Taxi Gourmet » taxi

Tasting the Biggest Apple

Layne — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:06:00 +0000

Tomorrow is my first taxi adventure in the Biggest Apple. Meanwhile, fear and excitement are dancing a fierce tango in my stomach, and it’s hard to tell which one is leading.

How will Taxi Gourmet translate in New York? Will the cabbies here be as cunning on the hunt for culinary treasure as the taxistas of Buenos Aires?

And if the hacks here do know something about delicious, will they be willing to open the plexiglass partition that separates driver and passenger and share their knowledge with me?

Today, I walked about 20 blocks from my apartment in Astoria and stumbled upon Afghan, Thai, Chinese, Cypriot, Colombian, Brazilian, and Ecuadorean restaurants, hot dog vendors, haute cuisine from India, bagel shops, kebab carts, Mexican grocery stores, produce stands peddling summer berries and tropical fruit, Italian bakeries and more Greek delis than I could count. And that’s just a slice of Queens. In a city with immigrants from over 200 countries, I know that there’s much, much more to taste.

Like a lover of literature who knows he’ll never read everything on his book list, I could spend the rest of my life eating in New York and die without exposing my palate to everything there is to consume. Here, flavor is infinite.

But here, there are also 13,000 cabbies who can show me the way to Gotham’s culinary riches. I’m placing my food fate in their hands (but I’m bringing pepper spray just in case).

Stay tuned to see where the movable feast begins…

Cantina Gone Bust

Layne — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:07:00 +0000

From time to time, my pursuit of all food that’s taxi-related goes bust, as was the case on today’s failed mission to La Cantina de los Taxistas.

For weeks, I’ve been fantasizing about paying a visit to this cabbie-friendly restaurant, hoping to taste some authentic Italo-Argentine food (they’re allegedly famous for their cannelloni) and harvest some wisdom from the taxi drivers I assumed would be dining there.

No such luck. Starving and cranky after a long march through the Palermo Viejo neighborhood, I finally landed at the spot where La Cantina was supposed to be – and discovered telenovela billboards in its place.

La Cantina de los Taxistas is no more.

Driving home the point, a decaying taxi was parked right out front, as if mourning the defunct eatery.

Such is the nature of restaurant reconnaissance in Buenos Aires, especially in these economic times. One by one, restaurants are closing their doors. And taxi drivers – and those of us who would follow in their footsteps – have fewer and fewer places to find a simple, tasty, cheap meal.

Still, the food quests continue. Stay tuned for my next taxi adventure…

Girl Power in Tehran Taxis

Layne — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:16:00 +0000

Although I have yet to meet a female cab driver on my Buenos Aires food quests, I still hold out hope that it will happen someday.

In the meantime, a group of 700 ladies in Tehran have taken the bull by the horns and started their own taxi service by women and for women. It’s almost enough to make me want to hop on a plane – maybe these female taxistas would skip the restaurants altogether and take me home for dinner?

Check out the full BBC story by Jim Muir here

Taxiing to the Light

Layne — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:20:00 +0000

Often when I tell people about these taxi quests, they’re surprised that I would surrender my food fate to a stranger.

“Isn’t that a little dangerous? Don’t you ever worry about being driven in circles? Or robbed? Or worse?”

Nope.

After taxi adventures in three countries and counting, cabbies continue to surprise me with their graciousness as they guide me to their favorite places. Although sometimes it’s difficult to communicate the idea that I don’t want to go to touristy restaurants, these guys simply refuse to cheat me, despite the fact that my foreignness makes me an easy target.

No, I’m not arguing that all taxi drivers are angels – especially in light of a recent assault on a British woman in Buenos Aires’ Palermo neighborhood. But so far my experience on these culinary escapades has shown me that cabbies more than reciprocate the trust I instill in them. Sensing my confidence in their judgment, they respond in kind. Every time.

If my experience doesn’t convince you that cool things that can transpire in a taxi, then maybe this story by Malaysian cab driver Tang Tuck Hoong will:

I arrived at the address where someone had requested a taxi. I honked but no one came out. I honked again, nothing. So I walked to the door and knocked.

‘Just a minute’, answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90’s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

‘Would you carry my bag out to the car?’ she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, and then returned to assist the woman.

She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness. ‘It’s nothing’, I told her. ‘I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated’.

‘Oh, you’re such a good boy’, she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, and then asked, ‘Could you drive through downtown?’

‘It’s not the shortest way,’ I answered quickly. ‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice’.

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. ‘I don’t have any family left,’ she continued. ‘The doctor says I don’t live very long.’ I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.

‘What route would you like me to take?’ I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, ‘I’m tired. Let’s go now.’

We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.

Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

‘How much do I owe you?’ she asked, reaching into her purse.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘You have to make a living,’ she answered.

‘There are other passengers,’ I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.

‘You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,’ she said.

‘Thank you.’

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.

I didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift?

What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

Photo Credit: Charles Rathbone: http://www.taxi-library.org/taxi-photo.htm

Taxistas vs. Urbanspoon

Layne — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:20:00 +0000

I admit it – I’m not a gadget person. So I don’t quite connect with all the buzz surrounding the release of the new iPhone, a contraption as appealing to a Luddite like me as blood sausage to a vegetarian.

However, like any persistent seductress, iPhone tries its darndest to entice those who might be indifferent to its charms.

In what looks a lot like a flirty nod to the food-obsessed, the device includes an application called Urbanspoon – an internet-based restaurant finder that uses GPS technology to identify the best places to eat according to your location.

In other words, forget restaurant guidebooks, friends’ suggestions, and taxista recommendations – plug your coordinates into Urbanspoon and suddenly you’ll be face to face with the restaurant of your dreams…in theory.

But how does Urbanspoon play out in practice? New York Times food critic Frank Bruni recently gave the nifty application a whirl and “thus revealed the foibles…of the Internet dining guides to which more and more of us are turning for help.”

Mr. Bruni’s Urbanspoon-guided adventures around New York were hit and miss at best. At one point, he was standing directly in front of Dressler, a “contemporary American” restaurant that earned a Michelin star last year, yet Urbanspoon directed him to a wine bar that was blocks away.

I’m sure that the brilliant minds that begat Urbanspoon will eventually work out its kinks. But even when that day arrives, I’ll still invest my culinary faith in a cab driver who knows his city – as funky as his recommendations might be.

Read the full account of Frank Bruni’s Urbanspoon escapades

The Adventure Goes Tango

Layne — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:37:00 +0000

In the tango world, you only step off the dance floor in the middle of a song set under the gravest of circumstances. Unless you’ve twisted your ankle, you’ve suddenly fallen ill, or the place is on fire, the so-called practice of “interrupting the tanda [song set]” is generally frowned upon.

No matter how bad his breath, no matter how incomprehensible his lead, no matter how racy his compliments, most women (including me) will brave 3-4 tangos with a less than desirable partner rather than set off the wave of whispers and curious glances that are the inevitable result of leaving the dance floor in mid-tanda. Besides that, the gesture can really hurt a dancer’s feelings.

For similar reasons, until Friday, I’d never interrupted a tanda with a taxista. No matter how difficult the dance, no matter how funky our connection, no matter how bizarre our destination promised to be.

No, nothing grave or unfortunate happened on Friday. But after two failed attempts to get cabbies to share their food secrets with me, I concluded that it simply wasn’t my day to tango with taxi drivers toward anything delicious.

Taxista #1 (a.k.a. That 70s Taxista) picked me up near the train station in Belgrano. After I gave him my can-you-please-take-me-to-a-good-place-to-eat pitch, he emerged from his pot-induced haze and told me that he was from the province – and that he didn’t like to go into restaurants where men were dressed in suits and ties (Incidentally, he was sporting a cream-colored peasant blouse).

“But there are plenty of places here that aren’t so formal,” I said.

“I know, but I just don’t like to eat anywhere en Capital. You know where I like to go? There’s a great little parrilla on a hillside out by the airport. They have everything – steaks, pasta, fish. They even have a playground for kids.”

When I realized that neither my pesos nor my faith would endure the 45 minute cab ride to the hillside parrilla, I asked That 70s Taxista to drop me off.

Eager to shake off my disappointment, I hailed the first cab that passed and soon discovered that I had no desire to follow Taxista #2’s lead either.

“Look, I don’t know any places in this neighborhood,” he said, “How about Puerto Madero? Or Las Cañitas?”

The suggestion to take me to two of BA’s trendiest and priciest neighborhoods was nothing out of the ordinary.

“No, señor. Just the opposite, I want go someplace simple and cheap. Someplace you’ve been where the food is good.”

“What? No, Puerto Madero is where you want to go. Cabaña Las Lilas, Bice…Maybe Happening…”

“Have you eaten at any of those [crazy expensive] places?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, then I don’t want to eat there, either. Isn’t there someplace you usually have lunch?”

“There’s a parrilla in Parque Patricios where you can eat all you want for 16 pesos. The chinchulines [intestines] are fabulous.”

I like to think it was the fact that my small change wouldn’t cover the fare across several neighborhoods to Parque Patricios – rather than my aversion to chinchulines - that interrupted the tanda with Taxista #2.

I took it as a hopeful sign that Taxista #3 was munching on something when he picked me up on the corner of Libertador and Maure.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” he said.

“It really is. Do you have long to go before you can enjoy it?”

“You could say that.”

“Did you just start?”

“Nope, but I’m not close to finishing, either. I’m in the middle of a 24 hour shift.”

“24 hours?!” I exclaimed, “How do you do it? Do you drink coffee? Tomas mate?”

“Nope, I just lean my seat back and take a little nap after I eat.”

There wasn’t a single note of self-pity in his tone as his eyes traveled to the last few bites of a sandwich in a bag on the passenger seat. I didn’t have the heart to ask him where he’d gotten it.

“How many days a week do you work?”

“Seven. Monday through Thursday and Saturday, 15 hours. Friday, 24 hours. But I only work 6 hours on Sundays.”

“And how long have you been driving a cab?”

“Twenty years. I started working like this when I first got married – I had to constuir una casa, you know? Then the kids came – I have four kids now – and I had to keep up the rhythm. I’m the only one working. What else can I do?”

“And do you make enough money to live?”

“Let’s just say I don’t have anything left over at the end of the month.”

And I didn’t have anything left over at that point in our journey. I asked him to stop on the corner of Libertador and Sarmiento and gave him all the small change in my purse.

No, he hadn’t led me to some fabulous culinary discovery – and we hadn’t embraced in the literal sense. And yet and still, I would compare my ride with Taxista #3 to the best tangos I’ve danced in Buenos Aires. The journey had been just as heart-wrenching, the connection just as fleeting.