First impressions

While this blog will mainly be about FOOD, it feels appropriate to start off with some general reflections on New York City after the first week here. In some ways it’s difficult to isolate what feels distinctive about the city; it’s at once familiar and unexpected, comfortable yet challenging.

It’s big.

Well, obviously. But it’s big in a different way to other international cities. The skyscrapers sprawl across the different islands in a way that differs from London’s isolated clusters in the City and Canary Wharf. On one of our first days exploring the city, the tower tops tapered into the mist, a spectacular mix of natural and industrial.

My sister-in-law told me “don’t forget to look up” and it’s true that, while you’re surrounded by dizzying towers there is also so much happening on the ground that you can get lost in the detail of the street-level. It feels big not only in structure but in activity; there is movement everywhere and people take up space through gestures and sound in a way that feels removed from the self-conscious insulation of Britain.

Despite this, large international cities share some similarities. Moving from London to New York has oddly felt less jarring than moving from Edinburgh to London (despite the latter being a 400 mile trip and the former almost 4,000). After living in London for four years, it still wasn’t uncommon to find myself in an unfamiliar part of the city and relying on my phone to get myself home. The unfamiliarity of New York is therefore – paradoxically – familiar, and the anonymity reassuring. People on the Subway get in your way just as much as people on the Tube. And no one makes eye contact on either.

Service is everything.

This one was expected, but service really is different. People seem delighted to see you in restaurants in a way that would be bewildering (edging on disconcerting) in London. This is perhaps unsurprising given the significance of tipping, but it (theoretically) makes eating out a much more pleasant experience. At least it will when I feel more equipped to respond in kind. When I was first asked how I wanted my coffee, I replied with a suave and slightly blunt “what do you mean?” (with milk, obviously). My British awkwardness was inclined to make the experience more complicated than it was.

Which moves on nicely to the labyrinth of tipping. The expectation seems to be tipping 15-20% when eating out, which actually isn’t too far removed from the standard 12.5% in London. The difference is the importance and expectation of tipping here; tipping has historically supplemented wages in a way that it doesn’t in the UK. I’m interested to see if the recent uplift of the minimum wage in New York to $15/hour (more than double the federal minimum) has any impact, but the practice feels so ingrained it seems unlikely.

The complication is more around when and what to tip beyond this. I’ve spent so much time discussing when and how much to tip with my husband, it’s probably disproportionate to any potential offence caused; hopefully our awkward British-ness will go some way to explaining any shortfalls until it feels more like second nature.

Eating out.

And finally onto the good stuff. Expectations were high but luckily the food has been glorious! Similar to the thrill of catching a first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline or looking across the Upper Bay waves at the Statue of Liberty, there is a familiarity and excitement to getting a hot dog from a street vendor in Central Park or settling into a diner and ordering “sunny side up” eggs with home fries.

It’s evident that breakfast has an importance it doesn’t have in the UK. While in a big city there will always be the portable office-worker breakfasts of pastries or bagels, the diner culture has a variety and generosity (and sheer ubiquity) that departs from the greasy spoon in London. Each breakfast menu has every kind of egg offering imaginable with as much carb as possible on the side (fried potatoes, waffles, toast, pancakes… or all of the above). And it’s all accompanied by endless coffee refills, which has been both wonderful and potentially dangerous (I felt slightly shaky the other day and when I suggested it might be because we hadn’t eaten in a while, my husband suggested it might have been the five cups of coffee I’d had that day…)

I’ve tried to balance out all the above with some home cooking. Despite warnings about the prices of groceries, the difference has been pretty staggering. As a case in point, a family-size bag of tangerines cost perhaps up to £2.00 in London and we bought one yesterday for $9.00 (equivalent to almost £7.00). The analyst in me feels compelled to caveat that this is in Manhattan and I expect (/hope) it’ll be cheaper elsewhere in the city. But it does compel you to consider how to balance when and what to eat out/in, especially when there is so much freshly prepared food in restaurants and cafes at comparatively good value.

All the more reason to continue exploring some of the over 10,000 restaurants and eateries in this city. To be continued… (Thank goodness there’s a gym in our building).