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Brendan Keefe's Blog
The Street Reporter
Food For Thought
Aug 4, 2005 8:17 am

Anyone who thinks the news business is glamorous needs to sit in the back of a TV van traveling at 55 MPH over the pot-hole riddled Gowanus expressway while trying to eat a chili dog.

While we don't eat well "on the street," we do eat a variety of foods all over the metro area. That has made some news photographers my favorite sources for restaurant reviews.

It really is a fringe benefit of the job. We eat the best calamari in Sheepshead bay, beef patties on Flatbush Avenue, chicken mahkni near City Hall, brisket in the East Village, cheeseburgers on the Upper West Side, carne guisada outside Yankee Stadium, pesto on Staten Island, deli sandwiches in Glen Cove, Portugese bar-b-cue in Newark, cheesecake on the Upper East Side, and canoli's on Bleeker street.

Collectively, we have eaten at every diner in a 70 mile radius from Columbus Circle.

For the night crews, waiting to see what story we'll be assigned is like waiting for the roulette wheel to stop. Dinner hangs in the balance. An arraigment in The Bronx means red beans and rice at Cuchifrito's. A press conference at One Police Plaza means dumplings at Wo Hop. Name a story and a location, we can answer with a restaurant and an entree.

This is not to say we actually get to sit down and enjoy these meals. In TV news, all food is fast food. Reporters and photographers order items with cooking time and portability in mind.

When we do get a chance to sit down, we sometimes have to bring the camera with us for security purposes. Imagine the horror of a restaurant owner upon first seeing the news van and then seeing the crew coming in with a camera. I was once told "you can't come in here!" I answered "what, we can't have dinner?" But our regular places know us well. Paulie at Randazzo's always welcomes us like we're members of the family.

We're street reporters. The world is our office. And if we can be expected to feed information to the masses, we've got to make sure we feed ourselves along the way. We just might even leave a few crumbs for the competition.

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