CHEESECAKE

The New York classic is high and light but subtly textured, with a pale yellow blend of cream cheese, sometimes with a little pot cheese or sour cream, and always lots of eggs, sugar and vanilla. Grated lemon rind is the only other acceptable flavoring. The cake might be based on a thin cookielike crust or one formed of crushed graham crackers. The best example from the old school remains S & S Cheesecake, which has a delicate cookie crust and a good belt of natural vanilla. It is baked on 238th Street in the Bronx and can be ordered and then picked up fresh, warm and unfrozen. It is also sold online and at Zabar’s and two Dean & DeLuca stores, but is shipped frozen, a process that does not overly mar the texture but leaves the cake just a bit sunken when not gently thawed.

A close second is Junior’s famed cheesecake, but only at the original restaurant in Downtown Brooklyn. Portions there seem fresher, lighter and more evenly moist, and with a nicely caramelized flavor, in contrast to some at the Grand Central Terminal outpost, where they can be a bit chewy and slightly soggy. Either way, avoid any hint of fruit or its sauce anywhere near the cake.

MANHATTAN CLAM CHOWDER

For complete accuracy, this perhaps should be called Brooklyn-Manhattan clam chowder, as my benchmark is the version I remember from the original Lundy’s restaurant in Sheepshead Bay. Most typically, it is a clear tomato-based vegetable soup with dicings of carrots, celery, onions and potatoes, along with tangles of clams — some in shreds, others in plump belly chunks — all enhanced by a heady belt of thyme, the seasoning that underpins the saline bite of the clams. Manhattan clam chowder is still widely available at Greek coffee shops on Fridays, but most are canned, overly thick and starchy versions. Otherwise it is hard to find in restaurants, where the creamy New England chowder somehow prevails.

But a few, like the Grand Central Oyster Bar and Restaurant, BLT Fish in Chelsea and Aquagrill in SoHo, regularly serve the hometown soup. The Oyster Bar’s chowder is pinkish with a cornstarch thickening and has the gentle flavor of thyme, oregano and bay leaves, and only mild clam undertones. BLT’s version, alas, is overpowered by smoky bacon. Aquagrill ladles out the classiest, headiest Manhattan chowder, redolent of sea breezes, with fresh clam bits. The most generous amount of clams in recognizable belly pieces, along with shreds, is at Randazzo’s Clam Bar in Sheepshead Bay. It is a thick sauce of a soup without any refinement, but with a very filling zap. Detecting no thyme, I asked if it contained any. “I don’t know,” the waitress answered. “I’ve never tasted thyme.”