vip in the city, page 33

S and J were already waiting with our rented car when I deplaned at BNA, twenty minutes early. The extra time afforded us the chance to make a breakfast stop on the way to Chattanooga.

Not wanting to deviate too far off the I-24, we decided upon one of the ubiquitous Cracker Barrels along our route. We exited in Manchester, and just as we were about to pull into the chain restaurant’s parking lot, a potentially more appealing alternative presented itself: Emma’s Family Restaurant. The sign outside the decidedly unremarkable-looking establishment promised “Home Cookin [sic] at a Great Price”; the parking lot was just full enough on a Wednesday morning to suggest a loyal base of regulars. We went for it.

Once inside, we knew we had made the right choice. Our waitress had a thick twang and an easy smile, and knew most of the clientele by name. We were set up with three coffees (strong, good, and offered with half-and-half only) and given some time to peruse our plastic-laminated, local advertisement emblazoned menus.

First off: nothing on the menu was more than $10 — and that was the T-bone steak dinner. Emma’s much-touted buffet (which included fried catfish, fried chicken and chicken-fried steak) was $5.99. Corn dogs — offered as a side — were $1.39. Pancakes could be ordered individually. Every one of the breakfast entrees included meat — just eggs: not an option — and a choice of hashbrowns, homefries or grits. A biscuits and country gravy add-on was available for 50 cents.

Yes, this is Tennessee. (Our bill came to $12. )

Later, in Chattanooga, at the Bi-Lo (where I applied for a shoppers discount card), we spied this local specialty: sausage in a can! (And more, but I refrained from posting the photo here, out of deference to the more delicate-stomached among you.)

And of course, you can’t be in Chattanooga and not visit the Chattanooga Choo-Choo: “It’s a train. It’s a song. It’s a hotel.” A Holiday Inn, to be exact. The chain took over the decaying Terminal Station, and after an extensive $4 million renovation, reopened it as a hotel on April 11, 1973.

The dome room was converted into a dining hall; the baggage room became the “Station House” restaurant with singing servers. Other cafes and retail shops — offering souvenirs, “Old Tyme Photos” and the like — opened along formal gardens in the former rail concourse.

Visitors can buy tickets for an authenic New Orleans trolley (below, in yellow) for a trip around the Choo Choo complex.

And most intriguingly: a pair of original sleeper cars — converted into hotel guest quarters.

Check out the rest of today’s photos on flickr.

A couple of weeks ago, S and J keyed me in to Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop, a low-key gem of a diner, located just steps from Madison Square Park. It seemed like just the spot for our Thursday midday excursion.

This vintage luncheonettes has been a Flatiron fixture since 1929, but this afternoon was my first visit. After three-quarters of a century, Gourmet columnist Michael Stern still swears by the egg-salad sandwich as does the Voice’s Robert Sietsema. Eric Asimov of the Times touts the “elementally perfect tuna sandwich.”

In 2006, the vintage sandwich shop was saved from being turned into a soulless Starbucks/Duane Reade/Chase by Josh Konecky — a longtime Eisenberg’s regular turned owner, and “curator of a lunch experience.”

We arrived at the peak of lunch hour and were seated near the famed counter, where we could watch the men at work. The menu was typical deli counter fare: the famed aforementioned tuna and egg salads, ruebens, matzoh ball soup, chopped liver, a few platters here and there. We went for a couple of old New York favorites (the pastrami and a burger), passing on the “Real New York egg creams” (advertised on a time-worn sign) for a pair of lime rickeys. Our order was taken by a waitress — who true to form, actually did address me as “sweetie” — and within minutes, the platters arrived:

My burger was very good, if a bit overdone – and unlike at a certain shack across the street, we were able to dig in within 15 minutes of arriving. When the accompanying fries arrive this hot and crisp, I’m a happy girl. SYB’s hot pastrami was piled high on rye; the meat itself was meltingly tender and salty, as good pastrami should be. The lime rickey – my first – went against expectation. Like a very sweet gin rickey without the gin, or a mojito without the rum and mint… and also… pink? (S later explained that the color was due to the addition of grenadine.)

Love it or hate it, Eisenberg’s is a New York City institution.

At Central Park’s Naumburg Bandshell tonight for the third program in the 2007 Naumburg Orchestral Concert Series: Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Astor Piazzolla’s Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic under the direction of conductor Alexander Platt.

There was a pre-concert talk by Dr. James Lentini, as part of “Miami University Night with Naumburg,” during which Lentini offered some background on the jazz and Argentinian tango influences of Piazzolla, whose homage to Vivaldi’s most famous work almost begs for side-by-side performance. (He did not, however, adequately explain to host Elliott Forrest of WQXR, just why Miami University is in Ohio.)

Tonight’s soloist Lara St. John is a 6-foot tall, blonde, “Junoesque” performer known as much for her bodaciousness as for her bowing skills. (See also: Vanessa Mae and the original violin vixen, Anne-Sophie Mutter.)

St. John arrived on the scene a decade ago, raising eyebrows with her debut album cover in which the “classical babe” posed topless with a strategically placed violin.

It was the music, though, and not the eye candy that entranced the crowd lining The Mall this night.

Walking home from the subway station this evening, I was approached by a young man with a headset and clipboard, who without much by way of introduction, asked if I’d be interested in appearing in a movie being filmed in my neighborhood that evening.

Hmm… this sounded like the set-up for a Lifetime Movie of the Week.  Probably sensing my suspicion, he quickly assured me that he had no prurient interests in mind, and showed me some production materials and a permit for a small independent film that appeared indeed to be shooting at The Church of the Blessed Sacrament on West 71st Street.

Well… why not?

For the next two and a half hours, I (and a couple dozen others) posed as wedding guests for what I understood to be scenes in a low-budget thriller to hit the festival circuit sometime later this year.

DVD screening party in 2008!

After a weekend of fun and food, we were able to squeeze in one final eat outing. B’s stories from his recent trip to Japan had whet all our appetites for some authentic Japanese cuisine. And although a few restaurants in New York do serve fugu, the precious, highly toxic blowfish prized in Japan, we decided on Sunday night to hit the other end of the food spectrum: ramen and street food.

To the East Village, then: the ramen epicenter of the city. It must have been fate that we somehow managed to snag four of the fourteen counter seats at Rai Rai Ken. (Bonus: two more stamps on my frequent eater card!)

And then to Otafuku (#91 on New York magazine’s 2006 Cheap Eats list), a snack shack with essentially three items on the menu: takoyaki (octopus balls), okonomiyaki (Japanese savory pancakes) and… in a throwback to last summer’s trip to Hong Kong: shaved ice!

And to clarify: the balls are made of  octopus. 

We took our steaming cups of coffee out to the garden this morning, to check in on the progress of the C family plantings.

Then into the house where a sumptuous breakfast was spread before us, including MC’s homemade chive dumplings and JG’s outrageously delicious shrimp cheese grits.

To celebrate J and B turning another year wiser, we convened near Grand Central (48 hours after the massive steampipe explosion) for dinner on the town – the town being, for tonight, North Salem in Westchester County.

Purdy’s Homestead is named for Joseph Purdy – one in the long chain of Westchester Purdys — who built his colonial farmhouse circa 1775 farmhouse in the hamlet that now bears the family name. S and I had read various reports in the paper of record over the years, and weeks ago she set out to plan the celebration weekend.

But first, a quick trip to the Cupcake Café for a small cake – aren’t they pretty?

One traffic-clogged ride up to Westchester later – seems we weren’t the only ones planning a quick summer getaway – we pulled up to the quaint, iron fenced homestead. A walk through the small bar area was like a glimpse into the landmarked house’s past: stone fireplace, beamed ceilings, wide-planked floors. No doubt cozy in wintertime, but tonight was clear and cool, so we elected to dine on the screened porch.

Chef couple — another one! — Charles Steppe and Maureen Brown-Steppe, who met as students at the Culinary Institute of America and married just after graduation, opened Purdy’s Homestead in January 2000. The New American menu was casually elegant: we started our meals with well-presented appetizers of artichokes, calamari and oysters, and as darkness fell, proceeded into a round of four solidly satisfying entrees (for which there was hearty-cross-sampling.)

And for dessert: chocolate birthday cake, topped with astronaut-themed candles. Despite not quite being the surprise that S and I intended (tough to smuggle a cake in such close quarters), it was a sweet ending to a festive meal.

After last week’s performance was rained out, the crowds turned out in droves for tonight’s second (and last) Philharmonic in the Parks concert in Central Park. 

J had staked out a prime spot for us near the center of the Great Lawn, putting us improbably adjacent to CP and her group, with whom we had to avoid eye contact when it became abundantly clear that they had far more people than blanket space.  (We may have been more inclined to generosity had half of them not insisted on prattling on loudly and distractingly through the entire concert.)

Sir Andrew Davis (who also conducted the Josh Bell concert last December) led the evening of music, which included Musorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” and one of my favorite arias, “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” from Catalani’s La Wally.

Post-concert fireworks over Columbus Circle:

Is Cape May the new Cape Cod? I remember how entranced we all were by the New England seaside resort the first time we visited… enough to commit to the destination as a family Labor Day weekend tradition. Some 20+ years later, though, some of us seemed ready to be lured away by someplace new.

A couple hours closer to New York City, and not yet victim to the contempt bred by familiarity, Cape May seemed like just the place. Once the fashionable resort for upper-middle class Philadelphians and Trentonites, it boasts a quaint small-town feel, pristine beaches, and streets lined with charming, well-preserved Victorian houses — the second largest concentration of such houses outside of San Francisco.

While Mom and Dad explored the area’s abundant antique shops, I toured the 18-room mansion of the late 19th-century Emlen Physick Estate — the year-round home of a nonpracticing Philadelphia-born physician. Physick came into his considerable inheritance, having fulfilled his father’s condition of attending medical school (at UPenn), but declined a medical career for the leisurely life of a country gentleman in Cape May, without ever treating a single patient.

It seems the elder Physick should have been more specific with his last wishes. The intent, no doubt, was to continue the family’s revered tradition in medicine through his son. Emlen’s paternal grandfather, Dr. Philip Syng Physick, was an accomplished and prominent Philadelphia physician, and considered by many to be the “Father of American Surgery.”

Softshell crab lunch at Lucky Bones Backwater Grille, conveniently (but probably not coincidentally) located next door to the Cape May Antique Center.

Washington Street pedestrian mall:

Check out the rest of the photos on flickr… though I suspect we’ll be back soon.