Clash of the Titans: Cel Ray vs. Manhattan Special

RC Cola and Cheerwine bring back memories of growing up in North Carolina. Sure, each is just carbonated sugar water. But they're really hard to find anywhere else, and I love a good quest for something arbitrary. Since moving to New York, I've discovered that Key Food stocks RC Cola (the Ave. A location also carries Diet RC, which I didn't even know existed), and Brother Jimmy's BBQ sells glass bottles of Cheerwine. This is one of the perks of living in a place like New York -- you can just keep walking until you find what you're looking to acquire.

[Fair is fair, so I should mention something I haven't been able to get my hands on. Still on the subject of obscure pop, I would sell a kidney for a case of this stuff. A thorough review of the Peter Spanton beverage line can be found here. From what I can gather, it's only available in the UK. The spoiled child in me resents being told I can't have something, but the mature adult is intrigued by grown-up soft drinks. Mr. Spanton's sales pitch was enough to get my attention:

"Like Marmite, I think people will either love it or hate it. I actively hope children will dislike it."

Traveling Anglophiles who want a public "thank you" on a blog read by no more than five people, take note. But, I digress.]

High rent and cramped quarters are among the sacrifices one makes for such absurd convenience. Of course, the door doesn't swing both ways. New York has its own quirky cultural relics that become truly impossible to find in most other places. After a bit of pondering, I set out to find a can of celery flavored pop and a bottle of espresso soda. As expected, I didn't even have to leave the neighborhood; I love this town.

First up is Cel Ray -- made popular by the same folks that censored Elvis' hips and hid important documents in their freezers. Jolt Cola was not your grandmother's drink. Cel Ray was... provided that she never stopped speaking ill of those Cossacks. It's one of those Kosher deli staples, so to speak.

So what does it taste like? Throw some celery into a juicer and mix it with some bland variety of ginger ale. That's the best comparison that comes to mind. I find RC cola endearing because it tastes like flat Pepsi "in a good way." Had I grown up on this paired with pastrami sandwiches, perhaps I'd have a special place in my heart for this substance. Instead, I grew up with Nabs and peanuts + Coke. That's enough bizarre tastes for one boy. I'm too old to start developing new quirks like drinking vegetable-based pop, and the other five cans I had to buy are going to sit in my refrigerator until someone takes them off my hands.

Next up is Manhattan Special Espresso Coffee Soda. Aside from coloring and some preservatives, the ingredients are pure coffee, carbonated water, and sugar. In principle, it's the perfect drink to accompany an ambiguous brunch dish like an omelette with french fries. Is it breakfast or lunch? Should you get coffee or cola? Since 1895, a solution to this dilemma has existed.

I appreciate that these 10oz bottles are just the right size to fill an ordinary coffee mug. Yes, I know it's strange to pour soda into a coffee mug, but I really don't know how to approach this drink. In principle, this beverage is a glorious idea. In practice, there's too much sugar in this drink. The first thing that hits you is a combination of coffee and fizz -- good! Then it fades into some kind of sweet-but-stale aftertaste -- less good! The image I was left with was that of sugary seltzer being strained through week-old coffee grinds. Maybe it's the sugar, or maybe it's the preservatives... or maybe it's just a crummy drink. Don't get me wrong, I'm entirely behind this concept. The execution could just use some improvement. Then again, this is coming from the guy that willingly drops perfectly good peanuts into a glass bottle full of Coca Cola.

Oh My Sweet Carolina

Growing up in North Carolina, I wanted nothing more than to leave. It's a state with a beautiful coastline and majestic mountains. It's a state where the water allows one to dissolve more sugar than should be physically possible into the sweet tea. It's also a state where a sign reading, "The KKK Welcomes You To Johnston County" wasn't removed until the late 1980's. Give any angst-fueled Raleigh native a few years of breakfast sandwiches and New York traffic, and he'll start to forget about that last part. The overwhelming longing for a real biscuit distorts certain memories.

Cracker Barrel is a nationwide chain. There's even one in Maine, but no one worth his gravy would dare call something a "biscuit" in any state north of Virginia. Going here outside of the south is kind of like getting pizza in the Ukraine. If it's all you know, then I suppose ignorance is bliss. But if you grew up in North Carolina, then nothing but the real thing is worth the heartburn. Oh, the glorious heartburn. There are rocking chairs on that porch for a reason.

My dinner started as a BLT. For those of us uncomfortable with this vegetable-to-meat ratio, they let you add cheese and a chicken breast to it. I opted for grilled chicken. They'll also fry it, but that just seemed like playing Russian roulette with my arteries. Either way, the lettuce and tomato just seemed out of place at this point. So yes, I got a BLT and threw the LT under the bus. I mean, hey, there's no sense in pretending that there's anything redeeming left in this sandwich.

Aside from being able to drink unlimited quantities of Cheerwine, there's only one thing you need to know about Cook-Out: milkshake possibilities. Depending on the season, their menu contains 39-40 flavors, and they let you add as many as you dare. Practically speaking, this gets disgusting quickly. But if you think about the numbers, it's just impressive. A simple calculation* shows that with 39 add-ins (since vanilla is the base), there are about 550 BILLION unique milkshakes. Keep in mind, a quarter of those contain Hi-C and Peanut Banana.

Traditionally, I make the mistake of hitting up the first Bojangles I see in Virginia as I'm driving home. This results in 1) weaving down I-95 because I'm too wrapped up in reuniting with this lost love, and 2) going back almost every day I'm there, hoping to get my fill before I head back to New York. This time, I saved it for my last meal. One can actually go a lot of different directions with meat, potatoes and bread. Add a deep fryer to the mix, and there's really only one clear way to go. It's this, and it's perfection in a box.


* The Cook-Out milkshake computation

First, warm up with an easier problem: pretend you have only one add-in on the menu, say M&M's. You can choose to have M&M's or forgo M&M's, so you have two possible milkshakes. No magic there.

Now, pretend you have two add-ins, say M&M's and chocolate syrup. You first choose to have M&M's or omit them, which gives you two possibilities. For each of those possibilities, you can choose to add or omit chocolate syrup. That means for each of two choices you have two choices. Two choices times two choices gives you four possible milkshakes. Still reasonable, right?

[Exercise: Work out how many unique milkshake there are if you have three possible add-ins. If you guessed it's two times two times two = eight, you'd be correct. If you think I'm lying, write them out... it doesn't take that long. Or don't, because this is just a dumb blog.]

Now let's look at 39 add-ins. It works the same way. You can choose M&M's or no M&M's, you can choose Hi-C or no Hi-C, and so on. Multiplying two thirty nine times will take you a while, but Google can quickly tell you that the answer is 549,755,813,888, or just under 550 billion.

Thursday's Lunch: Melt Shop

New York is a city of food fads. Cupcakes were really big for a while. After the novelty of being able to order gourmet dessert at 4AM wore off, people looked for the next decadent thing. Hence, the grilled cheese pandemonium that has invaded most neighborhoods.

A fair account of the history can be found here, but all one needs to know is that this enterprise has morphed into a miniature fleet of trucks and several upscale eateries. It's already so five minutes ago. Ronnie, the underground grilled cheese dealer of the East Village, shut down his operation before I could buy a sandwich in a transaction that could be mistaken for acquiring... well, blow. Apparently the threat of being shut down by the Health Department became too great to press on. What this meant to me is that I had to journey to midtown to catch the grilled cheese train. Bummer.

Melt Shop got a fair amount of press when they opened, so I took notice earlier this year. It just took me this many months to gain the courage to make the journey to midtown for lunch. Of course, what they don't tell you is that seating space here is just a myth during the lunch hour. I took a risk and barreled east as quickly as I could, ultimately finding an empty set of stairs on 1st Avenue in the mid 50's before the molten meal congealed entirely. It's a strange enough sight for some dude to eat a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich while sitting in front of an abandoned building as all the suited folks from the UN walk by. It pushes it over the edge when he takes out a camera to take pictures of his own lunch.

I got a side of tater tots... because I forgot one can only comfortably take so much grease on a hot afternoon. The main course is the bacon/cheddar variety, with some other disclaimers such as "aged" or "maple" that I quickly forgot; they had me at "bacon." What isn't explicit in the description of this beast is the entire stick of butter that they fry this thing with, and that's what you feel when you walk back home on a summer afternoon. However, as I wondered if I was going to expire, I did always came back to, "well... what a tasty way to go."

Verdict: Make no mistake, this is just comfort food in a pretty package. It's good, but you have to stand in line with a bunch of people wearing suits to get it. The Three-martini lunch has officially been traded for the kid's lunch in trendy clothing. It's probably for the best, because I don't like olives, and bacon is apparently my Muse.

Thursday's Lunch: Blurry (and Large) Tomatoes at 'wichcraft

Apparently, water has seeped into my phone's already rickety camera. Things look a little fuzzy for the time being.

The BLT at 'wichcraft is featured at #7 on NY Magazine's list of seasonal foods to try before summer draws to a close. This sandwich features Greenmarket tomatoes, whose availability determines when BLT season (euphemism for the dog days of August) occurs.

Today's lunch comes from the first of two (been to the Dallas area recently?) sandwich shops on my radar that refuses to spell out "sandwich" to the bitter end... er, beginning. 'wichcraft, as we're all aware, was created by one of those Food Network personalities. This alone should price it out of my reach. There's one by NYU whose tenured-faculty/student clientele ratio is approximately three godzillion-to-one. The only other place in this area which such distinction is Knickerbocker Bar and Grill... because who doesn't need a three course steak lunch to spice up his boring Tuesday afternoons?

The sandwich place is, relatively speaking, for the rabble; so I can afford to shell out $14.50 for lunch when I'm feeling lucky. No, it's not absurd. But keep in mind I could almost buy three feet of BLT at the Subway across the street with that money. The sandwich itself comes with a price tag of $9.87, which sounds rather arbitrary until you realize that this makes for a round figure when tax is included. I do appreciate that. However, it also means I paid almost five dollars for a bag containing about four potato chips and a bottle of pop. Okay, so the bottle was made of glass, and the chips were kettle cooked... but THREE FEET, I say!

The tomato was certainly the star of this sandwich, and given the other ingredients, that usually means that the bacon just failed. Even without the delicious distraction of pork, I've never really remembered a particular tomato like I will remember these. It didn't hurt that these "slices" came in roughly the same dimensions as short stacks of pancakes at IHOP. Killer tomatoes, indeed (okay last time).

My only method for assessing how "organic" something (so often do I find this necessary) has always been based on size. I remember pulling toothpick-sized carrots from my grandparents' yard as a child. Never has an unnaturally large, store-bought carrot tasted remotely as satisfying as the shrimpy ones I used to nurse from seed to snack. Maybe the recent sewage spill acted as supercharged fertilizer for these guys, but these were notably large tomatoes. From what I can gather, the Greenmarket name-dropping only suggests that these were "locally grown," and I can find no stipulations about what kind of BLT experience-enhancing chemicals were used in these guys.

Verdict: Well, I didn't really want to like it. When I found out that the tomatoes weren't necessarily hormone free, it started to taste better. Still, if I'm not paying for "organic," then I don't know why I'm paying so much for this smallish sandwich (it could have been three feet long!). Still, at the end of the day, I can't say I don't approve of anything that uses bacon in a constructive way. Constructive and tasty.

Do you have Coke... in a glass harmonica?

Good things come in small packages glass bottles. That's what my mother told me when I reached for my last undersized gift one Christmas morning as my brother was tearing off the paper on a gargantuan sized box. At least neither small packages nor glass bottles usually contain socks. I don't actually remember what was in that enormous box, so I've chosen to believe that it was just pairs upon pairs of boring socks. I digress. On to glass bottles....

The bottles above came from the Mast General Store in Valle Crucis, NC. This is what's left from the two cases I bought in January of this year when visiting my mom in Lenoir, NC. Yes, I threw two cases of pop in the back of my car before driving back to New York. It's surprisingly rewarding to know that I have a stash of Cheerwine and RC Cola in the city. A bottler in West Jefferson makes these varieties with (mostly) real sugar instead of the usual high fructose corn syrup. A six-pack of this assortment was also my contribution to a recent party... because the only way to make a bigger splash than the guy who brings Swedish Fish is clearly to be the guy who brings pop in glass bottles. There was no Lingonberry pop, so it was still a bit of a gamble. Point being, pop tastes better in glass bottles. This is a fact.

High fructose corn syrup is a somewhat controversial issue. My stance is best described here, but to summarize, I think anything is fine in moderation. Putting the fork down once and a while would go a long way.

Pepsi has responded to the public outcry by issuing the Throwback line in plastic bottles. I tried the Pepsi and Mountain Dew, and I really wanted them to taste better. Maybe they did, but the experience was sullied by the lack of glass involved. I'll restrict future discussion to pure cane colas that also happen to be packaged in glass bottles.

Changing camps, the only way (I know of) to get sugar-based Coca-Cola is to buy from Mexico. There's a short list of reasons why you shouldn't go into any given Bodega and start asking about "Mexican Coke," but the fact that it is produced in 355mL glass bottles does make it a worthwhile gamble. There is a website, but I've found that it's woefully uninformed about the vastness of the present marketplace. The scientist in me should come out at this point and note that this HFCS/cane sugar taste difference could all be total nonsense. The "glass bottle" effect, however, is entirely real.

Whether the cane sugar makes a damn bit of difference or not, glass bottles certainly improve the soda pop experience. See also Dublin Dr. Pepper for another example of people not letting the dream die. Long live the long neck bottle!

Irish Cuisine

After a week in Ireland, I figured I had to mention some of the food I sampled. I'm not a difficult person, and most of it did come in the form of fish and chips. It was delicious. Even the crummy stuff (the Kennedy Fried Chicken of fish & chips, shown below) was a life changing experience. Irish fried food is still fried food, but the slight rush of trying it somewhere new really makes the experience.

The best way to begin a day is with a full Irish breakfast. This is the real deal: potatoes, bacon (rashers), sausages, a fried egg, beans, and the somewhat unsettling black (blood) and white pudding. Yes, I ate it all. Multiple times. I don't know what this says about me, but I found the beans running into my eggs more disturbing than the blood flavored portion of the meal. My favorite version might be the one I had at the Portuguese greasy spoon I discovered in Cork. Who knew?

This is beef and Guinness stew: it's meat, potatoes and braised vegetables (which just taste like beef and Guinness). Another repeat offender on my list of things I consumed. I'm a big fan of any dinner that can be served in a big, spanking bowl.

Some locals in Cork asked me what I thought of Irish food. I explained that I had gorged myself on fried food, breakfast, and some beef/Guinness concoction. Their response: try the bacon and cabbage. So I did. This is apparently the dish that sends the message that you aren't a wussy tourist (because eating the blood pudding isn't a strong enough signal). The server at the pub seemed reluctant to let me order it, and he kept asking me if I was enjoying it. Also, it's quite tasty.

Tuesday's (pre-Ireland) Lunch: Ostrich Sliders

In light of the fact that I'm hopping on a Dublin-bound plane in six hours, it seemed wise to use lunch as an excuse to savor some fine, American cuisine. A full blown "burgers and fries" style lunch also makes it less likely that I'll shell out seven dollars for a can of stale peanuts... because that's your only choice when you're thirty thousand feet up, halfway across the Atlantic.

BareBurger is one of those places that just crops up around NYU when no one is looking. It's fairly popular, so maybe it's just that I wasn't looking. If you can get past the simple facts that (1) they're really proud of what they do, (2) they offer agave nectar in lieu of sugar, and (3) so many things have "organic" stickers that it would really be more organic if they just noted the three things that weren't, then you can really appreciate this meat and potatoes experience.


I went here on a whim with my roommate a few weeks ago, and the ostrich had sold out that day. I appreciate a place where your backup choice can be elk. Don't get me wrong, the elk was delicious; I probably wouldn't have ended up adding elk to my list of conquered animals if they'd been well stocked that day. Such a serendipitous experience encouraged our second trip, and wow-e, ostrich was worth the wait.

When done properly, a big slab of meat is a spiritual experience for me. However, variety is the spice of life, and sometimes the same quantity in smaller pieces is just more satisfying (M&M minis, anyone?). I went with the sliders, and they're absurdly good. Rob and I made a respectable dent in that mountain of fries in the background, too. Though not pictured, the recommended beverage pairing for any burger is the (translucent) sarsaparilla.

If bison burgers are the gateway drug of wild game, I think ostrich is something along the lines of cocaine (cokeheads who are also acquainted with ostrich: feel free to call me out on having no basis for saying that). Point being, ostrich is certainly different from your usual grass-fed cow. Gloriously different! I blurted out to Rob that there was almost an essence of jerky, and he nodded in agreement while busily devouring his portion. Thus, that constitutes my official review of ostrich meat.

Verdict: this place makes great food. The service is also disturbingly good, compared to most NYU area restaurants. My advice to anyone is to go find a new animal to eat. It just might be delicious... plus it always makes you feel important when you can buy something on the menu that's labeled "market price."

Thursday's Lunch: Peanut Butter & Co. BLT

So this is the first post. Basically, I needed a hobby... and here we are.

I've decided to document the fabulous sandwiches I encounter in the tri-state area in the spirit of NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me: Sandwich Monday." There will surely be other nonsense to come, but let's start with modest goals.

It was Thursday afternoon, and I needed a bit of a pick-me-up. I wandered down to PB & Co. to grab lunch. Ten minutes later, I walked away with a brown bag that contained this:

This, my friends, is a BLT with PEANUT BUTTER. Note the bag of carrot sticks and garnish of potato chips that come standard with any sandwich from this place. I appreciate that after serving you enough protein to bench press twelve llamas, they have the restraint to only give you 75 calories worth of chips on the side. Recommended beverage pairing: Stewart's root beer.

Perhaps you've seen the Five Hour Energy Drink commercials that speak of this "2:30 feeling." I had no idea what they meant until I ate this sandwich... at 2:20pm. This is heavy. Only after walking five miles in the evening could I bring myself to even think about dinner. Even then, steamed chicken & broccoli sounded intense.

Verdict: This is incredible. Bacon makes the world a better place, and the only possible way to improve a BLT is by adding peanut butter. It totally works, but if you have any self respect, you'll share this with someone. I have none, and I look forward to trying this again. Soon.