Click here to read about the writing process.

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Tucuman-style empanadas. Photo by Ryan Bird

July 9 is independence day in Argentina, and I wanted to celebrate by re-sharing the story of a taxi adventure that led to what became one of my favorite things to eat in Buenos Aires: Tucumán-style empanadas at La Aguada, in Barrio Norte.

“Some of us have to work for a living.”

The taxista didn’t actually say it, but I could read the words in his eyes.

“I’m a taxi driver,” he said, “I don’t have a favorite restaurant because I eat every meal at home.”

He bent over, pulled out a binder from underneath the passenger seat, and flipped through the plastic-covered pages until he found a list of restaurants.

I glanced over his shoulder and recognized famous names in the foreigners ghetto.

“What do you want?” the taxista said, “A fine restaurant? An all-you-can-eat buffet?”

“You know what?” I said, “I’m really sorry for bothering you. Maybe it’s better if I look for someplace on my own.”

The taxista snapped the binder closed, “OK.”

I walked to Avenida Las Heras and hailed another cab.

“I just came from the kiosk around the corner,” the taxista told me, “I always eat there. Hot dogs.”

“Oh…” Well, I could eat a hot dog, right?

He could sense I wasn’t so excited about a hot dog, “Do you like empanadas?”

Empanadas are my biggest Buenos Aires food obsession, I wanted to tell him, but all I said was “¡Sí!”

“I used to deliver empanadas for this place. Plus they make locro, humitas, stuff from Tucumán. I can’t remember the name, but…” The taxista shot through a red light and swerved between traffic lanes and bounced over potholes, careening onto a side street off Avenida Santa Fe. I was getting the feeling that he wanted to expunge me from his cab as quickly as possible.

“See the fat lady over there?” the taxista jerked his head in the direction of a statue of a woman in a blue apron with pink lips, “That’s the place. You’re in luck – they’re open.”

I thanked the taxista, careful not to slam the Fiat’s flyaway door, dodging lunchtime traffic as I ran across the street toward the fat lady. She held a chalkboard listing daily specials and pointed to the entrance to La Aguada.

I rang the bell and tried to ignore the fat lady’s eerie smile. A pint-sized waitress came out of the kitchen and swung the glass door open to a brown-and-yellow dining room with distressed wood tables, hand woven tapestries, and two other customers. One woman read the newspaper as she spooned stew from a ceramic bowl. The other woman sat in silence, an empty basket of empanadas in front of her.

A pile of plastic tamales towered over the six packs of Corona and Negro Modelo that crowded the bar. The voice of Mercedes Sosa was the only sound in the room.

I chose a table next to the wall where I could watch the comings and goings from the kitchen and opened the yarn-bound menu. The phone rang, and I listened to the cashier calmly take an order for 200 empanadas for Friday. The phone rang again – 50 tamales for Friday. And again – how many liters of locro did you want, señora?

I noticed a spread from Clarín, the city’s left-of-center newspaper, mounted on poster board a few tables away. Ignoring the stares of the two silent customers, I crossed the room to study its contents. The headline read:

“La Aguada Chef David Rosental Reveals the Secrets of the Perfect Empanada”

Jackpot.

The phone rang steadily now, and I studied the menu with happy anticipation, thanking the taciturn taxista for guiding me to the right place.

The pint-sized waitress bounced over to take my order. Before I could speak, she apologized.

“I’m out of tamales, locro and carbonada,” she said, “You know tomorrow is independence day, and we have so many orders.”

I’d forgotten tomorrow was independence day.

“You still have empanadas, right?”

“Of course.”

I ordered a beef and a 7-cheese empanada. The waitress nodded and disappeared. The woman with the empty empanada basket paid her check and left.

While I waited for my food, I spotted a handmade guest book at the table next to mine. The cover instructed visitors to “leave your signature, drawings, money, car, gold, husband, wife, kids – whatever you want.”

The first entry read: “Went to the dentist to get my teeth worked on and decided to try them out at La Aguada – it’s the best thing that’s happened to me today.”

Martin from La Pampa wrote: “I have high cholesterol and diabetes, but whenever I come to Buenos Aires, I always come to La Aguada and eat locro. Dr. Bordese will never find me here anyway.”

By the time the empanadas came, I’d discovered that La Aguada’s carbonada cured headaches, that their empanadas had mended more than a few lover’s quarrels, and that Antonia from Córdoba was willing to share her husband with the fat lady statue outside (but not with any other woman).

I closed the guest book and studied the palm-sized pastries in the basket. Brown oven blisters covered the thin masa, and I cut the empanadas in half to let the heat and smells (parsley, scallions, paprika) escape.

I tried the 7-cheese one first: fresh chives and celery checked the richness of blue cheese and mozzarella and five other cheeses I couldn’t name. I had to stop myself from inhaling the entire thing before I tasted the beef – lean, tender, mixed with leeks and sweet peppers, and just as irresistible. In both empanadas, the masa stayed where it belonged – in the background, quietly supporting the fillings that played the starring roles.

I was basking in empanada afterglow when the waitress put up the closed sign – lunch was over. It was time for siesta. The cashier turned off Mercedes Sosa and turned on Cristina Aguilera, singing along to “Ain’t No Other Man” between phone calls for independence day orders.

La Aguada – Map it
Billinghurst 1862, Capital Federal
Tel: (11) 4827-9477
Medios de pago: Solo efectivo
http://www.laaguadacocina.com.ar

Photo by Rumen Milkow

Taxi drivers in Rome have a terrible reputation for being cheats, liars and maniacal drivers. So what happened when I asked them about their favorite places to eat?

Read the full story about the taxi adventures in Rome in The Guardian, including photos by TaxiBerlin.

Pizza with zucchini flowers at Remo in Rome. Photo by Rumen Milkow

Bon voyage = На добър път. Somewhere in Bulgaria.

This blog is not dead. It’s on book leave.

After five years, three hemispheres, and a lot of cab rides, I finally get to tell the story behind the story of Taxi Gourmet.

Driving Hungry, the book based on this blog, is coming out in 2014 – and it’s the reason I’ve become a lapsed blogger.

It didn’t take long for the euphoria of finding a publisher to wear off. Now, in between moments of wondering why I ever wanted to write a book, I’ve become very good at working myself into a frenzy over how impossible it seems.

But I’m not here to whine.

I’m here because I’d like to tell you some things I’m learning in the strange, painful, occasionally joyful process of writing this thing.

If you came here to read about a taxi adventure, I owe you a story. (You’ve probably clicked somewhere else by now anyway.)

But if you’re still reading, and if you’re thinking about writing a book, or if you’re struggling with one, here are five hints you might consider. Please take what you need and throw the rest away. And if you’ve heard some of this stuff before, that’s because it’s true.

1. Read great writers who are writing about the places and events and people and food you want to write about. Try to be inspired and not intimidated. Right now I’m re-reading Henry Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi – a mostly masterful travelogue about Miller’s dreamy journey around Greece – and “The South” by Jorge Luis Borges – my favorite short story set in Argentina.

(You can also read terrible books that have been published in your genre and spend some time trying to pinpoint why their stuff isn’t working, so you can learn from their mistakes. Is the writer too self-aware? Not self-aware enough? No sense of humor?)

2. Gather quotes (from some of the great writers you’re reading?) that move you and/or relate to your story, and save them in one place. When you’re preparing to start a new chapter, sift through these quotes and figure out which one best communicates the message you want to communicate. Depending on what you’re writing, you can even put your chosen quote at the beginning of your chapter. You can erase it later if you want. The point is to use someone else’s beautifully expressed idea as a springboard to express your own. For example:

“I had many strange experiences in cabs myself. In New York mostly, and in other places. So what I really liked was the idea that in a taxi you are in a space with someone alone and you have nothing invested in your relationship. You can say whatever you want. You can be completely honest or dishonest.” — Jim Jarmusch, in an interview about Night on Earth (maybe the greatest taxi film ever made)

3. Find a writing partner. For you introverted types who think you can skip this step, I’m telling you you can’t. Well, you can, but if you do, it will just make your writing life more difficult. A writing partner will give you two things you desperately need if you’re writing something big: a deadline and constructive feedback.

Your writing partner should be, most importantly, someone who will be honest with you about your work. Someone whose work you respect. Someone who can tell you what’s working and what’s not working in your story.

Every week, or every other week, my writing partner and I meet. We commit to sending each other a piece of work a day or two beforehand. I read her stuff and comment and suggest. She reads my stuff and comments and suggests. You can’t do this over the internet. Well, you can, but it’s not as good, and you can’t share rhubarb soda.

4. Kill your television. Or give it away. Or throw it out the window, as I’ve seen people in Berlin do. If you can’t kill your television, find a place where you can go and write, without internet access. I had a friend in Buenos Aires who told me he was finally able to finish his script – after years of trying – because he couldn’t get internet in his apartment. The idea is to be honest with yourself about what distracts you, and to figure out the best way to contend with it. (Damn you, instant email alerts.)

5. Find a writing support to turn to when you’re stuck. This can be a book on writing (Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is a classic for a reason). It can be a Writer’s Digest webinar. It can be a movie about a writer you admire or loathe, or about the writing process itself (Adaptation is a good one). Have you ever listened to Selected Shorts? If you can’t find a way to move forward with your story, at least you can nourish your writing self in the meantime, and feed the feeling that you’re growing as a writer.

PS – If you’ve already written a book or two, and if you’re so inspired, please feel free to chime in with your insights. We who are about to write salute you.

PPS – I haven’t forgotten I owe anyone who’s still reading this blog a story about a taxi adventure. Please stay tuned for a delicious one from Rome.

Disclaimer

A summer of getting into random taxis in Berlin and asking drivers about their favorite places to eat led to what I think are 5 of the best Turkish restaurants in the German capital.

I’ve written about all of these cabbie-recommended spots on this blog, and when my friends visit me in Berlin, I like to take them to all five places and stuff them with Turkish delights, giving them what I call my ‘Istanbul in Berlin’ tour.

Now, thanks to a fancy new app called Rama Food, anyone with an iPhone can take the ‘Istanbul in Berlin’ tour.

Besides showing you where and what to eat, the tour also gives a brief history of the Turkish community in Berlin, shows you how to order each dish in German, and introduces you to the glories of regional Turkish cuisine. (Don’t worry – there’s doener kebab, too.)

And if you’re not in Berlin? Rama Food has enlisted food-obsessed bloggers in 22 cities around the world to share their favorite things to eat. Trust me when I tell you I’d follow their recommendations as enthusiastically as a cab driver’s.

If you’d like to try out my Istanbul in Berlin tour, it’s free to download until May 1.

*

Want to learn more about Rama Food and the Rama App? Click here

Want to check out ‘Istanbul in Berlin’ and other Rama Food tours on iTunes? Click here

Interested in writing a Rama Food tour – and showing off the best things to eat in your city? Email me

(Note & Full Disclosure: The Rama app is free to download, and so are the Istanbul in Berlin and the Dubai Ethnic Snack tours. Other Rama Food tours costs between 99 cents and $2.99 – and are worth every penny. I should know…I edited them!)

Photo by TaxiBerlin

I didn’t believe the taxi driver when he told me the pizza at Zeus – a tacky storefront near the party streets in Friedrichshain in what used to be East Berlin – was worth stopping for.

It wasn’t the McDonald’s-colored sign that put me off. It was the impression that Zeus is trying to do too much – besides pizza, he makes pide (folded flatbread with toppings), falafel, köfte (sausage), hamburgers, cheseeburgers (sic), and salads. If you’re a restaurant, even if you’re a fast food restaurant, how can you do all of these things well?

Zeus has an answer: “Maybe I can’t do all of things well, but pizza, and pide, I can do these so well that people write love notes and leave them on my walls.”

All of Zeus’ bakers roll out the dough for each pizza when you order it. And then they bake it in a brick oven. Zeus does not believe in par-cooked pies (Unlike most pizza parlors in Berlin, and in New York for that matter). What you get here is a New York-style thin crust that toes that delicious line between soft and chewy, tomato sauce that’s not too sweet, and a teasing sprinkle of mozzarella and maybe Gouda, too.

I should have trusted the taxi driver when he recommended Zeus. Viktor may be an ex-building engineer who’s only been driving a cab for a year, but he’s lived in Berlin since he was 15, and he’s picked up everyone from clueless tourists to famous authors like Wladimir Kaminer (who spent most of the ride arranging appointments on his cell phone, but was still ‘very nice’).

I should have trusted Viktor, because days before I followed his pizza recommendation, he led me and a co-adventurer to Hakiki, his favorite doener kebab stand in the city, where the three of us sat in his taxi (it was below freezing outside) and devoured one of the best versions of this sandwich that I’ve tasted in Berlin to date.

Hakiki is just outside the Osloer Strasse U-Bahn station, next to a taxi stand in Wedding, a neighborhood in what was West Berlin that’s not far from where Viktor lived with his parents (who emigrated to Berlin from Tartarstan in the former Soviet Union in the mid 1990s) until he moved to Marzahn, on the eastern edge of the city, to be on his own.

Every time Viktor is in the neighborhood, he stops at Hakiki for a doener. And judging by the taxis lined up next to the kebab stand, his colleagues do, too. There are two reasons:

1) Sauces here – spicy, herb and garlic – are not sweet, as at so many other doener kebab stands that cater to the local palate. Spicy sauce (scharffer Sosse) will make you sweat. Garlic sauce (knoblauch Sosse) will make your breath stink. This is what you want.

2) They are honest about their meat. This is the only doener kebab stand I’ve noticed in Berlin where they’ve posted a sign certifying the halal origins of the beef and listing ingredients (which unfortunately include soy protein and flavor enhancers, but we should probably expect this if a sandwich costs less than 3 Euros).

At Hakiki, Victor recommended the classic doener, on Turkish flatbread, with herb (Krauter) and spicy (Scharffer) sauces, and I was glad we took his suggestion. Besides the soy protein and the flavor enhancers in the meat, the only thing keeping this from being a perfect sandwich was the bread. Imagine how good the doener at Hakiki could be, I thought, if they made their own bread?

We who love doener kebab can dream – and in the meantime be grateful for taxi drivers like Viktor, who know the way to good junk food, and aren’t afraid to show us.

Zeus
Boxhagener Str. 29, 10245 Berlin – Friedrichshain
Tel. 030 29009100
Website: www.bistro-zeus.de
Open: Sun-Thurs, 11am-3am; Fr-Sat 11an-5am
Recommended: Pizza with ham

Hakiki
Tromsöer Straße 8, 13359 Berlin – Wedding
Website: hakiki-food.com
Note: There are 2 other Hakikis in Berlin – on Muellerstrasse 24 in Wedding and in the Schoenhauser Allee Arcade in Prenzlauer Berg, but the Osloer Strasse location is the original.
Recommended: classic doener on Turkish flatbread with herb and spicy sauces

A new place for cheap fowl in Berlin: Huehnerhaus restaurant, Skalitzer Str. 95a - Kreuzberg (across from the old chicken stand on Goerlitzer Park)

“I have a theory,” I said to the cabbie as we pulled away from the taxi stand at Wismarplatz in Friedrichshain, “That cab drivers know where to find the best, cheapest things to eat in the city.”

“Some taxi drivers know,” the cabbie said. “Not all.”

Fortunately, this cabbie, a forty-something Russian-German from Kazakhstan who has been driving a taxi in Berlin for the past seven years, is someone who does know about food. And like many Berlin cab drivers I’ve met in the quest for a good meal, Andreas Schulz is also a fan of his job and his city…

Read the rest of the story here

I’ve been back to Adana Grill Haus a handful of times since – and I learn something new every time.

On my last visit, I discovered that taxi drivers like Mesut aren’t the only ones who love this place – film director Fatih Akin and Green Party politician Özcan Mutlu are regulars here. So are German actor Daniel Brühl (of “Goodbye Lenin” fame) and boxer Marko Huck…

Want to read the whole story? Check out my post about Adana Grill Haus on the NPR Berlin blog.

After reading something between Byrne’s lines, and after a Lonely Planet writer told me that Berlin taxi drivers knew “as much about sausage as they do about Nietzsche,” I decided to take Taxi Gourmet to the German capital.

A few weeks in Berlin were enough to prove the Lonely Planet writer right: cabbies were as well versed in philosophy as they were in food. But besides leading me to the best sausage and strangolapreti and künefe in town, taxi drivers like Heiko Janssen also introduced me to their changing city.

Originally from Aurich, a German town of 20,000 in Eastern Friesland, on the North Sea coast near the border with the Netherlands, Heiko came to Berlin in 1988, a year before the Wall came down, “when West Berlin was more like an island for all the freaks from West Germany, for the outcasts of society.”

Heiko Jannsen: music lover, cab driver, tea drinker. Photo by TaxiBerlin.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Heiko joined the squatter movement in East Berlin, did odd jobs and started working on getting his taxi-driving license. It took him several years because “it was too easy in the 90s. Life was really cheap. Beer and food were cheap.”

Meanwhile, eating habits were changing as fast as everything else in Berlin. Taxi drivers like Heiko, whose favorite meal was sausage, potatoes and sauerkraut, started diving into new dishes like Syrian falafel and Thai green curry.

But Heiko held on to some flavors from his home town, especially after he became a cab driver: three times a day, like all East Frieslanders, he drinks at least three cups of Assam-Darjeeling black tea with kluntjes (a rock candy sweetener). Thanks to its seafaring tradition and historic trade with England and the Netherlands, Janssen explained, his region is the only one in Germany with a well-developed tea culture.

As a night driver with an encyclopedic knowledge of the club scene in Berlin, Heiko needs his tea. Before he gets in his taxi, he reads the papers and scans the Internet for fashion, film, and especially music events. Music is his greatest passion.

Heiko, who occasionally works as a DJ at Antje Öklesund (a gallery that a friend opened seven years ago) and is one of two personal cab drivers for the doorman at the world-famous Berghain techno club, drives his cab for the most part to support his love for music. Music is what brought him to Berlin in the 80s, and as much as the city has changed, it’s still making more music than he can listen to: “You can go to a concert once a week in Berlin,” he said, “You have so much.”

Photo by TaxiBerlin

Music is also what led the taxi driver to W-Der Imbiss, the so-called snack bar on the border between the once-grungy now-fashionable East Berlin neighborhoods of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg, where the taxi driver sat down for lunch with me.

From 2004-2006, Heiko drove his cab and moonlighted at Staalplaat, an avant-garde record label based in Amsterdam that was trying to gain a foothold in Berlin.

When Staalplaat musicians came to Berlin to give concerts, the cabbie broke bread with them at W-Der Imbiss. Back then, the restaurant limited its menu to two or three Indian-inspired dishes a day.

Since Heiko’s days at Staalplaat, W-Der Imbiss has undergone a major renovation. The tiki masks and the logo – the McDonald’s golden arches turned upside-down – are the same as the taxi driver remembers. But the menu has yielded to the new trendiness of the restaurant’s surroundings: besides the Indian subji curry that he wanted me to taste, W-Der Imbiss now offers house-made naan bread pizzas, wok dishes, wraps, soups, salads, and ‘tiki tapas’ that range from grilled goat cheese to kim chi.

W-Der Imbiss may be cooking up fancy fast food now, but Canadian chef and owner Gordon W, who pops up in the open kitchen from time to time, hasn’t forgotten that he’s catering to Western Europe’s most wallet-friendly capital: the most expensive rice bowl on his menu costs 8.50 Euros.

Indian subji curry. Photo by TaxiBerlin

Not only is the place is still cheap enough for a cab driver, but its Indian subji curry (6.50 Euros) was even better than Heiko remembered. Broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant, red and green peppers were crisp and colorful, even as they absorbed the spices from their light yellow curry sauce. Made to order, topped with a handful of fresh cilantro, and served with basmati rice and yogurt, the only thing missing in this curry was a little chili pepper heat.

We weren’t as impressed with red lentil soup (5 Euros, with a side of naan), which was spicy enough but short on aromatics. But the side of naan bread – brushed with ghee (clarified butter) and sprinkled with sesame, dried cilantro and thyme – was perfection from the tandoori oven: chewy, soft and still warm.

Red lentil soup and incredible naan. Photo by TaxiBerlin

Naan pizzas are the most popular item on W-Der Imbiss’ post-renovation menu. A few bites of olive naan (6 Euros), topped with house-made olive paste, sun-dried tomatoes, parmesan cheese and fresh arugula, helped us understand why.

W-Der Imbiss is just one example of how much Berlin has transformed over the twenty-plus years since the fall of the Wall: fast food is getting fancier, squat houses are disappearing, and underground clubs are becoming more and more difficult to find. But for Heiko, “The city still has more possibilities than any other German city, more possibilities for experience.”

“Berlin changes all the time,” the taxi driver said, taking a last bite of curry, “Luckily.”

W – Der Imbiss
Kastanienallee 49, 10119 Berlin (Mitte)
Tel. 49-30-44-35-22-06
Open: 7 days, noon-midnight
Eat this: Indian subji curry, 6.50 Euro; Olive naan, 6 Euro

A version of this article was first published in Sabor Magazine, December 2011. All photos by TaxiBerlin.

Here are my five favorite New York-based, taxi-assisted food finds from 2011, courtesy of a few wise cabbies, and some very food-savvy passengers:






1. Chicken tikka masala and roti: When I lived in Astoria, I must have walked by Roti Boti twenty times before cabbie Abdul finally convinced me to try it. They were out of his favorite chicken biryani when I went, so I curbed my disappointment with chicken tikka masala. Loaded with ginger and fresh thyme and plenty of the tomato cream sauce that makes this dish so delicious, Roti Boti’s chicken tikka masala is one of the better versions I’ve tried in New York. Basmati rice might be chicken tikka’s more logical sauce-absorbing companion, but roti is an even better foil: Chewy and warm and oven blistered, it will make you want to try everything that touches the tandoori here.
(Roti Boti / 27-09 21st St (near Newtown Ave) / Astoria / Tel. 718-278-7888 / Open 24 hours / Chicken tikka masala, $9; Roti, $1 – Map it )

2. Oxtails with rice and peas and sweet plantains: Oxtails at this Spanish Harlem storefront are smothered in simple brown sauce and fatty in all the right places. Sweet plantains leave no grease on your fingers. But rice and peas, simmered in coconut milk, are maybe the most remarkable part of this dish. Save room for rum cake – which showcases its star ingredient without letting it take over. There’s a reason Walkers Woods sells out of this dessert every day. It’s the same reason Max and Gillian and daughter, the passengers who told me this is their favorite Jamaican restaurant in New York, make the trek here from the Bronx as often as they can.
(Walkers Woods Caribbean American Restaurant, 2135 2nd Avenue (at 110th Street) / Tel. 212-996-2310 / Open: 8am-11pm / 7 days a week / Oxtails, $10 with two sides – Map it )

3. Steamed catfish in black bean sauce: Hop Shing may be known for dim sum, pineapple buns (Bau Lo Bao) and roast pork buns (Cha Siu Bao), but the cab driver who led me to this classic Chinatown restaurant steered me in a totally different direction. His ‘Lam Chops’ were on the menu, but his favorite steamed catfish in black bean sauce wasn’t. “If I walked in here tomorrow and ordered steamed catfish in black bean sauce,” I asked the waiter, “Would you make it for me?” Yes, he assured me, they would. So you should try it. The bone-in catfish could sometimes be fresher, but the black bean sauce – with fresh ginger and garlic and scallions – is something you’ll want every grain of rice to soak up.
( Hop Shing / 9 Chatham Sq (near East Broadway) / Chinatown / Tel. (212) 267-0220 / Open: Mon-Thur, 7am-9pm; Fri-Sat, 7am-10pm; Sun, 7am-9.30pm / Steamed catfish in black bean sauce, $10.95 / Map it )

4. Lamb Burger: I forgave the hassled mother who blew her top at me when the credit card machine in the cab stopped working when I took my first bite of the lamb burger she’d recommended. Cooked to a juicy rare, flecked with fresh mint, topped with pickled onions, tomatoes and barely-there harissa, it is Mediterranean glorious. Its airy bun doesn’t fall apart, but it doesn’t totally do the burger justice. The side of skin-on herb fries (seasoned with flat leaf parsley) does.
(Vareli / 2869 Broadway (at 111th St.) – Morningside Heights / Tel. (212) 678-8585 ‎/ Open: Sun-Wed 11:30am–11:45pm; Thurs-Sat 11:30am-2am / Lamb burger, $14 – Map it )

Photo by Amy Cao

5. Chicken in a Pot: When I asked cabbie Saliou Seck what he would eat if he only had 24 hours in New York, chicken in a pot at Ben’s Deli in Midtown Manhattan was his answer. At $17.99, it’s more expensive than most dishes that cabbies recommend, but if you’re short on cash you could easily split this soup/stew with one or two other people. Abundance isn’t the only thing going for it: the broth has the intensity of flavor that comes with slow cooking, you can cut the chicken with a spoon, peas and carrots are cooked to crispy, and the matzo ball is so delicate it almost disintegrates in your mouth. The tough dough on the kreplach is the only unimpressive ingredient in a soup that “cures everything,” according to the sign above Ben’s door. Maybe he’s not exaggerating.
( Ben’s Kosher Deli / 209 W 38th St / Phone: 212-398-2367 / Open: Dining Room Daily 11am-9pm; Take Out Daily 9am-9pm / Chicken in a pot, $17.99 – Map it )