The Not Dayton Trip, Part Seven: Valhalla to Corning, New York

   This is the seventh post in a series; you really should read them in order. 

Here's a link to Part One; and here's a link to all the pictures from this trip

 

 I had planned to leave Valhalla on Monday morning, but during Sunday evening's meandering discussion of things New York, which mostly centered on food, a gross oversight became manifest: we had not had any New York Style pizza during my visit. In order to rectify this, I had to stay an additional day. A sacrifice I was willing to make, as the cause was righteous.

 We started off with breakfast at Tommy's, a delicatessen and cafe on Broadway in North White Plains. The breakfast menu was limited, and to be honest I wouldn't go back to this place; the coffee was the best we've had, but the food wasn't by any stretch of imagination. I had a bacon, egg and cheese on a roll because the cheerful and outgoing owner recommended it, but the sandwich was a disappointment. It was cold and not very filling, and the roll was flavourless and lacking in texture. It was like packaged dinner rolls. 

 From the reviews posted on line, it's really more of a lunch place, and we actually only went there because the place we had come looking for, the City Line Deli (not to be confused with the City Limits Deli, where we went a day or two before), has disappeared from the building across the street. Tommy's shop is very small, with only three or four tables inside; we snagged one outside, as the weather was nice, and we got to watch the cement trucks going back and forth on the road, and some guy with a shovel grumpily scraping up the gravel that they drop in the travel lanes. (There's a cement plant just down a side-street; we passed it on the way to the restaurant.) It was also entertaining, watching people try (or not try) to park without blocking the crosswalk, and trying to extricate their cars from the curb when a delivery vehicle double-parked and blocked them in. This is apparently an accepted hazard in the metropolitan area, as no one was the least bit upset about it.

 Steve had some errands to run with Dorothy, which left me on my own. (That was when I went out to the Dam Plaza and wrote Part Six of this blog post series, which you should have already read. These posts make so much more sense when you read them in order.) When they came back they brought pastries from an upscale bakery in Connecticut. Steve assures me that "upscale" is not redundant when used to describe any old thing in Connecticut, but I have my doubts. We sampled a chocolate scone, a white chocolate scone, a sort of Danish pastry, and a streusel-looking cake thing. All were good. We talked for a while and then it was time to take Dorothy home. She lives in Port Chester, in a co-operative apartment building, which I don't really understand. It seems to be like a condo, but with a surfeit of rules.

 So we dropped her off and then drove north to Chappaqua and some other towns up that way; I forget why. Again, we missed seeing Bill and Hillary, but I can't say I'm surprised. They probably don't get out much, and we don't actually know where in Chappaqua their house is. 

 At some point we started trying to narrow down our choices for pizza. It was essential that we find a place with excellent New York style pizza, but first we had to have the discussion of what the hell constitutes New York style pizza. I'm of the opinion that there are only three "styles" of pizza in the United States: New York style, with thin crust; Chicago style (or pan pizza), with a sturdy crust capable of supporting vast quantities of toppings; and Sicilian, with a sort of thick cake-like crust.* There are all kinds of variations of toppings, including of course Hawaiian, the very idea of which is heathen sacrilege to New Yorkers, though I like it. Steve is of the opinion that there are lots and lots of pizza styles, and he thinks that New York style is not the same as thin crust because somewhere they sell pizzas on crusts as thin as crackers, and because once upon a time a pizza maker told him he couldn't sell him a pizza with more than two ingredients because it wouldn't support the weight. 

 I, of course, am right, but Steve wouldn't accept that and found all kinds of web sites listing twelve or twenty or sixty-two styles of pizza; but they weren't "styles" of pizza. They were variations on the three styles, some of which -- like "Colorado style" -- are sold in only one shop in some remote provincial town like St. Louis or a suburb of Denver. Just because a shop owner in South Philadelphia makes a pie with some odd combination of toppings, he hasn't created a new style of pizza. Just because some guy in Detroit decides to put the tomato sauce on top of the cheese doesn't mean his creation is anything but a Sicilian pizza with the sauce on top. Just because a bunch of bar cooks use a mix of cheddar and mozzarella cheese doesn't make "bar style" pizza a real thing. Putting clams on a pizza doesn't make New Haven pizza a style: it's still just a New York style pizza with clams, popular in New Haven.

 Steve and I somehow ended up at Colony Grill, a local chain of Irish sports bars with a location back in Port Chester, by the marina. I don't know how that became our pizzeria of choice. It appeared on several people's lists of the best places, but come on. An Irish bar? For pizza? And we passed easily more than half a dozen other, more likely venues, places with Italian names. But there we were.

 They offered pizza in one size and with one type of crust, the thin crust that I consider the defining feature of New York style. They offer the traditional toppings and a few that I suspect are there just for the determinedly contrary sort of trend-driven postmodern consumer. I'll only say two words about it, and then move on: salad pizza.

 Steve had no preference as to toppings. I was tempted to choose just pepperoni, as that is an archetypical New York pizza topping. But I decided it would be better to go with the same toppings I almost always get on my pizzas back home, in order to have a more valid point of comparison. So I asked for sausage, mushroom and black olive.

 It wasn't a bad pizza. The restaurant's signature feature seems to be something called "hot oil"; I'm not sure if it's supposed to be hot-spicy or hot-heated; it was neither. It's listed as a topping option, but we didn't ask for it, yet the pizza we got was oily in the extreme. You have to eat it over something you don't mind dripping on, like the table or a paper plate, which they provide. The sausage was plentiful; the mushrooms seemed a little scant; and the black olives were as abundant as rules at a co-operative apartment building.

 The pizza has good fold. This, I believe, is an essential criterion for true New York style pizza. You have to be able to fold it in half so you can eat it while walking down a crowded sidewalk. Of course, the oil dripping from the crease kind of militates against actually doing that with this pizza, but structurally the Colony Grill pizza meets the requirement. It's a success, too, in terms of crunch, another vital characteristic of New York style pizza. The pie we had definitely is one of the crunchiest I've ever had, and no matter where I go in the world (with two exceptions: Chicago and Austin), New York Style is my preference these days. But none has had the crunch of this pizza. So mark that down as a Yes. 

 The last discernible criterion is undercarriage. This has to do with the structural integrity of the crust. Does the narrow tip of the slice droop under the weight of the ingredients? Is it soggy, or has it cooked evenly in the oven? Is the thickness uniform from tip to rim? This one was successful, on all points. So I guess you'd have to say this was a high-quality New York style pizza. The only aspect of it that I wasn't completely happy with was all that damn oil dripping all over the place.

 So anyway: the pizza-related oversight was rectified, and we celebrated by stopping off at the Village Creamery in Valhalla for an ice cream cone. They make their own there, and it's worth every penny of the prices, which are comparable to any premium shops where they don't make the ice cream in-house. I had a scoop of chocolate chunk salted caramel and I think it showed massive self-control that I only had one scoop. I would go out on a limb and say it's the best ice cream in the United States, but the truth is it's only the most recent home-made ice cream I've had. Places like Baskin Robbins and Amy's and Stone Cold Creamery and, yes, even Ben & Jerry's are good -- very good -- but places that make their own, like the Village Creamery, are in the Honors Class of ice cream shops. (Shout out to Justin's Ice Cream, back home!)

 Afterwards we developed a plan for Tuesday. I wasn't in any great hurry to get on the road. My original plan had been thwarted by the fact that the car museum I'd planned to go to in Allentown switched its schedule at the beginning of September and is now closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. So instead of going there and then up to Corning for the glass museum, I'd go directly to Corning. The change also meant that I'd be able to put Lititz, Pennsylvania, back into the mix. I'd planned to visit with John, a friend who lives there, on the way up, but he was away from home when I went through; and when I'd looked at rearranging my return trip with the Allentown stop intact, it wouldn't work to go to see him. Now, though, it's a modest enough variance of route and it won't put the next stop, in Huntingdon, out of the realm of possibility. I'll be able to meet John and still get to Huntingdon in good time to go to that museum. 

 I'm not sure why, but these people in the Northeast seem unduly curious about what route I'm taking. Both Steve and John focused on the point: Steve on what route I would take to get to Corning, as if I knew, and John on which way I was coming from Corning to Lititz. They want to speculate on which is the best route. And neither seems to accept, deep down, that I'm not wedded to taking the fastest or most efficient route. At some point on return-trips I tend to get on a freeway and just go home, but until that moment arrives -- usually a moment of pique or frustration, or after learning of bad weather a-comin' -- I'm more likely to be found on some two-lane back road than on the freeway running in the same direction a few miles away. That's the whole point of my wandering. And I have Google Maps, and now that I've deleted and re-loaded it, it works well enough, so I don't particularly want or need speculative advice about which route to take, especially since, not having studied paper maps in great detail, I have nothing to offer in such a discussion. (Sometimes I do study maps before setting out, and in those instances, advice from well-meaning but relatively amateurish locals is not welcome. I know what I'm looking for in route planning, and it's something that departs greatly from the norm.)

 Thus, before I left Valhalla, I went to breakfast with Steve at a place called the Thornwood Coach Diner, on Kensico Road. It was great: easily the best breakfast we've had. The service was outstanding; the prices were reasonable; the atmosphere was comfortable and traditional. The menu was extensive, as most of these places' menus seem to be (Tommy's being the notable exception), and the food was very good. I had a Florentine omelet (feta and spinach) with bacon added, home fries and a bagel in lieu of toast, and it was all very well done. The bagel was dripping with butter, which was delicious. And the coffee was top-notch, and it kept coming. Definitely a five-star place.

 Then I hit the road. The trip up to Corning was uneventful, even dull, despite the construction along the way. I was at the Museum of Glass by two in the afternoon, and decided I'd rather spend the time available there instead of using any part of it for lunch. I can afford to skip a meal. So I spent three hours, until closing time, looking at the exhibits. I don't know if the museum is way bigger than it was when I was there years ago, or if I just missed ninety percent of the displays. (I suspect the former; the building I thought was the museum is now a Welcome Center.) All the exhibits are on the spacious second floor. Large rooms are devoted to this history of glass around the world -- Africa, China, Japan, India -- but the bulk of the exhibits focus on European and American glass, because that's where most of it is done. 

garish, klutzy and pretentious

 Much of the museum's contemporary art glass shows the unfortunate influence of Dale Chihuly; I swear I don't know why people seem to like his stuff so much. I suspect it has more to do with herd mentality than any real appreciation for beauty in art. It's the same with most modern painting and orchestral music. It appeals, perhaps, to practitioners who see challenges in the creation, but it leaves us ordinary folk cold. It's not pretty. It's not representative. It's garish and klutzy and pretentious. 

Nocturne 5

 But then there are other new pieces that are beautiful, graceful, magnificent. Of these, the ones I particularly like were a piece called Eve by Lino Tagliapietra, who is modestly (and accurately) described as "the greatest glassblower alive today"; the piece may have been there when I visited before, but I don't recall it. And there was a black and white chandelier at the entry to the exhibition space, but unfortunately I didn't find a card giving the name of the artist or the work. And the most impressive new work was Nocturne 5 by Karen Lamont, a stunning piece of glass sculpture. My photographs don't do it justice at all.

 By the time the museum closed I was as hungry as I've been in a long time, so I consulted Google Maps and found a Chinese restaurant not far away. When I pulled up, my instincts said I should go somewhere else, but I was hungry enough that I followed through, and got perhaps the worst pork fried rice I've ever had. At least it was filling, and I shall never have to go back there again. While I was there I made a reservation at a hotel for the night, and went there to write up this post. I also watched the last half hour of the US v New Zealand men's soccer match, an unimpressive draw, and a little bit of the presidential candidates' debate, an even less impressive performance.

*I would be willing to accept napolitano as a style, with the not-so-thin irregular crust such as one gets at Dough Pizzeria in San Antonio, one of the few restaurants in the United States that makes pizza by hand in the style of Naples; but there really aren't enough such places to make it matter whether napolitano is a style or not.

The Not Dayton Trip, Part Six: New York City

  This is the sixth post in a series; you really should read them in order. 

Here's a link to Part One; and here's a link to all the pictures from this trip

 The rain on Saturday afternoon really started to pour down just as soon as I finished writing up Part Five of this blog post. That was about half past four in the afternoon, and the pharmacy closed at six. I checked my weather app and it was predicting a break in the rain before 5PM, so I waited until then; and sure enough, the rain pretty much stopped by about five, and I was able to make the 15-minute drive north to Chappaqua in relatively dry weather; and without too much traffic. I got there and got my pills -- I did not see either Bill or Hillary Clinton, though I did witness a sort of Gathering of the Clans in the drug store's parking lot. There were a surprising number of people wandering around there on foot, and the guy in the car in front of me seemed to know them all. 

 When Steve got back from whatever he'd been doing, we decided just to go down to the Village* for dinner. The train station in Valhalla has been converted to a restaurant. (Trains still stop here, but all the ticketing functions are now done by machine, so the station building is surplus to requirements.) The new restaurant, called Valhalla Crossing, occupies the entire old station building, plus a rail car added for the purpose. I forget what Steve had; I ordered the shrimp po-boy, which is served "on a wedge." This, it turns out, is not a slice of lettuce, but the local word for a hoagie roll. It was just okay; the shrimp weren't very plentiful and were prepared in some unusual way that made them look like they were fried until burnt, but actually were just in some kind of dark batter. They had a good texture but no memorable flavour. There were maybe half a dozen of these oddly-dark medium shrimp on the "wedge", with lettuce and the other proper accoutrements of a well-dressed po-boy. I had it with a kölsch, which was the best thing on the table. The service was excellent, and the ambience was good. I think Steve picked up the check -- we seem to have been taking turns, completely unplanned -- so I don't recall if the prices were right. I'll assume they are.

 Sunday was gorgeous: cool, with clear blue sky. We went for breakfast to the City Limits Diner in White Plains, getting there just as it opened at 8. This time it was Steve who went for the lox and bagel with cream cheese and all the trimmings -- red onion, capers, olives, I don't know what else -- while I went simple with just a bagel with cream cheese, and coffee. The coffee there was excellent, the best we'd found to that point, and the service was outstanding. We had a relaxing breakfast, and I was surprised to learn that we'd spent an hour and a half there. Once we were done, we drove to Port Chester to pick up Steve's girlfriend Dorothy, who wanted to go with us into the city.

 The only thing I had on my list of things to do in NYC was to go across the Brooklyn Bridge. I think that in all the times I've been to New York, I had never even seen the old bridge, and I wanted to get some of those famous shots of the Manhattan skyline that you see on TV all the time. It took us almost an hour to drive to the bridge access on the Manhattan side, and then we crossed it in the car and found a place to park not too far from the pedestrian access on the Brooklyn side.  

 The number of people walking and biking on the bridge late on a Sunday morning is amazing, and they're almost all young, like 20- and 30-somethings. I had heard that Brooklyn is currently a big draw for the post-college crowd, and it certainly appeared to be so from this, my one time in the area. I think, though, that it may be a victim of its own success. The living spaces we saw in the area immediately around the bridge are surely out of reach for the vast majority of young people, but until the upscale market is completely saturated I don't expect they'll be building more affordable housing in any place where you can see even the tallest tower of Manhattan or the slightest hint of the East River.

 Anyway: we spent at least an hour out on the bridge. We only walked to about the halfway point, just far enough that we could get views of Manhattan free of bridge cables. The weather was gorgeous, and the crowd was tolerable. Even though you're on the upper deck of a very busy artery, you hardly notice the traffic down below; which, by the time we left (after a light lunch in a small park there), was bumper-to-bumper heading into Manhattan. We drove over to Williamsburg, which is another neighbourhood that I'd heard was sort of up-and-coming; and I suppose it is, but mostly it's remarkable for the number of Hasidic Jews that live and work there. I've never seen so many people wearing black, or so many men with wide-brimmed hats. And, of course, with the sideburn-curls that are the most immediately identifiable affectation of that population.

the Vessel

 From there, Dorothy -- who is even more of an urban aficionado than me -- suggested we go see something called the Vessel, near the newly-redeveloping Hudson Yards. The Yards used to be a train-storage facility for the railroads, but it's being phased out, and there's a clump of new skyscrapers already rising there, even as the area becomes the Disneyland of the City. The architectural motif seems to be glass and steel with non-standard angles plugged in at random to set the buildings there a little apart from the other tall towers of Manhattan. Apparently the miles of distance between that clump of skyscrapers and all the other clumps of skyscrapers isn't enough to differentiate it.

 So the Vessel is ... what can I call it? A climbable sculpture? A tourist attraction? At the moment it's closed -- has been for years -- while the people responsible for it install clear barriers to keep people from using it as a launching pad for suicides. In the brief time it was open to the public, it quickly became the go-to spot for people who wanted to end it all in the most unpleasant and public fashion possible. (The possibility of that happening seems never to occur to the designers of these projects, despite the long history of Falling to One's Death as a means of shuffling off the mortal coil.) 

 That evening, back in Westchester, we dropped Dorothy back at her place, then just cruised around the area. Steve has lived in Westchester essentially his entire life, so every place is a memory for him. For me, who has been here only a handful of times for a few days or a couple of weeks at a stretch, the memories are fewer and farther between, and less clear. Still, I enjoyed just staring out the window of the car while Steve recounted some person or event associated with a place we passed, and every now and then I could say, Oh, I remember such-and-such happened here, or there. We passed the place where Steve and I had dinner once, and he ordered satay, which I had never tried before. The restaurant's gone, apparently, but the memory remains. 

 Our own choice for dinner Sunday night was the Nautilus Diner, in keeping with our accidental theme for the visit of eating in places that feature American food. Steve got a pulled-pork sandwich, which came with an overload of french fries, while I chose the Texas Nachos.

 There wasn't anything particulary Texan about the nachos, but I guess the name suggests southwestern cuisine to people here. In the present case, I'll accept it on behalf of my home state as a great compliment, as the nachos I got were very good, and there were a lot of them (because things are bigger in Texas, I suppose). The menu mentioned chili as an ingredient, so I was expecting, worst-case scenario, Doritos with canned chili with beans on them. The chips are not Doritos, but some kind of large rounds with good corn flavour and not too much salt. There's a lot of jack and colby cheese, some black beans, some pickled jalapeño slices, and lots and lots of pulled pork on top. The nacho plate is piled high, and they're delicious; it's served with sides of good-quality chunky salsa, sour cream, and guacamole. I only managed to eat about two-thirds of the portion served me, and today (Monday) it's my lunch, and still delicious.

 After writing that, I took myself out to Kensico Dam Plaza again to walk; after all that walking yesterday I expected to ache in my joints, but I feel fine, and I want to try and build on that, in the hope of getting myself down to a tolerable weight and condition. I remembered that there are various walking routes laid out at the plaza. I picked the route that's half a mile long, and made two circuits, plus going slowly around the 9/11 Memorial (called, I learned, "The Rising") and looking at the names of Westchester's dead. No one could doubt that this country is a melting pot (or maybe a stew) when they read those names: Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, English, Irish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Scottish, Spanish, and some with roots I don't recognize. For all our faults as a society, that mix of nations is something to be cherished, now threatened by people who prefer to hate and fear others.

 Lots of dogs out, too, setting the good example.

N.B. I wrote that last bit before I found out that Haitian immigrants are eating the dogs in Springfield, Ohio. My point was that there were lots of things going on at Kensico Dam Plaza. But I wish I knew how to embed a meme of the Cheeto making the dog-eating claim during the presidential debate.

* It occurred to me that this reference to "the Village" might confuse people. I don't mean "Greenwich Village," which is commonly known simply as "the Village"; I'm referring to the one street of shops along Highway 29 (Columbus Avenue) across from the train station that is the business district of the Hamlet of Valhalla. It also is known simply as "the Village," but much less widely.