I’ve always worried that my food quest would fall flat on its (pudgy) face because of Africa. I love good African food, but the continent is home to a crapload of individual countries—54 or so, depending on whose list you’re looking at—and there’s a relative shortage of African restaurants in NYC. Until now, I’ve only been able to find food from 12 African nations in NYC. Which means that I need some help.

Thankfully, the wonderfully named United Nations African Mothers Association (UNAMA) hosts an annual fundraising buffet luncheon in Midtown, about two blocks from my apartment. It’s arguably NYC’s greatest event if you love homemade African food: the wives of African ambassadors prepare food from their countries, and the proceeds from the lunch are donated to Somali refugee camps in Kenya.

So for $35 per person, we gorged ourselves on beautiful African food from 12 different countries AND contributed to a good cause. What could possibly be better?

food from 12 African countries, gloriously heaped onto a single plate... jiggle jiggle

(And if I may toot my own (bloated, jiggly) horn for a moment: I’m very proud of myself for managing to cram food from all 12 countries onto a single plate. I’m even prouder of myself for managing to return to work afterward, without taking a nap on my way back to the office. Thank you for pretending to be impressed.)

And now… the food highlights, in no particular order:

• Benin: a blood-red stew of onions and tomatoes, served atop lovable squares of sticky white rice.
• Angola: another red, onion-filled stew, similar to the one from Benin, except that it was served with cou-cou, a corn-based mush which is one of the world’s most underrated foods… at least for my corn-loving Iowan taste buds.
• Tanzania: a thick stew of carrots, plantains, and beef, served alongside a meaty rice pilaf.
  

  less confusing than salmon from Chad, but equally delicious

• Chad: a delicious but mildly confusing whole salmon, baked with lemon, potatoes, and green beans; some small, buttery cookies from Chad were also on display on the dessert table. Who knew that salmon was the national dish of landlocked Chad?
• South Africa: some excellent stewed oxtail, reminiscent of an insanely tender beef steak. Much better than my previous encounter with South African food in NYC.
• Sudan: mildly spicy sausages stewed in a tomato-based sauce, accompanied by another meaty variation on rice pilaf.
• Mali: chicken stewed in a light glaze of tomatoes and peppers, accompanied by yet still more very tasty rice pilaf.
• Equatorial Guinea:  sadly, only a few bits of the tasty beef stew remained by the time we arrived, but the beef stew was served with yet still more additional delicious rice… and some small, sticky yellow balls that resembled miniaturized fufu.
  

  the mysterious miniaturized fufu of Equatorial Guinea?

• Nigeria: since I’ve already eaten plenty of excellent Nigerian food in NYC, I tried to focus my attention on the other African dishes… but I couldn’t resist the Nigerian beans stewed with peas, potatoes, and corn. Great stuff.
• Somalia: sadly, most of the Somali food was gone by the time we arrived; there were some remnants of something that resembled groundnut stew, served with some fantastically creamy stewed beans, which vaguely resembled the Nigerian version.
• Senegal: thieboudienne (derived from the Wolof word for “rice and fish”) is pretty much God’s gift to rice pilaf. UNAMA’s version contained cabbage, a whole fish, potatoes, and carrots, all fluffed into some bizarrely light rice. Always a winner.
  

  I'm about to feel unreasonably important... and jiggly

It might be vaguely jerk-y of me to select a favorite, but the food from Madagascar was worthy of some special love. The beef tongue stewed with peas and carrots was excellent, but the Malagasy cassava leaves were almost life-altering: the leaves were stewed with meat and shredded coconut until most of the moisture was gone, leaving behind a heap of deliciously dry, tender, nutty, airy awesomeness behind. The Malagasy dessert even had a regal-sounding name: banana doughnuts of Madagascar. I felt important just eating them.

The final count: I ate cuisine from nine new African nations, introduced a thoroughly American friend to his first taste of real African food, and contributed a total of $105 to a worthy cause. The three of us ate insanely gluttonous plates of homemade African food… but we couldn’t possibly feel too guilty, since our gluttony helped support a great cause. We love you, African Mothers.

a vegetable-phobic American's first encounter with African food... congratulations, African Mothers, your new American friend cleaned his plate

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peppers with beef: real food for real fraidy-cat white boys from Iowa

I was very excited when my pal Eric—who knows pretty much everything a white dude could possibly know about the culinary wonders of Flushing’s Chinatown—sent me a text confirming that he’d be joining me for Taiwanese food. It got better when he promised that a pair of his Taiwanese friends would be coming with us. And I was even more stoked when he texted “Personally, I’m dying to try the sautéed flies’ heads.”

Yup, sautéed flies’ heads. Why not? If the Taiwanese enjoy sautéed flies’ heads, then I’m going to learn to enjoy them, too, dammit.

gooey oyster pancake, topped with extra goo

When I arrived at Main Street Imperial Gourmet, a Taiwanese joint roughly a mile from the heart of downtown Flushing, I immediately scanned the menu for the evening’s featured dish. No flies’ heads on the menu, at least not in English. But there was a dish translated as “putz fish.” And there were plenty of un-translated dishes, both on the menu and on handwritten strips of colored paper taped to the walls of the restaurant. And we all know what un-translated dishes are: stuff that scares white people. Bring it on.

Several of our dishes were thoroughly non-scary, even if you’re a fraidy-cat little white boy from Iowa. We ate a shredded beef dish with lightly sautéed hot peppers—tasty and crunchy and spicy, but not remotely frightening. We also munched our way through a pot of three cup chicken, which sounded exciting when I read about it online (chicken cooked with rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil, and Thai basil, served in a sizzling metal pot), but it seemed to be lamentably light on the sesame and basil, and tasted like chicken in sugary soy sauce. Reasonably appealing, but nowhere near as titillating as sautéed flies’ heads.

no, really: the gelatinous ball crammed with meat is ridiculously delicious

Things got more interesting from there. We shared an oyster pancake, described by one of our Taiwanese companions as “kind of gooey and egg-y, but with oysters”; it tasted far better than it sounded. The Taiwanese meatball, featuring spiced beef and ginger jammed inside a translucent ball of gelatinous rice flour, was arguably the hit of the evening, despite the fact that the term “translucent ball” is rarely a prelude to great food. And then we ate a dish called “clams with loofah,” which seemed a little bit odd to me—if I’m not mistaken, my sister scrubs her ass with a loofah whenever she takes a shower. And it’s the same kind of loofah, actually; white Californians buy the dried variety at Whole Foods, but Taiwanese chefs sauté them and eat them. They taste like an unusually firm squash. Not bad at all.

steamed fish with fruit of the fragrant manjack tree… mmm, manjack!

And we were just getting warmed up. We ordered a whole steamed “putz fish,” which sounds like an absurdist insult that might be hurled in a Jewish deli. Putz refers to the berries on a certain kind of southeast Asian tree, better known as the “fruit of the fragrant manjack tree.” I am not making this up. The little putzes looked like chickpeas, but tasted like mildly sweet olives.

I never thought I’d say this, but the fragrant manjack fruit was pretty tasty. Don’t tell my fiancé that I’m a fan of the fragrant manjack—she might get jealous, and she might start wondering what the hell I do when she’s studying late at night and I say that I’m “going out to eat.”

desperately trying to breathe through my mouth

Speaking of fragrant, our Taiwanese friends decided that we needed some stinky tofu, served with pickled cabbage. They said that the fermented aroma reminded them of home, but the odor just reminded me of sweaty man socks. The tofu didn’t taste bad at all, but it was awfully tough to overcome the stench—it reminded me of an ugly moment in a crowded locker room at the gym last week, when I was wedged between a old guy who was using a hairdryer to warm his wrinkly testicles and a college-aged guy who smelled like he was decomposing. The stinky tofu smelled just like that moment in my life. I ate it anyway.

flies’ heads… without the flies

And the flies’ heads? Tasty, but lamentably insect-free. It turns out that “flies’ heads” is just a colorful description of a plate of stir-fried minced beef and chives, with a sprinkling of dried black beans that look like dead flies.

So there you have it: Taiwanese sautéed flies’ heads aren’t actually made from real flies’ heads, and the fruit of the fragrant manjack tree isn’t actually made from fragrant manjack. But the stinky tofu? Definitely made from remarkably stinky tofu.

Huge thanks to Eric Malson at Mahlzeit for an amazing culinary tour of Flushing. Even huger thanks to Ann and Audrey for their translations and cultural insights. You all rock. 

and now my mouth probably smells like it’s decomposing

Main Street Imperial Taiwanese Gourmet
59-14 Main Street, Flushing
Subway: Main Street, Flushing (7 train)

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Like most people who live in Manhattan, I’m guilty of perpetually ignoring the Bronx.  I’ve eaten food from almost 90 countries, but have deigned to visit the Bronx only three times.  That’s kind of lame, and I kind of suck.

full-sized cheese burek, straight from the oven

But my anti-Bronx suckitude isn’t actually all that bad by Manhattanite standards:  according to a survey conducted by an online dating site, only 16% of New Yorkers from the other four boroughs would ever date somebody from the Bronx.  Yup, if you’re from the Bronx, you can pretty much only get laid with other people from the Bronx.  Aren’t you impressed by how charmingly open-minded New Yorkers are?

In an effort to compensate for my own pathetic Bronxlessness, I decided to date several women from the Bronx, just to see what would happen.

I’m lying.  I already have a smoking-hot girlfriend, so I decided to eat as many bureks as I could in a single afternoon in the Bronx instead.  The total?  Five bureks—in four different flavors—from three different restaurants owned by immigrants from three different Balkan nations.

like sex, only cheesier and doughier... usually

In case you’re not familiar with them, bureks are the Balkan’s version of a good slice of pizza: quick, tasty, cheap, doughy, and satisfying.  Most bureks are made from layers of paper-thin phyllo dough, stuffed with meat, cheese, spinach, pumpkin, or other fillings.  They’re kind of like a relatively macho, egg-free quiche, or maybe a cross between deep-dish pizza and a stuffed croissant.  I’m pretty convinced that bureks are like sex or pizza:  even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good.

Our first stop, Dukagjini Burek in Bronxdale, was better than pretty good.  And it actually resembled a pizza joint, with a blissfully simple menu:  you could have your choice of meat burek ($4 for a large slice), cheese burek ($4 for a large slice), or spinach burek ($4 for a large slice).  Or yogurt.  That’s it.  No other options, besides espresso and bottled beverages.  And they were out of spinach bureks when we arrived, so we ate a cheese burek and meat burek.

like pizza and sex, only meatier... maybe

Both bureks were incredible—crispy on the outside, but blissfully doughy on the inside, stuffed with wonderfully spiced ground beef and something resembling a mild feta cheese, respectively.  The lovely lady behind the counter (presumably an ethnic Albanian of some sort; the owners of Dukagjini Burek are Kosovo-born Albanians) pulled the bureks straight from the oven and hacked each full-sized pie into four slices immediately before serving them to us.  It was as fresh and tasty as a burek can get.

pretty bad, but still pretty good

Our second burek stop was somewhat less inspiring.  We headed to the Arthur Avenue-area outlet of Djerdan, a small, Bosnian-owned chain of burek bakeries. The store’s lone employee was incredibly warm and friendly, but the stick-shaped meat bureks—the only flavor available—were dry and lifeless, and tasted like they’d been removed from the fridge and put in a convection oven.  Which they were, I think.  The bureks were cheap ($4.25 for a pair of good-sized sticks), but they were basically the burek equivalent of, say, Domino’s Pizza—okay if you really need pizza (or a burek) and delicious if you’re drunk… but definitely not the best burek in the Bronx.

The Bronx burek circuit redeemed itself on our third stop, at Tony and Tina’s Pizza and Burek, an Albanian-owned spot on Arthur Avenue.  Tony and Tina’s offers a pretty solid variety of bureks, filled with cheese, spinach, beef, or pumpkin.  Since our first few bureks were stuffed with meat and cheese, we opted for a spinach and a pumpkin burek ($4 each).

It’s a little bit unfair to compare any other burek joint to Dukagjini Burek, but Tony and Tina’s came pretty close.  The wedge-shaped spinach burek lacked the straight-from-the-oven doughy genius of Dukagjini, but the slightly creamy scallion-and-spinach filling was appealing enough.

The pumpkin burek, on the other hand, was pretty special:  coils of fresh dough, stuffed with small globs of lightly seasoned pumpkin puree.  And don’t we all love globs of pumpkin puree?  It was everything you would ever want from a good slice of pumpkin pie, except that the pumpkin was unsweetened, and the dough was far fresher than an average pie.

See?  Bronx food doesn’t suck, although I probably still suck for taking two years to figure that out.

Dukagjini Burek
758 Lydig Avenue, Bronx
Subway: Pelham Pkwy (2, 5 trains)

Tony and Tina’s Pizza and Burek
2483 Arthur Avenue, Bronx
Subway: Fordham Rd. (B, D trains) or Metro-North to Fordham

Djerdan Burek
593 Crescent Ave., Bronx
Subway: 182-183 Streets (B, D trains)

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army of Dutch-made crab balls... but not Dutch bitterballen

Our Dutch evening had the potential to be absolutely epic. The friendly folks at the Netherlands-America Foundation organized a night of Dutch jazz and Dutch food as part of Five Dutch Days, an annual festival celebrating Dutch history and culture in NYC. (Is anybody else impressed by the fact that I just used the word “Dutch” four times in one sentence? I didn’t think so.)

The event was hosted at Zinc Bar, a sexy, cozy little music venue in the West Village. And best of all, the website promised Dutch appetizers—including small Dutch meat snacks called bitterballen, which sound delightfully disturbing—prepared by a real Dutch chef. All for $10! Awesome.

Dutch... potato chips?!?

The night began auspiciously: when we walked in, our friendly Dutch hosts started us off with free samples of Bols Genever, the deliciously gin-like national spirit of The Netherlands, made from a blend of distilled grains and juniper berries. The evening’s entertainment was a sextet of Dutch jazz musicians led by Robert Bosscher and an adorable female vocalist named Fleurine who charmed the hell out of us with her quadrilingual (English, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese) banter between songs. (Line of the night: “I can’t bend over in this dress, or my Dutch apples will fall out.” She paused. “And now my face is turning into a red Dutch apple.”)

non-Dutch dessert (Dutch apples not pictured)

And best of all, there was food everywhere, prepared by a genuine Dutch chef from the Plaza Hotel. It was great stuff: small bites of beef Wellington, miniature spanikopita appetizers, chips and guacamole, sticks of chicken satay, bite-sized fried crab cakes, stuffed mushrooms, and a gorgeous stack of raw vegetables. Our Dutch friends even offered an impressive spread of desserts, including chocolate croissants and something resembling small, elegant cinnamon danishes. All this, and jazz too? For only $10? In Manhattan? Awesome!

Except for one problem: almost none of the food was Dutch, except for the Old Amsterdam gouda cheese. No bitterballen. I’ve been duped.

It was a fun duping, though. Free Dutch alcohol, good Dutch-accented jazz, great non-Dutch appetizers, plenty of Dutch cheese and a few wayward Dutch apples? Good enough for me.

Five Dutch Days NYC, November 2-7, 2011
Organized by The Netherlands-America Foundation

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As a former waiter, I am thoroughly embarrassed by our attempt to annoy the living hell out of the staff at Rudar Soccer Club, a Croatian-Istrian bar and restaurant in Astoria. Four of us—including a legendary shark-eating Slovenian and an American dude who is abnormally chummy with orangutans—showed up at around 5:00. A fifth diner appeared at 7:00. About 25 more of our friends–mostly Slovenians—trickled into the restaurant between 7:30 and 9:30. And then we stayed until midnight.

This guy joined us for dinner. (The not-too-furry guy on the left, I mean. The dude on the right may or may not fling poo at the dinner table.)

I mean, really: how annoying is that? We’re total pricks. Four people walk in without a reservation, occupy a table for six, and then slowly turn into a table-camping party of, like, 27 people who occupy the restaurant for seven hours. Not cool. Don’t ever do this to a restaurant, especially not to a small establishment like Rudar Soccer Club. It’s pretty chaotic and cruel, even though we didn’t actually bring our orangutan friend.

Despite the chaos, the servers and manager of the restaurant were unbelievably welcoming and accommodating. They patiently put up with our mayhem, and even offered to split up our checks. Amazing. Rudar Soccer Club is apparently run by a bunch of friendly Istrian Zen Masters.

The thoroughly lovable club is phenomenally easy to miss: it’s in a mostly windowless, industrial-looking building on a relatively quiet street in Astoria. The place was founded in 1977 as a private social club for a team of soccer-playing coal miners from the Croatian segment of Istria, a region of the Balkans that covers the northwestern corner of Croatia, as well as a few bits of Slovenia and Italy.

fishy popcorn for craggy old men

The “soccer” part of Rudar Soccer Club seems to be a misnomer these days: the club is basically a place where Istrian-Croatians drink heavily. When you walk in, you’ll immediately encounter a not-terribly-attractive bar, filled with groups of craggy old European dudes who will stare at you for a little bit longer than you might like—even if you’re not an orangutan.

But once you get past the craggy old dudes, Rudar Soccer Club has a secret: there’s an inviting little Istrian restaurant in the basement, filled with friendly Croatian servers, tasty Istrian wine, amazing handmade pasta, and bite-sized fried fish that resemble fish-flavored popcorn.

not rubbery

At the beginning of the evening, there were four of us at the table, led by the legendary shark-eating Istrian-Slovenian who acted as our Food Dictator. At the Food Dictator’s urging, we started with the grilled calamari. Calamari is always a little bit risky, in my humble opinion: if the squid is either badly cooked or has that not-so-fresh feeling, then it ends up being rubbery and unpleasant. The stuff at Rudar was outstanding—minimally rubbery, and grilled in a thoroughly addictive lemon-garlic-butter-parsley sauce.

Our other appetizer, called girice, was my personal favorite, at least for novelty value: an enormous plate of very small deep-fried fish with their heads and tails still attached. Girice’s purpose in life is as a snack food for drunk Istrians—basically, a very fishy version of popcorn or potato chips. I thought they were great, though my companions were all either disinterested or allergic; after eating half of a heaping plate, I gave up, and eventually brought them home to my very bewildered (and naked) fiancé, who demanded that I throw them out before they stank up our entire building.

anybody ever notice how hard it is to make bean and cabbage soup look appetizing?

Our other dishes were also pretty damned solid: chicken sautéed with mushrooms, thinly-pounded grilled veal, swiss chard sautéed with potatoes, and an amazing stew called jota, made with barley, white Romano beans, bits of pasta, and sauerkraut… basically, an absurdly hearty minestrone with a pleasant hint of cabbage-y sourness thrown in. And my personal favorite was the fuzi, a ridiculously soft handmade pasta topped with a veal sauce.

For dessert, we had some fried calamari. (Really, squid makes a great after-dinner treat. Kind of like a mint, except that it makes your breath even worse.) The calamari was just as pleasantly non-rubbery as the grilled stuff; our legendary hakarl-eating Istrian-Slovenian Food Dictator insisted that it was the best fried calamari in New York. We also ate apple strudel, Istrian crepes (palachinke) filled with walnuts and fruit jam, and cheese strudel stuffed with ricotta cheese and topped with powdered sugar. (Our Food Dictator claimed that the cheese strudel was evidence of a terrible cultural crime, since a proper Istrian strudel should be stuffed with farmer’s cheese, not ricotta; the rest of us saw no reason to complain.)

a crepe, some apple strudel... and a delicious, ricotta-filled cultural crime

We had arrived at 5:00, and ate slowly. After whining to our Croatian Zen Master waitress about the cheese strudel, we paid our bill at 8:00. We’re really annoying. But our Croatian Zen Master waitress just smiled, and thanked us for being there. We tipped well, and then a few of us tried to leave.

And then all hell broke loose.

It turns out that our hakarl-eating Istrian-Slovenian Food Dictator had casually emailed a few other Slovenians, who causally emailed a few other Slovenians, who apparently emailed a few more Slovenians. By 8:30, the little Istrian-Croatian basement restaurant was crawling with 25 Slovenians… nearly all of whom were obscenely well-educated. I met an African Studies professor, an astronomer, several owners of technology start-ups, a brilliant Ghanaian-American who managed to learn Slovenian in her spare time, and a bunch of other people who speak more languages than I’ve even heard of.

"Dessert." Anybody wanna kiss me goodnight?

By the time the Slovenian geniuses completely conquered the tiny restaurant, I was already sloshing with wine and strudel and calamari, but I lingered with the gang of absurdly brilliant Slovenians until 11:30, drinking Croatian beer and nibbling that the platters of crepes and strudel that the Croatian Zen Master staff offered our party.

I’m not sure that the genius of the Slovenians rubbed off on me. But by the time I left, I’m pretty sure that the Croatian beer and Istrian wine had rubbed off on me. I’m also pretty sure that I had consumed enough fish and calamari and strudel and crepes and beer and wine to be thoroughly flammable, in a cloyingly sweet, pungently fishy, non-brilliant sort of way.

But apparently, it’s all good. I surely stank and had obviously stayed too late, but our Croatian and Istrian hosts just smiled broadly, and thanked us for coming. I love Istria! And Slovenia! And Croatia! And orangutans! And fish! (Burp.)

even the salad looked relatively intelligent

Rudar Soccer Club
34-01 45th Avenue, Astoria
Subway: Steinway Ave. (R train)

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