Fat Dave picked up our trio of Canadians in uptown Manhattan and tossed a Max Brenner chocolate chunk cookie our way as part of our introduction. He told us a little bit about his car as we told him some of the foods we wanted to try and had us rolling toward a coal burning pizza oven before we knew it. New York style pizza has a very thin crust, and when you use a coal oven you get to taste pizza the way it tasted a hundred years ago in NYC. It is no longer legal to use coal ovens but about 60 restaurants in New York have managed to keep theirs running, allowing us to enjoy our first of many New York City pies.
From the Pizza we continued on the Italian theme to have Roman Broccoli fried with Italian Sausage and served with garlic knots and Had a Hero sub from Delfonte’s Sandwich Shop, where the Sopranos like to eat. They served up Italian ham with fried potatoes and egg on a sub with house brewed sweet Tea.
By this point we would have been full, but Dave taught us to pace ourselves from the beginning and had about 20 minutes between each delicacy to digest and feast our eyes on the city. With stomach room to spare we had Vietnamese sandwiches, with lychee and avocado shakes, then stopped for some fresh beef jerky in China town. It was the softest and tastiest Jerky I have had in my life. We managed to keep eating, having key lime pie, and chocolate dipped key lime pie on a stick, but the boundaries were about to be pushed.