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I bought a new pair of jeans a few months ago at an Esprit outlet, and I thought I’d bought some good sh*t. The jeans are comfortable, my ass looks relatively non-terrible and somewhat non-flabby in them, and I only spent $15. Not bad, right?
 I think they meant "EAT." I can do that. Trouble is, the jeans have one weird flaw. When you unzip the fly, the word BEAT appears in large print. Are these instructions of some sort? If so, is Esprit telling me to inflict pain or pleasure? Or did they mean to write EAT, and just made a typo? And why can’t they keep their instructions away from my junk? I’m confused.
That has absolutely nothing to do with Guyanese food. Sorry, I just had to get it off my chest. Every time I pee, I feel slightly more confused by my pants.
In other news, my friend Rimma and I spent more than an hour walking around Ozone Park, at the very end of the A train in Queens, trying to select one of the neighborhood’s 15 or so Guyanese eateries. We actually chose Anil’s Roti Shop out of a little bit of (non-pants-related) confusion: Rimma saw the sign, exclaimed “I love roti!”, and ran over to the store window, thinking that she’d stumbled upon an Indian bakery.
 Caribbean-style roti, stuffed with ground chickpeas Anil’s Roti Shop wasn’t quite what she had in mind: the owners are indeed of Indian descent, but are more recently from Guyana and Trinidad. And poor Rimma wasn’t going to find the flat, unleavened, whole wheat roti served in Indian restaurants: Caribbean-style roti is soft and moist, often featuring flaky layers of dough stuffed with ground chickpeas. Caribbean roti and curry are clearly descended from Indian food, but the Caribbean varieties are distinct from the stuff served in South Asian eateries.
Not that we’re complaining or anything. Anil’s is cheap as hell, and the food is amazing. Rimma ordered a plate of yellow goat curry with roti for a paltry $6. (And when I say “yellow goat curry”, I mean that the curry sauce is yellow, not the goat itself. I don’t think that yellow goat meat would be all that good, especially if it’s a shiny iridescent yellow. Goat meat is supposed to be brown. Or slightly pink. Yellow meat? Bad sign. Yellow curry? Perfectly OK.) I went for geera chicken with a side of stewed spinach and roti (also $6). Both of our meals came with a small side of potatoes stewed in yet another yellow curry sauce.
 geera chicken... with extra bones I’ll admit that both of our dishes contained more sauce than meat, but we really didn’t give a rat’s ass, since our bits of meat and bone were swimming in absolutely delicious sauces. The geera chicken was particularly impressive, drenched in a pungent oil infused with massive quantities of black pepper and ground cumin seeds. Fresh, flaky, chickpea-stuffed Guyanese roti dipped in the sauce was one of the most delicious things I’ve eaten lately. I crunched on a few bones in the process, but I can live with that.
Anil’s also has its own little bakery, and we couldn’t resist trying a powdery little treat that looked like fudge but tasted like dulce de leche or an unusually dark caramel; we also munched on an orange spiral that reminded me of a crispy, syrup-drenched funnel cake. We weren’t really into the desserts, but that roti and goat curry and geera chicken could easily be habit-forming… if only Ozone Park were a little bit closer to home.
 the goat curry was better, and also a more natural shade of yellow 
Anil’s Roti Shop
12501 Liberty Ave., Queens
Subway: Lefferts Ave. (A train)
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I thought I was pretty slick when I headed out to Brooklyn for “Syrian” food. I’d eyeballed Damascus Bread and Pastry on Atlantic Avenue quite a few times, and decided that it was time to finally venture in. When I looked up the address again, I found a listing (and a solitary yelp review) for yet another “Syrian” bakery called Damascus Bakery, located on Gold Street in Dumbo. I figured that “Damascus Bakery” and “Damascus Bread and Pastry” must be completely different businesses, since their names were a little bit different. This was potentially very exciting, because I would get to eat Syrian food in two different bakeries! Awesome, right?
Just one little problem: the two bakeries are actually the same business. Gold Street is the location of the bakery itself, Atlantic Avenue is the location of the retail store only. And neither location is Syrian at all.
 crack wheat is my favorite salad ingredient According to the friendly non-Syrian gentleman in the retail store, Damascus Bakery has been owned by Lebanese immigrants in Brooklyn since 1920 (though the sign said 1930). In 1920, most of modern Syria (as well as parts of modern-day Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon) was part of a French-controlled State of Damascus, which the friendly Lebanese gentleman in the bakery referred to as “Damascusland”. Like much of the Middle East during the first half of the 20th century, the borders of Syria and Lebanon were subject to the whims of French and British colonists, and the current states of Syria and Lebanon weren’t clearly defined in their current forms until after WWII.
But by then, Damascus Bakery was already an institution in Brooklyn, and owners thought it would be confusing to change the name of their business. So despite the owners’ Lebanese ancestry, the name of the bakery still seems Syrian. Interesting.
 lamentably flaccid Despite Damascus Bakery’s long tenure in Brooklyn, the food was a surprisingly mixed bag. I love snack-sized Middle Eastern spinach pies and meat pies, so I ordered four of them (four snacks makes a meal, right?): a whole wheat spinach pie, a spinach pie with feta cheese, a beef-filled pie, and a chicken pie ($2 each). I was impressed by the shredded chicken in its dry, smoky-sweet tomato sauce, but the other pies were merely good, not great; the dough on all four pies was somewhat flaccid, which doesn’t exactly ruin the pies, but it doesn’t help, either. The tabouli salad ($3.50 for a small container)—one of my favorite dishes on earth—was an even bigger disappointment. Honestly, the tabouli had spent a few too many nights in the refrigerator, and the parsley had a hint of that brown, liquefied taste that plagues greens that are past their prime. I ate a few bites, and threw the rest away. Sad story.
 slime makes me smile The rest of my food was fairly solid. I was pretty happy with the falafel sandwich ($4), which was rescued by a stellar combination of tahini, marinated red cabbage, and pickles. I also bought a package of cookies stuffed with pureed dates and covered in sesame seeds—delicious, but arguably a little bit overpriced at $8.99 a pound (my bag of 12 or so cookies cost $6.12). I also bought a package of flatbread coated with olive oil and zahtar (sesame seeds, salt, thyme, and sumac), which had a little bit too much of a charred flavor for my taste, though it was a decent companion to the absolutely delicious chilled okra salad ($3.50), a wonderful, not-overly-slimy paste of tomatoes, garlic, onions, pepper, okra, and allspice—easily the highlight of my (large, but somewhat disappointing) meal.
Fortunately, Damascus Bakery isn’t the only place in NYC that serves Lebanese food under a not-necessarily-Lebanese name. Good old Kalustyan’s in Curry Hill is legendary for its astounding selection of imported teas, spices and other dry goods, but the upstairs deli is my favorite part of the place. They serve a healthy variety of Middle Eastern standards (hummus, tabouli, kibbeh, falafel) as well as a rotating selection of steam-table delights.
 worth every minute of the fiber-induced squirming On my first visit, a friendly staffer saw my exited-but-indecisive face pressed against the steam table, and generously offered me spoonfuls of all six items on offer: a white bean dish, lentils sauteed with crispy fried onions, sautéed spinach with carmelized onions, and stewed eggplant with tomatoes and peppers, among other things. Everything was spectacular, so I wussed out, and asked for a combo plate. I received a monstrous container overflowing with spinach, lentils with fried onions, a green salad, a warm pita, pickled vegetables (celery, carrots, cucumbers), and dolma (stuffed grape leaves)… all for $7.99. It was enough fiber to make me squirm for a day or so, but tasty enough to be worth every moment of squirming.
Interestingly, my Armenian friends insist that the name Kalustyan is Armenian in origin, but when I asked two different elders at Kalustyan’s about the origins of their recipes, they replied with an identical, seemingly rehearsed line: “our food is from all over the Middle East, but mostly Lebanon.” Lebanese or Armenian or otherwise, I’m a fan.
Damascus Bread & Bakery
195 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn
Subway: Borough Hall (2, 3, 4, 5 trains)
Kalustyan’s
123 Lexington Ave., Manhattan
Subway: 28th Street (6 train)
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Today was one of the rare days when I tried NOT to eat anything unusual or exotic. I was dining with one of my favorite ex-students, an imminently likable guy from upstate New York who claims to be “a complete pussy when it comes to food”… and those are his words, not mine. In honor of his conservative palate (“my family ate both kinds of food: beef and chicken”), we settled on a venerable, 30-year-old Spanish spot in Jackson Heights called Meson Asturias. My pal with the middle-American taste buds figured that Spanish food would be relatively non-threatening.
But sadly, Meson Asturias’s former location was being thoroughly gutted. No tapas here, unless you want a small plate of drywall or asbestos on a stick. In its next life, that property will probably be something far less interesting than an Asturian restaurant. I’m betting that it will become a Foot Locker or a Curves or a 7-Eleven or an irritatingly trendy fusion restaurant, but that’s just a guess. I’m upset.
 far tastier than drywall on a stick Luckily, it’s hard to screw up a trip to Jackson Heights if you’re looking for international food. So we wandered a few blocks over to Urubamba for some Peruvian food.
Urubamba is a clean, comfortable, relatively spacious place with a fairly large, varied menu. The variety was arguably a little bit of a problem: my companion isn’t generally a fan of fish, he had never eaten lamb before, and gave me a terrified look when I said something about octopus and squid. (Admittedly, the word “squid,” which sounds a lot like “squish” or “squalor,” doesn’t sound like something you’d really want to eat. “Squab” doesn’t sound too appealing, either.) So I decided to order the squid-filled mixed ceviche appetizer (with fish, shrimp, squid, and octopus) and a lamb stew.
Ceviche is somewhat of a hit-or-miss proposition: it’s a cold seafood stew, served in a brine of spices, cilantro, and lime juice. Trouble is, the seafood isn’t actually cooked—it’s just marinated in citrus juice until it looks and tastes cooked. It’s not scary at all, unless the quality of the seafood is suspect… in which case, you’re going to be spending some serious quality time in the bathroom of your choice.
 corn, without tentacles I had a good feeling about Urubamba’s mixed ceviche ($14.25), though I decided not to tell my companion (who had never even heard of ceviche) that the seafood isn’t actually cooked with heat. The dish was absolutely beautiful: a huge mound of fish (seabass, I think), calamari rings, octopus bits, shrimp, onion, and cilantro, bathed in a sharp-but-balanced brine of lime, garlic, and hot peppers. The ceviche came with a few chunks of boiled yucca, some yams, a handful of boiled hominy (large, chewy kernels of corn), and another handful of toasted hominy. As much as I loved the ceviche itself, the toasted corn might have been the highlight of the meal for me—it was as crunchy as a corn nut, but tasted like fresh popcorn. (I did a pretty lousy job of making that sound impressive, huh?)
 seco combinado My companion was also pretty excited about the corn, but he was thoroughly repulsed by the texture of the not-really-cooked calamari rings and whitefish, and he was unequivocally terrified by the octopus. Great, more for me!
Sadly, I didn’t have the opportunity to offer my pal his very first taste of lamb, since Urubamba was out of lamb that day. So we settled for a plate of wonderfully tender beef in cilantro sauce (seco combinado, $12.25), served with a gigantic mountain of rice and canary beans (which are not made from real canaries, in case you’re wondering). For our second entrée, we ordered
 rice and canary beans, hold the canaries tacu-tacu (a deliciously oily pilaf of rice mixed with spiced beans) topped with more than a pound of grilled chicken ($12.75). The chicken itself was an insanely tender work of art, as is often the case with Peruvian chicken—which may explain why Peruvian chicken restaurants have become a minor food fad over the past decade or so.
And just in case we weren’t tickled enough by our three spectacular plates of food, the drinks were pretty interesting, too. Chicha de jora ($2.75) is a lightly alcoholic punch, brewed from sprouted, fermented corn and tons of sugar, with a hint of lime: imagine a light, sweet, corn-and-citrus version of hard apple cider, and you’ll be on the right track. The non-alcoholic chicha morada ($2.25) was even better: a fantastic punch brewed from purple corn, sugar, pineapple rind, and lime juice, and topped with a few bits of shaved apple to add a tiny hint of crunch.
The chicha was an afterthought when we ordered our ceviche appetizer, but it turned out to be completely necessary: my poor friend needed a strong, sweet beverage to stop himself from gagging after his first attempt at eating marinated tentacles.
 actually really tasty... you probably won't gag
Urubamba
86-20 37th Ave., Queens
90 St – Elmhurst Av (7)
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Like Uruguay, Paraguay is a (probably thoroughly amazing) country that I visited far too quickly. Back when I was dumb and young (things have changed enormously: now I’m dumb and approaching middle age), I passed through Paraguay for about 24 delirious hours, while riding the cheapest series of cross-continent buses I could find between Sao Paulo, Brazil and Santiago, Chile.
I was exhausted, confused, and nearly broke when I passed through Paraguay—not unhappy, but definitely disoriented. I had been traveling for nearly ten months, starting with study-abroad programs in Russia and Chile, followed by a month of hitchhiking in Argentina and two months spent chasing a beautiful Brazilian to Bahia and back.
 sopa paraguaya ("paraguayan soup")... but with extra lard, and no soup By the time I left Brazil, my brain was thoroughly pureéd from immersing myself in Russian, and then Spanish, and then Portuguese. By the time I got to the Brazil-Paraguay border, I couldn’t figure out whether people on the bus (a mix of friendly Brazilians and Paraguayans) were speaking Spanish or Portuguese to me. It was hilarious—I could understand both languages, but couldn’t distinguish them from each other, and had no idea whether Spanish or Portuguese would pop out of my mouth when somebody spoke to me. I think the other passengers thought I was some sort of babbling South American idiot, instead of just a confused visitor from the Midwest.
 vori vori, or "lots of little balls" So when I arrived for my overnight stay in Asunción, I was afraid to speak to anybody, since I’d apparently lost all control over my tongue. I slunk meekly out of the bus station, bought some bread and lunchmeat from a grocery store, and went to bed early in the cheapest (darkest, mildewy-est, probably roachy-est) motel I could find. I woke up the next morning, wandered around the city for an hour or two, and hopped on a bus out of the country. That’s it. I have a vague memory of buying an empanada and a cold cup of tereré (Paraguay’s version of Argentine yerba mate, a strong, loose green tea) at the bus station, but I otherwise blew it: I didn’t really see anything in Asunción, and I definitely missed out on the country’s culinary wonders.
So in a tiny little way, I felt like I was making up for missed opportunities when I went to I Love PY Bakery in Queens. I walked in, gazed at the smallish steam table and pastry case, and decided to order… one of everything, pretty much.
 lucky me, a drumstick! I started with sopa paraguaya ($3) and some Paraguayan soup ($5.95). (That last sentence is either conclusive proof that I have the brain the size of a walnut, or that something is funny about the way Paraguayans name their national dishes. Or both. You decide.) Vori vori, arguably the national dish of Paraguay, is an astoundingly tasty Paraguayan soup, located somewhere at the intersection of Mexican posole and Colombian ajiaco. Vori vori (loose translation from Guaraní: “lots of little balls of dough”) features lots of little balls (I thought it would be awesome to write “little balls” three times in the same sentence… see what I just did there?) of cornmeal held together by cheese; imagine small, corn-based balls of gnocchi, and you’ll be close. The little balls of cornmeal are served in a salty, thick chicken broth, spiced with cilantro, onion, garlic, tomato, oregano, and—if you’re lucky—a chicken drumstick. Vori vori quickly jumped to the shortlist of my favorite soups of all time, somewhere above ajiaco and below Burmese mohinga.
To accompany my Paraguayan little ball soup, I ordered sopa paraguaya (literal translation: “Paraguayan soup”), which is NOT actually a soup. (Got that?) Sopa paraguaya is actually an insanely dense, moist brick of cornbread—not unlike the North American variety, except that it’s made with tons of milk and lard. The loaf I ate was roughly the size of four standard slices of bread stacked on top of each other… but easily four times denser.
 surprisingly croissant-like spinach empanada... with hidden lard? Despite the delicious lardy heft of the sopa paraguaya, I thought it would be stupid to leave a thoroughly lovable Paraguayan bakery after only eating two dishes, so I decided to raid the pastry case. I ordered a fried empanada filled with corn and something resembling a white cheese sauce. I also snagged a baked empanada, filled with spinach, carrots, peas, and minced boiled eggs; the flaky dough was absolutely amazing, similar to a beautiful, fresh croissant. The chipa so’o was even better: a dense, delicious ball of cornmeal, stuffed with peppery ground beef and more minced, boiled eggs.
I fell madly in love with the chipa so’o, and was convinced that the secret to the dense-but-moist cornmeal dough was… drum roll please… lard! The wonderful sopa paraguaya was also made with lard. Is it safe to conclude that that the delicious, flaky spinach empanada also was blessed by a few scoops of lard?
So I guess I Love PY Bakery loves lard. And since I love I Love PY Bakery, I guess that means that I love lard, too. Who knew?
 chipa so'o... yup, I love lard 
I Love PY Bakery
43-16 Greenpoint Avenue, Queens
Subway: 46th Street (7 train)
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Whenever I travel overseas, I inevitably experience something that I call the “evil glint” food encounter. A friendly native will offer me an opportunity to try some of their food. It’s a perfectly pleasant encounter at first, and then the native gets an evil glint in his/her eye, and realizes that it would be highly entertaining to offer the silly American some fermented fish cakes, headcheese, pig intestines stuffed with rice noodles, chilled pigs’ feet with hot sauce, grilled cow brains, and/or tripe soup (I am not making any of these up). I see how this might be really funny, as long as you’re not the silly American with an irrational cultural phobia of animal innards, hooves, and/or fermented fish.
 thoroughly non-scary carimanola... does not go "boing" in your mouth Unfortunately, I rarely have the opportunity to return the favor in my home country. When international friends come to New York, I can’t really terrify them by offering a hamburger, BBQ pork, or apple pie. The typically American food that is most likely to frighten a foreigner might be grits… but even then, I think Southern-style grits are more likely to terrify a New Yorker than a visitor from overseas.
So it was sort of a special occasion when I was invited to dinner by Grant Robertson, a journalist from the Daily Dot, an online newspaper that’s still in a fun beta phase. We met at Kelso Restaurant, a loveable Panamanian spot in Crown Heights, largely because I thought it might be fun to see the look on the poor guy’s face when I tried to get him to eat cow foot soup with pig tails.
 dessert or breakfast as an appetizer, anyone? I’d never eaten Panamanian food before, so I thought it would be fun to order the only two items on the appetizer menu that I’d never heard of. We started with carimanola, a tasty little breaded, fried torpedo of yucca (cassava), filled with a thin layer of peppery ground beef. It was a little bit on the gummy side, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And much can be forgiven when an appetizer costs a mere $1.
Our other “appetizer” was a little bit perplexing, but absolutely delicious. Chicheme ($3) was listed under the “frituras” (fried appetizer) section of the menu, and I apparently did a really lousy job of listening to the friendly server’s explanation of the dish (that, or my Spanish is far worse than I think it is—I should have gotten the hint from “it’s sweet, and is sort of like oatmeal”). It turns out that chicheme isn’t fried at all, and it isn’t an appetizer: it’s actually an oatmeal-like sludge, made with pounded corn, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and craploads of sugar. I loved the stuff, but felt slightly silly for ordering it before dinner on a Friday night—it would work well for dessert or a snack or a sugary breakfast… but it’s a little bit surreal for a pre-dinner treat. Oops, my bad.
For his entree, my journalist companion played it safe by ordering curry chicken ($7), served with fried plantains, a small side salad, and a massive pile of rice cooked with red beans. I thought that his meal was pretty impressive: the chicken was phenomenally tender and served in a tasty, Caribbean-style yellow curry sauce. Kelso offered a monstrous pile of food for the price… but Grant barely touched anything besides the chicken.
 did the smell of cow feet from across the table render the rice and plantains inedible, or am I just being paranoid? He explained that he just wasn’t all that hungry, but I thought it might be entirely my fault: I was vaguely worried that I’d grossed the poor man out with my meal. I ordered sopa de pata (cow foot soup, $5 for a large bowl), which falls under the broad title of Panamanian sancocho—a thick stew, often served with a variety of tubers, meat, spices, and chunks of corn on the cob. The server asked me if I wanted pig tails included in my cow foot soup. Of course I did!
So here was my “evil glint” moment. Mr. Online Journalist, would you like to try some cow foot soup with pig tails? Nevermind that I’m not really a fan of cow feet—I can appreciate the extra flavor that cow feet (or innards, or other bits of fat or skin) might add to a stew, but cow feet are incredibly fatty and gelatinous, and not really my favorite thing on earth. But I was still excited to have a bowl of cow feet and pig tails. This was my big chance to torment somebody else for a change.
Grant politely took a spoonful of the soup, and nodded appreciatively. I then harangued him to spoon out a little chunk of the cow feet fat (“cow feet fat” will someday be the name of an indy rock band… just watch), and he gamely scraped a bit of gelatinous goo out of a hoof, and ate it without visibly flinching. Nicely done, Grant.
 no boing from the pig tails, but plenty of squish from the cow feet At that point, I didn’t see any reason to push him to try the pig tails, which were chopped into tiny, hard, chewy pieces. Neither gross nor appealing. Kind of a dud in an otherwise fantastic (and insanely filling and inexpensive) stew.
When I told my lovely fiancé about my excursion to Kelso Diner, she asked me only one question about the meal: “Do pig tails go boing in your mouth when you eat them?” Nope. Kind of disappointing, in a way. Don’t get me wrong: I loved the stew, which was beautifully thickened by chunks of yucca, potato, cornflour dumplings, and chunks of corn on the cob. But no boing. And no look of terror on the journalist’s face. Bummer.
(Note: our phenomenally filling $17.42 meal was sponsored by the Sandusky media empire. Thank you, Sandusky media empire!)
Kelso Restaurant
648 Franklin Avenue, Brooklyn
Subway: Franklin Ave. (2, 3, 4, 5 trains)
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