New in New York: Now You Can Pinpoint Your Wafels & Dinges

By Mitch Broder

When I was a boy my mother deemed waffles and ice cream an official meal, which is why I still love my mother and why I still love waffles and ice cream. But a good waffle, like a good mother, can be hard to find, which is why Wafels & Dinges has opened its first shop that doesn’t move.

Till now Wafels & Dinges has been the mildly baffling name of a fleet of trucks and carts that dispense waffles in mildly baffling forms. Powdered — make that powered — by public response, the owners have opened a waffle café in Alphabet City without any wheels.

Dinges, pronounced “ding-ess,” which is Flemish for “things,” are the toppings that you can get on your wafels. Wafels, pronounced “wah-fuls,” which is Flemish for “waffles,” are Belgian waffles. Belgians speak Flemish. New Yorkers are learning.

The main wafels are the Liège, which is “soft, sweet & chewy,” and the Brussels, which is “light n’crispy.” Once you have selected your wafel, you move on to selecting your dinges. Standard dinges include maple syrup and butter, but the dinges go way beyond standard.

One dish premiering at the café is the Oh Oh Serrano, which is a “flavor fest on a grilled Brussels wafel with serrano ham, asiago cheese, & fig spread.” Another is the 2^nd Street Salmon Special, which loads your Brussels wafel with smoked salmon, capers, red onion, and lemon-dill sour cream.

These join things familiar to truck patrons, like the wafel with pulled pork, and the wafel with Bauernschinken ham, Raclette cheese, and scallions. Also things like the World’s Fair wafel, topped with strawberries, whipped cream, and powdered sugar, just like the ones that were the hit of the ’64 fair.

My mother never stocked Asiago cheese or lemon-dill sour cream, let alone Bauernschinken ham or pulled pork. So I ordered waffles and ice cream. I chose chocolate ice cream on a Brussels wafel. I knew it wouldn’t match Breyers on a Downyflake. But it came remarkably close.

Still, at least in New York, Belgian waffles have a checkered history. They’ve never had a golden moment like, say, Belgian fries. Over a decade ago I wrote about a new place called Bulgin’ Waffles Café. It was soon toast. Then again, its special was the Hot Waffle in a Bag.

More recently, there was a place called Go For a Bite, whose two specialties were its  “Original Belgium Waffles” and its Cream Puffs. It, too, went up in smoke. Curiously, it has been replaced by a restaurant that serves only oatmeal, which is called, suitably, OatMeals.

Acccording to Sophie Grant, the manager of Wafels & Dinges, waffles are a tough sell largely because of Breyers and Downyflake. “It’s one of those meals people take for granted,” she explained. “You can get them at any diner and have them at home in the freezer.”

“What sets ours apart is the quality,” she added. “It’s as close to a real Belgian waffle as you can get. We chose one thing to do really well.” That choice was made by Thomas DeGeest, the Wafels & Dinges founder, who sold his first wafel in 2007 from a 1968 Chevy truck.

Thomas’s triumphs since then have included popularizing spekuloos spread, a Belgian topping that looks like peanut butter and tastes like a gingerbread man.

Awhile ago I got it on a Liège wafel from a Wafels & Dinges truck.

I’m trying to get my mother to deem that another official meal.

Get off the street at Wafels & Dinges, 209 East Second Street, between avenues B and C, in New York City.

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Old New York: A Sad Last Look at What's Left of Big Nick's

By Mitch Broder

It was clear almost immediately that I was not going to be getting a hamburger.

And yet I stayed. Surely someone would show up and say it was all a mistake.

I'm never in the last four stages of grief. I enter denial and I stay there. This applies to the loss of places as much as to the loss of people. So when I visited Big Nick’s Burger Joint & Pizza Joint a few days after its closing, I was sure that it would be coming back. Despite all that crap in my booth.

Big Nick’s is the joint that had more character in its 28-page menu than most restaurants in New York today have in their 28-day lifespans. Ironically, for all its earthiness, it gave the Upper West Side class. It closed last week because its space can now be rented for the price of 10,000 hamburgers a month.

Nevertheless, Big Nick — ever the gracious host — invited me in, even if, for the first time, I would have to leave hungry. I roamed the ruins, unsure what I craved more, the earthiness or a hamburger. It didn’t matter. Neither one could have existed without the other.

The earthiness included framed photographs of mostly stars of the future, and little signs for selections like the Sumo Burger (“Over One Pound [1 LB.] of Meat”). The hamburgers included 60 varieties among which was the Sumo, although, if you were going strictly by weight, that one should have counted as two.

Nick always embraced his jointhood. He put quotes on the back of the menu like: “Big Nick’s is a 24-hour dump that … inspires affection.” His place was a roadside diner, except that the road was Broadway. On his tables, there was never a laptop. On his TVs, there were always Three Stooges.

Nick is actually Demetrios Niko Imirziades, who arrived from Athens in 1961 to make his Broadway debut. He washed dishes. But he also diligently attended restaurant school and worked his way up to manager at the coffee shop that he would buy in 1964.

He renamed it The Burger Joint (now the name of the unconnected joint at Le Parker Meridien). A few years later, he unveiled the Big Nick burger in response to the Big Mac. In 1976, he renamed the place Big Nick’s. The name was accurate. Nick had once excelled in discus and shot put.

Through the years, Nick has opened and closed about a dozen other joints. One was Big Nick’s on 71^st Street, which still exists but is no longer his. The last to go, before the flagship, was the nearby Niko’s Mediterranean Grill & Bistro, which closed in 2011. It had been inspired by his mother’s cooking.

I thought of all this as I trudged past the now burgerless grill, the now empty stools, and the now Stoogeless television sets. I thought of it as I gazed at the corner booth where I once sat with Nick, when he told me that it was the booth in which he’d had a heart attack thirty years ago.

Now, before I left, I spoke with Nick outside. He seemed confident that he’d be opening another place, around 20 blocks up. “It’ll be a little bit more limited menu,” he said. “It’ll be a combination of what I sold at Niko’s and what I sold at Big Nick’s.”

“I will know in September if something’s happening, and if it doesn’t work out, maybe we’ll try something else,” he said. “Nothing is set a hundred percent.”

Except for this: The old Big Nick’s will be back. I know it. No need for anger, bargaining, or depression.

And definitely no need for acceptance.

Big Nick’s was on Broadway at 77^th Street. I’ll let you know when it comes back.

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