Gritty eats

Even before we thought of this tour, I liked to eat. I still do. I like trying different local specialties when I visit different areas. And that’s been one of the highlights of this tour, for me, eating and drinking new things. As well as teaching you about an area and giving you the opportunity to interact with locals, it can provide structure to your plans – you plan to stop at this bar, or that restaurant.

I’ve already written about the seafood in Baltimore; I should also give a shout-out to National Bohemian, the city’s signature beer. I wish I’d had a chance to try pit beef. Next time, next time. I also need to recommend Samos, a Greek restaurant in Greektown. It was our first stop when we got to Baltimore. Great souvlaki and dolma.

In Buffalo, obviously you eat wings. One of our first stops when we got there was the Anchor Bar, where they were invented. The place was packed. We found a seat at the bar, though. The wings aren’t as saucy as they are elsewhere; they put enough on for flavor, but they don’t drown the things like some places do. Also – and we saw this elsewhere in Buffalo – the wings are huge. Close to twice as big as what you’d see in your average pizza joint or chain restaurant in eastern New York. Different bars and parts of the city have different wing styles, apparently; a bartender at the Blackthorne in South Buffalo said that South Buffalo-style wings have a more in-your-face kind of punch in the sauce flavorings than wings elsewhere in the city. That's the Irish for you. He also recommended we have the steak sandwich there, which was excellent.

I like to try the pizza everywhere I go. I worked at pizzerias for years; it’s one of my favorite foods, and I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur. Buffalo-style pizza has a thicker crust than New York City, but not as thick as Chicago. It’s not as crispy as New York-style either. One thing that stood out to me was the tomato sauce – it’s a lot sweeter than the sauce in the NYC area.

The Texas wiener, despite its name, was invented in Paterson, supposedly at the diner Libby’s Lunch. The diner is still there, right by the Great Falls. It looks kind of dumpy on the outside, but it’s nicer when you get inside, and the prices are very reasonable. I had my wieners “all the way” – with chili sauce, chopped onions and spicy mustard – and some gravy fries. Texas wieners, to the uninitiated, are deep-fried hot dogs. They’re supposed to be really healthy, just like visiting off-the-beaten-path cities nobody else goes to and walking around their most depressed and violent neighborhoods.

Thoughts on Buffalo and Paterson

So far, on this tour, we’ve been to Baltimore; Buffalo; Hartford, Conn.; and Paterson, N.J. Here are a few random thoughts on Buffalo and Paterson.

BUFFALO: When you’re in Buffalo, you know you’re in Buffalo, because there are buffaloes everywhere. There are, of course, Buffalo Bills signs. And, there are artistic buffalo sculptures, which were placed around the city in some sort of art/tourism campaign a while ago. The name Buffalo, however, comes from the French beau fleuve, or “beautiful river.” It is not named after the animal. Heck, I don’t even know if buffaloes ever lived in the Buffalo area.

Buffalo, like many other cities in upstate New York, has been extremely depopulated over the past 40 years or so. You can really feel this on the East Side. This is where Central Terminal is. Once a busy train station for what was the eight-biggest city in the country, it has been abandoned since 1979 and is now a giant, abandoned ruin. The East Side used to be mostly Polish. Today, from what we saw, it’s mostly uninhabited. We drove around the area surrounding the train station, block after block of abandoned, boarded-up houses.

We went to a bar – Arty’s. It’s in the shadow of Central Terminal, and the only sign of life left in the immediate neighborhood. The people inside were friendly. There was a big Polish flag in the window; the vibe was regular neighborhood/working class bar. We drank Genny out of those short, fat old-school bottles, and on the way out, we got a recommendation for a good Polish restaurant in nearby Cheektowaga.

PATERSON: About a year ago, before we had even conceived of the “Gritty Cities” tour, I was on a train to New York City. One of the stops was Paterson. I looked out the train window, and saw a bunch of abandoned factories. It looked like a German city from 1945. I knew I had to visit there someday.

Even by urban northeastern standards, Paterson has an inordinate amount of litter. You walk along the Passaic River, and the shores are full of garbage and the water close to shore has an oily sheen on it. There’s tons of litter everywhere in the city. Weirdly enough, when we went, there were broken TVs everywhere. We must have counted at least 40 of them, on curbs mostly, but also in vacant lots, next to the river, in Hinchliffe Stadium, wherever else you could throw them. It’s like everyone decided to throw out their TV on the same day.

Hinchliffe Stadium is one of a handful of Negro League stadiums still standing. It’s right there after you cross the Great Falls, over to North Paterson. It feels a bit like, I imagine, looking at the remains of a Roman amphitheater would. You can get a sense of its former glory, but today it’s falling apart and full of garbage. A lot of car parts, weirdly enough. It’s like people use it as a spot to dump parts after they crash their cars.

Paterson feels more crowded than Baltimore or Buffalo. With about 120,000 people packed into eight square miles, this makes sense. Unlike Buffalo, where you can sometimes look out on a main street and see no people, Paterson is full of people. Its vibe reminds me of a gritty neighborhood in New York City, which I guess makes sense given its location.