Give Us Your Tired,
Give Us Your Tired,
Your Hungry,
Your Couch Bound...”
One of the most valued of any New Yorker’s inalienable rights, the one right behind random moments of enchantment and discovery and immediately preceding random acts of brutal and senseless violence, is the right to order in. Especially now with the post holiday doldrums of January settling down like a wet parka over the deadening ennui of February. There is nothing so perversely comforting as the idea of some dauntless delivery person braving the cruel winds and freezing rains of winter to deliver hot noodles to our various remote controlled, humidifier fogged abodes. Especially here in Manhattan where virtually every known cuisine, and a few not so well known, is only seven little push buttons away. With this in mind, I have researched exhaustively, sometimes ordering in three or four times a week, to discover the very best these various culinary disciplines have to offer and to provide some few insights on the best of their individual offerings.
Italian food is relatively fool proof, although ordering an entire pizza for one person can make for a somewhat lonesome, not to mention dangerous, evening, if you happen to possess that all important Y chromosome. You know, the one that gives men the same ability as most Irish Setters to determine when they have consumed enough food, (which is usually everything within reach). Simple pastas, heroes and salads travel well and most neighborhood places do a pretty fair job at a reasonable price. (Anyone of the thousands of original Ray’s is a good bet.) Just make sure to order any salad dressing on the side, unless you want to spend half your evening towel drying the lettuce.
The only other advice I can offer here is this: if your pizza still hasn’t arrived after an hour do not do what I did, which was call the pizzeria and get into a shouting match with Augie from Bay Ridge, hang up on him after telling him to go screw himself, and only then realize that Augie from Bay Ridge has your address and phone number.
Mexican food is fine but be careful when ordering anything that consists of mostly cheese and beans - they quickly congeal onto a Frisbee sized mass that resembles nothing so much as fake vomit. (Then again it sometimes looks that way in the restaurant, but by that time you’re on your third margarita so who cares.) I find that it’s best to order individual tacos with salad or guacamole, unless you’re willing to bribe the delivery guy into picking up a bottle of Sauza and a few limes on the way over.
Indian food is great, as long as it is consumed in an authentic Indian restaurant. Once you take away the Pier 1 decor and the annoying music it loses some subtle quality. Like edibility. Unpacking all those strangely textured and exotically colored items in the bright light of your own kitchen you notice that everything looks a little, well, too organic, if you know what I mean. (If you don’t believe me try to think of the last brightly lit Indian restaurant you ate in.) You could of course try to recreate the appropriate atmosphere by turning the lights down and playing a Cyndi Lauper tape backwards, but my advice is to either brave the cold or wait till spring for Tandoori shrimp.
Japanese cuisine is a favorite of mine and they pack it in those cool containers that look like something Frank Lloyd Wright would design for NASA. But again there are only certain items that should be ordered to go. Sushi is great when its served by guys in pajamas wearing bandannas, but once you get it home it starts to look like something that should be thrown to you while you slap the backs of your hands together. If you have to smear wasabi on something order the hand rolls. Any of the teriyaki dishes travels well, but stay away from the tempura. By the time it gets to your house it’s just limp greasy vegetables. If you want that for dinner you should move back in with your parents.
Middle Eastern food is almost perfect for delivery. You can order any number of savory concoctions, such as humus or babaganoush, and just stuff it in the handy pita bread that comes along with it, thereby avoiding the chore of cleaning your utensils. Most of it is room temperature mush already, so it certainly can’t suffer by traveling. And, to create a real cross cultural experience, you can spread a blanket over the rug and eat on the floor, dreaming of someday returning to your beloved home land that is now so painfully torn by strife and violence. Like Massapequa for instance.
And finally there is Chinese food, the one cuisine that surpasses all others in sheer deliverability. To start with you have the menus. Besides the twisted syntax, baroque use of adjectives (I’d love to have who ever writes these things describe my sex life), and allusions to quasi historical military leaders (Who was General Tso, does he outrank Colonel Sanders?) they offer a wonderful example of the slow meld of cultures: on some menus the traditional vegetarian dish Buddhist’s Delight is now called AndyBoy Medley. I’m not sure if this raises American truck farming to the level of deity but it is remarkably evocative. On other menus there is the vaguely Gallic sounding Shrimp Almond Ding. If nothing else these colorful descriptions and typos offer us a smug giggle or two that can take some of the sting out of eating at home. Alone. Again.
Then there is the food itself. From spring rolls to black bean sauce, from Szechuan to Hunan, Chinese food offers an endless variety of foods from which to compose a healthy meal containing items from the four basic order in food groups: noodles, grease, brown or red sauce and anything that can be identified as a green vegetable without the use of a spectroscope. It is also conveniently packaged so that the part you don’t eat (if anyone actually ate all the Chinese food they ordered they could lapse into a coma that would last until long after the Stanley Cup Playoffs) can then be neatly stored in your refrigerator. Until you throw it out. Some time long after the Stanley Cup Playoffs. All this without even mentioning the condiment dividend, and the fact that they pack your meal with an orange and a cookie without asking you why you haven’t called lately.
As for efficiency of delivery, Chinese food excels, which is not surprising if you think of all the times you’ve almost been run down by white jacketed bike jockeys sporting Moe Howard hairdos.
In any case, you should always ask for an E.T.A.. That way you’ll know when its time to resort to the time honored tradition of insuring immediate delivery: removing all your clothes and getting into the shower. I guarantee that as soon as you are completely wet the door buzzer will sound. (I once tried just standing naked in my bathroom with the water running, but it didn’t work. Somehow they know.)
I hope these few helpful hints come in handy the next time your afflicted with wind chill factor induced agoraphobia. Choosing the appropriate cuisine for an evening of cable grazing is a crucial decision, and, with any luck, the last important one you’ll have to make till April. In closing I would like to add one more personal note: Augie, forget the pizza, I moved.
First published in NY WEEKLY February 25, 1996
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