in the world.  We decided to go with something more in the middle of that range.  We arranged to catch up with some of Jimmy and Eva's friends for dinner and decided on going to Eataly in the Flatiron district.  Eataly is incredible.  Inside Eataly, we were once again amazed by the sheer volume of items like we had been inside of the Met, though this time for different reasons.  We walked around all the different aisles of food and then bought cheeses and meats, along with bottles of wine to eat amongst the throngs of people shopping, eating, talking and laughing.  We were just getting started with the eating though.  This was just a simple appetiser to get us ready for more food, as we arranged to go upstairs to one of the many restaurants inside of Eataly.  When it was our time to go up, we walked up the stairs and found ourselves walking past Nina Dobrev from the Vampire Diaries.  The girls all giggled at having seen a celebrity, adding to this New York experience.  Once we were seated upstairs, the food began to arrive.  We all felt like family, so the plates were all pushed to the centre as everyone picked bits and pieces from every dish, trying to experience as many different flavours as possible.

Once we finished with dinner, everyone sat back satisfied (or so we thought).  A few drinks were ordered as we talked about our days and our respective trips.  The waiters came back to the table with menus for dessert.  We looked through the menus, but nothing in particular popped out at us.  Someone at the table started talking about Katz Deli and the incredible pastrami sandwiches they made.  Eva and Jimmy had never been, so they listened intently as everyone at the table described in detail the fatty delights offered at Katz.  It was at that point that someone at the table asked "why don't we go now?"  I'm not sure who it was who made that suggestion.  At first we thought they were joking.  We had just finished dinner, and it was close to 10:00pm at this stage.  We all looked at each other and we all started to think "why not?"  It might be a bit strange, but there wasn't actually anything stopping us from going.  We all started to respond together, as though a wave had overtaken us, and decided that this was actually the best idea of the night.  We paid our bill, then went downstairs to grab a couple of cabs to take us over to the Lower East Side.  Our two cabs made their way through the city and dropped us right next to the shining lights of Katz Delicatessen.  We were late enough that there was no more lineup outside.  Inside, there was still a bustle of people, but there was enough space for us to all grab a large table together at the back.  A group of us went to the counter with our tickets in hand and ordered our sandwiches.  It was hard not to laugh, as we then carried the trays laden with food back to the tables.  We joked that this was in fact our "dessert" for the night.  The earlier dinner did not stop us as we all started eating.  We were clearly not famished or hungry, which strangely helped to give us an additional appreciation for the food.  We were here purely for the pleasure of the food rather than any need to satiate hunger and that changed our collective perspective entirely.  Every bite was chewed more, savoured a little bit more which made us appreciate how special it was.  The sandwiches were all eaten and we were left with plates of pickles to gnaw on as we realised just how much food we had been eating over the last few hours.  With that, it was time for everyone to go.  We gathered outside of Katz to say our goodbyes.  Some hopped into cabs, whilst I headed towards the subway.

It was a great day.  A day filled with far more food than I could have ever imagined.  The bookends of two meals from Jewish establishments with a middle of Italian food seemed to be an apt analogy of what New York is.  This city, so rich in its history of both Jewish and Italian Americans, has pushed out a unique culture towards the rest of the world.  We had experienced a true overload of that cultural mix in a single day.