Famous Fat Dave – an Xperience Interview – by Dick Beach.
RRX: So, we’re driving around in a white Checker Cab in beautiful Manhattan with Dave Freedenberg, who is better known as –
DF: Famous Fat Dave.
RRX: Famous Fat Dave.
DF: I appreciate that you know my real last name, which is not my trade name. My trade name is Famous Fat Dave. Just like Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs, Famous Ray’s Pizza.
RRX: The objective here is to wander around New York getting to know some of the lesser-known places to have a bite to eat, having great food, great conversation. And as it turns out, Famous Fat Dave is not a native New Yorker.
DF: No. I’m a Marylander by birth, a Chicagoan by blood. My mom and dad are from Chicago. But I’ve been New York-ified. I moved here when I was 18 years old; I’m 45 now. I became a pickle man, a cheesemonger, a hot dog vendor, a bread truck driver, and a Yellow Cab driver. And I’m driving around in this old Checker Cab, this ’82 Checker Cab. So, it’s respect.
RRX: A Checker Cab is – was – a brand of vehicle that was the iconic taxicab in the city of New York forever, until they decided they were going to make them small. Then, there were the Impalas that were riding around. Now, it’s all Toyotas, and these little Fords, and these things, and yuck.
DF: Yeah. I have the brochure that came with this car, and the first line (because cars were already small by 1982; this is a 1961 frame that they made every year until ’82) of the brochure says, “Enter through our doors without folding yourself in half.” So, it’s spacious.
RRX: Famous Fat Dave does food tours of New York City. You can either do a Manhattan walking tour, or you can do a ride around in the Outer Boroughs tour. For those of you who don’t know what the outer boroughs are, that would be Queens and Brooklyn and …
DF: And Bronx and Staten Island.
RRX: So, let’s talk a little bit about how you became Famous Fat Dave and how that all started.
DF: So actually, it was a name I applied to myself. Like all famous things in New York, you name yourself Famous. I was living in Italy, doing study abroad, and I couldn’t help but be a good chef.
The ingredients in Italy are so much better. I fried salami and mixed it in the pasta sauce, and put it over penne and it was so good. So, as a joke, I called it Famous Fat Dave’s Super Salami Surprise Sauce with Penne.
And Famous Fat Dave’s Super Salami Surprise Sauce with Penne morphed into Famous Fat Dave’s Five Borough Eating Tour on the Wheels of Steel, where I take people to places where people can cook.
RRX: And in the case of this particular reporter, I first came across you on a program with Anthony Bourdain.
DF: Yes, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations on the Travel Channel. I was on that show three times. I was on the New York episode, the disappearing Manhattan episode, which was about things that used to be very common in Manhattan and are now rare.
My name is Freedenberg and I went to Eisenberg’s and Heidelberg’s with him. I was like, what is this? What are you, like, being racialist against me with the Berg? And then I also did the Outer Boroughs episode. I took him to the Bronx. So, that was a good 10 to 15 years ago, those three episodes. It’s been a while now.
RRX: And it has turned out to make you a living, which is good.
DF: I thought at the time that – I was like, oh, I’m in business now. What happened was, like, you have stored it away, you know? You heard about it 10, 15 years ago, and I’m only meeting you now. So, I found that it gave me the street cred to be on his show. But it didn’t launch me so much as it was 5 years, 10 years, 15 years down the road. People are like oh, I remember him on that show. And if they’re looking for what tour to take, they’re like, “Famous Fat Dave – that guy, he’s legit, Bourdain’s down with him.”
RRX: I know a lot of people in upstate who don’t want to go to The City. They think that people aren’t nice. I have not found that. By and large, would you say that New Yorkers are nicer than everyone gives them credit for?
DF: So, yeah. I mean, just don’t waste a New Yorker’s time. If you need directions, don’t go up to them and be like, “So, how about this weather we’re having?” Just say, “Which way to Carnegie Hall?” and they’ll tell you.
RRX: Practice.
DF: There we go. Thank you. I set you up, you knocked it down. They’re not afraid to tell you their opinion literally shoulder-to-shoulder on the subway. And they’re not necessarily gonna be your best friend.
Everybody is a character. Everybody’s fun to talk to, to hang out with. I’ve been New York-ified, I feel like. It’s in my blood.
Now, we’re going for pierogies probably, and then an egg cream for dessert.
RRX: Describe for the uneducated what an egg cream is and isn’t.
DF: So, it’s neither egg nor cream. An egg cream is three ingredients: usually Fox’s brand U-bet chocolate syrup, but a chocolate syrup, a seltzer, and a cold whole milk. But where it comes from is what’s not in the textbook.
Second Avenue used to be Yiddish Broadway. There was a Yiddish Broadway star who went to Paris in the early part of the 1900s, when Paris was very en vogue.
And in Paris, there was a very popular drink that was chocolate and cream. In French, chocolate and cream translates to chocolat et crème. And chocolat et crème translates in New York-ese to chocolate egg cream. So, they think that that’s it; the French “and” became the egg. Because there’s no egg in it. That’s not one of the ingredients.
RRX: I have to ask the proverbial question because you go everywhere, all these different restaurants, all these different places. If someone came to you and said, “What is your absolute favorite place to have a meal in New York City,” what would it be?
DF: Okay. I’m a lover, not a fighter. So, I can’t answer that, honestly. But I’ve thought about it a lot. Can I give you, like, one in each borough? I can’t narrow it down to one.
RRX: Yeah, one in each borough, there you go.
DF: So, okay. I named my son Reuben after the Reuben sandwich at Katz’s Delicatessen. You should tip the guy and ask him for a first cut. You get a first cut, meaning he takes it right out of the steam tray and butchers it right there in front of you. That’s gonna change your life. That’s my Manhattan answer.
Brooklyn, if I had to pick one, I’ll take people to a spot in Brooklyn called Brennan & Carr. It’s not the roast beef that I love so much, it’s the burger. It’s just the burger, cooked onions, American cheese, and that broth all over it. Then, you just unhinge your jaw and swallow it whole, like a snake.
Staten Island’s a tough one. I love Lee’s Tavern there. They have a unique style of pizza. Not unique; it’s more like a bar pie, different from New York, from the rest of the city. They do a clam pie there that’s really nice.
Then, I’ll take the pizza for the Bronx, Louie & Ernie’s Pizza in the Bronx. You go into a guy’s house basically, into the basement, and they’re cooking pizza. I was just there today. You can sit in their backyard, eating the really particularly good sausage slice.
If I had to narrow it down in Queens, there’s this guy name Oda who is like a mad scientist of Japanese home cooking. Like today, we had a fried softshell crab in rice and seaweed with lettuce and a little – there’s a slice of cheese on there. It’s cheese on a rice softshell crab seaweed sandwich.
As I say, I’m a lover. I just love it all. I’ve basically turned into my mother. Like, I just want to feed everybody.
RRX: I’m going to bring this to a close the way I normally do. I always ask people if there’s anything that you want people to remember you have said that is important to you. It doesn’t have to be anything life-changing, but something that you’d like to live by or like people to remember you for.
DF: Just taste it. I was a picky kid and I think I missed out on a lot of life experiences by being picky when I was little, and I regret it. I have this feeling when I taste something for the first time that’s really good, I get angry because I’ve spent my whole life up to this moment not eating that thing.
I don’t think that’s so profound but yeah, taste everything. Try everything. And you can apply that to other stuff, too, if you want. But I’m literally talking about food. I mean, you could apply that to love, and sex, and you name it. But about food, try everything.
RRX: Excellent. Thank you.
DF: Thank you! It was really fun.
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