Posts tagged ‘Shake Shack’

As no baseball fan needs to be reminded, today is Opening Day 2010, and I’m ready to get on the 7 train with the orange-and-blue masses to make the hunger-inducing trip out to Citi Field.

Although I’ve never memorized ERAs or correctly identified a player on the Texas Rangers beyond A-Rod, I’ve always been drawn to the tradition and pace of baseball. All the cities I’ve lived in have been baseball towns to an extent with endearing underdog teams, so it’s a good thing I married a Mets fan.

Due to Dan’s patient and all-consuming obsession, over the past decade, the Mets have come to feel like my team, and Shea Stadium (and slowly but surely, the new park that Danielle calls Debits Field) have come to feel like home in New York. The wholesome goofiness of having a man whose head is an oversized baseball helps a lot too.

But you know me. I’d be lying if I said the food at Citi Field had nothing to do with my affection for the new stadium. Shake Shack, Blue Smoke, the Belgian fries stand Box Frites, El Verano Taqueria (cheffed by Tabla’s Floyd Cardoz), Dave Pasternack’s fish shack Catch of the Day, Daruma sushi and Mama’s of Corona sandwiches at World’s Fare Market…. If you were at all familiar with the prison-cafeteria options at Shea, you would know that even beyond my minor hero worship of Union Square Hospitality Group, Citi Field is a step up.

I ate my fill of all of the above a few weeks ago at the Mets All-Star preview lunch at Citi Field’s Caesars Club, one of the many eating areas that were formerly available only to high-paying ticket holders but are now opening up to fans with cheaper seats—a recession-appropriate concession on the part of the management for the disappointing ticket sales in the latter part of last season, no doubt.
>> It’s going to be a good season for Mets fans, as long as they’re hungry fans. Read on. >>

Today, please welcome a post from Kristen Trajan, who has meticulously scouted a few wallet-friendly NYC dining options to keep us full and on a budget.

I’ve been riding the poor train for years now, and while I’ve been known to hop off for a little Blue Hill at Stone Barns, I stay true to my cheap roots. As Danielle will attest, I’m a great dinner date, but not a terribly adventurous grocery partner. (You’re talking to the girl who recently put a $1.29 package of pasta back on the shelf after realizing I could get it for $1.19 eight blocks away.)

But we don’t always have the luxury of—or energy for—making delicious dishes for less at home. And that’s why I’m giving you the highly coveted top 5 under $5.

Under $5, you say? In New York? Yes, my friends, ’tis true. I know just about every corner, park, and questionable hole-in-the-wall restaurant for recession-friendly deliciousness. But I’m starting with five classy spots. You know, where you can take that date you don’t really want to invest in. In no particular order, I give you the first five:

>> Where can you get this bowl of filling hummus for only $5? Read on. >>

I graduated college in 1999, but didn’t get my first “real” job, the kind with benefits, until January of 2000. Essentially, I’ve lived my entire “grown-up life” in the aughts and as I ponder the jobs I’ve had, all the traveling I did, friends and lovers come and gone, and a world with many sharp shifts, I also think about what I was eating. It has been both a hungry and fulfilling decade.

My friend C.C. and I like to refer to the very early aughts as “The Sex and the City” era. We were both working and playing hard at a dot com way downtown, accruing stock options in lieu of 401ks, and drinking a lot of cocktails. Though I was always a dirty martini girl, the drink du jour was the Cosmo. Then came apple martinis, espresso martinis, a resurgence of Manhattans, and pomegranate martinis. With our 10-dollar drinks, we also scarfed down huge amounts of sushi. Sushi was everywhere, even the grocery store, and I was able to convince my Dad, a meat-and-baked-ziti kind of guy, to try a tuna avocado roll. Dudes in banker blue button-down shirts were eating steak like it was going out of style. Any man who hadn’t sunk his incisors into a wedge of Kobe beef hadn’t yet really arrived.

The stock market had a mini-crash, the dot coms started folding, and I lost my job. I stopped swilling martinis and started doing a lot of daytime reading on Cedar Hill in Central Park. One book passed on to me was The Botany of Desire. “Have you ever heard of Michael Pollan? He writes for the Times,” asked my friend Christina, whose cooking prowess increased as the relationship with her boyfriend grew more serious. “I never thought I would be interested in botany, but this guy really opens your eyes.”

>> Read on for details on the rest of the decade in food >>