vip in the city

Recuperation

Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop

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.

Sexy strings

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.