I’m not the slightest bit religious, but I have the occasional fantasy about what heaven might look like when I die.  If heaven exists, I’m pretty sure that it would have three things: friendly people, pleasant weather, and an endless supply of spicy food, preferably cooked in coconut milk. It pains me to use such a silly cliché, but I think I found my personal version of heaven in NYC. In a fenced-in parking lot. Behind a mosque.

And really, where else would you find heaven besides a parking lot in Astoria?

mmmm... endless supply of fried Indonesian stuff

Roughly once a month during the summer, several dozen Indonesians set up an Indonesian food bazaar behind Masjid Al-Hikmah in Astoria. It’s like a giant bake sale, except that there’s a wide range of foods, including entrees, soups, desserts, salads, fried snacks, and Indonesian smoothies (made from coconut milk and either fruit or avocado). Stupidly, I went by myself, which meant that I was obligated to massively overeat if I wanted to even begin to scratch the surface of the awesomeness offered at the bazaar.

I warmed up with a pair of insanely delicious appetizers, starting with a chicken-stuffed fritter (gorengan, $1), made from a dough that reminded me of the insanely soft, flat rice noodles that you can get at Chinese dim sum places. I also inhaled something resembling an Indonesian tamale: a delicious, banana-wrapped cylinder of minced chicken surrounded by sticky rice (rice cooked in coconut milk), also just $1. Both were so good—especially when dabbed with spicy-sweet

like a chicken tamale, only rice-ier and coconuttier

sambal sauce—that I vowed to eat everything I possibly could at the bazaar. I was madly in love with this parking lot.

I moved on to an entrée-sized plate of nasi rendang, one of the national dishes of Indonesia, consisting of a massive cone of rice accompanied by meat and vegetables ($7); I selected a firm-but-oddly-tender hunk of beef jerky coated in crushed red peppers, along with collard greens stewed in coconut milk. The friendly Indonesian lady at that particular stall noticed the excited grin on my face (ever look at a dog just before he’s about to get fed? I looked like that, only slightly porkier), and added a scoop of beef curry to my plate, just so I could try it. I love you, kind Indonesian lady. And I definitely loved all of your food, especially the fiery beef and coconut-ized greens.

somewhere under the flurry of red peppers is inexplicably soft-but-dry beef jerky... go figure

After two appetizers and a heaping plate of rice, greens, and beef, I should have stopped eating. But there were another dozen food stalls at the bazaar, all of which were staffed by friendly, smiling Indonesians who looked like they knew how to handle themselves in a kitchen. So I kept eating: another fried appetizer filled with beef and sweet peppers; an amazing “Indonesian salad” with peanuts, apples, pineapple, and finely shredded coconut in a spicy tamarind sauce; and a bowl of green rice-flour pancakes swimming in a very gently sweetened sauce of coconut milk and palm syrup.

why stop eating when this is staring you in the face?

Even after all of that, I still kept being drawn in by smiling Indonesians, standing behind tables bearing still more treats to be tried. I took home four of the delicious Indonesian “tamales” (chicken or beef surrounded by coconut milk-soaked rice and wrapped in banana leaves); I bought several more fried appetizers, one of which was a tasty ball of minced tofu, shrimp, and chicken, accompanied by a vicious little hot pepper; a pudding made from seaweed, chocolate, and coconut milk; some edamame-filled dumplings steamed in coconut milk; and something described as “Indonesian sushi”—delicious squares of coconut rice filled with spiced minced chicken.

Indonesian "pancakes" in a mildly sweet brew of coconut milk and palm syrup

The final score: I ate four appetizers, a full entrée, and two desserts before leaving the bazaar… and then I took seven appetizers, a salad, and another dessert home with me. I spent a grand total of $27.50, and probably bought enough food for three or four people with normal appetites. Much of the food was spicy, and nearly all of it featured some sort of coconut or coconut milk. And few things make me happier than spicy food made with coconut milk.

Best of all, there were some incredibly friendly people there who appreciated and embraced my curiosity (and ridiculous appetite). Without exception, all of the women patiently and enthusiastically explained their food offerings to me, and invited me to taste their wares. They made it hard to leave: just as I was about to escape with a massive bag of food in my greasy little fingers, a friendly lady shoved a delicious rectangular block of sticky rice with brown sugar and jackfruit into my hand so that I could try it.

What? Random smiling strangers shoving dessert into my hands?!? In NYC? I doubt that I’ll ever make it into the real heaven, but if the closest I can get is that parking lot in Astoria… I think I’m cool with that.

heavenly homework

Indonesian Food Bazaar
Masjid Al-Hikmah
48-01 31st Ave., Astoria
Subway: 46th Street (R, M trains)

Share

If you’re going to eat assloads of international food in NYC, you have to embrace the magic of the steam table. As a Midwest native, I’ll admit that steam tables bring back unpleasant memories of school cafeteria mystery meat (my graffiti of choice on high school bathroom walls: “flush twice, it’s a long way to the cafeteria”) and all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets, which sometimes manage to serve food that is simultaneously dried-out and dripping with grease. Not cute.

no need to flush twice

Now that my life is a long way from the school cafeteria, I’ve shaken my fear of steam tables, but somewhere in my little Midwestern head, steam tables are still synonymous with that not-so-fresh food feeling. And that’s completely unfair: I’ve had plenty of good, fresh steam-table meals in NYC, most notably from Russian and Senegalese places.

But I have to hand it to the nice people at Trini-Gul in Crown Heights, who have taken steam table awesomeness to new levels. Not only was the food fantastic, but they actually grow their secret curry ingredient onsite. In a pot. In Brooklyn. In a small, four-table restaurant on a busy street. Good trick, huh?

I visited Trini-Gul with the captain of the Jamaican women’s basketball team. (I am not making this up. She is one of my favorite people in NYC, and she is also one hell of a slick passer.) She had never tried Trinidadian and Tobagoan (hereafter referred to as Trinbagonian) food, so we asked the wonderfully friendly young woman behind the counter for recommendations. She said that stew fish with cassava (yucca) was the national dish of Trinidad and Tobago, and she served me a plate of the stuff with a side of okra and callaloo for $10; Captain Nicki went for stew chicken with rice and pumpkin and fried plantains ($8).

Trini stew chicken with rice, pumpkin, and plantains

Variations on stew fish and stew chicken are popular throughout the Caribbean; the sauce contains a blend of garlic, ginger, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and tomato paste, with additional spices included according to local taste. Trinbagonian stew sauces, in my limited experience, are flavorful but rarely overpowering; at Trini-Gul, the stew fish was deliciously balanced and salty, and tasted of a delicious seasoning that I couldn’t quite place… but the spices didn’t overpower the flavor of the fish. I loved it, and particularly loved the young lady behind the counter for generously loading my plate with two massive pieces of fish, along with a gigantic pile of yucca. Our side dishes—particularly the callaloo (shredded, stewed greens) and pumpkin (mashed with spices in a chicken broth)—were also excellent.

delicious if you've acquired a taste for it, spit-inducing if you haven't

Captain Nicki was less enthusiastic about her stew chicken, possibly because she held it to the standards of her Jamaican grandmother’s kitchen wizardry. She was also unimpressed by the gigantic brownish cup of mauby that I purchased; the stuff is made from tree bark and anise, and tastes like intensely strong, sweet black licorice. Poor Captain Nicki took a sip, and ran out into the street to spit it out. Oops. Definitely an acquired taste if you’re not a fan of pungent drinks made from bark and anise. If you’re trying to acquire a taste for Caribbean beverages, stick with Ting (Jamaican grapefruit soda) or sorrel (a sweet red drink, similar to a sweetened iced hibiscus tea)… or rum.

As we sat around patting our bellies (did I mention that Captain Nicki calls her belly “Herman”?) after the meal, a friendly Trinbagonian woman emerged from the kitchen, and plucked a few leaves from a plant perched on the windowsill. “This is podina, my secret ingredient,” she explained. “That’s why my curry and stew taste so good.”

So that secret tasty spice that I couldn’t quite identify in the stew fish? It was podina (or pudina), also known as Spanish thyme or big leaf thyme.  Apparently, bunnies love the stuff.  And so do I.

Trini-Gul
543 Nostrand Ave., Brooklyn
Subway: Nostrand Ave. (A, C trains)

Share

some Alaskans make amazing Italian food; others are heavily armed and like to shoot things

I really didn’t think that it would be worth mentioning my trip to Alaska on a New York food blog.  Alaska isn’t particularly known for its international culinary wonders, unless you’re really into mooseburgers, reindeer sausage, or bear steaks.

We were in Alaska for three weeks, thinking that we would get away from the mayhem of NYC, stare lazily at mountains and glaciers and herds of caribou, do plenty of mellow day hikes, and maybe get eaten by a bear.  If we had to subsist on a diet of trail mix and energy bars and convenience-store sandwiches for three weeks, we were fine with that.

The weird part?  We had amazing food in Alaska, over and over again:

• Day 1, Anchorage:  fantastic dolsot (hot stone pot) bibimbap at Korean VIP Restaurant… they even served my favorite thing ever, gelatinous Korean fish skins!
• 

  best bagel sandwich ever... in Fairbanks?!?

  Day 2, Talkeetna (population 772):  went to a random bar behind the general store, got a shockingly good BBQ pork sandwich, served with a delicious, not-too-creamy, orange walnut cole slaw.  Didn’t see that coming at all.

• Day 3, Talkeetna (population 773… I ate enough BBQ pork to count as an extra person): Mountain High Pizza Pie served us the best Italian breakfast I’ve ever eaten, anywhere.  We loved the food so much that we stayed at the same table for both breakfast and lunch.  (See below.)
• Day 6, Fairbanks (population 35,252):  Randomly stumbled into LuLu’s Bread and Bagels, fell madly in love with the rosemary bagels, the gumball machine that dispenses chocolate-covered espresso beans, and the tidy breakfast sandwiches that include diced bacon or vegetables inside the egg patty.  The best bagels I’ve eaten anywhere in the world, including New York City.  Didn’t see that coming at all, either.
• 

  bearburgers that have never touched bear fur are apparently delicious, but we stuck with beef, ham and egg anyway

  Day 7, Paxson (population 43, not including Aurora the talking Malamute):  After spending four hours hiking through the tundra in a failed attempt to visit an obscure glacier, we had no choice but to eat at Paxson Lodge, the only restaurant within 100 miles of the (rumored) glacier.  Had a phenomenal (beef, I think) burger topped with ham, cheese, and fried eggs, served with the best batter-dipped fries I’ve had in years.  While we ate, the lodge owner explained that bear meat is instantly ruined if the bear’s fur touches the flesh during the skinning process.  Fascinating.  Who knew that bear fur could ruin the taste of bear meat?

• Day 9, Homer (population 5400, including Tom Bodette and sometimes Jewel):   fresh chocolate bread at Two Sisters Bakery, followed by an amazing wood-fired pizza at Finn’s Pizza.  The owners at Finn’s—one of whom spent nearly a decade making pizzas in Italy—hauled the oven 5000 miles from a defunct restaurant in New York to Alaska on a flatbed truck.  Unbelievably good pizza and polenta, better than anything I’ve eaten in NYC.
• Day 13, Kodiak (population 6228, including several of the nicest people on the planet).  OK, get this:  Kodiak has a winery, and it’s actually really good.  Chilly Kodiak Island isn’t exactly a legendary grape-growing region, so the winery makes salmonberry, blueberry, and raspberry wines, along with wildflower-scented honeymead.  The shocking part:  their award-winning wines aren’t overly sweet, and we absolutely loved them.  The owners of Alaska Wilderness Wines are lovable, non-pretentious people who have an informal tasting room in their basement; an evening with them was an unexpected highlight of our trip.
• 

  best borscht ever

  Day 14, Kodiak:  wandered into Monk’s Rock Coffeehouse, ordered a bowl of the best borscht I’ve ever eaten in my life, jammed with craploads of dill—just like grandma used to make.  (Or maybe better.  Shhhh, she’ll haunt me forever if you tell her I said that.)  Monk’s Rock also serves the best calzones I’ve ever eaten, and that’s saying a lot.  Turns out that the coffeehouse is run by an Italian dude who became a Russian Orthodox priest, which explains the amazing Russian and Italian food; all coffeehouse proceeds support the priest’s work with orphaned and troubled teens.

breakfast pizza with sourdough crust

Of all the amazing food (and wine) surprises on our trip, Mountain High Pizza Pie in Talkeetna (population 772; town motto:  “a quant little drinking village with a climbing problem”) deserves a special mention.  We dropped in for breakfast on Mother’s Day and ordered the breakfast pizza (with a sourdough crust, arguably the best pizza crust we’d ever eaten) along with the day’s breakfast special, an obscure Italian classic called pastio.  I’d never heard of the stuff before, and I found exactly zero mention of it on Chowhound or Google… but I fell madly in love:  Italian sausage, pasta, eggs, and cheese, artfully baked into a pie tastier than the best lasagna, quiche, or Spanish breakfast tortilla I’ve ever eaten.

We loved the pastio and pizza so much that we stayed in the restaurant for several hours after our meal, reading, dozing, and using the wifi until we got hungry

sat at the same table for five hours, just so we could eat this twice before leaving town

enough to eat another pair of entrees:  more pastio, and a equally wonderful breakfast stromboli.  Yes, we ate breakfast twice in four hours, without leaving the restaurant—it was that good.  In case you’re wondering, chef/owner Todd Basilone is a recovered New Yorker who comes from a long line of Italian chefs.  I think he said that the pastio recipe came from his grandmother, and that the recipe for the sourdough pizza crust has been in his family for five generations.  Genuine, old-world Italian awesomeness in little Talkeetna, Alaska?  Surprise!

I could ramble forever about the other details of our trip:  we took nearly 1500 photos of turquoise lakes, calving blue glaciers, herds of caribou, and a bear that was close enough to taste us.  We figured that Alaska would be gorgeous… but tasty?  Never saw that coming at all.

I think he sees a tasty salmon coming... or a tasty hiker

Share

According to my lovely fiancé, a Colombian stew called ajiaco is better than an orgasm, a choir of angels, a full-body massage, and the holy grail, all rolled into one. She went to Bogota eleven years ago, and hasn’t stopped ranting about the awesomeness of ajiaco bogotano since. Ajiaco might be the most often-mentioned food in our household…despite the fact that she hasn’t touched ajiaco in almost a decade, and I’d never laid eyes on the stuff until last weekend.

tastes better than a choir of angels

There’s no shortage of Colombian food in NYC, but it turns out that ajiaco is remarkably difficult to find. Ajiaco is a local favorite in Bogota, but rarely seen in other regions of the country… and most of NYC’s Colombian restaurants are apparently owned by immigrants from Cali and Medellin. It doesn’t help that ajiaco is a pain in the butt to make: a good ajiaco bogotano apparently requires at least four or five hours of cooking time, which doesn’t exactly encourage restaurants to put the stuff on the menu.

I’ve been actively searching for a good ajiaco for about three years, dating back to when we lived in DC. I’ve googled ajiaco dozens of times, hoping to surprise my fiancé with a bowl of the stuff—but had zero luck until I saw a mention on twitter: it turns out that ajiaco, once upon a time, was a special served at Cafecito Bogota in Greenpoint.

bandeja paisa... oink

I didn’t bother to call ahead, and just showed up at Cafecito Bogota on a random weekday. No ajiaco that day, but I found out that Cafecito Bogota always offers ajiaco on Saturdays. In the absence of ajiaco during my first visit, I inhaled a massive plate of bandeja paisa ($12.95), the national dish of Colombia, consisting of (I’m sucking in my gut as I type this) chorizo, chicharron (fried pork skin, which is tastier than you might think, but just as fattening), a surprisingly tender steak, a fried egg (sweat pours off my brow as I strain to keep my gut sucked in), fried plantains, rice, beans, an arepa (a flat, fluffy piece of white corn flatbread—not to be confused with Venezuelan arepas), and avocado (I give up… my stomach just rolled past my beltline and flopped onto the keyboard). Absolutely delicious, across the board.

tastes better than the holy grail, but bits of it do get stuck in your teeth

The following Saturday, I reappeared at Cafecito Bogota with a beautiful, ajiaco-loving woman (click here to see a picture of her naked, if you haven’t already fallen for that one). And yes, there was ajiaco ($7 for a large bowl), made from three different kinds of potatoes simmered for several hours with chicken, cilantro, corn on the cob, and guascas, a Colombian herb that is apparently the secret to a good ajiaco. The dish is then topped with a float of heavy cream, and served with a side of capers and avocado. The result is a thick, smooth, delicious, oddly buttery ooze of shredded chicken and spices, punctuated by an occasional chunk of corncob. I’m not sure that it was as good as an orgasm or choir of angels (now that I think about it, a choir of angels sounds kind of annoying… so scratch that last comparison, ajiaco is way better than the choir), but it wasn’t too far off.

crispier than most orgasms

To warm up for the ajiaco, we ordered a pair of the best fried empanadas ($2 each) I’ve ever had, stuffed with an interesting slurry of finely shredded chicken, rice, potatoes, onion, and herbs. For my entrée, I went for sudado de pollo ($12.95), which consisted of huge chunks of chicken, potato, yucca, and green plantains, stewed in a delicious tomato salsa criolla, and served with rice and a small salad.

Thrilled as we were with the entrees and ajiaco, Cafecito Bogota deserves a few extra bonus points for being a thoroughly comfortable place to lounge around for a few hours. You can get your caffeine and/or booze buzz going with a fruity sangria, a bottle of good Chilean wine, a Colombian soda (Pony Malta, anyone?), Colombian coffee, or all of the above. And I don’t think they believe in hurrying you out of there: Cafecito Bogota has a wonderfully relaxed South American feel to it, more like a sidewalk café in Cartagena than a storefront in New York City. A relaxed café in New York? Almost as rare and amazing as a holy grail having an orgasm.

also tastier than a holy grail having an orgasm, I suspect

Cafecito Bogota
1015 Manhattan Ave., Brooklyn
Subway: Greenpoint Ave. (G train)

Share

After eating half a plate of halusky, the national dish of Slovakia, at a Czech restaurant a few days ago, I knew exactly what I was getting into when I headed to Slovak-owned Milan’s in Brooklyn:  meat, potatoes, cheese, more potatoes, some fried dough, and maybe some more cheese and meat.  And that’s completely awesome, but probably not the sort of food that you’d want to feed to a bride who needs to cram herself into a pretty little white dress in a few weeks.

eat dessert first... the apocalypse could come while you're picking at your halusky

So guess what?  I brought a friend with me to Milan’s, and she has to fit into a pretty little white dress in a few weeks.  Just before our meal, her tailor instructed her “not to gain or lose any weight” between now and her wedding day.  So basically, I’m a complete a**hole for feeding her halusky and fried potato pancakes and blueberry-stuffed pierogies.  Isn’t there always a risk that unexpected weight gain might turn a lovely, calm, mild-mannered young woman into a raging bridezilla?

Unfortunately for our bride friend, it would be silly and impossible and reckless to try to maintain a girlish figure at Milan’s.  When we arrived, the friendly Slovak owner brought a basket of fresh bread with an addictive spread made from scallions and cream cheese… not exactly a wedding-dress-friendly way to start the meal.  To accompany our bread and fat, we ordered a plate of “baked” (but suspiciously crisp and buttery) pierogies, stuffed with an insanely delicious blueberry compote, and garnished with sour cream ($5.20).  Definitely a nominee for the best dish I’ve eaten this month.

(And yes, we ate dessert first.  Hey, you have to be prepared for anything.  You never know, the world might end while you’re in the middle of your entrée, and you’ll never actually get to dessert.)

if I eat this entire mound of halusky, the world might actually end mid-meal when my belly goes supernova

For our entrees, the lovely bride-to-be ordered halusky ($8.10), since I spoke so highly of it after visiting Zlata Praha.  In case you missed our last encounter with Czechoslovak food, halusky is Slovakia’s gut-busting equivalent of macaroni & cheese, except that it’s made from bryndza, a sheep cheese that tastes like a cross between feta and parmesan.  And it’s made with dumplings (spatzle) instead of macaroni.  And it’s topped with bacon.  Always delicious, never wedding-dress-friendly.

I don’t have to fit into a wedding dress in the next few months (though I did wear a prom dress on stage once… long story), so I opted for the Slovak combination plate ($9.40), consisting of a generous pile of halusky, three crispy (“baked”) potato pierogies with sour cream, and an absolutely delicious, deep-fried, garlic-scented potato pancake.  I also ordered cole slaw ($2); I was expecting vinegary, Russian-style slaw, but instead was served a bowl of the creamiest slaw I’ve ever seen.  Not my style, really, but you have to give Milan’s credit for turning perfectly healthy cabbage into a ridiculously rich, heavy side dish.

non-dainty halusky, non-dainty potato pierogies, and a garlicky potato pancake, which gave me non-dainty breath

Also to Milan’s credit, we had exactly zero chance of cleaning our plates, especially after starting with our thoroughly unnecessary (and thoroughly worthwhile) plate of blueberry pierogies.  It’s funny, a 1999 NY Times review of the place whined that Milan’s portions were served in “dainty portions”, albeit at “extraordinarily low prices.”  Twelve years later, the prices are still low, but the portions are anything but dainty:  despite her best efforts, my (still dainty, but temporarily well-fed) bride friend only managed to eat 1/3 of her halusky, and I left about a quarter of my meal on the plate.

But seriously, 1/3 of a plate of halusky—preceded by a few chunks of bread and a batch of blueberry pierogies—is a pretty serious meal for a bantamweight bride-to-be.  I’ve never met a bride who can eat like that without getting instantly neurotic.  Good job, non-bridezilla!  We’re impressed.

Milan’s
710 5th Avenue, Brooklyn
Subway: 25th Street (R train)

Share