Ithaca's Fast & Cheap Eats

Since the mid-nineteenth century, Ithaca has been overrun by students hungry for cheap eats. Boarding houses provided those first greasy meals. My own student-day recollections (I lived through the sixties, and – strangely – I do remember them) include the long-gone, long mourned UniDeli, which dispensed thick provolone sandwiches on rye, dripping with cole slaw and a wet stalk of pickle for around a buck. In my days as a cafeteria worker, students, having run out of money before they ran out of month, ordered scoops of mashed potatoes with gravy for dinner and made soup out of ketchup and tea-water. Options have improved considerably. Ithaca, Central New York’s Exotic Restaurant Capital (we’re just missing an Ethiopian restaurant), offers plenty of wholesome dining adventures that’ll provide a day’s worth of topflight nutrition in the five-to-ten-buck range. Here are just a few of your options: See and be seen in the hall of plenty. Wegmans Julie Jordan Wings of Life Salad Bar will fill you up in a way your body will appreciate. For $5.49 for a meal-sized salad, $7.49 for enough for two, order up a pile of fresh baby greens, three kinds of cheeses, two of olives, shocked broccoli, brown rice, chickpeas, spicy tofu cubes, cashews, almonds, and sunflower seeds, a hunk of bread, and your choice of Julie’s own dressings. Mine is the lemon-sesame. Get it to go, or dine right there at Wegmans. A note of caution: it’s surprisingly easy to buy $80 worth of imported cheese, $20 worth of olives, a fresh bouquet of flowers, and a fruit tart on your way through the store. Across the plaza, King Buffet is tucked in amongst neighboring Pier 1, Eastern Mountain Sports, and a strip-mall MRI facility. For $5.49 at lunch, $7.99 at dinner (a dollar off with a coupon from one of the local weeklies) you can dine royally, if not regally on truly fast food. Locate your table, then hit the salad, steam, and dessert tables. Start with mostly vegetarian sushi with pickled ginger and fiery wasabi. The salad bar includes the usual fixings, but also chilled shrimp (you’ve gotta peel ‘em), plump mussels, and spicy squid, as well as a tasty seaweed salad. There’s a raft of vegetarian dishes, including garlicky eggplant and steamed bok choy, and an odd collection of “American” dishes for the less adventuresome, including the old cocktail favorite pigs in blankets, stuffed clams, and a good Cajun chicken. The Chinese offerings are vast, colorful, and varied, and include wonton, egg drop, and hot and sour soups; dumplings both steamed and fried; sweet-and-sour whatever; wings; barbecued chicken on a stick; and all manner of stir-fries and noodle dishes. For dessert there’s fresh melon, pastries, puddings, and Jell-o. When was the last time you had Jell-o? The check comes with fortune cookies all around. My last fortune told me my life was about to get less harried. I’m waiting. We’ve long been a fan of Viva Taqueria, whose Super Burrito is about the size and shape of a large stomach. For $5.65 you get your choice of chicken, beef, spicy Mexican sausage chorizo, tofu, or the calabacitas vegetable blend, plus rice, beans, sour cream, cheese, guacamole, and salsa, wrapped in a huge, soft, warm flour tortilla – comfort food at its loveliest, and enough for two people with normal appetites. If you’ve reached the end of your month, a basic burrito, nutritiously stuffed with rice, beans, and salsa, is only $2.50, a soft taco $1.99, and a hard taco only $1.60. There’s a choice of hot sauces made with burn-your-tongue, fruity habaneros, smoked red chiles, or jalapenos, three choices of beans, and four of salsas. Fiber challenged? Opt for a side of escabeche, a fresh pickled vegetable mixture, for a buck. On the run? Call ahead (277-1752) for takeout. The Indian luncheon buffet at Diamonds, at $6.99 is one of the best deals in town. Rice and naan, a bread baked on the inside wall of a tandoor oven and served warm, provide a base for an ever-changing roster of vegetarian curries, including a kofta curry of vegetarian “meatballs,” the sweet cabbage curry of my dreams, and rich spinach-y sag paneer; several daals crafted from chickpeas, kidney or other more exotic beans; red tandoori chicken with crisp onion slices, chicken curry, a refreshing iceberg salad, yogurt-and-cucumber raita to cool things off (not that they’re very hot), onion chutney to heat them up, a minty relish, and a sweet-and-sour tamarind sauce. Finish it off with a little bowl of satisfying kheer, a sweetened rice dessert delicately flavored with cardamom. The new Garcia’s on Route 13’s fast-food strip, an offshoot of a popular Cortland restaurant, was bustling on a recent Saturday night, and there were plenty of combination plates for under $10, and a good handful in the $6 range. Most lunch specials are $5.00 or less. Tortilla chips and two very good salsas, one hot, one not, hearty chile verde – pork in a tomatillo sauce – served with cheese-topped beans, rice, a smear of guacamole, and a green salad in a lop-sided bowl for $8.50, and a “Coktel de Camarones,” a spicy, salsa-based cold soup, which came in a tub-sized cocktail glass stuffed with chilled shrimp, hunks of avocado, raw onions, fresh cilantro, and a little too much balsamic vinegar, which isn’t high on our list of Mexican ingredients, but we could probably be happy with that for dinner five nights a week. That just about broke the bank at $9.50, but it was Weight Watcher heaven – no fat and plenty of vitamins, protein, roughage, and flavor. We’ve run out of space, but not out of ideas. Before the students come back, and while there’s parking in Collegetown, try Aladdin’s or Sindbad’s. Elsewhere, there’s Taste of Thai Express, Wok Village, Jade Garden, Chinese Buffet, Glenwood Pines, and the salad bar at the CTB on the corner of Aurora and Seneca Streets. Cheaper than cooking at home.