A New York gastro walk

Being a tourist can be infuriating. You're just not in the know. You're not an insider. You're not a local. So you wander around doing things you think are the right things to be doing, but you're never 100% sure. The locals, on the other hand, march around doing things they know are the right things to be doing.



You can see the smug look on their smug faces as they elbow you into the gutter. It says: "My day is going to be better than your day because I'm in the know and you're not, tourist loser. Now get out my way or I'll be late for my exclusive gig/ restaurant opening/guerrilla-art performance. Have a great time at Madame Tussauds. Snigger, snigger."

There is a solution that doesn't involve violence. You buy your way into that local knowledge. No, not by offering locals money to be your friend. By signing up for a tour. No, not one with an umbrella, a coach party and some students paid to dress up as ghosts and scare the bejesus out of you with their terrible acting. A proper local tour for local people. And in New York, that would be a Savory Sojourns, which combines the two best things you can do in the Big Apple: walking and eating.

Savory Sojourns is run by Addie Tomei, who is as ged-outta-here effervescent as her Oscar-winning daughter Marisa. She is a Brooklyn Italian born and bred, and when you're walking around town with her, you couldn't be more in the know. She does food walks in all the most interesting parts of the city: the Bronx, Chinatown, SoHo, Hell's Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Little Italy and the Lower East Side, so the only real dilemma is deciding which one to go on.

Each one has its own ethnic culture and accompanying array of food specialities. So you can pick your walk based on your appetite. This, like going to Waitrose, is not advisable on an empty stomach. I was starving when I called to book and ended up on a hard-core Lower East Side-Little Italy combo: bagels and salt beef before elevenses; ice cream and risotto for afters.

We met in Katz's Deli, New York's most famous cafe because it's where Meg Ryan had her fake orgasm. There's even a sign that reads, "This is where Meg Ryan sat", and you have to pay just to have a look around. It's the Madame Tussauds of the Manhattan cafe scene, so it felt good to leave the loser tourists behind for stop number two, Russ & Daughters. Specialising in every kind of lox, sable and sturgeon, the store has been open for 92 American years, which is the equivalent of 920 English ones. As such, it's a venerable institution, and you won't find a better wild-Baltic- salmon-and-cream-cheese bagel anywhere on the planet, not even in the Baltic. It was, as Mary Beth said, "to die for".

Mary Beth was one-third of a trio of glamorous West Virginian ladies up for a foodie weekend in New York. They were enthusiastic to the point of spontaneous combustion. I was this close to performing the Heimlich manoeuvre on Mary Beth at our next stop, the Yonah Schimmel Knishery, when she began convulsing halfway through her potato knish. Just before I embarrassed us both by grabbing her firmly from behind, I realised she wasn't choking at all. She was just in raptures about her potato knish. Maybe the Meg Ryan thing had rubbed off.

I know what you're thinking, you miserable bunch of Brits: three overenthusiastic Virginians sounds like a headache first thing in the morning. Far from it: their enthusiasm, stoked regularly by Addie's brassy observations, was as infectious as Ebola. But in a good way.



By the time we reached the Economy Candy Store, a dentist's Dante's Inferno of atomic fireballs, Mary Janes, tootsie rolls and lollipops so large they'd stop traffic, I was behaving entirely out of character, matching every Virginian gee and crikey with a home counties gosh and cor blimey.







I FIRST saw the Lower East Side back when New York was mad, bad and dangerous to buy postcards in. I'd promised my parents I wouldn't stray from Midtown or go on the Subway, and then, like any self-respecting teenager, immediately disobeyed them and took the Subway to Essex Street. The Lower East Side was a rundown, threatening place. Even the graffiti was graffitied. I wandered around until someone demanded my shoes or my life, then scurried back shoeless to meet my parents for tea. These days, it's all change. There are stylish bars and minimalist hotels, and tenement apartments selling at Notting Hill prices. And nobody demanding your shoes.

So it's no surprise that the Essex Street Market, formerly a collection of largely Hispanic food stalls, now has a touch of the Borough Markets about it. Jeffreys the Butcher might have been there since 1929, but Saxelby Cheesemongers, purveyors of fine American farmstead cheeses, has been there less than a year in the form of Anne Saxelby, a young New Yorker who partly learnt her trade with the Slow Food producers of Italy and France. Another excellent place to snack.







NEVERTHELESS, by half eleven, even Mary Beth's enthusiasm was meeting its match. In a particularly gruelling half-hour, we tasted the finest doughnuts (at the Krispy-Kreme-smashing Doughnut Plant), then the finest pickles (at where else but Guss' Pickles), then the finest ice cream (at the pretentious Il Laboratorio del Gelato), then the finest parmesan and prosciutto (at the this-could-be-Bologna Alleva Dairy). If I have one criticism of the tour, it's that it followed a geographical logic rather than a gastronomic one. I would gladly have zigzagged more if it had meant I could have had the pickles and parmesan before the ice cream and doughnuts. As it stood, I tried to stop sampling the wares altogether after the pickle store, but Addie and her proprietor friends all looked mortified every time I shied away.

"You no want my prosciutto? You hurt me. You hurt my family. You hurt my grandmother. You kill my grandmother. You spit on my grandmother's grave."

"Okay, okay, I'll have the prosciutto."

"Good. Eat more. You eat the cheese. Eat, eat, eat. Mozzarella. Artichoke. Here, try the bolognese. Issaspecialrecipe."

By lunchtime I was full, which is a terrible state to be in in the heart of Little Italy. As Addie pointed out Umberto's Clam House on Mulberry Street, where Crazy Joey Gallo got plugged five times by three hitmen halfway through his 43rd birthday meal, I tried jogging on the spot to earn some room for lunch. It didn't work: I could only pick at my cannelloni in the bright main room of Ristorante Il Cortile. After the calamari, I was praying for a hitman myself. "Enough food, already." But what's a trip to the Big Apple if you don't, at some point, feel like a balloon in need of a pin?

Between courses, Addie secured us a VIP pass into the kitchens to witness real Italian chefs preparing real Italian food in the heart of real Italian New York. It was brilliant. Thirty-odd streets to the north, thousands of tourists were no doubt milling about in midtown, wondering forlornly where all the New Yorkers were going in such a hurry.

"Nice skyscraper, Shirley."

"Yeah, shall we go and look at another one, Bob?"

"S'pose."

Who cares if I'd eaten so much I was praying for a mafia hit to put me out of my misery. At least I wasn't Bob or Shirley.

Travel brief

The food walk: this combo tour costs about £85pp, with lunch. Tours start at £60pp (00 1 212-691 7314, www.savorysojourns.com).



Where to stay: the Shoreham (247 6700, www.shorehamhotel.com, doubles from £188) is a stylish mid- Manhattan boutique option. Or there's the trendy Hotel QT (354 2323, www.hotelqt.com), 10 blocks south, with titchy but lovely rooms from £100. Or immerse yourself in the Lower East Side at the super-designer Hotel on Rivington (475 2600, www.hotelonrivington.com doubles from £220).



Getting there: British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com) flies from Heathrow and Manchester from £249. Or try Virgin Atlantic (0870 380 2007, www.virgin-atlantic.com) or Aer Lingus (0818 365000, www.aerlingus.com).



More information: NYC & Company (020 7202 6368, www.nycvisit.com).