Best ways to experience a taste of New York in Melbourne
As NGV prepares to open its summer blockbuster exhibition of works by famed New York artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, we take a look at ways to embrace the City That Never Sleeps in Melbourne.
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Be it the bagels with a schmear, the Reuben, Prohibition-era bars serving up a good Old Fashioned, to musicals in opulent 19th century theatres, world-class sporting events or an edgy arts scene, slices of New York City abound in Melbourne.
And as NGV prepares to open its summer exhibition — featuring the works of renowned New York artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat — there are a number of ways to soak up Big Apple fever in the Victorian capital.
FOOD
Both cities are revered for their strong foodie cultures — local cuisines melded with an extensive array of international picks — and while New York arguably outstrips every city on earth for sheer quantity of eating options, Melbourne sure makes up for any comparative lack of outlets with its quality.
All the major cuisines you’d expect to find in NYC are done well here — Mediterranean, Asian, Mexican, European and Middle Eastern, and in more recent decades, the likes of East African and South American.
The two cities are among the most diverse cultural melting pots globally and their respective dining options are all the better for it.
New Yorkers do crave their caffeine hits but in a more functional, on-the-go way than the Melburnian prerequisite that their brew meets a top-notch standard. The idea of a good coffee to the two can seem as far apart as the Pacific expanse between them.
In recent years, however, New Yorkers have started cottoning on to our passion for quality coffee, so much so that a string of Aussie cafes in the Big Apple — the likes of Blue Stone, Toby’s Estate, Citizens and Two Hands — are booming.
If it is the New York style batch-brewed filter coffee you seek, there are local cafes here that do it well, or there’s always that mega chain — far less popular in these parts — beginning with “S”.
For a better taste of New York, why not skip to satisfying a grumbling stomach instead with that breakfast and lunch favourite — the bagel.
Salmon and cream cheese is the filling most synonymous with NYC but the varieties really are endless for these dense, doughy rings of goodness.
Zev Forman, a New Jersey native, who now calls Melbourne home, took it upon himself to lift the bar a notch on Australian bagels.
After starting out baking and selling his own at markets, he started a dedicated bakery and cafe, 5 & Dime, which serves onion, rye, poppy seed, sesame, cinnamon and raisin, or dill bagels, all cooked in the traditional boil and bake method.
Schmucks Bagels in the city, Glick’s Bakery and Poppy and Seeds Bakery — both in Balaclava — and Huff Bagelry in Carnegie are among the others filling your NYC hooped-bread fix.
The New York-style delis are a reliable place to sample another of the west coast metropolis’s iconic lunch options — the Reuben.
To an Aussie, it tastes like a corned beef sandwich – which is technically correct – but is only one of the options. The other is pastrami, a similarly brined beef brisket but rubbed with a spice blend and smoked instead of boiled.
The aptly named Bowery to Williamsburg pays homage to NYC’s Bowery subway station in a classic-style diner in Melbourne’s CBD, but as they put it, “in a refined style and surrounding that Melburnians have come to expect”.
The bagels are sourced from 5 & Dime and the menu includes Reubens, the New York-style Cubano sandwich — with braised pork shoulder on Jewish challah bread — and beef brisket with fried eggs.
Dagwood Deli, at Southbank, is a New York-style diner dishing up the perfect house-made hot pastrami sanga — admittedly, Americans would not have a clue what a “sanga” is — rightly served with mustard on rye, dill pickle and a side of potato chips.
Fitzroy’s Smith & Deli and Mason Dixon American Sandwich Bar also serve up a great Reuben — the latter even selling US soft drinks, ie: soda.
NYC’s and Melbourne’s shared Italian history make for a plethora of a wining and dining offerings.
But for the New York-style pizzas — think big bases, thin crust and covered in pepperoni — Carlton North’s new Leonardo’s Pizza Palace, which retains of an original retro 1970s fit-out, is a good place to start.
Herald Sun food writer Dan Stock recommends heading to Pepe’s — the former Trunk diner in the city — for a more classic pepperoni executed with class, where old-school New York is mixed with new-world Melbourne style.
DRINK
Long before Melbourne was staking its claim in the hidden bar stakes, the Big Apple was doing discreet drinking dens out of necessity, as a way around the US’s tough Prohibition-era laws in the early 20th century.
Traditionally known as the speakeasy, these bars were at the time illegal, but have grown to become a dime a dozen in NYC, now a mere throwback to the inconspicuous locations of these watering holes.
The Old Fashioned and the Manhattan are two of the most iconic cocktails first mixed in the Big Apple and while its origins are debated, the martini became the cocktail synonymous with the Prohibition era due to the ease of access to illegal gin in NYC.
All three are staples of Melbourne’s bars scene, but if it’s the clandestine experience of a NYC-inspired speakeasy you’re after, a bunch of cosy and discreet bars exist.
Above Board, in Collingwood, is named with a subtle nod to the once illegal speakeasies, while Matthew Bax’s Bar Americano evokes the Golden Age of drinking, the time of the “American bar”, the type found in the jazz cities of Chicago and NYC.
Melbourne’s renowned cocktail establishment, 1806, is named after the year in which the word “cocktail” first appeared in print — in Hudson, New York, no less.
Adorned with Prohibition-era decor, this low-lit, lavish offering features a cocktail masterclass, a gin odyssey and a cocktail degustation for the aficionados.
Pizza Pizza Pizza needs little explanation in the way of it sole culinary offering, but behind the whopping New York-style thin and crispy slices lies a secret unnamed bar, specialising in cocktails, of course.
With its unequivocally French menu — think steak tartare, escargot and souffle du jour — the recently opened Bar Margaux pays homage to the late-night New York-style Paris brasserie.
Dimly lit and underground, this is one of Melbourne’s most highly touted new bars and even serves “snack size” half-serve classic cocktails, as well as American Miller High Life beer.
Located in an old bank vault, Beneath Driver Lane is exactly that — in the basement down a CBD alley under Driver Lane. Bar staff are neatly fitted in black chef coats as the sound of blues fills the underground haven where more than 100 whiskies are stocked.
State of Grace, despite having moved around the corner to King St last year, has kept its secret cellar bar, accessible via bookcase.
While outside the CBD, Windsor’s Jungle Boy — not so much a well-kept secret anymore — opts for a tropical theme once you step behind a fridge in Boston Sub sandwich shop.
ENTERTAINMENT
Few cities stand toe-to-toe with the Big Apple’s arts scene, given its glut of galleries and theatres.
While blessed with The Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art), MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), the Guggenheim Museum and the smaller Whitney Museum of American Art, New Yorkers can still satisfy a creative fix — albeit it on a smaller scale — in Australia’s arts capital.
The Crossing Lines exhibition brings a dose of Keith Haring’s and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1980s New York to NGV from December 2019 to April 2020.
Haring left his mark on Melbourne’s street art 28 years ago when he painted one of his murals on what was then the Collingwood Technical School.
Both cities are proud of their constantly evolving and cutting-edge street art, and for other renowned Melbourne galleries, the Ian Potter Centre at Fed Square houses NGV’s Australian art collection, right next door to ACMI (the Australian Centre for the Moving Image).
Back closer to NGV, dip into modern art at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and Buxton Contemporary.
Broadway may be the home to musical theatre but Melbourne is no slouch, regularly hosting the biggest productions, with Chicago (December 8) and Billy Elliot (February 20) due to return with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Come From Away currently playing at some of the city’s most historic theatres.
A trip to Yankee Stadium to cheer on the New York Yankees over a hot dog and American beers is surely the most quintessential sporting experience for a New Yorker.
Melbourne’s equivalent in the sporting landscape is venturing to the MCG for a game of footy or cricket match, with the Boxing Day Test the highlight of Australia’s annual cricket calendar.
Across the road, Melbourne Park plays host to the Australian Open tennis every January, four months after Flushing Meadows in New York stages the final Grand Slam of the preceding season.
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At 341ha, the sprawling Central Park is the Big Apple’s welcome reprieve from its hectic pace, the most visited urban park in the US. While it dwarfs any of Melbourne’s green spaces, a similarly tranquil escape from the city hustle can be found here in the likes of the established Fitzroy Gardens, Carlton Gardens or Royal Botanic Gardens.
SHOPPING EXPERIENCES
On the southern side of New York’s High Line sits the former home to the National Biscuit Company, a block-filling brick building built in 1890 and now reclaimed as the Chelsea Market, one of the world’s premiere indoor food halls.
While not of the same scale, the South Melbourne (1867), Prahran (1891) and Queen Victoria markets (1878) are Melbourne’s quintessential village markets of the same era, with their fresh produce, meat and seafood, and gourmet stalls serving up global fare.
If a dose of retail therapy is in order, for a sprinkling of the high-end retailers, which line Manhattan’s Fifth Ave, try the Paris end of Collins St or the Emporium.
For a more Brooklyn vibe head out of the CBD to Northcote and Brunswick for vintage stores, with the likes of Lost and Found Market and Vintage Garage selling edgy threads in Collingwood.
While online shopping has taken its toll on Melbourne’s once vibrant boutique shopping strips such as Chapel St, try Gertrude St in Fitzroy, or Flinders Lane and Little Collins St in the CBD for smaller independent retailers, the kind of which can be found in leafy Greenwich Village in Manhattan.