At The Table: Gray’s Papaya

A few months ago I was drinking a martini in a little bar in Chinatown when the owner brought over a hotdog for us on a silver platter. It was a speciality of the establishment, she said. It was delicious. And so we got talking about hot dogs and New York City. Which isn’t really much of a hot dog town in the way that Chicago is a hot dog town, despite having “invented” the dish.

Because if anyone can claim to having invented something as universal and ubiquitous as putting a sausage in in a bun and eating it, it is Harry Stevens, who, while working at the Polo Grounds in 1901, ran out of the slips of paper traditionally used to hold the sausages he was selling, and had the ingenious idea of putting the sausage in a handy stack of rolls he was also selling, instead.

The rest is history. Which is how, 125 years later, we found ourselves, a few martinis deep, discussing where to go in New York to get the best hot dog, the most classic hot dog, the New York hot dog. There was one unanimous choice that our hosts suggested we must try, and that was Gray’s Papaya.

And so we went to Gray’s Papaya. Everybody comes to Gray’s Papaya. It’s on a corner of 72nd and Broadway, in the Upper West Side, halfway between The Dakota and the Hudson River, a bright glowing beacon, radiating promise. No one really loves the Upper West Side. It lacks the glamour of the Upper East, the grit of the Lower East Side, the exuberant huge everything-ness of Midtown.

But everyone comes to Gray’s: old Upper West Siders, families, students, tourists, people coming home late from work, regulars who have been eating there for decades. It’s an equally great spot for a quick snack if you’re off to the Lincoln Center to see an Opera, a student at Juilliard or Colombia, or in search of something cheap and quick and easy.

It’s slightly out of time, but you don’t want to romanticise Gray’s too much. It isn't a preserved piece of old New York, unapproachable and resolute. It's a functioning, slightly scruffy fast-food restaurant. As if to underscore that, Gray’s slogan is simply: "When you're hungry, or broke, or just in a hurry."

The format for Gray’s is pretty simple, you go in, get a hot dog or three, and a cup of tropical fruit juice. It’s a strange combination, but it does, undoubtedly, work.

It was started by Nicholas Gray, a Chilean former stockbroker and aspiring theatre impresario, who for a time ran a rival tropical juice and hot dog on the Upper East Side, called Papaya King, before leaving to open his own. Gray's belongs to an older New York food culture in which immigrant entrepreneurship, inexpensive food and slightly bizarre combinations could produce entirely new institutions. It feels a little mad cap inside, garish, beautiful in its way. Too bright, decked out in signs, clashing tropical colour schemes, fruit shaped decorations.

We order the Recession Special, a Gray’s calling card, two dogs and a juice for $8. It is a bargain. As good a deal as any you could find in the city. It was launched in 1982, when the special cost just $1.95. It’s survived multiple recessions now, the price creeping up a little each decade.

The name has outlived the particular recession it was created for, and many a recession that’s come since, but there is something more serious underneath it: Gray's has continually offered New Yorkers a small slice of affordability in a Manhattan that feels continually to be getting more and more expensive.

It feels apt that Gray’s then, is Upper West Side, with its particular character within Manhattan. It is more residential, less glossy and aspirational, it has its institutions, schools, apartment buildings, families, retirees, students, musicians, academics. It can feel less glamorous than other versions of Manhattan and that is exactly why Gray's makes sense there. It’s not a destination but a part of the fabric of the neighbourhood, a place to eat when you’re hungry, passing by, because you live nearby, because your daughter wants a hot dog, because it’s where you’ve eaten hot dogs for twenty years, because you simply have $10 to spend.

This isn’t old New York. There is something more ordinary, and perhaps more interesting about it because of that. Gray's represents a version of Manhattan that is lived in rather than visited. The restaurant's lack of glamour is part of its significance. Its slightly battered persistence reflects the neighbourhood around it.