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Pastrami on Rye with Adolfo Carrion

The Bronx's head foodie talks turkey with City Hall
By Charlotte Eichna

Food is a topic near and dear to Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion's heart. Not only did he famously chastise Tim Zagat for neglecting to include enough Bronx eateries in his guidebook, Carrion used to be in the catering business, and is a self-proclaimed foodie.

City Hall recently lunched with the borough president at the Court Deli nearby borough hall. On the menu: a pastrami sandwich, his possible mayoral ambitions, and a discussion of why a renovated Yankee Stadium makes sense for the borough.

City Hall: You used to be a caterer. What was your specialty?

Adolfo Carrion: Everything. I can cook you any Italian dish, just about any Asian dish, Chinese. Obviously I can cook Caribbean, Puerto Rican—just about anything…I love the kitchen. I have a great kitchen in my house. We have a house that was built in 1853 that for the 17 years before we owned it was a French bed and breakfast. So the kitchen was a commercial kitchen—you know, real old stove and a huge island in the middle with a sink and we put butcher block counter tops. We've got all the pans hanging up so they're readily available because every dish is a work of art.

CH:Are you the cook at home?

AC: I am. You know, it's very difficult given my schedule but when I am home I do cook and on the weekends I enjoy elaborate breakfasts on Saturday and Sunday morning whenever I'm home. The kids always say, ‘Papi, we want a real breakfast,' which essentially means hot food and pancakes and sausage and eggs. And I'll make a Caribbean breakfast for them with the fried plantains with eggs in olive oil. It's really delicious.

CH:When you ran your catering business, did you ever have any disasters, like a soufflé that didn't rise or a really difficult client?

AC: I did a wedding at a hotel overlooking St. Bart's—the Helmsley—it was a private party, it was in one of the suites and it was way at the top. They wanted chocolate covered strawberries and then to have the strawberry in a glass of champagne for the toast. It was a weird thing. You know what? Chocolate and champagne is great. And we had a little difficulty getting the chocolate to cool fast enough and look pretty—and of course people who are getting married are very picky. They want everything to be perfect…It all worked out, but it was pretty darn scary.

CH:Have you spoken with Tim Zagat about the number of Bronx restaurants featured in the '07 survey?

AC: Not yet. You know I got him up here—last year hit 10 restaurants in one night…We had a lot of fun. And as a result of that encounter we've established a really good friendship. He's invited [my wife] Linda and I over to his house to cook. We haven't had the opportunity to go but it's in the plans. He brags about his kitchen so we're going to go see it.

CH:Do you have a favorite restaurant in the Bronx? Or maybe one in another borough?

AC: That's delicate. I have so many friends that own restaurants. Let me just tell you: I like good seafood that's prepared well, and that means you never overcook seafood. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever—like you never overcook meat.

CH:Do you cringe when people order steak well done?
AC: It is the cardinal sin. Well-cooked steak is like ordering Rosé.

CH:So you're a wine snob, too? 

AC: Not a snob, just, you know—basic taste. I'm a foodie, definitely a foodie.

CH:You've been a big advocate for securing Campaign for Fiscal Equity dollars for the city—where specifically would you like to see that money spent?

AC: I think where we should spend the money is equipping the schools with the technology they need; libraries in every school that really work as libraries; every swimming pool, every gym and every auditorium and music room needs to work and have what it needs to give these kids—our kids—a full education experience. And where ever we can spend money on teacher training and professional development, we need to do that.

CH:Is the money even there?

AC: I think that in a $112 billion budget, to find an additional $3 billion is not that difficult. I think it has to do with political will and that there has been a disdain on the part of a lot of the communities in upstate against the big city down here because I think they see New York as a drain of resources and the State Legislature's lopsided, the political power arrangement is lopsided, we have more representation simply because we have more population. I think the governor can change the tone of that conversation in a number of ways, certainly in his executive budget statement and also by putting together a very aggressive growth plan for upstate New York.

CH:A lot of people have questioned whether a stadium can economically revitalize a surrounding neighborhood. How is the Yankee Stadium project different?

AC: I agree that a stadium alone, if it's a football stadium, you're talking about 16 games, eight days a year, where 100,000 people come in... If it's a baseball stadium and nothing else, you're talking about 82 days out of 365. And if the franchise is the Yankees, then you get a few extra days. And we're creating year-round traffic so that you'll have a full-service restaurant that not only serves the fans, but serves the people who work here. And then you build the Yankee Hall of Fame, the museum, and you have tourism—people from all over the world and the country. And then the other thing is that we were able to eke out of this a new park with lots of new facilities for the kids. Is it a major inconvenience? Absolutely. Is it going to be difficult for a few years during construction? Absolutely. But whenever we advance and progress as a city, whenever we build anything it's going to be an inconvenience.

CH:Did you agree with calls for Yankees manager Joe Torre to be fired because of this season's outcome?

AC: I think the calls for Joe Torre to be fired was a little bit of a hysterical overreaction to a bad finish. My sense is that Joe will be there at least one more season and just like any other franchise, change will come. It's inevitable. Jeter is there, he's great. A-Rod is staying—he'll get his head together, everything will be fine. And then life will go on.

CH:Do you get consulted for trades?

AC: You know, I have to tell you—I talk to the guys.

CH:Yeah? Express your opinion? 

AC: I do. I do it always off the record

. CH:Do they listen? 

AC: At least they pretend to. They humor me.

CH:Do you ever miss being a Council Member?

AC: I miss the camaraderie. I miss the banter that goes on in the members lounge. And the plotting around bills, the strategic partnerships that you can build. But I have to tell you, I love this job.

CH:You've also talked about in 2009 possibly running for mayor. Who would you look at as the most serious challenger—someone like an Anthony Weiner, a Bill Thompson or somebody in the Bloomberg mold like Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons?

AC: I think that my biggest challenger is Adolfo Carrion. I think that I play in politics like I play at sports, which is, I know the other players there, but I don't spend any thinking time on their game because it takes me away from what I am doing. And I think we've been successful in the Bronx because we've had a single focus…When I first started, we first said, ‘We're open for business, we want to grow this economy, we have a young workforce, we're eager to be in the marketplace.' And so we're going to create a business-friendly environment. We then said to the development community, ‘If you do business in the Bronx, you must do business with the Bronx and be a partner in building our economy.'

My belief is that people still come to this global city and this wonderful place for the same reasons they came in the 1600s, which is there is a city that is filled with opportunity—for commerce, for economic development—and I believe that the city, the American city, is the ultimate platform for democracy and for free markets.

So when somebody asks you something like, ‘Who's your biggest opponent?,' Me. It's what ideas I roll out to New Yorkers and say, okay, let's build up your part of the city. I'm an urban planner—what do we do? Do you have a piece of the waterfront? What do you want here? Let's just do it. The obstacles, they're always going to be there.

I think the question about who's going to run for mayor and what will happen in '09, even though we all like to run around talking about it—political gossip is wonderful, it's a lot of fun—at the end of the day, a lot of things will happen between now and then because life happens to people. My strategy is very simple. I continue to do what I'm doing here, I express some thoughts about the future of the city as it relates to education, as it relates to infrastructure, as it relates to people's quality of life in their neighborhoods, as it relates to the affordability problem that we still have—you know, all the stuff that should be the métier for the leader of the city. And then what will happen, we will raise money—I expect that we're going to have ten million dollars-plus...

CH:In your mind, why couldn't Fernando Ferrer connect with New Yorkers and get them to vote for him for mayor? 

AC: I think he did. Almost half of New York said, ‘yes.' And the other half responded to a very good campaign that Mike [Bloomberg] ran. And I think that the general direction of the city is good. There was no ‘Kick the Bum Out' movement.

CH:We just had a former Bronx borough president as the Democratic candidate for mayor—will people want another former Bronx borough president as the candidate?

AC: It doesn't matter. We're different people with very different styles. And I think that that kind of hair splitting is all sort of ‘Inside Baseball' anyway. It allows us to have a political conversation. It's like saying, ‘Could there be two white males, two women, two African Americans, two Hispanics, two Jews in a race?' There should be talented, capable people competing with every ounce of their existence to be the leader of our city. And hopefully our children will benefit from the work of smart people. And everything else is a bunch of hokum. Really. Win or lose, we all win if it becomes substance and it's on what matters most. On the other side, come January 1st, 2010, life goes on, we do other more interesting and better things—everybody's life will go on and somebody will be in Gracie Mansion.

CH:Do you think that race and ethnicity play too big a role in city politics today?

AC: I think that what people are concerned about is ensuring that the leader of the city will deliver for their dreams and aspirations. I think it's great that people, as I do, care about their culture, their heritage, nationality.

But I always tell the folks that what constitutes the American family and the glue that keeps us together is an idea, a notion—not race or ethnicity. We are principally committed to a free, democratic society with all its wonderful benefits and to a free market and that anything that gets in the way of that is not good. We have to build a meritocracy so that a child growing up in a society who demonstrates talent and works hard, he can add value, have the opportunity to add value.

And what unfortunately has happened is there's been a lot of cynical players in American politics that understand the power that you can conquer by dividing, you can play to people's fears, so you know, there's a lot of issues that are simply used as tools of distraction and it's unfortunate because it diminishes who we are.

CH:There are a lot of families that are all in the business of politics in the Bronx. Do you think that this discourages ‘outside' challengers?

AC: We have not had a shortage of challengers and insurgents in the Bronx at least in my memory. I've been involved about 20 years. I think like any other trajectory for a family, what tends to happen…you know your dad's a lawyer, a doctor, you're going to have the tendency to consider being a lawyer or a doctor. I think in politics you grow up in the shadow of people who are constantly talking about the issues of the day, arguing about how best to do things, how best to run our city, what laws are fair, what's not fair—so it's in their DNA.

It's not really unique to the Bronx. It's all over the country.

CH:So there's no shortage of outsiders.

AC: They don't win, because incumbents have the upper hand.

CH:Are your kids interested in politics at all?

AC: They pretend they're not, but they can argue circles around me…They're great because they get it. And they push me. Sometimes I take a position and they say, ‘Well, pops that's not fair.' And I say, ‘Well tell me why.' I egg them on. And then they make an argument as to why they think it should be a certain way.

CH:Do you ever laugh when Eliot Spitzer says he's from the Bronx because he grew up in Riverdale?

AC: (Laughs) No, the Bronx is Riverdale, just as any other part of the Bronx is the Bronx. Even though some people put in their address, ‘Riverdale, New York.' Queens has that same phenomenon—you know, Flushing, New York. I think people make much ado about little.

CH:But they are very different neighborhoods. Is it hard to represent two such distinct constituencies?

AC: No. People want the same fundamental things and I see that and my job is to deliver on those things. They want to make sure of safety and security, they want to make sure that there's some aesthetic environment, they want the systems to work for them—when they turn the lights on, they're on; when they show up at the train station, there's a train. They want to buy a home or have a good place to live that's relatively affordable…We need to create all levels of housing for all people. We have failed to hold on to the middle class. They're starting to come back but we need to grow and keep the middle class. That's going to be a challenge going into the future…I think we need to create a mix of incomes in neighborhoods. You have to encourage it. And the basic services — we still have a relatively broken healthcare system where people are not seeing a primary caregiver to manage their health.

CH:What would you be doing if you weren't in politics?

AC:I have some passions in my life. Food is one of them. I love the food business, so I could conceivably be in the restaurant business, but I would probably be building things.

CH:Physically?

AC: Yeah. Probably, you know, building homes and commercial buildings and airports. That stuff gets me going. If you look at Abraham Lincoln's life and his thinking,…before he was a working lawyer he was a flatboat worker on the Mississippi. He understood that the way you democratize the economy and economic opportunity is building infrastructure.

And that's what drives my public involvement: the sense that if we create the systems, so whether it's rail, whether it's water transport, whether it's our ability to move quickly in the air, whether it's information, data movement…it's all part of building our capacity to be a free market and a free democracy. So if I weren't in this, I'd be involved anyway, but I'd probably be building things.

I don't see myself going into a legislative body. I think by coincidence of history, given the wave of growth in the Hispanic community, that I have a sort of a unique place in the chemistry of what's going on, that I can really serve as a cross-over and bridge-builder, given the explosive growth of Hispanics in this country.

And what's funny is that regardless of people's sentiments—because people are always sentimental about the stuff that's happening around them. It's like, ‘Oh, that's a bad thing,' or ‘That's a good thing.' Well you know what? It is. So you can go tell it to Oprah or you can do something about it. You can go see a therapist or you can work with it. And I think that all too often we encourage the, what's in Spanish we call the ‘ay bendito,' or the pity discussion or the feelings discussion as opposed to, what are we doing? What are we doing to be more competitive? We have a global market that is sucking the life out of the economy because we're farming out so many things to the rest of the world—what are we going to do about that? Or are we just going to be insular and protectionist and say, ‘Oh, we've got to hold on to our little thing the way we built it.' Like every other edifice, it ages, it rots, turns to dust and we need to rebuild. And that's the way I see the city. The city—we'll make it over. And when we get done we'll make it over again. We'll grow it and we'll grow it some more. And in the process we'll preserve some of the historic, beautiful sites that mean so much to us and our history. But for the most part the place has to work for human engagement. It's sort of a philosophical kind of approach to what we do.