In 2009, a few years after Yelp and Eater launched, back when we used to read the Sunday paper for restaurant reviews (remember that?), I asked my chef (co-owner of Perbacco) to give me some restaurant recommendations for my upcoming trip to New York.
When he gave me a list of over 25 restaurants I looked at him and laughed. “OK, give me your top five,” I said. “I only have three nights.”
He returned my gaze with one that said, man up.
“Sarah,” he said. “You’re a professional chef. It is your job to know what the countryʻs most important restaurants are serving.”
The list he had given me was not a list of recommendations, it was an assignment.
When I got home that night and shared our upcoming culinary tour with my boyfriend (also thankfully a chef), he laughed, exhaled and said, “OK!.”
I began plotting our course. This was right before the world of food blogging erupted. Back then, the only way to find out if a place was good was to go. Some of the restaurants were near each other, while others were separated by several city blocks. Some were fine dining, others were delis or pizza joints. It was a lot of food. And ultimately I decided that if we began eating at 8 a.m. every morning and kept going until 2 a.m. (thank God Manhattan restaurants served late), we’d be able to fit in about seven restaurants a day, give or take, without vomiting.
To handle transportation, and the hovering issue of how we’d physically consume all the food, I decided we would walk everywhere. New York City is conducive to this approach, thanks to its flat streets. Walking blocks, or miles, after every meal would give us ample time to burn off what we’d just eaten.
I thought about this trip the other day, sitting at a formica table in a plastic chair with the sound of coffee cups clinking around me. It wasn’t the beginning of my writing journey, but it was a significant point in my cooking career and the first time I had really gone “restaurant hopping” for more than just two or three spots in a night.
We managed to fit in 21 out of the 25 restaurants on Chef’s list. The food was eye-opening, and I was very hungover afterward. I remember running down the street with one of my friends from New York at 3 a.m. on a warm, summer night, drunk and happy. I drank chilled Lambrusco for the first time (the good stuff, not the sweet cheap stuff). I ate a hot dog in Central Park. I ate tasting menus on freshly pressed white linen. And I ate a slice of greasy pizza afterward. I consumed all of the Manhattan food memories I could handle in one weekend.
From that day forward, I never looked at traveling the same way again. Traveling by way of restaurants, eateries, bars, markets and street food is the quickest way to learn about a place and its people, present and past, but more on that some other time.
If you are curious, this is where we ate and drank.
Esca (closed)
Babbo (Now under Chef Mark Ladner)
Ino Cafe (closed)
Public (closed)
Momofuko Ssam Bar (closed)
Schiller’s Liquor Bar (closed)
‘inoteca (closed)
Morimoto (closed)
Del Posto (closed)
The John Dory (closed)
The Spotted Pig (closed)
Ray’s Pizza (I have no idea which one)
Hot dog in Central Park
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