Salmon in Manhattan

I just flew back from New York, and boy is my liver tired!

My wife Mindy and I are recovering from spending 4 days and 3 nights in Manhattan. We didn’t go there specifically to try a sandwich–it was our 20th wedding anniversary, and we’d never been there, and it seemed like a fun place to go and have some new adventures together.

We stayed at a crazy expensive hotel overlooking Central Park, we saw a Broadway show (did you know that if you order a couple of drinks at a Broadway show you may end up spending $50 but you will also get 2 very cute adult sippy cups full of booze?) and we spent several days eating and drinking our way across Manhattan. It just so happened that many of those things we ate were sandwiches. I may write about some of the others, but it also just so happened that a few of the sandwiches we ate were bagels with lox.

I thought I knew what lox was: what did I know?

Sure, I’ve had bagels with lox before! Why, I’ve even written about it before, haven’t I?

Of course, even then, I speculated that it was Nova rather than real lox. From what I understand, there’s a hierarchy of cured and/or smoked salmon. You’ve got your basic, cold-smoked salmon, mildly cured (brined I guess) with a bit of smoky flavor; then there’s Nova, which is the same thing basically but specifically from Nova Scotia; Gravlax is a Norwegian type of dill-cured unsmoked salmon; then finally there’s lox, the cured belly of a salmon, the richest fattiest piece of meat on the fish, salt-cured, never smoked, and something you can’t get just anywhere. A lot of other things get called lox, sure, but this is the real deal.

I was after the real deal. I found myself in New York City. What are the odds?

Mr. Russ, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter

Mindy and I arrived in NYC noonish on Wednesday, the day of our anniversary. We had theatre tickets and dinner reservations later that evening, yet once we’d dropped our bags off at the hotel we made a beeline for the lower East side to check out Russ & Daughters, an appetizing store that’s been around for over a century.

Russ & Daughters has been featured in Louie (twice), appeared in a film called Lola Versus, an example of the kind of indie rom-com Mindy loves to watch, and has even had an adorable looking documentary made about it, which I plan to watch after having seen this trailer.

Russ & Daughters was great. It was a small place with an extensive menu almost solely involving fish products. Mindy ordered an everything bagel with a schmear of caviar cream cheese. I ordered a plain bagel with belly lox, cream cheese, onion, tomato, and capers. There was a park nearby but we were still logy from the plane ride and ended up taking them back to our hotel and the spectacular view there.

The bagels here were on the small side but good, with a pronounced hole. I’d like to tell you how good Mindy’s caviar cream cheese was but I can’t–not because she wouldn’t share, she did, but because when I tried it I was still busy being gobsmacked by the intense punch in the mouth that is real belly lox.

Wow. I like salty things–give me bacon, pickles, chips! Serve me the briniest of cheeses! Let me tell you something, though. I was not prepared for how salty belly lox is. Belly lox is prettydamnsalty. If these fish were alive, they’d be swimming upstream away from their own dead salted asses. Its saltiness takes away from my ability to perceive other characteristics? Like: is it firm or soft? Well, it squishes out the sides of the bagel a bit when you bite into it but I can’t really tell because SALT.

A Conversation

LOX MAKER GUY: Hello sir, may I interest you in a proposal? I took this raw fish belly and I preserved it with salt, in the manner of ye Olde Worlde, and I thought you could serve it on one of your delightful bagels! I call it… LOX.

BAGEL BAKER GUY: Why that sounds delightful! Let me just taste this fine artisanal product. (takes bite) Why this is quite good, very salty, very salty indeed.

LMG: Yes, and by spreading the halves of the bagel with some of your cream cheese, we help secure the lox within.

BBG: Capital idea! My customers are indeed suffering from an excess of hydration, and the addition of the salty cream cheese will be just the thing!

LMG: In that case, may I suggest adding some pickled capers as well?

BBG: Almost perfect! Let us retire to my office, where we can discuss the details. You certainly are full of genius ideas!

LMG [exiting]: Have you ever considered making a… salt bagel?

Hotel Food: Bad, or Universally Bad?

Our hotel held a nightly reception, to which part of our exorbitant bill was going whether we took advantage of it or not, so we started our anniversary evening with wine and rubbery sliders. From there we had very expensive drinks at the theater, followed by slightly less expensive and more delicious drinks at our late anniversary dinner, followed by more drinks in the hotel bar, followed by a nightcap in our hotel room. Yet we arose quite early on Thursday morning no worse for wear.

I lie. I lie horribly. Mindy was no worse for wear. I was a bleary eyed waste of oxygen begging for just 10 more hours of sleep.

This is, of course, the reason room service exists. And in fact our hotel’s room service menu included an option for a bagel with smoked salmon. How perfect!

This giant fluffy bagel had been toasted within an inch of its life. I couldn’t even eat the thing for a few hours, though that had more to do with my condition than with the condition of the bagel. When I did finally eat it, I was feeling too tender for the onions and capers and just ate the cream cheese and salmon on, yes, the cold toasted hard fluffy giant bagel.

It was OK. The day, though rainy, got better.

When the moon hits your eye like a big circular piece of bread, that’s a Murray

We did have a wonderful day on Thursday, though we took it a bit easier on the drinking end of things. And by the time Friday came around, I was ready to give lox another try. While Mindy got ready for our appointment to gawp and take pictures from the top of a building like the tourists we were, I made a quick run down to Greenwich Village to grab us some breakfast from Murray’s Bagels.

Murray’s, though not quite as storied as Russ & Daughters, is well known not only as one of the best places in the country to get a bagel, but also for their recently-rescinded policy of refusing to toast their bagels.

FWIW, despite my horror at the toasted-to-a-crisp bagel I received at our hotel, I don’t have strong feelings about toasting bagels, mostly because I don’t have a good source of fresh bagels. But wisdom imparted by my bagel snob friends seems to be that good bagels do not require toasting.

The bagels at Murray’s are good, bigger and thicker than what we’d had from Russ & Daughters, with a hole so small as to almost be nonexistent. Mindy had requested an everything bagel with Nova, chive cream cheese, tomato, onion, and capers, though she wasn’t sure about the capers. For the sake of consistency, I again ordered a plain bagel with belly lox, plain cream cheese, tomato, onions, and capers.

The bagels were not only bigger but perhaps a bit firmer than those from Russ & Daughters as well, and for a moment I thought that maybe, maybe, the lox was just a little bit less salty. Then I had my second bite and realized, no, this is every bit as salty if not more so. I tried a little of Mindy’s and found the Nova to be more to my liking, mild, firm, a little smoky. Having the two side-by-side helped firm up my impressions of the belly lox though. The texture is a bit lusher than that of the Nova, rich and fatty. I almost wish I could try it again but soak it in water for a few hours first to desalinate it a bit. Perhaps I will try making it myself some day.

I don’t know though. I’m quite happy with the regular smoked salmon that I can get at Aldi on the cheap.

Why, with this, cream cheese, some big fluffy supermarket bagels, and a toaster, I can make a breakfast every bit as good as the $50 hangover special I got from room service. Perhaps it will help me relive those magical days we spent in the city that never sleeps but occasionally passes out for a bit. Thanks for a great time, Manhattan! (Next time we’ll try to see some of the rest of you, NYC)

And let me take this opportunity to again thank my beautiful wife Mindy for the past 20 years, and for the adventures yet ahead of us. Here’s hoping the next one is not quite as fishy!