Summer 2015

Food, Glorious Food

I enjoyed your article “So Where Do You Want To Eat?” [Spring 2015], but you omitted the Japanese restaurant Aki Dining Room on West 119th Street, between Amsterdam and Morningside. We used to eat there in the mid-’70s; it was pretty exotic food back then. I found this obit of the owner.

Renee Dossick BC’78
New York City

 I enjoyed the “Food, Glorious Food” articles in the Spring 2015 CCT. I remember some tidbits that weren’t uncovered by your correspondents.

First, La Bella China had a mixed menu, half Mexican and half Chinese, with rice being the common bond. Every time I pass the corner of Broadway and West 110th I can smell the Mexican spices mixed with MSG.

Second, Campus Dining Room was a restaurant serving diner food until around 7 p.m., when it became a bar. The CDR was “the place to be” on Thursday nights during the ’70s. My favorite memory is of Kevin McSweeney ’75 ordering 14 gin and tonics at last call during his last Thursday on campus before he graduated. They gave him all 14; we did finish them before being escorted out to Amsterdam Avenue.

Mike Hansen ’77
Oakmont, Pa.

Thanks for the evocative article. When I lived in the dorms and had to study late into the night, I would take a food break about 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning. I went to a 24-hour deli on Broadway near Prexy’s and ordered an American cheese sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise. It cost 11 cents. It was so thin that if you held it up to the light it was translucent. Still, it was very satisfying. Those were the days.

Dr. E. Michael Geiger ’58
Delray Beach, Fla.

Thanks for another great edition of CCT [Spring 2015]. The food theme was truly inspired.

Two omissions: From the good old days, you missed the Sugar Bowl, on Amsterdam Avenue just up from Columbia Chemists and across the street from Livingston (now Wallach). Until I was 4, my family lived on West 114th Street while my grandparents ran the Sugar Bowl. I donned my Columbia freshman beanie just before the wrecking ball demolished the Sugar Bowl’s building, making way for Women’s Hospital, then part of St. Luke’s. I had spent many hours sitting in the booth adjacent to the Sugar Bowl’s front windows, gazing at Livingston, closely watching Columbia students and professors as they arrived for breakfast or lunch, and setting Columbia firmly in my imagination as my model for college life.

Second omission: I graduated from the College in 1965, as did Arthur Cutler. I headed off to the Peace Corps in Venezuela; to TC, during the 1968 student protests and building takeovers; and, eventually, to a long and fruitful career in independent schools in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Artie took over his father-in-law’s Long Island grocery store; bought Murray’s Sturgeon Shop, then situated in the West 90s on Broadway; and in 1990, opened Carmine’s. The latter was the first in Artie’s small empire of themed restaurants that included the first Ollie’s, which you do mention. Sadly, Artie died in 1997. Here is his New York Times obituary, which outlines his fascinating career.

Steven J. Danenberg ’65
Old Lyme, Conn.