Soul Food: 4 New York places of worship to find an unforgettable meal

by Ori Epstein on

In a city that elevates certain chefs to god-like status and treats their restaurants as shrines for gastronomic worship, how about a more humbling dining experience in an actual house of worship? Several churches, places of worship and temples throughout New York are preparing and serving meals for anybody that drops by that are always delicious, unique, and either inexpensive or free.

The following are not places where you will be taking advantage of a charitable soup kitchen; nor are they places where you would expect to be preached at in exchange for the food. Rather, these are places that happily welcome anybody to share a meal in the spirit of creating community.

Sikh Cultural Society – Worldwide, every Sikh temple, or gurdwara, runs a communal dining hall providing free, vegetarian meals to all visitors, Sikh and non-Sikh alike. The Golden Temple in Amritsar, India demonstrates this most famously, and most spectacularly, marshalling an army of volunteers to serve upwards of 80,000 meals a day. The Sikh Cultural Society in Richmond Hill, Queens may operate on a far more modest scale, but is no different in its approach, providing conversation and tasty home-style Indian cooking with hospitality and camaraderie.
Norwegian Seamen’s Church – Once a month, this Manhattan church provides an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of Nordic treats. With New York’s winters increasingly resembling an Arctic winter, tables overflowing with meatballs, potatoes, and smoked, pickled, and baked fish are especially welcoming. For all of New York’s culinary diversity, there is a definite dearth of Scandinavian restaurants, so why not try this cuisine with a group of friendly Norwegian expats?

Hindu Temple Society – On a quiet, residential street of aluminum-sided, Archie Bunkeresque homes in Flushing, Queens, incongruously sits one of the continent’s largest Hindu temples. In the main sanctuary dedicated to Lord Ganesh, worshippers cleanse and attend to the ornately carved deities. Meanwhile, in the temple’s unassuming basement, a crowded canteen serves some of the city’s most satisfying and inexpensive South Indian fare. Giant spicy dosas spilling over the paper plates, delicious deep-fried samosas, and deceptively flavorful lentil soups serve to remind even the most hardened carnivore that a meat free meal can be immensely enjoyable.

Hare Krishna Temple – Another basement, another filling vegetarian feast. Travelers have long known that Hare Krishna temples provide both budget-friendly and health-friendly meals. This sometimes vegan and always vegetarian downtown Brooklyn outpost features an impressive buffet and the neighborhood’s best lunch deal.

Review: Not For Tourists New York iPhone app

by Mike Barish on

For those of you familiar with Not for Tourists books, you know that they are handy little guides designed to help locals (and visitors) discover new and interesting places that are oft-overlooked by the larger guidebook series out there. While their books are typically pocket-size and easy to carry, not everyone (especially actual locals) wants to always be toting a guidebook around with them. Sometimes you’re just out and about and have a specific need worth addressing. Whether it’s a place to buy a scarf because a cold spell caught you off guard or a strong need for a stiff drink after a long day, Not for Tourists books have always been useful. Now, however, they have an iPhone app for New York City that puts all the useful tips of their book right in your phone. I put the app to the test over the last few weeks. Since I live here, I’m very familiar with bars and restaurants in my neighborhood. However, I often need recommendations when I head to other parts of the city. I was curious to see if the Not for Tourist app would lead me astray or replace the friends I often call for suggestions when I head to other parts of town.When you open the app, you are presented with a list of neighborhoods. Rotate your iPhone into landscape and the list gives way to a map with neighborhoods clearly marked. Once you select a neighborhood, you are given a list of categories from which to choose. These include Top Picks, Restaurants, Nightlife, Shopping, Landmarks, Libraries and Museums. after choosing a category, a list of locations appears. From there, you can pick your poison and make your decisions.

The first thing I noticed about the Not for Tourists app is that it is probably more beneficial to a local than a tourist (even though many tourists love their actual guidebooks). Information is limited within the app. Summaries of bars and restaurants are often only one sentence. If you’ve heard of a place before or received a suggestion from a friend, the NFT app is a nice supplement, but it is not a robust primary source of information.

On a recent trip to TriBeCa, I was at a loss for where to go for a drink. Since the NFT app is broken down by neighborhood, I simply selected TriBeCa followed by Nightlife. I was then presented with a list of bars. Bars are categorized but, unlike the paper editions of the books, the app lacks a key to decipher the pictures. While I could figure out that a knife and fork meant that the bar served food, I was unsure about other icons.

You can search by name if you are looking for a specific location. I selected The Ear Inn, a bar with which I was somewhat familiar, to see what NFT had to say about it. The app included a one line synopsis and a lengthy description of the bar that was incredibly useful. Then I decided to select a bar with which I was completely unfamiliar. I tapped “Toad Hall” and was provided with a very basic description stating “Laid back vibe with SoHo locals.” Unlike the write-up for The Ear Inn, there was no additional information provided. As such, the app essentially told me that the bar existed and not much else.

This was the case for additional searches over the course of the next few weeks. Most listings had simple one sentence summaries that were not terribly descriptive.

If you are a fan of NFT guides, are familiar with their aesthetic and typically agree with their suggestions, then the app is significantly more useful than random Yelp or Google Places reviews. If you’ve never used NFT guides before, the app is certainly too vague to distinguish itself from other apps and online resources.

Overall, the Not for Tourist iPhone app is useful for New Yorkers who occasionally are flummoxed when they leave their comfort zones. For visitors, it could be a helpful supplement to a fuller guidebook, but probably wouldn’t replace the Not for Tourist paper edition, which contains much more information and is a richer resource. Considering how small the actual NFT book is, I’d be more apt to keep that in my bag than rely on the app, considering how inconsistent the information is on the phone.

Thankfully, Not for Tourists has kept the price low. The New York app costs just $2.99 (as do their apps for San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles and elsewhere) and is available in the App Store. If you don’t feel like carrying around a book, the apps could be useful.

NYC Fails at Blizzard Cleanup

by Elizabeth Seward on

Residents of New York City were promised that every street in the city would be plowed by Thursday morning. With several city streets still snowbound, that promise seems to have been false. Stranded without access to buried cars, many city buses, or taxis, the snow in New York has made it difficult for some commuters to even use the subway.

City sanitation commissioner John Doherty promised on Wednesday during a news conference that every street across the five boroughs would be plowed by 7 a.m. Thursday morning. With that deadline not met, Mayor Bloomberg acknowledged the problem in a Queens news conference.

“Our response was inadequate and unacceptable,” said the mayor. “Clearly, the response to the storm has not met our standards.”

Garbage is piling up, cars are covered to their hoods in snow, and the blizzard from last weekend remains a huge problem for New Yorkers. Read more about the blizzard cleanup in New York on the New York Daily News website, here.

[photo by Jillian Steinhauer]

New Roosevelt Island Tram in NYC

by Mike Barish on

Cities employ myriad modes of transportation for commuters and tourists. From subways to rickshaws to monorails to water taxis, there is no shortages of ingenuity when it comes to moving people around. In 1976, however, New York City became the first city in the world to operate a tram for urban transportation. The Roosevelt Island Tram transported people between Roosevelt Island and east side of midtown Manhattan up until March of 2010 when it was shut down for renovations. Today, a brand new, modern, state-of-the-art tram once again allows commuters and tourists alike to sour over the East River and enjoy views of Manhattan unavailable anywhere else.

Gadling took a ride on the new tram before it even opened to the public. Can urban transportation be exciting? Keep reading to find out.

%Gallery-108524%The new tram was fabricated by Leitner-Poma. You might not know the name but, if you ski, you very well may have enjoyed their products. They’re responsible for many of the gondolas, ski lifts and trams you find on mountains around the world. Perhaps that’s why the new Roosevelt Island Tram looks significantly sleeker and more sophisticated than the rest of the bland, utilitarian vehicles that comprise the rest of the New York City transit system.

For those of you worried about a repeat of the 2006 incident in which 47 Roosevelt Island Tram passengers were stuck 250 feet in the air for several hours, rest assured that this new tram has several backup systems and fail-safes. The two trams run on four motors but can operate on only one. There are four independent braking systems. Perhaps most importantly, the tram can run completely off the grid and keeps a hefty supply of gas to power its generators.

The ride is smooth and silent. Unlike the subway, there’s no jerky start to jostle passengers. Suddenly, seemingly effortlessly, you begin elevated above Second Avenue as traffic flows right below you. Huge windows provide 360-degree views of Roosevelt Island, the East River and the east side of Manhattan. As you gently pass the upper floors of high rise buildings, it’s certainly amusing to spot people at the desks as you’re pretending not to stare. Before you know it, you’re at the apex of the ride, high above the East River.

The trams themselves are spacious. The windows keep claustrophobia at bay. A tram operator rides with passengers and controls everything using a touchscreen interface. This is a far cry from New York’s 100-plus-year-old subway operation. Everything about the tram seems modern and sleek.

With the new tram in place, Roosevelt Island is once again accessible via public transportation beyond solely the F train. And while more people may know about the Staten Island Ferry, the Roosevelt Island Tram is another wonder of New York City transit. For just a swipe of your MetroCard ($2.25), you can take a three-minute ride above the East River. Not too shabby for a New York City attraction that actually serves a very useful purpose.

Met returns Tutankhamun artifacts to Egypt

by Sean McLachlan on


New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is returning 19 artifacts from King Tutankhamun’s tomb to Egypt. This is another success in Egypt’s ongoing battle to bring home its heritage. Antiquities chief Zahi Hawass is spearheading the drive and says he’s repatriated more than 5,000 artifacts. These include a fragment of Egyptian sculpture the Met discovered last year had actually been stolen, and other items from collections all over Europe and North America.

According to the Met’s press release, the artifacts made their way into the museum’s collection in the years following the tomb’s discovery by Howard Carter in 1922. Carter and the Egyptian authorities had agreed that all of his finds were Egyptian property, and the objects should never have been allowed to be sold or bequeathed to the Met. After Carter’s death, his own home was found to be decorated with loot from the tomb. Most of the Met’s artifacts are fragments that were used as scientific samples, but the collection includes a bronze dog and a sphinx bracelet.

The objects will join the exhibition Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs at Discovery Times Square Exposition before going on display at the Met for six months. After that, they’ll finally join King Tut’s other treasures in Cairo, like the scarab bracelet in the above photo.

[Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons]