New York is a city that holds a special place in the imagination of many people around the world.  So it is no surprise to see the mystique of New York used to sell everything from condos to makeup here in Bangkok.  The most recent addition to this “Big Appleing” of Bangkok is a small restaurant at the Crystal Design Center: NYCC – New York City Cheesecake.

Located in a rapidly expanding strip mall in the suburban outskirts on the northeast flank of the city, NYCC claims to offer a real taste of New York with not only authentic New York style cheesecakes but also pastrami sandwiches.  Being a lover of pastrami, I had to go out and try this for myself.

The restaurant is really more of a shack or hut, located between other buildings at the Crystal Design Center.  CDC is a design-oriented strip mall located on Ram Intra Road, an already overcrowded road that extends from Ekkamai Road out to the suburbs.  Despite the overcrowding, the past five years have seen an explosion of businesses and housing this direction.  Perhaps the good news is that with these new shopping centers on the periphery of Bangkok, the traffic on the streets in the core of the city will not get any worse.

The interior of NYCC looks more like a noodle shop with stools and small tables.  It isn’t much of a surprise then to learn that NYCC has a sister shop behind it that sells – wait for it – noodles.  Framed posters of Broadway shows lines the windows and various New York theme tchotchkes sit for sale on a side shelf.  The friendly staff take the orders and deliver the foods.  On a weekday afternoon around lunchtime, the place was not very busy.

NYCC’s motto is “cheese will never cease” – I’m not sure what that means.  For some reason, it makes me think of an alternative definition of the word “cheese”.

After a few minutes longer than I thought it would take, our sandwiches arrived.  I ordered the pastrami and Tawn ordered the chicken club.  The sandwiches are monsters, shooting for the “mile high” measurements for which New York deli sandwiches are know.  Let’s take a closer look at what we really have, though, from the toothpick down:

The bread was actually pretty good, although it would have been a bit nicer lightly toasted.  It wasn’t a nice dark rye but was slightly more substantive than the wonder that passes for bread all too often here in Bangkok.

In the middle, which is where most of the bulk is in this sandwich, is a stack of two types of lettuce, a stack of raw onion, and a stack of tomatoes.  The problem here (other than whether or not there should be any vegetables on a pastrami sandwich) is that everything is stacked, so you get a lot of onions in one bite, for example, and no onions in another bite.

At the bottom is the pastrami.  I’ll give them credit for tasty pastrami, albeit sliced a little thicker than I like.  It was tender and smoky.  There was also not much of it, especially when compared with the bread and vegetables.  As for the sauce, the sandwich was over-sauced – which is not unusual here in Thailand, with brown mustard (nice) and Thousand Island (wrong – this isn’t a Reuben).

How to rate it overall?  Well,  for a sandwich that carried a price tag around 340 baht (about $11.40), it was mighty short on meat and might high on everything else… except a pickle, which would have been a nice touch.  Now, I’m not a New York, just a frequent visitor.  But from what I know of New York pastrami sandwiches, this is what my expectation looked like:

This is a pastrami sandwich from the Carnegie Deli.  We can debate which deli is the best, but in my mind, this is a good example of what a pastrami sandwich should be.  Lots and lots of pastrami with little or nothing else between the bread.  Now, I understand that beef is expensive here and I’m not opposed to paying a good price for something that approximates a real New York style pastrami sandwich.  But if I’m going to pay that much money, let’s lose the salad, add a little more meat, and put the sauce on the side.

As for Tawn’s chicken club, it was a similar tower of salad but had a very substantial amount a chicken at the base – probably two breasts’ worth.  The meat was bland and instead of being thinly sliced was more slab-like.  It was about 250 baht and, from Tawn’s perspective, overpriced. 

As for the eponymous cheesecake, a recent dining companion (at another meal) told me she thinks the cheesecakes are flown in from the Cheesecake Factory in the United States.  I don’t think that’s the case, but the potion sizes are enough to make you believe it!

We ordered a slice of regular cheesecake with strawberry topping, more than ample for two (or four!) to share.  I’ll give them credit for making a pretty passable New York style cheesecake.  The consistency is smooth, solid but not too dense, and nicely flavored.  It had obviously been frozen previously as the center of the slice was still icy – a faux pas when service cheesecake – but it was better than a lot of the overly airy cheesecake I’ve had in Bangkok.

We ended up with a bill of about 850 baht for two sandwiches, one slice of cheesecake, and two bottles of water.  For Bangkok, that’s a pretty pricey meal, especially for a lunch.  It was fun to try and NYCC had some things going for it, but not so many that I’d be easily tempted to make the trek out Ram Intra.  Instead, I’ll just save my pastrami cravings for my new trip back to the real New York.