Relish:NYC food like Houston's but with more expensive Mexican food

By Siegfried Bilstein and Dan Nelson     1/20/11 6:00pm

And so we decided to embark on a journey to the urban cesspool that is New York City. After a three-day car ride with brief stops in Arkansas, the Maker's Mark distillery in Tennessee, and West Virginia (where bars are open until 3 a.m.!), we arrived in glorious Chatham, New Jersey. Chatham was certainly the coolest place ever, but this is a column about New York City, so Chatham will have to wait until another day. Full disclosure: We were only in New York for two days, so we totally know absolutely everything about it. Our editor says that in order to make this relevant, we need to compare New York to Houston, so we'll provide y'all with a handy Texas analogue to each restaurant we visited.

Times Square is so dumb. The buildings are plastered with giant advertisements for all kinds of shit - the place has sold literally every square inch to advertising - and there are like a million people walking around in circles. However, Times Square is worth visiting because it's a spectacle of a place and you can get a pretty good meal at the Hard Rock Café.

We made an important discovery: In New York, if a restaurant has more than three locations, then it is required by law to list the calorie count of every single item on the menu. Needless to say, this leads to ordering lots of salads/feeling like a fatass. Texas Analogue: Hard Rock Café in Houston/House of Blues Foundation Room.

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After a couple of beers at the Hard Rock, we proceeded to St. Mark's Place, where we stopped at a Texas-themed bar called Coyote Ugly. It was a total caricature of all things Texas, which should be expected from those damn Northeastern liberal communists. Texas Analogue: Kay's in the Village.

We ended the night at the Crocodile Lounge, which is heavenly for one reason and one reason only: Every time you order a drink, you get an entire free pizza. Not a slice of pizza. An entire, personal pizza. The quality of the pizza is irrelevant (awful), because it is free and you've probably reached the point in your night where you don't really give a shit about what your pizza tastes like anyway. Texas Analogue: The Hoot.

The next day, we stopped by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to learn us some culture. Culture mainly consists of naked statues with missing body parts. We also learned that the knish stand outside of the museum allows you to get an authentic New York experience: buying greasy, delicious food from a dude in a cart. A knish is like a taco, except fried and made out of potatoes and originating from early 20th century Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants to New York. Texas Analogue: taco truck!

For dinner, we went to Rosa Mexicano, which is a swanky, surprisingly incredible Mexican place located in Midtown Manhattan. (Pete's parents, if you're reading this, thanks so very much for taking us to all of these places. You are the best, and you have a lovely home.) You should already know what great Mexican food is like, so since we have a lot to cover, we will just assure you that this place has it, in addition to very alcoholic tequila-based desserts. Texas Analogue: Kenny and Ziggy's, a slightly pricey and authentic Jewish New York deli located in the Galleria.

As you can no doubt suspect, we spent the rest of the night boozing. From sake bombs at a sushi place all too familiar with the ritual to some douchey NYU bars, New York is expensive. The most expensive, however, was a speakeasy we visited named Please Don't Tell, which one enters through a phone booth located in an unassuming hot dog place.

Despite being a speakeasy, this place was super classy. We really have no idea why the hell they let us in. Still, the drinks were superb, which makes sense, given that they cost $15 on average. The speakeasy also sells hot dogs that are pretty cheap and equally superb. Texas Analogue: Hiding from RUPD in your room while eating hot dogs.

We somehow managed to stumble upon a beer bar with an unbelievable selection. They had hundreds of beers and the walls were covered in bottle caps. Peculier Pub (yes, it's French) was not too expensive and a lot of fun, so much so that our tour guide (a former Thresher news editor who happens to live in New York) was there every day for the rest of break. Frustratingly, the only Texas beer they had was Lonestar. Goddamn Northeast liberal communists. Texas Analogue: The Ginger Man plus The Flying Saucer minus any and all Texas beers.

Finally, before we realized that we had to run to catch the subway back to New Jersey, we ordered some authentic New York pizza. Featuring pizzas such as "The Newman" (sopressata and sweet Italian sausage on a white pie) and "The Dude" (essentially a bacon cheeseburger pizza), Two Boots in West Village is a really fun place to get late-night pie. Texas Analogue: Star Pizza.

New York is a great place to visit with friends from school. Offering a wide variety of food, fun and other ways to spend all of your money, it's definitely worth visiting in order to experience a break from Houston. But we're only giving it four out of five stars because if everyone in New York is an asshole, then we get to be assholes too. Texas ?Analogue: Lubbock.

Siegfried Bilstein and Dan Nelson are Wiess College seniors.

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