In honor of Greasy Spoons Week, City Landing's chef and owner, Bill Brodsky, a Long Island native, reflects: "My all-time favorite greasy spoon, without a doubt, is Sammy's Roumanian in NY's Lower East Side. My family made annual pilgrimages to sample some of the tastiest, cholesterol-loaded cuisine on the entire planet, not to mention some homegrown hospitality via somewhat obnoxious servers (in a good way). The décor is, well...a basement, with business cards posing as wallpaper. However, the ambiance is one its own. Live showtunes in Yiddish being reproduced by a surly guy playing an electric piano with the ash of his cigarette reaching two inches before it magically disappeared. Ah...the 70s."
"Even more memorable was the meal I ordered almost every time I went. An app of chopped liver where you can add as much schmaltz (rendered chicken fat in a maple syrup bottle placed in the middle of the table) as you liked with fried onions that bordered on burnt. Another app of Karnatzlack featured a beef and veal "sausage" (almost kabob-like) that has so much garlic in it that you need to go to sleep with a gallon of water next to the bed so that when you wake up with the driest throat of your life, you will be close to an oasis. For an entrée, the Romanian tenderloin (skirt steak) was again laced with garlic and what I think was bone marrow. The small steak hung over the edge of the plate, so I never opted for the large.
A meal like this can't be better...but it was. To finish you off, we went deep: include an old-fashioned egg cream that you make at the table with your own bottle of seltzer and Fox's Ubet chocolate syrup and some chocolate pudding. Covered with a thick layer of skin. The waiter poured heavy cream on top of it which when mixed with your spoon became ethereal. Now that's living."· All coverage of City Landing on Eater [~EBOS~]
· All coverage of Greasy Spoons Week on Eater [~EBOS~]