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Gov. John Kasich was ready for dessert. But first, he clarified his plan of attack.

“I’m not going to eat my strudel with a knife,” he said.

Mr. Kasich was finishing the latest stop of his culinary tour of New York, which has included pizza in Queens — where he used a fork, possibly on purpose — and an Italian feast at a deli on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.

For Saturday’s outing, three days before New York’s primaries, Mr. Kasich perched himself on a stool at the PJ Bernstein kosher-style deli on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

A swarm of journalists surrounded him, ready to document any misguided utensil usage.

Mr. Kasich eagerly tackled a bowl of chicken soup with kreplach, a type of dumpling, declaring to anyone who wondered, “I love soup.” He used a spoon to eat the soup, as people tend to do.

In a bold move, he turned away a pastrami sandwich, explaining that he planned to have dinner with one of his daughters upon returning to Ohio later Saturday.

“I can’t eat any more,” he said. “I’ve eaten so much that I can’t eat any more.”

But a minute later, he inquired about dessert. He ordered apple strudel, requesting that it be served “without the whipped cream or any of that other fattening stuff” and cut it into thirds so he could share it.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Kasich has a tendency to heap praise upon the states where he is seeking votes. But he has been particularly effusive about New York, gushing about “New York values” and the food he has consumed while campaigning.

“I’m currently working on a secret plan to delay the primary so I can spend more time eating in New York,” he told reporters after speaking earlier Saturday at a synagogue in Great Neck, on Long Island.

At the deli, he seemed amused by the close inspection of his eating.

“What are you writing down? That I’m eating soup?” he asked this reporter.

Told that the reporter had written down that he had eaten a pickle, Mr. Kasich offered a correction: “Two pickles.”

Later, he announced he would eat another pickle, and updated his tally.

“Three pickles,” he said.