the buzz

“I Love Eisenberg's”

This is certainly not a posting about a hot new restaurant. Indeed, it’s just the opposite. It’s about a little joint that I love that’s about to celebrate 80 years of business. It’s called Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop and it’s been around, with different owners but with the same milkshakes and egg creams, pastrami, corned beef, and tuna salad, since 1929.

I love this place not because the food is so mind-altering (though they do make a very nice sandwich), but because it reminds me of the way things were in the past—a past that I wasn’t even a part of—but one that I often think I should’ve been. I’m a total sucker for nostalgia so Eisenberg’s pretty much had me at 1929. I am completely enchanted with old-fashioned lunch-counters, with the interaction between the customers sitting elbow to elbow, with watching all the buzzing activity behind the counter—toasting, grilling, slicing, making, mixing, shaking—and with the sweetness of a time when folks used to sit down to lunch on a swivel stool, take off their hats, and with both elbows planted on the counter, have themselves an egg cream and a burger.

Eisenberg’s is just that—a sweet old-school lunch counter with red swivel stools serviced by men in white paper soda jerk hats turning milk and chocolate syrup into frothy egg creams with soda water on tap, layering slices of corned beef and pastrami on mustard-slathered toasted rye, and filling aluminum sleeves with milk and ice cream for thick and creamy milkshakes. It’s the sort of place where you sit down with the Post, and might as well keep it folded up ‘cause the real story is in the people sitting next to you—the regulars, the old-timers, the folks who come in every day for salami and eggs on a roll, or their cult-favorite tuna salad. I’m an egg salad woman myself, which they serve well seasoned and with a lifetime’s worth of mayo mixed in, topped with a fresh crisp wedge of iceberg, a few slices of red tomato (you’ll find no pale anemic-looking tomatoes here) and a nice dill pickle on the side. Their fries are good too, if you’re into that sort of thing (and who isnt’?) They’re steak fries, hot and crispy, with just the right amount of grease. Most days on the counter you’ll find a Pyrex dish of cobbler or carrot cake. You might have a slice with a cup ‘a joe after you’re done. You’ll sit, you’ll eat, you’ll schmooze. And I think you’ll be back soon.

Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop is located at 174 Fifth Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets, 212-675-5096.

Have you been to Eisenberg’s? Tell me what your favorite sandwich is, and please Share Your Two Cents, below!

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