Notes from a Food Diva: A Cross Bronx Crawl

This weekend, you, like I, may be heading across the Cross Bronx Expressway and the George Washington Bridge.

I did it periodically as a little girl living in Beechhurst. Waking up early, we would take the College Point Ferry to the Bronx and then drive across 125th Street to the George Washington Bridge. We’d take old Route 17 up to Forestburg, halfway between Port Jervis and Monticello, where Dad went hunting in winter and we vacationed at blueberry picking time, complete with trout fishing and swimming in the stream below a small waterfall.

There wasn’t a Whitestone or Throgs Neck Bridge and Robert Moses hadn’t yet built the Cross Bronx Expressway, which is now designated as the worst traffic nightmare in the country.

While I was on a solo trip two or three years ago, WCBS traffic station blurted out, “Another lousy day on the Cross Bronx Expressway.” For months afterwards, that comforted me. As I sat there stuck in traffic, I’d repeat the words I heard on the radio.

Well last month’s trip was the pits. It took two hours to go from Douglaston to the Sunoco station on the Palisades Parkway in Jersey. It was the longest, but not the most tedious trip - we kept inching along, never stopping. On that other forever- and- a day trip, I sat and sat and sat.

On another solo journey, I arrived at our country home (160 miles) in the western Catskills and Brian Brock, my son, asked, “Where did you have lunch?”

I shrugged. “On the Cross Bronx Expressway,” I told him. 

“What?” 

“If it takes you 45 minutes just to cross the Expressway, you can have lunch.”

Well there we were. WCBS had reported, “Heavy traffic.” We skipped the Tappan Zee option. An hour later, half of a red lobster, claws and all, painted on the side of a tractor-trailer truck towered over me as I slouched in the passenger seat. Garbo Lobster. How many lobsters could be in there? Of course, there might be other seafood along for the ride.

And that started me looking for phone numbers on tractor-trailers. There was only one, a Portuguese Bakery from Newark known as Teifeira’s. They deliver, I learned via cell phone, to Pennsylvania and New York, Portuguese breads and pastries as well as breads French, Cuban and Italian.   

A pristine, long, polished aluminum tanker trailer nosed past us. Must be milk. Another, Farmland Skim Milk, a refrigerated trailer, had a very fashionable purple exterior. And there was Farmland Dairies, Dedicated Dairies and Refrigerated Express, all of which were heading back to the source, the farm.

I gave thumbs up to a trailer with “One potato, Two potato, Three potato, Four or more” emblazoned on its side. But my first place award went to a long yellow Shop Rite with the bulls-eye logo and slogan, “Why pay more? “

I tried to query a few drivers. They were up there and I was down there. Never once did I get their attention. One truck had good driving pointers printed on the rear including, “Keep your eyes on the road.” Could they have been instructed not to look down on mortals such as myself?

No restaurants or advertisements thereof appeared on either side of the expressway, other than two McDonald's.

Brian Lehrer on NPR helped break up the monotony with an interesting program on parenting – “Young Kids Under Five: The Wonder Years” - and a segment on suicides. This was rather appropriate under the circumstances.

Finally! We were on the upper deck of the George Washington Bridge and exited onto the Palisades Parkway. Luckily, we had taken lunch today. It was now 11:30 a.m. and we headed for one of four-in-a-row stops with a Hudson River view right past our Sunoco pit stop.

Rockefeller Overlook, the first, is our favorite. It has a group of three big stones and a bench that offers a great view of the Trestle Bridge across the Harlem River. Today, it opened and a small boat went through. Then, it closed. A Boston-bound Amtrak train went north, and soon one went south to New York.

Next comes Roosevelt Overlook, but we usually pass it by. It’s the same easy on, easy off as the Rockefeller and the same Hudson River, but not the same charm.

The Alpine Cloister exit that passes the police station and goes to the rivers edge is a bit of a winding drive down. But then you are in the lovely Alpine Park, which has a boat basin and the historic Kearney House right by the Hudson. If you have a bit of more time, it‘s a great spot to lunch and spend a bit of time unwinding.

The fourth possibility, Stateline Lookout (another Hudson view), is a short drive in from the Palisades Parkway. Here, you have the option of buying refreshments or a light lunch at Lookout Inn and eating in a rustic chalet-like setting with a fireplace burning brightly for whenever there’s a chill in the air. There is a selection of books and things to purchase or just to browse.  

On trips when brown bag lunching is the way to go and the timing is right, try one of these delightful spots with a view of the Hudson. If you’re a foodie and it’s one of those endless drives across the Bronx, you might even, like me, start inventorying the oh-so-long food trailer trucks looming above you seated on the passenger side.