Will Fly for Food - East Coast Edition

One of the famous sandwiches from Primanti's Bros. in Pittsburgh, PA.

If you're a flight attendant bidding your trips for the month, or more likely, putting in your list of trips for the next day - trying to pick up something better than the trip you already have - how do you decide what to bid?

If you will be commuting home after your last flight, like most flight attendants in Philadelphia, you're first consideration will be to make sure the trip gets in an hour before your last flight home.  Secondly, you probably want to pick up a trip that pays a decent amount of time.  You may also consider the quality of the hotels on the overnights, how many "legs," or flights, you'll have to work each day, if there's a long overnight in a city you like or a city where you can do something fun, like meet up with an old friend.

Those are all valid and perfectly logical reasons to sort through the dozens of possible trips each day.  But once in a while, after a long day of dealing with the cranky traveling public, encased in a narrow metal tube filled with recirculated air for twelve hours, you're just craving something good to eat.  You want to eat at a particular place, eat a specific local dish or meal, or at a unique restaurant you really enjoy.  Sometimes, you're just flying for food. 

I thought I'd list some cities that I regularly flew and stayed in, where I'd look at the three letter airport codes on a trip sheet - LGA, ORD, DUB, SAT, MSY, BWI, SEA, PIT - and my simple male brain could only think of what delectable food I could eat in that town.

This week I'll cover BWI (Baltimore), LGA (New York/LaGuardia), PHL (Philadelphia), PIT (Pittsburgh) and PVD (Providence).  I will cover the Midwest (Chicago), the South (Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans and San Antonio) and the West Coast (Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego and Las Vegas) in coming weeks.

Cornelia Street Cafe in Greenwich Village.

Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village in New York is so quiet and secluded that it feels as if you've just stumbled on to a movie set.  But you're right in the heart of Manhattan, tucked between 6th and 7th Avenues - just a couple of blocks from Washington Square Park.  The short, tree-lined street with attractive brownstones just begs to be strolled.  It even feels a little Parisian.  There are two wonderful restaurants on this street: The Cornelia Street Cafe and Home.

Both are especially lovely on warm days, when the front doors of the Cornelia Street Cafe  are opened.  There are often live music acts playing in the restaurant on summer evenings.  The French inspired food will make you feel as if you're sitting in a bistro in Paris.

The backyard patio at Home.

Right across the street from the Cornelia Street Cafe is Home restaurant.  This tiny, reasonably priced establishment specializes in comfort food.  The food and decor make you feel as if you're dining in someone's...home.  It's a great place for breakfast or lunch, and the back patio was one of my favorite places in New York to meet friends for a leisurely meal. 

Moving uptown in New York City, one of my favorites was Josie's, on the Upper West Side.  There are apparently now several Josie's in New York, but this was the only one for me.

Josie's restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue @ 75th street on the Upper West Side.

Josie's was usually loud and boisterous.  This is a great place for a large or loud group.  But don't bring heavy meat eaters here.  Josie's specializes in vegetarian cuisine.  Delicious vegetarian cuisine.  I usually ordered their vegetarian meat loaf.  A great place to dine before or after a show at nearby Lincoln Center.

The pastries at Vaccaro's in Baltimore.

Moving down the Eastern Seaboard, there were a couple of years when I constantly found myself overnighting in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  Just east of all the aquariums, museums and tourist attractions of the Inner Harbor was a wonderful section of town called Little Italy.  A very small, safe, walkable area of town that was filled with good Italian restaurants. Many a night I walked down to Little Italy from our hotel and ate dinner with my entire crew.

But the real treat for me in Little Italy was Vaccaro's bakery and pastry shop.  There are now numerous Vaccaro's locations around Baltimore, but the Little Italy location was the original.  Open late in the summer, this was a mandatory after dinner stop for a cooling cup of gelato.  I would also usually buy one of their delicious pastries - I recommend the Napolen - to eat for lunch the next day.  Tell 'em Vinnie sent ya'.

It's well known among my friends and family that I was never a huge fan of Philadelphia.  I believe it was Craig Kilborn who said, "Philadelphia is for people too afraid to live in New York and too stupid to live in Boston."  In other words, Philly isn't Boston or New York, and suffers by comparison.

But even I must admit that Philly had some good food.  There was actually a great little pizza place named Romano's, down the block from the hotel in Essington, where all the airline commuters stayed the night before or after our trips.  I had the place on speed dial on my cell phone.  Their pizzas were rectangular in shape, not circular; and the cheese went on the pizza first and then the tomato sauce on top.  Yum.  How YOU doing?

They also had great Italian sub sandwiches, if you were there during the day, and looking for some food to take out to eat later on the plane.  They were famous for their Strombolis, and there were pictures along the wall at the front counter of celebrities, including U.S. Presidents, eating their Romano's Strombolis. 

Rita's Italian Ice in South Philly.

As a vegetarian, I didn't get as excited for the cheesesteak sandwiches in Philly as most people.  But if forced to choose, I was more of a Jim's, on South Street in South Philly, than Geno's man.  They made a decent veggie "cheesesteak."  South Street in Philly is a very interesting and walkable neighborhoods with some unique shops and restaurants.  I'm a frozen drink kind of guy and the real pay off for me on South Street was Rita's Italian Ice.

Del's frozen lemondade of Rhode Island.

There's also a great chain of local "ice" places around the Providence, Rhode Island area, known as Del's.  They specialized in frozen lemonades, but as a connoisseur of frozen beverages, I felt obligated to try all their flavors, strictly for research purposes, of course.

I'm not one to debate the merits of Del's frozen fresh fruit drinks in Providence versus Rita's Italian ices in Philadelphia.  Why choose one over the other when you can just enjoy them both?  Be prepared for a brain freeze.

Finally, no US Air employee flew for very long without spending some time at some point in da' 'Burgh - downtown Pittsburgh, PA.  Pittsburgh is one of those downtowns full of office building that completely empty out by six p.m., leaving the city empty.  Except for a rare concert or ballgame, there was little to do in Pittsburgh after dark.

Primanti's Brothers, a longtime dining institution in Pittsburgh, came to the rescue.  Their famous sandwiches, I always went for the fried egg and cheese, were piled high with lettuce and french fries.  They were a mess to eat, but I would enjoy every bite.  Most importantly, several of their downtown locations were open late.

It's worth flying cross-country for a sandwich at Primanti's in Pittsburgh.

The highest testament I can give to Primanti's and their sandwiches is that when Boeing started test-flying their new 747-8 freighter aircraft this past summer, the test pilots had a choice of flying the plane to any East Coast city they wanted on their first flight.  Which city did they choose?  Pittsburgh.  The reason?  They wanted some sandwiches at Primanti's.

And like all good airline crews around the country, these guys were pros when it came to flying.  Even more importantly; they knew how to eat.  I was not the only one Flying for Food.