Spotlight: New York New York

The towering Empire State Building, hidden ominously in the approaching storm clouds...

The merest sample of what is to come: Stroko's deli from across the street (L), 

and a million choices of smoked, dried and pickled fish in Ess-a-Bagle (R)

Last week, the Spy slunk his slippery sliding way across the Atlantic, and you join him in New York, sitting in Ess-a-Bagel just off 3^rd Avenue and 51^st Street, home to the chewiest, most enormous bagels he has ever snaffled in all his Spy days. During his breakfasts here thus far, he has sampled oat bran, whole wheat, salt and cinnamon raisin, and has come to the conclusion that he is, at heart, an oat bran man with a soft spot for cinnamon raisin. (They were not kidding about the salt on the salt bagel, which formed a thick white crust around the edge like the shores of the Dead Sea, ensuring that the Spy spent most of the day drouthy and dried out like an prune-skinned Egyptian mummy, seeing camel / oasis hallucinations and begging passers-by for water, all with a throbbing headache that comes from having all the water extracted from your brain until it resembles a shrivelled pickled walnut.) His tummy has been a little too delicate for such morning delicacies as gefilte fish or pickled lox, but the happy guzzling going on around him leads him to conclude that the reputation that precedes this fine establishment is not unfounded. All human life is here, and the Spy is already on first name terms with several of the gentlemen working here, largely because, he suspects, of his cut glass tones and James Bond appearance.

 

Oat bran bagel and coffe (L) and a Sunday morning queue that stretched all the way out the door (R) 

Salt bagel, with the vast majority of the salt scraped off. The Spy had not even started on the bottom at this point, which was so thickly salted that the bagel was elevated about 6 inches from the table... 

In town for a Spy Convention, his gastronomic exploration time has been sadly limited, but he has discovered two particularly fine New York pizza establishments (as recommended to him by the security guards on the door where he is based): Mariella’s and Stroko’s, the former being a hole-in-the-wall purveyor of pizzas, and the latter being something more of a deli. In general, the Spy admits that he tends to find the pizza in this part of the world not quite to his taste, being not tomatoey enough and a tad over-cheesey, but he knows he will be instantly struck down for such a comment in a city where you can get everything somewhere, whatever your taste, and so will go no further down this scandalous route. In any case, the Spy’s joy was magnified by the fact that the pizza was free (bought by a Dutch fellow-spy on account of The Saga of the Missing Lunch Salad that took place at a Spy convention in Sweden last year) and consumed in the sun at Columbus Circle at the corner of Central Park, and it doesn’t get much better than that.

 

We had joy, we had fun, we had pizza in the sun...

Well, actually it does, because the Spy is utterly enamoured of the New York deli system, particularly the bit where you can pick from a veritable cornucopia of goodies laid out in silver trays; a wide range of cuisines (dumplings, stir fries, vegetables, pastas, salads, schnitzel, fruit) served in a million ways. Although there are of course famous delis such as 2^nd Ave Deli or Carnegie that the Spy has sampled on previous occasions, the best delis tend to be the one nearest to you and open at 2am, and in the Spy’s opinion, the more low-key the better. His personal favourite is currently the 24hr beauty Azure, (3^rd Ave, 51^st street, just opposite Ess-a-Bagel, bit expensive but good grub), and they also have an upstairs seating area where the Spy can sneakily watch proceedings suspended above the salads and dumplings below. The Spy is in heaven. The Spy is never coming home…

 

Not enough fruit for you, sir? Then please take advantage of our million other humble deli food choices, we insist...  

A small update: the Spy is even more in love with New York's 24 hour delis than ever. Returning at some unsavoury hour from a Sunday-night toddle about town (see below) and ravenous as a vegetarian tiger, he found the aforementioned Azure, lights merrily blazing, a glorious array of food products steaming away and piping hot in their little silver trays. The Spy fell upon them like a gannet; he was sufficiently hungry that he would have dithered and deliberated if asked to pick one dish, but as it was, he could have a spoonful of stirfry, a dollop of dumplings and a portion of pasta, as his whimsy took him. He even fitted half a peach and a couple of grapes on top of the enormous food mountain for dessert, and is now lying feebly on his bed, clutching his rounded belly and licking his lips as the mother of all storms rages outside. Cosy.

  

The life-affirming food mountain, with dessert perched on top...

If there's a good reason for missing dinner, here are a couple:

Rockafeller Center, ice-skaters just out of shot...

Macy's indoor flower show: butterflies in the entrance hall (L), hot air balloon and astonished bystanders (M) and lots of lovely flowers (R), all alive (apart from the butterflies). The scent was extraordinary....