One night this fall, it struck me that my birthday had become a birth month. It was around the time of our second group dinner, after the party bus but before the karaoke, when I surveyed my haggard friends. “We look like tired D.W. in ‘Arthur,’” someone joked.
This got me thinking: If a birthday can last a month, why not also on Thanksgiving? Below are three restaurants where you can find roast turkey, pies and some less traditional fare. Haven’t had your yearly allotment of Thanksgiving egg rolls? Let’s go.
Leave the turkey to the pros
Long before our rotisserie chicken moment, Viand Coffee Shop on the Upper East Side was making a case for 365 days of turkey. The birds are prepared in-house, usually four to six per day (down from 10 in the restaurant’s heyday). Thickly carved slices are piled into turkey melts, clubs, turkey-roast-beef combos and Swiss omelets. The turkey plate comes with a wobbly puck of cranberry jelly and, since this is a diner, the option to add coleslaw and sour pickles. There’s bottomless black coffee to counteract that spike of tryptophan and a bevy of pies waiting in the display case.
673 Madison Avenue (East 61st Street), Upper East Side
Room for dessert?
At Katie Kaplan’s West Village pop-up, Fillings, the pies measure just five inches across. So why not cobble together a flight of three or nine miniature slices, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, from the menu of rotating flavors. Peanut butter and jelly pies with cherry jam and mini moons of coconut key lime custard are menu fixtures. But mind the weekly specials: That’s where I found my favorite, peanut butter mousse in a dark chocolate shell that cracked like a dipped cone from Mister Softee. Need an excuse to eat nine slices of pie in one sitting? How about, “It’s research!” The shop is open through Christmas Eve with full-size pies available for preorder.
272 Bleecker Street (Morton Street), West Village
Happy deep-fried holidays
Anyone can throw together a Thanksgiving sandwich with leftover turkey and sides. Donnie D’Alessio, an owner of the sandwich shop Comfortland, tucks all these tidbits into golden egg rolls. Yes, egg rolls: whopping, deep-fried trunks that could put your Chinese takeout place to shame. Turkey, sweet potato and chicken stuffing are wrapped tight, and then welded shut in the deep fryer.
This is on brand for D’Alessio, whose restaurant has become a safe harbor for strange sandwiches. I’ve long enjoyed Comfortland’s Space Jam — (cornflake-crusted fried chicken with blackberry jam) and the Illmatic (breakfast sausage plus maple-candied jalapeños). Now comes the Black Friday, a fried chicken sandwich with craggy ends peeking out of both sides of the bun. Hiding underneath is chicken sausage stuffing and a layer of cranberry sauce, which, after it’s mixed with slaw, is the exact color of the McDonald’s Grimace Shake.
40-09 30th Avenue (Steinway Street), Astoria
92 Rivington Street (Ludlow Street), Lower East Side
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