Yes, I know another food tour … this time in the Lower East Side. We started at Katz Deli. Made famous by that scene in when Harry Met Sally. We had the specialty, pastrami on bread with some deli mustard. It was good. Melt in your mouth and so tasty.

Not far from there is the original Russ and Daughters store. Appetising since 1914. It was packed inside but I got a few photos and had a look at all the different foods they were selling. We had another rugalech. It was still good.

Walking through the streets we got a good look at the old buildings. Most of the ladders on the fire escapes are fixed now so that people can’t pull them down and climb in the windows. They were having too many breakins. Since the fire fighters now have ladders they are redundant anyway. We passed a disused bathhouse in the middle of the road. Originally the old buildings had no bathrooms and the residents had to go to public bathhouses. We headed just a block into Chinatown and got some dumplings at Vanessa’s Dumplings.

Next up was The Pickle Guys. Who had all sports of pickles in big barrels. Onion, mango, pineapple, beetroot, capers, mushroom, Brussels sprouts, mushrooms, tomatoes, garlic and many more. We tried the sour gherkin which was more vinegary and another gherkin that was a much quicker pickle and was still bright green and tasted quite salty.

Following this we popped into Kosar’s for bagel with cream cheese and bialy with butter. I’d never had bialy before or a fresh bagel and both were good. Our second last stop was doughnut plant where we tried three types of doughnuts. These were much more cakes than normal doughnuts and very, very good. Finally we visited Economy Candy, a treasure trove of various lollies. We picked up some to take back to the kids.

We got back on the subway and headed towards to marathon finishing line for G to pick up a finishers top and get his medal engraved. The line for medal engraving was huge so I stood in that while G went shopping. Once he was finished he took my place and I went back to the hotel where I had enough time to do a 55 min run on the treadmill, have a shower and rest up for our night adventure.

In the evening we ventured up to Harlem for a Blues Tour with Big Apple Jazz Tours. The meeting point was at a cafe called Silvana which serves Middle Eastern food and has a basement performance space. We listened to one set of Phil Young and the House of Blues Band. This was a lot of fun, the music was great.

Afterwards we had a walk through Harlem to see some sites before going to the New Amsterdam Musical Association for a fun eclectic set. This was a very local, grass roots venue with people able to jam with the band. One of the people on our tour sang (and she really could sing). The band was pretty impressive the way the could just jam on the fly. The night finished much later than expected and we had a very quick walk a block to the subway and then an almost empty train back to the hotel.