You can eat poutine any time of year, but this Quebecoise treat tastes best when it’s really, really cold outside. I’m talking Montreal in January cold, the kind of frigidness that invades unusual places like your eyeballs and your teeth. Now that I don’t drive a car anymore, I don’t mind winter. I enjoy having an excuse to stay home, drinking dark beer and swaddling myself in layers of wool–the better to hide the gut I’m packing from savoring my favorite foods. Poutine is actually very simple–it’s just french fries and cheese curds, melted into savory gobs under a layer of steaming gravy. But it is somewhat tricky to execute. Proper curds are not easy to find, the fries should be fresh, the gravy ratio MUST be perfect, and a snowstorm backdrop doesn’t hurt either. Unlike your typical diner cheese fries, which fill you with self-loathing and regret, poutine, when it’s done right, warms your cockles, which I believe are located somewhere somewhere between your gullet and your spleen.

Poutine is pretty rare in the States but there are a few places in New York City that serve it. On Saturday, I checked out TPoutine on Ludlow Street, a relatively-new burgers-and-fries shop advantageously located in the booze-soaked Lower East Side. A classic poutine ran a steep $7.25, and came served in an appealing iron skillet, the curds just beginning to melt in their gravy bath. The cheese curds tasted authentic, and were generously-sized, although this possibly prevented them from completely melting. The fries, to their credit, maintained a fair amount of crispness, but the gravy didn’t taste much more than hot. A friend’s plate arrived with entirely too much gravy, which soon made the fries soggy, so it may be to your advantage to tell them to go light. All-in-all, this did a fair job satiating my poutine craving, but I’m told it’s not as tasty as the stuff you’d find in Montreal. TPoutine is open til 5am on weekends, so I could foresee a making late-night pit stop, but I’d probably keep looking for the really good stuff–my next destinations will likely be Mile End or Sheep Station in Brooklyn. There’s also decent and cheaper version available at Pommes Frites in the East Village.

TPoutine
168 Ludlow St between Stanton St & Houston St.
Tue-Wed 12pm-2am, Thu-Sat 12pm-5am, Sun 12pm-2am

Looking for a decent soft pretzel in New York City is a little like being thirsty in the middle ocean. There are pretzels everywhere, sold from ubiquitous street carts, but they’re completely inedible. Occaisionally one stumbles across handmade pretzels at a German bar like Loreley or Zum Scheider, but these places lack the get-it-and-go convenience of a cart. Sigmund Pretzel Shop, which opened last month, finally gives the Bavarian snack its due. A cafe and bakery headed by a former Bouley pastry chef, Sigmund sells fresh pretzels made on-site in small batches. Flavors include jalapeño cheddar, gruyere and paprika, garlic and parsley, salt, sesame, poppy, whole wheat, caramel, and cinnamon raisin ($3.00-$3.50). A choice of dip–whipped butter, herbed goat cheese, cream cheese, whole-grain mustard, honey mustard, or horseradish mayo–is included.  Pretzel sandwiches and donuts are also available.

The jalapeno-cheddar pretzel was by far my favorite. It was doughy and still-warm, with the cheese forming slightly-crunchy crust. Its lack of spice was forgiven since the whole-grain mustard dip added the needed kick. Although best eaten warm, it also travels extremely well. The cinnamon raisin pretzel with butter walked a fine line between savory and sweet, without being overly sugary or greasy. The passionfruit coconut donut was basically a thin doughy shell surrounding an intriguingly sweet-and-tart custard, but on the whole, I found it a little too sweet for a snack.

Seating is available, and with the smell of fresh-baked bread wafting from the kitchen and a row of windows overlooking Avenue B, this is a mellow place to stop for a quick bite. Try to go earlier to grab a fresh pretzel–they start selling out near closing time.

Sigmund Pretzel Shop
29 Avenue B between 2nd and 3rd St.
Tues-Sun 10am-10pm or until sold out. Closed Mon.

I usually exit Bloomingdale’s Soho through the back door, while toying with taking drastic measures. Like leaving the city for good so I’ll stop blowing money on pretty things I don’t need. A right on Crosby street and a left on Broome puts me within reasonable distance of Chinatown, where I can atone for my purchase my finding something cheap for dinner. It’s no accident that enthusiasm for bahn mi spiked as the economy tanked–these hearty Vietnamese sandwiches are famously wallet-friendly. But you can skip the $5 versions at Baogette and Nicky’s. There’s better stuff downtown.

Bahn Mi Saigon Bakery on Mott street masquerades as a jewelry store but I have never seen anyone buy the candy-colored plastic beads in its window. A single long bench along the wall stretches toward the sandwich counter in the back, and a dry erase board hanging from the ceiling functions as the menu. The different sandwiches include  pork, chicken, sardine, pate, meat ball, and buddhist (mushrooms and tofu); there’s also papaya shrimp salad and summer rolls. Everything is four or five bucks, and the classic bahn mi, with pork, is $3.75. When asked “spicy or no spicy” I usually split the difference and request medium.

The pork bahn mi is served on a served on a crunchy baguette scraped with mayo and piled with fresh shreds of cold pickled carrots, radish, cucumber, and peppers. Topping it off are crunchy bits of sweet pork, a slice of lunchmeat-like pork roll, cilantro, and of course, hot sauce. This is a sandwich of great textures and well-married flavors, one that definitely has a smelly aura if you’re toting it around with you, but is utterly satisfying upon eating. In fact, half of this sandwich is enough for me, and a full one is a little overwhelming. Another plus, it doesn’t come doused in fish sauce, something I’ve encountered with other bahn mi shops.

For the full Saigon Bakery experience grab a bottle of the mysterious “Soy Drink” from the refrigerator. It’s actually just soy milk, but shit, it’s only 75 cents! Dinner under $5? Done.

Bahn Mi Saigon Bakery
138 Mott Street between Grand Street and Hester Street
Tue-Sun 10am-7pm. Closed Monday
Gets busy during lunch hour, go later if you don’t want to wait.

Currywurst, a dish so popular in Germany that it has its own museum, is saving me from a hangover this minute. It’s essentially sliced sausage, slathered in sweet-and-spicy tomato sauce, served with fries in a paper bowl. Currywurst is meant to be eaten on the run, preferably in the middle of an epic pub crawl. Grub like this quietly soaks up a night’s beer-drinking, and provides piece-by-piece nibbling over conversation. Piercing fast food with a dainty plastic fork strikes me as a uniquely European intervention–Americans would shove their food on a bun be done with it in a few chomps. But possibly it’s not a European thing at all. I was only on the Continent once, about 15 years ago, and don’t remember too much about the food, but I did see a man masturbate while steering his car through an 8-lane rotary around the Arc de Triomphe. It was a cultural experience I haven’t been able to shake.

Back to currywurst. Germany’s national snack has a base of operations in the East Village at Wechsler’s Currywurst, possibly the cleanest and tiniest dive in the neighborhood. With just a couple of tables, a row of high stools, and several German beers on tap ($3 mini-glassed of Reissdorf Golsch, $5 pints of Radeberger, and various $6 Hefeweizen), it never gets obnoxiously crowded and it’s a pleasant enough drinking spot without the wurst. But if sausages are what you’re after, they range from bratwurst, boar, lamb, and chicken to the namesake currywurst and fries (all $6). Silence your meat-hating friends with hearty sides like sauerkraut ($3), potato salad ($3) and soft pretzels served with sweet or spicy mustard ($3). Full disclosure: I only tried the currywurst and the soft pretzel–be forewarned that the hot mustard burns your nostrils and a little goes a long way.

Is the currywurst at Wechsler’s the real deal? Well, the owner is from Germany, I did overhear some German accents at the bar, and certain Yelpers seem to think so. But even though currywurst’s invention can be traced to 1949 Berlin, it never McDonaldized. Every vendor makes it a little differently and you’d probably have to do a lot of sampling in Germany to get a handle on what the good stuff is. If you just want to have some German snacks and raise a glass to Oktoberfest (which runs through Oct 4th), Wechsler’s is a much shorter journey.

120 First Avenue between 7th St. and St, Mark’s Place.
Mon-Thu 12pm-1am, Fri-Sat 12pm-2am, Sun 12pm-12am
Cash only

Last night I slept under the covers. This is notable because during August my apartment never drops below a steamy 80 degrees (I dislike air conditions, ugly white-noise units that down out my window symphony of crickets, owls, cars, and clattering dishes from the restaurant next door). So the end of summer is usually a relief, like a fever breaking.  The only downside is that there’s just a few days left to pick up my favorite Greenmarket snack, before they go out of season.

Fresh peaches from the Greenmarket put supermarket peaches to shame. Ripe, unbruised, and fragrant, with a deep golden hue and sweet, juicy flesh, they taste a little like the local answer to mangoes. They’re delicious eaten alone or with vanilla ice cream or garnishing a plain cereal like Special K. Italians serve them sangria-style soaked in red wine. I grabbed two for $1 on my last visit, which seems steep until you taste them.

Peaches don’t ripen off the tree so be sure to pick a ripe one and eat it as soon as possible. Look for a deep golden background color, no bruises, and a strong, peachy fragrance. They should give a bit when squeezed. If you’re holding one that isn’t fuzzy, it’s a nectarine.

If you’re a peach fan, don’t miss this peach dessert slideshow.

Union Square Greenmarket
Union Square West between 14th St, and 17th St.
Mon, Wed, Fri, and Sat 8am-6pm