New York Series - Meatballs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatball

America is a melting pot of different cultures, which leads to an interesting approach to food and restaurants, especially in a city like New York, where there are hundred of different cultures all mixed together.  What's also interesting in New York is that foods from other countries and cultures get adopted and then taken as their own.  Of course this is true in many countries, there something unique about the way New Yorkers adapt food and grow its popularity. This can be seen with all sorts of food, most notably Pizza, but I also noticed that the humble Meatball also gets the New York treatment.

When wandering around New York, I kept finding Meatballs on the menu of many restaurants, and in fact found a restaurant chain dedicated to the humble fare.  Many countries have a variant of the meatball, countries like China are made with pork and usually steamed, while Danish meatballs are a mix of pork and beef and are often fried.  Many European countries have their own types of meatballs and each lay claim to having the original meatball, but the style of meatball most common in New York closely align with Italian Meatballs.  

In the United States, meatballs are most commonly associated with spaghetti, as in spaghetti and meatballs. There was a large number of Italian migrants that entered the country in the early 19th century, who assimilated the humble meatball dish (along with Pizza) into what is now known as Italian American cuisine.  I managed to get to a few restaurants in New York where Spaghetti and Meatballs were the focus and found that while there were similarities in the dishes, there were some very different approaches to this almost ubiquitous food.

New York Series - Balthazar

http://www.balthazarny.com/

Almost everyone who gave me their New York list of places to see or do included Balthazar in their list.  This is not much of a surprise, Balthazar is pretty much on the top three of everyone's food list and is by far one of the most popular restaurants in New York.  For Brisbanites that's not a complete surprise, inside it looks almost exactly like on of our best restaurants, Tartufo.  There is a pretty good chance that the team that established the restaurant before Tartufo took over, Belle Epoque, used the popular New York dining spot as the inspiration for the interior.  It's uncanny.

Balthazar is located in one of the coolest streets in SoHo, which is one of the coolest districts in all of Manhattan.  There are so many great restaurants and shops in SoHo that you could spend a whole month just in that one area and still not see everything.  It's also bordered by other great districts, Little Italy to the east, Greenwich Village to the north west along with burgeoning suburbs like TriBeCa nearby.  It's often compared to London's SoHo and with good reason, both places attract a certain type of person that brings colour and excitement to an area.

We had spend quite a bit of time wandering around and exploring Soho and had thought about going to Balthazar a few times, but each time we went it was so packed we decided to go elsewhere.  I finally decided to bite the bullet and make a reservation for dinner, thinking that if we went a little earlier in the evening it would be a bit less hectic.  Boy, was I wrong.  We turned up for our 5:30pm reservation and the place was still packed and crazy, with barely a table available.  Even though it was busy our reservation ensured we had a great corner bench spot, even though out table was only a little bit bigger than a postage stamp.

New York Series - Burgers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger

When coming the the US and in particular New York, one of the restaurants that was recommended most to me by friends was the Shake Shack, usually accompanied by a statement that these were the best burgers in the world.  I had a pretty good idea that 'burgers' were popular in the US, I mean, the biggest burger company in the world started out in San Bernardino, California.  Once I actually arrived in New York, I started to get a bit of a sense of how ubiquitous the humble hamburger was.  There are burger joints 'everywhere' and most menus, even in some of the nicer restaurants, have a burger on the menu.

Just what makes the burger so popular and in the States?  I thought I would try to find out by getting to as many different burger places that I could (and my waistline would allow) and find out for myself which was the best burger joint in New York.  Now I understand that this is a personal view and that everyone will have their favourite burger and favourite burger joint, this will be a totally subjective view of burgers.

I wanted to find out more about the humble hamburger, so I took to the internet (thanks Google) to find out a little about the background of a food most of us take for granted.  There is quite a dispute about who invented the hamburger but there is a common theme amongst many of the 'origin' stories that some Germans from Hamburg were involved.  One of the more interesting stories was that Louis Larsen created a hamburger in 1900 and sold it to some 'rowdy' sailers from Hamburg, Germany, and they named it after themselves.

New York Series - Eataly la Birreria

http://www.eataly.com/birreria/

Throughout our trip to New York I have had a pretty tight reign on the restaurants that SC and I have visited, but SC took the reigns for a while when she directed us to Eataly and in particular la Birreria.  Eataly is an institution in Manhattan and it first came to our attention when we were watching an Anthony Bourdain show called The Layover.  Its a show about what you can do in a city if you are just there for a 24 hour layover, it's pretty cool and shows you what sort of great things you can get up to in just 24 hours if you know the good stuff about a city.

Eataly is a pretty cool concept that is essentially a market place and dining area combined and they have a bit of a motto "We cook what we sell, and we sell what we cook".  It's a place where you can go to shop, taste and savour the high quality traditional Italian food products and beverages, along with local produce and artisanal products.  The concept was originally created in Italy by Oscar Farinetti, when the first Eataly went live in 2007 in Turin.  There are now Eataly markets throughout Italy and the concept has made a successful transition to New York.

It's also helped that there are some heavy hitters involved in the concept in New York, with US super chef Mario Batali and his partners from the B&B hospitality group Joe and Linda Bastianich.  The team have a string of successful and well loved restaurants throughout the US, so it was no surprise when they became involved in Eataly and helped drive its success in New York.

New York Series - Katz's Deli

http://katzsdelicatessen.com/

As an Australian wandering around New York, there are so many iconic things to do and see that you almost become immune to them.  American culture has dominated our TV and our consciousness for a long time and pretty much everywhere you look, there is something that you have heard about or seen on TV.  One of the most iconic, both for international tourists and American tourists coming to New York, is Katz's Deli.  Most people simply know Katz's deli from that scene in 'When Harry Met Sally' (see it here).  This place is even iconic for New Yorkers!

SC and I first came across Katz's deli by accident when were were wandering around the Lower East Side, just getting a feel for the area by walking around the streets (we also came across WD50 the same way).  We had already eaten lunch on that day, so after taking a few photos we moved on, determined to come back another day to check it out.  One thing that we noticed when we wandered by was the large queue of people waiting to get in, which seems to be almost standard for any well known place of interest in New York.

The Lower East Side is a neighbourhood located in the southeastern part of New York and was traditionally an immigrant, working class neighbourhood that began to go through a rapid gentrification which started in the mid 2000's.  More recently, it has become home to upscale boutiques and hip restaurants, in particular along the well known Clinton Street 'restaurant row'.  The Lower East Side is just across East Houston Street from the East Village and is now considered one of the most dynamic and sought after neighbourhoods in Manhattan.