|
|
Four things really caught my attention during our visit to Syabri, a friendly Belorussian restaurant in Brooklyn:
-
 who wouldn't want some warm, spicy tongue in their mouth? I got more tongue at Syabri than I’ve ever gotten in any other restaurant, Slavic or otherwise.
- I got more mayonnaise at Syabri than I’ve ever gotten in a Slavic restaurant. (The Russian and Ukrainian salads I grew up with were always dressed with vinegar, not mayonnaise.)
- Tongue and mayonnaise might actually go well together… as long as you like your tongue cold and gloppy.
- If a Belorussian dictator visits your restaurant, you should name a dish after him, just to be polite. And perhaps to avoid getting your ass kicked.
 who wouldn't want some cold, spicy tongue in their mouth? For our first round of dishes, our gang of 11 diners (including a Belorussian, a Ukrainian, two Moldovans, a shark-chomping Slovenian, four Americans of partial Russian ancestry, a beautiful American woman who does not actually resemble a burrito, and the captain of the Jamaican women’s basketball team) ordered sautéed beef tongue with a delicious beet-colored horseradish sauce ($7.90). I like my tongue warm, wet, and spicy, so I was pretty happy. We also ordered a plate of chilled pork loin and boiled, chilled beef tongue, served with more of the delicious beet-colored horseradish sauce ($13.90). I’m still not sure how I feel about having cold, spicy boiled tongue in my mouth, but the pork was fantastic.
 who wouldn't want some cold, gloppy tongue in their mouth? Even the “Belorussian salad” featured tongue, lightly seasoned with fried onions, cabbage, radishes, and assloads of mayonnaise. Our Belorussian companion was much more enthralled with the olivie salad ($6.50), which included radishes, peas, carrots, and potatoes, held together with a somewhat lighter dose of mayonnaise. We also ate a Russian radish salad ($7.50), graced by yet still more additional heaps of mayonnaise. I’m not really a mayonnaise-lover, but the delicious beet-colored horseradish sauce helped the mayonnaise and tongue slide down my throat.
(The beef tongue, I mean. Nobody else’s tongue slid down my throat. At least not that I can remember.)
 Belorussian beef stroganoff... without tongue, mayonnaise, or dictator Besides the tongue variations, most of our other dishes were fairly standard Slavic fare, much like the goodies you’d find in any Brighton Beach Russian or Ukrainian joint. We had fried potatoes and mushrooms (always good with vodka, $9.50), pelmeni (translated as “chicken ravioli” on our bill; it wasn’t as good as Oceanview Café’s vareniki, but it’s always good with vodka), pickled vegetables ($13.50 for large platter, including magnificent pickled green tomatoes, which are always spectacular with vodka), beef stroganoff (which goes well with vodka, $10.99) and chicken and pork kebabs ($10.50 and $11.50, respectively), which usually taste better with vodka.
The friendly staff also brought us small glasses, which are also always good with vodka. Even the gently sweetened, mildly overpriced ($10 per pitcher) non-alcoholic house punch went very well with vodka.
 nothing comforts like mayonnaise...? So basically, pretty much everything served at Syabri falls into the category of hearty, delicious Slavic comfort food that happens to go well with vodka. Still, there were a few standouts, in addition to the pickled green tomatoes. Draniki ($5.50)—Belorussian potato pancakes—are perfect for soaking up craploads of vodka; kolduny ($7.50) are an even heartier version of draniki, stuffed with mildly spiced meat. (When we inquired about the filling, the waitress just said “it’s meat.” Hm.) And my favorite dish was the stuffed cabbage ($11), jammed with rice, vegetables, and bits of meat in a blissfully oily, tomato-tinged sauce.
The menu at Syabri features one oddity that we—sadly—failed to try. Once upon a time, Syabri restaurant was graced by a visit from a dude named Alexander Lukashenko, who happens to be the dictator of Belarus (or, if you prefer, “Belorussian dude who has been president for 18 years and is somehow still popular enough to be reelected with 86% of the vote”). So what do you do if the dictator “president” of Belarus shows up at your restaurant? You serve him a fancy egg omelet, and then rename it in his honor.
No, really. The menu at Syabri includes a dish called “Egg Omelet ‘Hi from Lukashenko’”. I am not making this up. In retrospect, I wish that we’d ordered one, just so that I would be able to tell my Belorussian friends that I once had some Lukashenko in my mouth.
Oh, well. At least I can still say that I enjoyed a long, hearty, vodka-soaked dinner in Brooklyn, and somehow ended up with more Belorussian tongue in my mouth than I ever could have expected.
 tastier than a Belorussian dictator 
Syabri Restaurant
906 Kings Highway, Brooklyn
Subway: Kings Highway (B, Q, F trains)
|
|
|
 pleasantly spicy, but not life-altering I’m madly in love with the “Little Egypt” stretch of Steinway Street in Astoria. There are tons of Lebanese, Egyptian, and Palestinian restaurants, accompanied by a dizzying array of hookah lounges, halal butcher shops, bakeries, and coffee shops. And it’s arguably one of the friendliest chunks of NYC: if you talk to a random stranger on the street, he will almost certainly respond without swearing at you. Strange, right?
After several great experiences in the neighborhood, I figured that I couldn’t go wrong at Little Morocco on Steinway. Our first visit was reasonably good, but surprisingly uneventful. We started with bissara, a tasty, blended fava bean soup, sort of like a cumin-spiked version of split pea soup. We then devoured a lamb tagine (braised lamb shank, $10), a plate of merguez (Moroccan sausage, $9), and a meat kebab combo (lamb, kefta, and chicken, $13), all of which were served with two side dishes.
 don't worry, the merguez sausage doesn't get crammed by the chef in any subsequent photos All of our dishes were large, inexpensive and perfectly good. None of them were life-altering. And sadly, Little Morocco doesn’t even serve couscous—arguably the national dish of Morocco—on any day besides Fridays.
Realizing that I’d had a solid-but-lamentably-unimpressive Moroccan food experience, I decided to come back on a Friday for some couscous. I ordered lamb couscous ($12) and chicken couscous ($10) to go, thinking that it was Little Morocco’s best chance to knock my (slightly chubby) socks off.
While I waited for my order, I glanced over at the gentleman (let’s call him Chef Crammer) who was assembling my couscous. Chef Crammer was painstakingly cramming as much food as he could into the container. Not that I’m complaining, but the man appeared to be almost pathologically obsessed with the task of fitting as much food as is humanly possible into the aluminum to-go tins… and couscous, in its diminutive awesomeness, is one of the world’s most crammable foods.
 crammed lamb Somehow, Chef Crammer managed to wedge an entire leg of lamb into one of the containers. He then completely suffocated the lamb with a dense brick of perfectly cooked couscous, and then mounded the container with large chunks of carrots, chickpeas, some lightly caramelized onions, and an insanely tasty squash relative.
And just when it looked like the container was full, Chef Crammer spent several minutes looking carefully for any little pockets of unused space. Whenever he found an empty spot, he wedged in one more chickpea, or another little scoop of couscous, or another chunk of carrot or squash. I was very impressed by Chef Crammer’s impressive cramming skills.
Miraculously, Chef Crammer managed to cram two full-sized chicken breasts with wings inside the other to-go container, and still found room for the same array of vegetables, chickpeas, and couscous. (OK, I admit it: I just wanted to write the words “cram” and “breasts” in the same sentence.) By the time Chef Crammer finished, my two tins of couscous—which cost a grand total of $22—weighed at least eight or nine pounds. I had a shoulder cramp by the time I got back to the subway. I am not making this up. The couscous was delicious, and fed my fiancé and I for… well, a few hours, anyway. Thank you, Chef Crammer!
 warning: the crammed little cinnamon dudes on the left will bite you back And just to make sure that I had some excessively dense desserts to accompany my excessively dense couscous, I lugged my Moroccan treats next door to Jordanian-owned Al-Sham Sweets & Pastries, which offers a mind-blowing selection of baklava and other goodies. I passed on the Western-style cakes and cookies, and ordered a little bit of everything else: a tightly-packed square of shredded coconut topped with green pistachios; a dense, gooey, honey-soaked square of coconut cake; and some fried cones of dough dipped in honey, among other things.
But my favorites included the mixed nut bar, featuring pistachios, almonds, pecans, and walnuts mounted on a thin layer of shredded phyllo dough, held together by only a thin glaze of honey. And the real winner was the feisty cinnamon-spiked baklava, which kicked like a mule and bit like a crocodile, despite being crammed into a petite, 75-cent treat.
Little Morocco
24-39 Steinway St., Astoria, Queens
Subway: Astoria Blvd. (N, Q trains)
Al-Sham Sweets & Pastries
24-39 Steinway St., Astoria, Queens
Subway: Astoria Blvd. (N, Q trains)
|
|
|
 mmm… cheesy Vodka doesn’t appear anywhere on the menu at Tbilisi, a cozy Georgian restaurant in the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn. There’s no beer on the menu, either.
But we got slaughtered, anyway. Surrendering to our lamentable stereotype of former Soviet states, our group of nine—all of whom were of purely Asian or Western European descent, with the exception of a certain half-Slav food blogger—felt obligated to drink as much vodka as possible with every course. BYOB can be a very dangerous thing, especially if you eat four or five or six courses. Which we did.
For our first course, we ordered craploads of khachapuri—Georgia’s legendary cheese-stuffed bread—to soak up the two bottles of vodka that we purchased at a liquor store down the street. Our wonderful waitress told us that each order of khachapuri is cut into six pieces; there were nine of us in the group, so we decided that we needed four orders of khachapuri.
 eggplant with walnuts Don’t ask me how we came up with that math. What do I look like, a math tutor? Oh, wait.
In our first wave of food, we received two large, round, flat loaves of imeretian khachapuri ($9), stuffed with craploads of suluguni, a slightly pickled, salty-sour cheese that tastes outrageously good when it comes straight out of the oven. Khachapuri is always amazing, but it tastes particularly great when it’s fresh… and accompanied by assloads of vodka.
Soon after devouring the first batch of khachapuri, we started on the cold, salad-y portion of our meal, featuring a dish called “eggplant with walnuts” ($11)—basically, slices of eggplant that had been marinated, grilled, and then chilled, topped with something resembling walnut hummus and garnished with pomegranate, red onions, parsley, and lettuce. It was absolutely delicious, and arguably the best dish of the day.
 kind of looks like shredded muppets, but it tastes great The similarly named “spinach with walnuts” ($10) was nearly as good: shredded, pleasantly dry balls of spinach and walnuts, pressed into little figures that vaguely resembled stuffed mushrooms, and garnished again with pomegranate and onion.
Sadly, our other two cold appetizers weren’t quite as amazing. We ordered a pair of pricy sturgeon platters ($18 each), consisting of reasonably appealing marinated, chilled sturgeon, garnished with black olives. The sturgeon was decent, but not particularly interesting; I had hoped for better for the price. And I love pan-Soviet pickles more than most people, but was pretty bummed by our nondescript plate of pickled cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and canned pepperoncinis ($10); the dish was mildly redeemed by the handful of blissfully crunchy pickled green tomatoes, but was otherwise a dud.
 tasty, but it’s kinda sad when you think about how many muppets were juiced to make a bottle of this stuff But the crazy bubbly green s#!t we drank wasn’t a dud, and Tbilisi deserves an award for serving the best-tasting mouthwash doppelganger I’ve ever encountered. Georgian tarragon soda ($3) is an unreasonable shade of emerald green, but has a surprisingly mellow, not-overly-sweet licorice flavor. Tbilisi also offers a pear soda ($3) with a pleasantly floral finish.
Both sodas go very well with vodka. Actually, everything goes well with vodka, in my opinion. Except for lawyers. Who needs lawyers, really?
After we finished our “cold” appetizers, our wonderful waitress brought our second round of khachapuri. This type was called mingrelian khachapuri ($14), and like the imeretian khachapuri, it was stuffed with cheese… but it was topped with even more cheese. It might have been the cheesiest thing I’ve ever eaten in my life, and I mean that in the best possible way. It might have been cheesier than most pieces of plain cheese I’ve eaten. How the eff did they make that happen?
 cheesier than most cheese… and tastier than most lawyers As I finished stuffing my face with blissfully cheesy Georgian cheese bread topped with cheese and extra cheese, I realized that six of my eight fellow diners were lawyers or law students. That made me want to drink even more vodka. So I did.
For our—I don’t know, our third or fourth or fifth course, depending on how good you are at counting—we ordered a double plate of khinhali (6 for $9), Georgia’s large, ravioli-like dumplings, stuffed with spiced lamb. Our always-wonderful waitress explained how to eat them: you’re supposed to hold the khinkali by the nipple, take a small bite, drink the juice out of the dumpling, and then eat the rest of the meat and dough. I’d read somewhere that you’re supposed to leave the nipples on your plate as a way of counting how many khinkali you’d eaten, sort of like notches in your belt. So I left my nipples, even though they were doughy and delicious.
 nippled khinkali… which are also tastier than most lawyers Actually, I just wanted an excuse to write the word “nipple” a couple of extra times. You’re welcome.
For our final course, we ordered yet still more sturgeon, but in kebab form this time. It was a little bit disappointing, especially for the price ($23); it was unnecessarily fishy, and really didn’t have much going for it in the way of seasoning. I pretty much ignored the sturgeon, and focused on an incredible veal-tarragon stew called chakapuli ($11), loaded with an unreasonable amount of tarragon and parsley.
Once I finished licking the veal-tarragon stew bowl clean, I looked around the table, and realized that I was not only surrounded by lawyers, but engaged to marry one of them. So I finished both bottles of vodka and immediately went to my favorite Nigerian restaurant to drown my sorrows in more food.
 chakapuli (drunk lawyers not pictured) 
Tbilisi Restaurant
811 Kings Highway, Brooklyn
Subway: Kings Highway (B, Q, F trains)
|
|
|
 homemade pirukas, as far as the eye can see... and I wasn't even seeing double this time I have a soft spot for New York’s legendary Estonian House, where I spent a magnificent evening eating salt herring, drinking heavily, and pretending to be a barn swallow. So when the Estonians graciously allowed me to return to the club to eat more Estonian food, I jumped at the opportunity.
This time, the Estonian House was hosting a special event: a piruka bake-off. Pirukas are a baked cousin of Polish pierogies, consisting of meat, vegetable, or sweet fillings stuffed inside a small pocket of fresh dough. For a mere $10, we joined a large herd of official “tasters.” More importantly, for $10, we got to gorge ourselves silly on homemade pirukas. What could be better than that?
There were 21 entries in the bake-off: 10 meat-filled pirukas (mostly stuffed with beef or ham), 8 vegetable-stuffed pirukas (primarily cabbage and carrots), and 3 dessert pirukas. The “tasters” rated each piruka on a scale of 1 to 10. Judging isn’t my thing, really–I just like to eat homemade food, and nearly all of the 21 pirukas were insanely delicious. I felt like a big meanie giving anybody’s homemade pirukas a bad rating, so I inflated accordingly.
 the dessert piruka on the right might blow your mind... if there's anything left in your mind after the bartender is finished with you That said… well, all of the pirukas were good, but a few were mind-blowingly good. My favorite pair of meat-stuffed pirukas contained a mix of minced ham and pickles. And that may not sound all that good, but they were fantastic. And all of the dessert pirukas were tasty, but one was reminiscent of an amazing piece of cheesecake; my cheese-loving pal from a Wisconsin dairy farm was literally weak in the knees when she first tasted it.
Sadly, I had to deal with a minor family drama before the judging was finished, and my weak-kneed friends weakly left soon after I did. (Maybe they were mildly afraid of Urve the legendary bartender after reading my earlier post?) So I don’t know whether any of my three favorite pirukas became the champion.
But my partner and I got to share 21 homemade pirukas from 21 different kitchens. So we definitely won, even if neither of us ended up imitating a barn swallow before we left. I still love you, Estonia.
 This has nothing to do with pirukas or Estonian food... but isn't it kinda hilarious and brilliant that the urinals at Estonian House have fly stickers in them, instead of actual flies?
New York Estonian House (members only)
243 East 34th Street, Manhattan
Subway: 34th Street (6 train)
|
|
|
If you’re ever wondering how I became so food-obsessed, head to Iowa and introduce yourself to my mother. She’s one hell of a great cook, and she can do some serious damage to a plate of cinnamon rolls, brownies, or apricot crisp. She’s the daughter of Russian (Cossack) and Ukrainian immigrants, and her Ukrainian mother was an absolute wizard in the kitchen. Some of my first food memories are of my grandmother’s amazing Ukrainian-style cole slaw and borscht; my Ukrainian Mommy loves nothing more than a plate of vareniki, Ukraine’s version of Russian pelmeni.
 I think they approve of the green borscht Here’s the problem: Ukrainian Mommy lives on a farm in Iowa, far from the nearest Ukrainian eatery. It’s been decades since her late mother prepared a feast of Ukrainian vareniki, and Ukrainian Grandma never really taught Ukrainian Mommy how to make the stuff. That’s a sad story.
Worst of all, poor Ukrainian Mommy has developed an allergy to gluten–and there’s no such thing as gluten-free vareniki. If she eats gluten, her face breaks out in red splotches. So Ukrainian Mommy hasn’t indulged in a truly great plate of Ukrainian comfort food since sometime in the 1980s. That’s an extra-sad story.
So as a belated Christmas gift, I bought Ukrainian Mommy a ticket to NYC, and dragged her to Brighton Beach to gorge ourselves silly… red splotches be damned. She giggled happily as we walked down the street—she hadn’t heard this much Russian since she was a kid. We also hauled my equally giggly Californian sister and my ludicrously hot naked fiancé with us.
 a good way to confuse your mommy We decided to end Ukrainian Mommy’s decades of vareniki deprivation at Oceanview Café, a nondescript diner that serves a typical Brighton Beach mix of pan-Soviet cuisines. The sprawling menu includes chebureks (arguably of Tatar, Turkish, or Tajik origins, depending on whose story you believe), khinkali (eaten primarily in Georgia and the Caucasus mountains), Baltica beer (from Russia) and vodka (happily consumed everywhere). But we knew that the place was Ukrainian from the huge sign above the kitchen, advertising four different flavors of vareniki.
Ukrainian Mommy was going to be very, very happy. Covered in red splotches, perhaps. But happy.
 this is totally going to make the red splotches worthwhile We started our meal with a phenomenal bowl of green borscht ($6), made from parsley, dill, spinach, onions, and a few soft flecks of egg. We then slurped some red borscht ($6), made from carrots, onions, beets, carrots, and a hit of garlic, all pan-fried together before being stewed in tomato juice and tons of salt. Both borschts were particularly wonderful when served with the Ukrainian rye bread that was brought to us by our particularly taciturn waiter. Ukrainian Mommy was happy. Californian Sister was giggly. The waiter was serious. My fiancé was still hot.
We also ordered a mixed platter of picked vegetables ($8.50), which contained some lovable Slavic standards: pickled cabbage, pickled cucumbers, and picked cherry tomatoes. Ukrainian Mommy loves real Ukrainian/Russian pickles, so she was happy. The dish also contained several big chunks of pickled watermelon. Ukrainian Mommy was slightly confused; she’d never seen pickled watermelon before. The rest of us loved the stuff—it had an oddly feisty sweetness mixed in with the half-sour pickle flavor.
 way better than Slavic Chef Boyardee And then we ordered the vareniki, which doesn’t usually sound all that mind-blowing—they’re small, round, ravioli-like creatures, stuffed with your choice of shredded beef, spiced cabbage, or farmer’s cheese ($6-$7 for a large bowl). Badly executed vareniki are the Slavic equivalent of Chef Boyardee ravioli, but great vareniki are amazing. Oceanview Café’s were in the amazing category, partly because of the copious amounts of butter and fried onions served atop the dumplings, and partly because they nailed the fillings; the stewed cabbage vareniki were our unanimous favorite.
 happy Ukrainian Mommy, happily eating herself into a happy stupor And Ukrainian Mommy was absolutely ecstatic. I don’t think I’ve seen her so happy in a long, long time—probably not since her own wedding seven years ago. She wasn’t even this happy when I announced my engagement—I think she was too shocked that my lovely fiancé was gullible enough to marry me.
The best part? Ukrainian Mommy didn’t even break out in red gluten-allergy splotches. (Warning: vaguely shameless, unsolicited product endorsement coming next.) She took some enzyme pills called Gluten FREE (is it really necessary to put caps in the product name, guys?) from a (caps-loving) company called MRM, and nothing happened. No splotches, no sneezing fits. She just sat there and giggled happily.
So I’m now officially a fan of the miracle Gluten FREE pills. I’m an even bigger fan of the cabbage vareniki and pickled watermelon and Ukrainian beer served at Oceanview Café. And I’m thrilled with any restaurant that can make Mommy giggle happily for hours.
 stupor 
Oceanview Café
290 Brighton Beach Ave., Brooklyn
Subway: Brighton Beach (B, Q trains)
|
|
View My Favs!
Search This Blog
Food By Region
|
