Ruth Reichl's Perfect Snacking Tour of New York's Lower East Side
Legendary food writer Ruth Reichl. Photo credit: Jo Piazza
With the smell of pastrami thick in the air, Ruth Reichl leaned across the rickety wooden table at Katz’s Delicatessen on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to let me in on one of her pet peeves.
“One of the things that drives me crazy is when people come in here and ask for lean pastrami. Why would you want lean pastrami?” she said, with a look of absolute horror on her face.
I nodded and the best-selling author, food writer, and former Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet magazine went on: “I say, make it fat. Am I right? There’s no point at all in eating dry and stringy pastrami.”
There are few better ways to spend a gorgeous spring afternoon than eating your way through the Lower East Side with Reichl. She doesn’t just love food, she loves people who love it, which is why a walk through the neighborhood she lived in during her twenties, and the setting for many of the scenes in her new novel Delicious, provides both culinary delights and conversations with fascinating foodies.
Thankfully for all of us, it is a trip that can be easily replicated by any visitor to New York City who is willing to walk and eat.
