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I haven't done one of these columns —in which I make a dish based on the recipe in a cookbook put out by a long-gone New York restaurant—in a long time. Nearly four years. Mainly I stopped because it's a lot of work and takes up a great deal of time. And, to be honest, the payoff usually isn't that great. Perhaps my cooking skills aren't what they could be; or the cookbook authors left some secret ingredient out of every recipe; or I don't have the required restaurant-level equipment. Or maybe the food of yesteryear just wasn't that good to begin with. Whatever it is, the result is usually underwhelming.  That said, I have had successes. I can say that since making Luchow's Wiener Schnitzel back in 2009, I make it about one a month. And the Grotta Azzurra's meatball recipe is a winner.  For this dish, I turn again to the Grotta Azzurra book, of which I'm pretty sure I have one of the last surviving copies. As I reported before, the Grotta Azzurra ...

The Milshire Hotel is grand old edifice on N. Milwaukee Street in the now fashionable Logan Square section of Chicago. It is little changed, inside and out. The vertical neon sign is original as is the traditional wooden booth the hotel manager sits in just inside the door. The Milshire is today what it always was, that kind of shady urban hotel where people of no fixed address stay for short (sometimes very short) or long periods of time. As you can see from the faded ad on its side, it was a "weekly transient" hotel, even back in the day. Today, shifty character pass in and out of the front door. Nonetheless, there's a cheap coffee shop inside that advertises its wares ("Cappuccino!") to all and sundry. I thought of taking a cup of coffee in this establishment, except when I entered the Milshire all eyes suddenly fell on me, and one lean, scruffy individual began to make a beeline toward me, as if he knew me or I owed him money. I beat it. The episode lasted a...

A couple years ago, I rejoiced at finding the storied prosciutto balls, once made at the Carroll Gardens institution Joe's Superette, at a Soho pizzeria called Prince Street Pizza. Louie, who used to make the balls at Joe's (which closed in 2011 and is still sorely missed), was behind the counter. However, in December 2013, I got a message from Louis' brother saying that Louis had left the pizzeria in late 2012 and the prosciutto balls were not longer to be found there.  Now, a couple days ago, I received this comment from "Frankie," the nephew of Leo Coldonato, the owner of Joe's and the inventor of the taste treat. He wrote, with a detectable sadness between the lines: Hopefully one day I can bring my uncles prosciutto balls back to Brooklyn where they belong. You can count the number of people who know us real recipe on one hand, and have fingers left over. Besides myself and Louie, I only know one other person who knows his real recipe. Like I said, hope...

Rico Wholesale calls home a rusticated, four-story, sandstone-like building at 1149 Broadway, between 26th and 27th Street. It one bothers to look up, one see that it was once home to "Wallace & Co.," which now reads "Walla ce & Co.," since someone, at some point, erased the keystone that once separated the "A" from the "C." The building dates from 1886. William L. Wallace was a confectioner and this was his store. Or his last store, anyway. Wallace, who lived in Tarrytown, died in 1890. Wallace was very good at selling candy. When he passed away, he was a millionaire. Wallace was a modest man. In his will, he called for a "plain and inexpensive monument" over his grave. He was also a vengeful man. He left nothing to his daughter Kate, to whom he "had never become reconciled since her elopement with a Mr. Wood of Sing Sing some years ago," or his son Carolyn (Carolyn?), who was given only $50, "which the testator ...

The shuttering of Classic Impressions, a gift and card store on Court Street in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn—as well as the recent closure of Gloria Flower Shoppe just down the street—got me to thinking of the past history of 296 Court Street. It's only been Classic Expressions, after all, for about a decade or so. I uncovered a few things about the address. In 1888, this was a hat store. It was owned by Caesar Simis, who had several haberdasheries. In the 1950s, there was a "store and bakery" here. Which is interesting, since its right next door to the iconic Court Pastry Shop. Must have been some rivalry. On a more grisly side, on March 26, 1895, there was a horrible trolley accident at the nearby corner of Court and Congress Streets. Woman named Mary Ann Medinger was struck by a trolley car and dragged under it for fully sixty feet before the transport came to a halt. He body was "literally torn to pieces," the New York Times reported, with he head cut off and legs ...

When I went to Caputo Fine Foods on Court Street last Friday to buy some gnocchi and found it closed during business hours for no clear reason, I was alarmed and wondered if something was amiss. I discovered today that he closure was due to the death of the shop's founder, Guiseppe Caputo. He died on March 21. Guiseppe waited on me a number of times (though he spent more time in the back kitchen than at the counter). As with everyone at Caputo Fine Foods, he was attentive and friendly. Caputo and his wife opened the store in 1973. Since then, it's become to be widely regarded as the best source of Italian foodstuffs in the neighborhood, particularly the homemade pasta, the mozzarella and the olives. The shop is now run by his sons.

New York was once littered with public bathhouses. The last of them closed in the 1970s. But one can still find many of the buildings they used to occupy in plain sight. The old bathhouse on E. 11th Street near Avenue B and what is now called the Brooklyn Lyceum on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn are two prominent examples. This off-white, not so terribly grand looking structure was the Everard Baths. It was not a public bath, but a commercial bath. It operated from 1888 to 1985. It was founded by James Everard, a wealthy financier brewer. The building actually had a previous purpose, as a church. So I guess the building itself is actually older than 1888. At the time, 28th Street was a swell location. The theatre district was in nearby Herald Square and there were many swanky hotels in the area. Everard had private "steam cabinets" and several different styles of bathhouses. The place had a rocky history. (All bath houses did. Get a bunch of naked strangers in one building and som...

Gloria Florist on Court Street, one of the oldest businesses in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, has closed. Sal, the elderly owner of the shop—which started in the 1940s—recently died. The family hopes to rent the space to another florist. The business didn't look that old, but if you were eagle-eyed, you could discern its age from the lovely terrazzo rising-sun design on the stoop just in front of the entrance. Accounts of the store's history vary. Some say it has been in the same location since the 1940s. Some say 1938. Others have told me it began on Columbia or Henry Street and moved to Court Street in the 1970s after the BQE killed business on that side of the neighborhood. The closing of Gloria brought to mind all the old Italian businesses that have been lost since I moved to Carroll Gardens in 1994. Helen's Italian Restaurant, Fratelli Ravioli, Rainbow Deli, Renaissance Pharmacy, Carroll Gardens Pharmacy, Cammerari Bakery, Rapid Valet Dry Cleaners, Joe's Restaurant, ...

I would never stay at the Ohio House Motel, but I am fascinated by its continued existence on a considerable chuck of real estate in downtown Chicago. It's like somebody dropped a 1950s roadside motel in the center of a crowded city block. The check-in building and (now closed) Coffee Shop, as well as the lodgings, are a mere two stories high and sport a recurring diamond pattern that must have been fabulous when the place opened in December 1960. And there is plenty of parking. It's a wonder, given the overall style, that there's not an outdoor pool. The curious name comes from its location—the corner of Ohio and LaSalle Streets. According to the motel's rather proud-sounding website: Planning for the Ohio House began in 1959, when the Miller Development Company proposed a 48-room motel on a downtown lot owned by the Chicago Board of Education, which had previously held a school. Architect was Arthur Salk of Shayman and Salk, who also designed the Summit Motel on Linco...

This somewhat impressive-looking, somewhat anonymous building on W. 26th Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway holds quite a culinary past. Until 1904, it was the home of Delmonico's, the most famous restaurant New York has produced or ever will produce. After 1904, it was Cafe Martin, a super-chic dining spot favored by the well-heeled and fabulous for a decade early in the 20th century. It was owned by Jean-Baptiste Martin, who laced the place's design with just the right tough of naughtiness to titillate the patrons. A rural by William De Leftwich depicted nude women floating through space. And ladies could dine—a rarity at the time—if accompanied by a gentleman. A few years later, the forward-thinking Martin declared that ladies could smoke in his restaurant. Martin was also a good marketer. He provided postcards to diners. If they wrote a note to a friend or relation, the cafe would post it and mail it. Cafe Martin provided the world with plenty of scandal. Architect a...

In recent weeks, readers have been sending me photos of extant wooden phone booths like crazy. And I couldn't be happier. This one is in the Yale Club in midtown Manhattan. The door has been taken off. Next to it is another booth with the phone missing. The reader said he saw someone sitting in this booth working on their iPad. See: they still have a use!

Rose & Joe's Italian Bakery is a small hole-in-the-wall joint on 31st Street, at the end of the Q and N lines, in Astoria. It looks sweet from the outside, the way all Italian bakeries ought to. Inside there are several cases of the usual cookies and treats you find in such places, but that's not the hidden treasure that makes this place remarkable. In the back, there is another counter where pizza is made and sold. There were a few round pies when I was there, but it was the large Sicilian that caught my attention. I asked which kind of pie the bakery was known for, and an old lady indicated the Sicilian. It was indeed special, thinner, lighter and flakier than many of the heavy, sodden Sicilian slices I've had around town, with good quality sauce and cheese. I'm not saying its one of the best slices in town, but it's well above average, an quite a surprise to find inside a bakery. Rose & Joes's is roughly forty years old. I'm told they only make th...

On Waverly Place in Greenwich Village. Jack's been there since 1987, which is odd, since the store and the sign look far older.

On lower Stone Street (not the cool section lined with bars and favored by brokers), under some scaffolding, there is a narrow operation that I've always considered the weirdest steak house in New York. Most steak houses are huge and spacious. This one's a sliver, but fire-engine red. It's also pretty sad and decrepit looking, and bears what I consider an odd name: Nebraska Steakhouse. I guess there are a lot of cows in Nebraska. Or were, historically. But in a town where most steak houses proudly trumpet the names of their founders or owners (Peter Luger, Smith & Wollensky, Ruth's Chris, Keen's), it seems strange to crow about another state. The menu's the usual array of large cuts of meat, with a chicken and lamb dish thrown in. (Though they do have something called "Mona's Health and Wellness Menu," which included tilapia and turkey meatballs and such.) The prices at—again, as usual—sky high. Judging by the largely positive Internet reviews,...

I snapped this shot recently while walking on Essex Street along Seward Park in the Lower East Side. The building with the illuminated clock is the old Jewish Forward building, which was renovated a while back and converted into condos. Somehow the dusky image of a tall, striking building seen above the tops of bare winter trees reminded me of this classic Alfred Stieglitz image of the Flatiron Building and Madison Square from a century ago.

Some priceless New York dining institutions just don't get the press others do simply because they are in out-of-the-way, or less-desirable neighborhoods. And so the 100-year-old bar or 50-year-old deli will be covered exhaustively year in and year out simply because its in the East Village or Cobble Hill—that is, the areas all the bloggers and journalists either live or like to hang out. I can be as guilty as any of such professional laziness, though I do try to get to a neighborhood that is not my own at least four or five times a week, and a borough not my own once a week. I had first heard of Charles' Country Pan Fried Chicken years ago, but it wasn't until last week that I hauled myself up to the far eastern corner of Harlem, on Frederick Douglas Boulevard, where Charles Gabriel does business. It's not a flashy place. You'll miss it, if you're not keeping a sharp eye out. From the outside, it looks like a run-of-the-mill, low-fi avenue restaurant with a cru...

I encountered La Cross Pharmacy while on a recent visit to the Mott Haven neighborhood in The Bronx. It's on the corner of Saint Anns Avenue and 138th Street. I was attracted—as I often am with such places—by the the old signage running down the edge of the building. Added attractions included the indented, angled corner entrance, the metal pillar bearing the word "Drugs" in vertical letters, and the sad window display of a lonely wooden mortar and pestle. By the looks of the facade, I'm guessing La Cross has been around since the 1940s. It won't be around for much longer. The shelves were sparsely stocked, and there's a sign on the side of the building saying it is for sale.

Everyone knows the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street, the century-old-plus haunt of writers, singers and anarchists, last drinking spot of poet Dylan Thomas, etc. Fewer know of the city's other White Horse Tavern, dive-ish hole in the wall on a nothing side street on the southern tip of Manhattan. The latter White Horse is situated in an old, five-story brick building at 25 Bridge Street. There's nothing surprising about there being two White Horse Taverns in New York. White Horse is the name of a blended Scotch whisky that was extremely popular in the middle decades of the 20th century. The White Horse is a survivor, a lone old-world structure surrounding by glass towers. I don't know who owns the bar, but I have to believe they also own the building, because there's no other explanation as to why the bar still survives, given the valuable land it occupies, and the low prices it charges. There are reports of a five-story building being here as far back as the 1870s. ...

This is the Park Slope storefront on 9th Street that used to contain Catene, the Italian sandwich shop that specialized in calamari heros, and closed in 2012 after 46 years in business. Judging by the cute exterior, it looks like the next tenant will be a little less rough and ready. Cute storefront. But I miss the old, brazen, red sign.

Haven't done one of these in a while. But this pizzeria, encountered by accident during a trip to The Bronx, seemed to fit the bill, what with the corner space, the hand-painted signage on both sides of the storefront, and the upper signs with the illustration of the pizza man flipping dough. Golden Pizza is in Mott Haven. It's at the corner of Brook Avenue and 138th Street. From the looks of the place, it was founded in the early 1970s, and no later. But who can tell? Places like this, there's very little recorded history about. But it has the feel of that kind of local pizzeria that neighborhood people have been depending on for decades. For the record, it's owned by two folks named Harjinger and Manginda Singh.

The Lower East Side has lost a great many of its mercantile landmarks over the past 20 years of gentrification. And I'm not suggested that Jade Fountain Liquor Corporation—a grungy little booze shop on Delancey east of Essex—can replace the likes of Ratner's or Gertel's. But, hey, it is nearly a hundred years old! Maybe. According to the patchwork sign—which says, among many things, "As Old As Hills"—the store was was found in 1920-something. (I can't tell what the last number, now fallen off, was.) Which is, of course, absolute nonsense. No liquor store in the U.S. was founding in 1920-anything, because Prohibition was in effect from 1920 to 1933. Nor is it likely that the shop has existed all that time as Jade Fountain. Not in this location, which was solidly Jewish until the 1960s or so. Chinatown didn't start to encroach on Delancey and Essex until the late 1980s So what can we find out about the address of the place, 123 Delancey? In 1901, there was a...

This City is growing alarmingly short of classic New York delis. So it was painful to hear, in November 2012, that Sarge's Deli in Murray Hill—one of the lesser sung delis, but a dearly loved one nonetheless (witness the crazy number of  comments  on my "Who Goes There?" column in 2011)—was gutted by fire . I'm sure many suspected it would never rise from the ashes. Happily, the skeptics were wrong. Sarge's reopened for business this week. Here are some shots of the interior. Strangely, the owners seemed to have strived to recreate the deli's unremarkable interior exactly. The place basically looks as it did before the fire. Only a little cleaner.

Soon after I wrote about midtown's circa-1959 Famous Oyster Bar for a "Who Goes There?" column in 2013, the joint gave up the ghost. The restaurant closed in January 2014, pushed out by a greedy landlord. The good news is the classic neon sign—always the best thing about the place—has been saved. Bowery Boogie reports that Grey Lady co-owner Ryan Chadwick purchased the twin signs, and will soon attach them to the facade of his establishment at Allen and Delancey Streets.

The same eagle-eyed reader who sent me photos last week of the wooden phone booths at the Queens County Supreme Court, soon after sent me this image of wooden phone booths at the Harvard Club in midtown. Which makes me think this reader of mind travels in some well-heeled circles.

I've always assumed that the Rat-Squirrel House—aka 149 Kane Street in Cobble Hill (seen today, above, and in olden times, below), Brooklyn, a structure whose creepy and bizarre decline and resurrection I've chronicled for five years —was once a normal, upstanding structure, occupied by normal, upstanding citizens—not the reclusive, Collyer-Brothers-like lady who let the landmarked building fall to wrack and ruin during the '90s and early 2000s. I was wrong. A few weeks ago, I received this message from a reader. It's the first time I've ever been contacted by anyone with intimate, direct known of 149 Kane Street. Read and wonder: The Rat-Squirrel house belonged to my grandparents, Edward and Molly Fitzsimmons. I was born in 1954 and my memory of the house begins when I was 2 or 3. I remember it as a dark somewhat scary place when I was young and as I grew into my teens it became simply creepy except that my grandparents, who I loved dearly, lived there. The basemen...