Growing up in the Bronx, it wasn't unusual to stop at a Luncheonette and order an Egg Cream. I love them with chocolate or vanilla syrup. Lou Reed even wrote an entire song about this refreshing drink. The trick to making a good Egg Cream is making sure you have the right ratio of milk, seltzer and syrup. As a kid, my family would have the seltzer guy drop off a case of the spray bottle seltzer and we would leave the empties outside for him to recycle. I remember these bottles to be fizzier than the ones you find in the supermarket today.
While in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I found a place that served the perfect Chocolate Egg Cream. The place was called DJ's Taste Of The 50s and they definitely take you back to a bygone era. I will write more about that place in another blog, but they have to be credited for creating the masterpiece pictured above, which I had already partially drank. Old fashioned luncheonettes, like the one I used to visit as a kid, sold newspapers and comic books among other items. They were famous, however, for their lunch counter where you grabbed a stool and ordered a sandwich or ice cream. Woolworths was famous for having one such counter in their store.
I will always remember the walks I would take with my aunts and the stops we would make just to order an egg cream. As Lou Reed remembers, "When I was a young man, no bigger than this. A chocolate egg cream was not to be missed. Some U Bet's Chocolate Syrup, seltzer water mixed with milk. You stirred it up into a heady fro, tasted just like silk." And that's exactly how I remembered it!