Eating out With Famous Fat Dave

Dave is a part-time taxi driver in New York and Dave loves to eat. He cares about good food and about places that prepare original food: the corner bakery, the traditional brewery or the little pizza place that’s barely surviving the competition with “Pizza Hut” and other fast-food chains.

So what does Dave, the taxi driver talk to his clients about? Food, of course. Dave usually asks his customers what eating joints they like in their neighborhood. He figures: if they live in that area, they will know the best eating places to go to. He tries them out and if they’re good, he’ll add them to his list of the best places in the city.

Eat your way through the city

At some point, Dave decided that he could make money by merging driving and eating: He started offering eating tours through New York.

Each tour lasts a minimum of four hours. During these four hours, Dave will take you through different New York neighborhoods like Brooklyn, Uptown or Little Italy. He’ll stop here and there at places that no ordinary tourist would ever find. Places that many a New Yorker will never have heard of either.

But Dave knows that this is the best place in the city for bagels, and that is the best place for pizza – oh and THAT has to be the best place for cannoli, little Italian pastries that are to die for.

We took a four-hour eating tour with Famous Fat Dave last week. Before we started, I thought four hours would be endless and that we’d be stuffed or bored after the first half of the tour. But the four hours were over before we knew it!

For one thing, Dave does a lot of driving on his tours – so that already takes up a lot of your time. And then, when you finally reach one of the places he’s picked out for you, you’ll only be eating a tiny little bit. Just a taste. A little Turkish salad here, some hummus there, or a slice of pizza and ice cream somewhere else.

Of course, you can always have seconds wherever you like throughout your journey. But I, for my part, was always worried I’d stuff myself too early and then wouldn’t be able to enjoy the rest of the tour…

In our case, “Famous Fat Dave’s Five Borough Eating Tour on the Wheels of Steel” ended at McSorley’s Old Ale House – an old bar with sawdust on the floor and an ancient cast-iron oven in the middle of the room. I would have expected this place anywhere between Dublin and Belfast – but never in downtown Manhattan.