Quick Fix

Even portly, overfed restaurant critics feel the need for a furtive snack now and then, so whenever I’m languishing between meals, I sneak into Tom Colicchio’s latest spinoff, ’WICHCRAFT, to stand in line with the rest of the reverent foodies for a morning bite of egg, frisée, and Gorgonzola on a ciabatta roll, or one of the several artfully flattened sandwiches on the menu, like braised flank steak, roasted onions, and Gruyère cheese, squeezed between pieces of grilled country bread. Later in the day, I might repair to a cozy slip of a restaurant in the East Village called the CARACAS AREPA BAR. Arepas, in case you didn’t know, are steamy corn buns with a pleasurably chewy density, and they’re served here like burgers, in a plastic basket, and stuffed with classic Venezuelan fillings like mashed chicken and avocados or the aptly named la palua (“the hairy one”), consisting of shredded beef with a topping of shaved Cheddar cheese.

ZAITZEFF, down on Nassau Street, and BLUE 9 BURGER, in the East Village, are where I go when I want a more grandiose burger on the fly (all organic beef with horseradish sauce on a Portuguese bun at the former; a classically messy, fast-food double-decker leviathan at the latter), and the new hot spot for hot-dog hounds seems to be WESTVILLE, where $11 buys two perfectly articulated Niman Ranch dogs with a variety of toppings. For the ultimate cholesterol bomb, however, go straight to CARL’S STEAKS, on Third Avenue, where my friend Philadelphia perks up like an old beagle when he smells the familiar greasy funk rising from the grill. The sandwiches are tightly bound in wax paper, like torpedoes, and the available cheeses are American, provolone, or, more correctly, Cheez Whiz, ladled from a bubbling, viscous pot.