New York

If you are a foodie visiting New York, you're probably planning on visiting Mario Batali's Eataly where you'll wander the crowded aisles a bit dazed. Glass fronted counters and small eating areas display the best that Italy has to offer, including pizza, pasta, cheese, salumi, fish, local produce, prepared food, pastries and candies.

You'll wish you'd brought a spare suitcase to cart all these great products home. That's the temptation of New York. So many great celebrity chefs and so much great, albeit expensive food, and so little time.

But wait! Don't spend all your money on high-end restaurants and eateries.

Stick to the neighborhoods. Eat the way locals do. Find the small restaurants and take out holes-in-the wall that feed New Yorkers as they speed through their insanely busy days.

Everyone has their favorite places to eat in New York. On a recent trip, I revisited my favorites and enjoyed myself all over again. Here's a quick trip through half a dozen I think you'll enjoy.

We went to the Lower East Side the other night to see what the young people are up to. Our son, Max, was playing a gig at the Bowery Ballroom with a great band called dinowalrus. They totally killed — awesome. Jill and I were the oldest people in the neighborhood by at least thirty years.

We didn’t make reservations for dinner before the show because we always assume we can get ourselves fed when it’s just the two of us — often at the bar. I did have a destination in mind, though — Xicala, a tapas/wine bar that looked online to be properly LES. It was raining, so we scurried from the Grand Street subway across Bowery to Elizabeth Street, where Xicala promised to be and it was closed. Locked shut. I later checked their website, which says they’re “undergoing a makeover.” Good luck, Xicala. See you next time.

We were now wandering aimlessly in the rain, looking to grab a quick bite before the show. It was definitely an any-port-in-a- storm situation. We saw little orange lights coming out of a dark front window and crossed Elizabeth Street to see what was up and it was a restaurant called Little Rascal that serves Turkish food. Yeah — Little Rascal — Turkish. It made no sense to me, either. But our interest was definitely piqued — and our appetites as we’re both partial to Turkish food.

If you have been to Russ and Daughters you know that they have 5 kinds of salmon, the best smoked fish, many flavors of cream cheese and then you have to pick a bagel, toasted or not: lots of choices and combinations. I had worked out the fine details of what I would order. I had one shot at it as we were on a tight eating schedule. Not every minute over a 5 day span, a few minutes here and there. I could study all I wanted but until I saw what the various salmon looked like on that day it was only a guess.

We flew into JFK, checked into our hotel and it was still only 9:00AM. Next stop, Russ and Daughters. A subway ride south combined with a brisk walk as our phone’s GPS showed us the way. It started raining but we had an umbrella, then it started sleeting - that was fine, we are made of hearty Maine stock. All of a sudden it started snowing the biggest flakes we have ever seen and it reduced NYC to the feel of a small town. That is until the snow thunder started.

I’ve been in rehearsal this week for a reading we’re doing on Friday. It’s a fun piece called “Old Jews Telling Jokes” based on the website of the same name. All this is to say that this week I’m a working man, a nine-to-fiver, so bye-bye to my indolent life. No time now for shopping at Eataly after my caffé macchiato with the crossword puzzle; no time for noodling away at the stove in the afternoon, sautéing pretty vegetables for Jill’s dinner while hooked up to a Sangiovese drip. No. I’m a working man. Punch that clock.

But today I fell into one of those time warps that New York offers up when you have no particular place to go. I’m on my break; it’s drizzling; I have an hour to kill. Our rehearsal hall is on Eighth Avenue in the high Thirties – a bit of garment district, a bit of spillover from Forty-Second Street — tons of places to eat and not one of them calling me. I walk in the rain over to Ninth Avenue, which never lets me down. Ninth Avenue is a Baghdad bazaar — good, bad and everything in the middle. I love Ninth Avenue. I walk past this little place with a menu board out front. It’s called Capizzi, a little joint, sitting in the shadow of the Port Authority bus terminal. It’s essentially empty, some people at a table in the back – maybe it’s the staff having their lunch. It’s 4:00 in the afternoon – the rush was over. But there’s something; I walk by it three times; there’s something about this place.