I apologize, Central Europe: I clearly underestimated your entire region of the world, at least from a culinary perspective. I’m now guilty of walking into Austrian, Hungarian, and Czech(-oslovak?) restaurants with supremely low expectations, just trying to cross a few countries off my list. And thanks to Zlata Praha, I’ve now been pleasantly surprised by unexpectedly impressive meals from all three (or four?) nations.

halusky, the gut-busting Slovak national dish

Zlata Praha has graced Astoria since 1993, the same year in which Czechoslovakia dissolved into two countries. Interestingly, the restaurant still considers itself Czechoslovak, rather than branding itself as solely Czech or Slovak. When we sat down, I asked our waiter if he was Czech or Slovak, and he said that he was Slovak, but that it’s the same thing as being Czech. I then asked him what his Slovak grandmother would order if she came to the restaurant; the answer was ultimately wonderful, but gut-busting.

vaguely scary-looking hand dryer from the Zlata Praha bathroom... fascinating, no?

While we waited for our food, Zlata Praha’s pan-Czechoslovakian-ness got us thinking: why the hell did Czechoslovakia break up, anyway? It seemed to have almost nothing to do with ethnic tension: according to a 1992 poll commissioned by the Czechoslovak government, only 36% of Czechs and 37% of Slovaks actually wanted to break the country apart. The dissolution was a bloodless, calm split engineered by politicians, mostly due to concerns over economic and political asymmetry in the country—Slovakia has half as many citizens as the Czech Republic, and was substantially poorer than the Czech side in the early 1990s. Interesting.

So Czechs and Slovaks seem to have absolutely no problem with each other—at least in the United States—and nearly every NYC restaurant that serves Czech food claims to serve both “Czech and Slovak” dishes. (Milan’s, which seems to be NYC’s only Slovak-owned restaurant, serves “Slovak and Czech” dishes.) The owner of Zlata Praha is Czech and our waiter was Slovak, so we decided to embrace Czechoslovak unity by ordering national dishes from both countries.

mmm, svickova juice... I swear that some beef is swimming in there somewhere

For the Czech half of our meal, we ordered svickova (pronounced “sheeshkova”, I think… $10.95), a plate of marinated roast beef (sauerbraten) swimming in a massive pool of bizarrely delicious gravy, served with a side of bread dumplings and a dollop of cranberry sauce. I’m not usually a fan of meat-in-gravy dishes, but the sauce adorning the beef was surprisingly appealing: a gently sweetened blend of carrots, cream, pepper, onion, and thyme. The bread dumplings (extremely soft, moist bread, comparable to a less-chewy version of a steamed Chinese siopao) were clearly engineered exactly for the task of sopping up the tasty svickova juice. (Mmmmm, svickova juice.)

fruit dumplings count as health food, right?

For our other dish, we took the advice of our friendly Slovak waiter, and ordered halusky ($9.95), the national dish of Slovakia. Halusky is Slovakia’s answer to mac-and-cheese topped with bacon, except that the dish contains spatzle (smallish dumplings) instead of macaroni, and the cheese sauce is made from a sheep cheese called bryndza. The bryndza reminded us of a cross between feta and parmesan—it has a hint of feta-esque sour sharpness, but it’s salty as all hell… and that’s a good thing, in my world. I absolutely loved the stuff, especially with the sprinkling of bacon; it was, however, supremely dense, and we struggled to keep our heads off the table after sharing our two entrees with each other.

Despite the gut-busting plate of halusky, we had a feeling that skipping dessert would be a bad, bad, dumb, bad idea. So we ordered a plate of Czech fruit dumplings (ovocne knedliky, $5) which were clearly an acquired taste. Each dumpling contained an entire pitted plum, and the doughy balls were topped with some sort of cream cheese relative, tons of melted butter, a dusting of powdered sugar, and more melted butter. I can’t really rip on Zlata Praha for this, but the cheese and butter were too much for us, so we just picked at the fruit, and left the rest uneaten. I’m sure that it’s the sort of thing that you can learn to love, but it was awfully hard to acquire a taste for anything so rich when you’ve just eaten a big, fat plate of halusky with bacon. Maybe ovocne knedliky is best appreciated after a light meal, and we should have had salads instead of halusky. Or not.

Sorry, Zlata Praha: I'm not badass enough to eat a plate of your buttery cheesy plum dumplingness.

Zlata Praha
2848 31st Street, Astoria
Subway: (N, Q trains)

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I spent a somewhat awkward month in eastern Venezuela in 2007, when George W. Bush and Hugo Chavez were at the height of their enmity. President Bush’s axis of evil speech (which, for the record, did not actually include Venezuela) had become legendary in Venezuela, and Chavez spent much of his time making four-hour speeches on prime-time television, convincing his people that the United States and Venezuela were on the brink of war.

Chavez’s saber-rattling—coupled with Mr. Bush’s unfortunate foreign policy decisions—made it vaguely uncomfortable to be an American in Venezuela. Military checkpoints were everywhere; whenever we rode a bus between cities, we would have to stop every hour or two, and get off the bus while the soldiers conducted a full search of everybody and everything on the bus. American tourists were extremely rare in eastern Venezuela, and Venezuelans were invariably shocked—and inquisitive—when they realized that we were from the United States. Nearly everybody thought that Bush was the devil, and Venezuelans would always ask us how we put up with life under the Bush dictatorship, or whether the United States was planning to invade Venezuela after we finished in Iraq.

this delicious arepa is not part of the axis of evil

Despite the nasty political climate, Venezuelans rarely held anything against us personally—some politically engaged Venezuelans even seemed to see us as ambassadors of peace, and welcomed us particularly warmly. Other Venezuelans didn’t give a rat’s ass about politics, and just wanted to talk about American major league baseball, which is arguably more popular in Venezuela than in the United States. I quickly realized that the best way to handle a military checkpoint was to flash my American passport, smile broadly, and start chatting about the New York Yankees or Detroit Tigers. Whenever a soldier would scowl in our general direction at a checkpoint, I would just say something about Magglio Ordonez (a Venezuelan native who won the 2007 American League batting title), and everything would be fine. (Thank you, Magglio: your chase for the batting crown probably saved me a ton of trouble, and possibly a small fortune in averted bribes.)

see? nothing evil about fried cheese and roast pork

When it came to Venezuelan food, however, I think we missed out during our trip through the eastern portion of the country. The economy was thoroughly shattered in many of the places we visited, and precious few restaurants were able to survive. On occasion, we would stumble into a great arepa cart or an impressive little café, but we mostly lived off of bread, lunchmeat, and cans of corn and tuna that we purchased at grocery stores. Because we spent most of our time in smaller towns, little else was available, unfortunately.

So when I wandered into Patacon Pisao 2, a tidy little Venezuelan restaurant in Queens, I was embarrassed to admit that I knew very little about Venezuelan food, despite my travels in Venezuela. The friendly young Venezuelan behind the counter was hugely helpful: he explained that many of Patacon Pisao’s dishes—especially the patacones—were from the vicinity of Maracaibo, and that there was no shame in being familiar with only the arepas. So I ordered both an arepa and a patacon, just for variety’s sake.

patacones are arguably even less evil than arepas, if that's possible

Arepas are grilled (or lightly fried, depending on where you are in Venezuela) patties made from white corn; the arepas are then sliced in half like a pita, and stuffed with meat and other goodies. I ordered the pernil (roast pork) arepa, and received a dense bundle of Venezuelan brilliance, jammed with lettuce, tomato, pork, a flat patty of delicious fried cheese, and Patacon Pisao’s special sauce, which resembled a spiced tartar sauce. The arepa was of the fried variety, and surprisingly crunchy; it was messy as all hell, but absolutely delicious. For $5, the arepa was the size and weight of a good hamburger, and was easily a meal in itself.

carne mechada with special non-evil sauce

I’ve always loved arepas, but the patacon was arguably even better. Imagine a messy sandwich, stuffed with spiced, shredded beef (carne mechada), more lettuce and tomatoes, another delicious little patty of fried white cheese, more hot sauce, and the aforementioned spiced tartar sauce. But instead of a bun, the sandwich was cased in two large, flat, greenish-brown discs, made from fried green plantains. Any sandwich made from deep-fried carbohydrates is bound to be delicious, but the patacon sandwich was a work of (messy, dense) art: the plantain discs were surprisingly chewy, and were far less greasy than I would have imagined. The arepa was a meal in itself, but the patacon might have been twice the size of the arepa. I was proud that I managed to eat both in one sitting. (Oink.)

Impressively, my entire bill came to $11, including a can of soda and tax. It isn’t all that easy to find any decent meal in NYC for $11; it’s mind-blowing to eat two really good meals in NYC for a grand total of $11. I love you, Patacon Pisao.

Patacon Pisao 2
85-22 Grand Ave., Elmhurst, Queens
Subway: Grand Ave.—Newtown

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I have a theory about ethnic food: if yelpers consistently whine about a restaurant’s service, the restaurant is almost surely awesome. If the service sucks and the place is still open—especially in a high-rent city like NYC—the food must be amazing, right?

doesn't look like much from the top, but I swear that it's pretty damned "delicious moist flavorful" inside

Banjara, an Indian restaurant in the East Village, is a perfect example of my theory. The yelp reviews are generally very good (four stars, on average), but there’s a lot of griping about service in some of them. And I think that’s great: if a four-star place consistently loses a star for service, that means that the food is worth five stars, right?

Pretty much, yeah. Banjara, as suggested by the yelping mobs, seems to have its share of service issues: the restaurant lost the reservation for our party of six, the friendly-but-disorganized staff seemed to be in a perpetual state of chaos throughout the meal, and our bill passed through the hands of at least three different staff members before anybody ran the credit cards. But hey, the food was awesome, and the staff wasn’t mean or anything. Who really cares about anything else?

best lamb ever... crap, I think the Greek culture just excommunicated me for saying that

Our gang of six diners (including my fiancé and four single women) was led by a wonderfully opinionated (single) Indian-American woman who acted as our benevolent food dictator for the evening. Our lovely (and single… want me to arrange an introduction?) food dictator fed us plenty of tasty Indian standards: samosa appetizers, shaag paneer (spinach with cubes of cheese, $10.95), paneer makani (firm cubes of cheese in a moderately spicy onion-tomato-cream sauce, $13.95), rice, naan, lots of chutney, papadoms, and chicken vindaloo ($11.95). We even gorged on a pair of Indian desserts: gulab jamun (basically, deep-fried doughnut holes swimming in sugar syrup, $3.25) and rasmalai (firm, mild globs of cheese drowning in sweetened condensed milk). The desserts were far too sweet for my taste, but everything—appetizers, entrees, and desserts—was wonderfully well-executed, and served with a healthy dollop of friendly ethnic restaurant service chaos.

okra with mango and onion... genius

Two of the dishes, however, stood out above all the others, and are among the best foods I’ve eaten anywhere in NYC. The menu offered a pretty hilarious description of the phenomenal chicken dumpakht ($14.95): “dumpakht is a method of cooking by which the cooking vessel is sealed with pastry, resulting in a deliciously moist flavorful dish.” Yes, definitely “deliciously moist flavorful.” Imagine a spicy, creamy Indian version of chicken pot pie, topped with a delicious, freshly-baked crust of naan, and you’ll be close.

The adraki lamb chops ($20.95 for three big chops), marinated in a peppery ginger sauce, were an even bigger hit. As a half-Greek, I’ve eaten craploads of lamb in my life, and Banjara’s was easily the best I’ve ever had—perfectly spiced, blissfully charred-but-still-pink, outrageously tender. (Oh sh*t, my Greek ancestors are going to strike me down for complimenting somebody else’s lamb. I’ll stop now.)

Bollywood stars lacquered into the bathroom sink at Banjara

On a subsequent visit (accompanied by a completely different educated, gorgeous, single woman… we should start a dating service, no?), we discovered a third incredible dish, okra do piazza ($12.95). I’ve never met a plate of okra that I didn’t like, but this one was special: whole pieces of okra sautéed in onions and dried mangoes, with just enough hot pepper to prevent the sweetness of the mango from overpowering the dish—amazing.

Since we were far too stuffed to order dessert on our second visit, the much-maligned staff brought us each a little scoop of ice cream—vanilla with a very gentle hint of passion fruit. Free ice cream?!?  Hell yeah.  Hey, maybe the service wasn’t so bad after all.

Banjara
97 1st Avenue @ 6th, Manhattan
Subway: Astor Place (6 train) or 2nd Ave. (F train)

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If you’ve read many of my other posts, you’ve probably seen lots of whining about Midtown East. There are way too many Starbucks (Starbuckses?) and real estate is insanely pricey, so there isn’t much room for charismatic hole-in-the-wall ethnic joints. (If the term “hole-in-the-wall” brings back gleeful memories of truck stop toilet stalls, please stop reading my food porn blog and go bother somebody else.)

But at least we have lots of good Irish pubs around here, and that makes me sorta happy. And when I say “good” Irish pubs, I actually mean “crappy”… which, in my book, is the same thing as “good” if we’re talking about pubs. Got that?

mmm... French fries, suet, and oatmeal, with a side of crusty mean old lady

The first Midtown business I ever fell in love with was Muldoon’s Irish Pub. Everything in this neighborhood is so damned squeaky-clean and corporate, but Muldoon’s is—and I mean this in the best possible way—just a crappy old bar. Everything in there is a little bit worn, including all of the furniture and most of the bartenders. The beers are cheap ($6 for a Guinness) by Midtown standards, the staff is warm, crass, and informal, and there isn’t a hint of pretention to the place, ever. Some of the regulars are wonderfully crusty and mean: one night, a leathery old lady with a pickled brain started randomly screaming at us for being “assholes”, even though we were quietly minding our own business and hadn’t said a word to her. What’s more unpretentious and un-corporate and un-Midtown than a drunk old blue-haired lady screaming obscenities at you on a Saturday night?

Muldoon’s food isn’t amazing, but it’s always solid, and reasonably priced by Midtown standards. The Irish breakfast (10.95, including coffee and a bloody Mary or beer) is decent, but it isn’t unusual for certain pieces of the dish to be missing: on one recent Sunday afternoon, they were out of breakfast potatoes and toast, and gave me a small

six eggs, cheese, bacon, and half an avocado? sign me up!

mound of French fries instead. Kind of funny. The black pudding and white pudding were surprisingly delicious—both little patties were seared until they were black as death, and had a crispiness that allowed me to forget that I was eating pig blood mixed with suet and oatmeal. And really, who wouldn’t prefer to forget that you’re eating pig blood mixed with suet and oatmeal?

I truly love Muldoon’s, but if I’m in the mood for a slightly classier experience, my favorite spot is Jameson’s pub, which serves the best burrito I’ve had in NYC (with the notable exception of the Tacos Morelos carts). You couldn’t possibly mistake Jameson’s breakfast burrito for legit Mexican food (ever see a breakfast burrito in Mexico? I didn’t think so), but it’s the perfect hangover breakfast, stuffed with about six eggs, bacon, and cheese, and topped with black bean sauce and half of an avocado. (You weren’t expecting vegetables in an Irish pub breakfast, were you?) Your lovely Irish-American breakfast burrito is served with Irish soda bread, coffee, and your choice of a bloody Mary or beer… all for $10.95.

comfort food, if your idea of comfort is an eight-pound mound of ground beef and whipped potatoes

Though the breakfast burritos are my absolute favorite, pretty much everything I’ve ever eaten at Jameson’s has been good-to-great, including the shepherd’s pie. Whenever I order it, the charming, sassy, overeducated bartender nods grimly and says, “ah yes, comfort food.” It’s delicious stuff, but you may or may not feel comforted after jamming your stomach with a massive, dense, 4000-calorie brick of beef, peas, carrots, and creamy mashed potatoes. But at least it’s a little bit more comforting than getting cussed out by an angry old lady.

Muldoon’s Irish Pub
692 3rd Ave. (between 43rd & 44th), Manhattan
Subway: Grand Central (4, 5, 6, 7, S trains)

Jameson’s Pub
975 2nd Ave. @ 52nd, Manhattan
Subway: 51st St. (6 train) or 53rd-Lexington (E train)

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You know that I prefer to eat my meals at cheap, independently owned restaurants… many of which are in a perpetual struggle to survive, no matter how good the food is. Of the restaurants I’ve visited in the past year, at least three (Chilean restaurant Barros Luco, Canadian spot T Poutine, and Vietnamese take-out joint Boi-To-Go) have closed; I’ve had my eye on several others (Iraqi restaurant La Kabbr and Algerian-owned Habib’s) that kicked the bucket before I had a chance to try them. The restaurant business is always absolutely brutal, even in the best of times.

kabuli (or qabili) palau... ridiculously tender lamb lurks in that mound

And then there are cases when the restaurant business is especially cruel: 2nd Avenue in the Upper East Side has been completely ripped apart by subway-related construction since sometime in 2010. Foot traffic along 2nd Avenue is down 50%, according to local merchants, who (unsuccessfully) begged their elected officials to create a sales-tax-free zone in the construction area. In all likelihood, the construction will cause trouble for a damned long time: depending on who you ask, the 2nd Avenue subway line won’t be operational until sometime in 2014 or 2015—at the very earliest.

It seems that Afghan Kebab House #2 has been hit particularly hard by the construction mayhem on 2nd Avenue. I figured that the restaurant would be relatively quiet at lunchtime, but I was a little bit disturbed to see that it was completely empty. We arrived toward the end of lunch hour, but it still was odd that there wasn’t a soul in sight, and the waiter looked surprised when I walked in. My friend and I lingered over a two-hour meal… and still didn’t see a soul walk into the restaurant, other than a well-dressed young woman with an Eastern European accent, who was just looking for work as a server. (Unsurprisingly, Afghan Kebab House #2 isn’t hiring.)

kebab combo, which looks unreasonably runty in this picture

Our food was pretty good, if a bit overpriced. We ordered kabuli palau (often spelled qabili palau), the national dish of Afghanistan. It was a tasty mound of ridiculously tender lamb chunks, served in a pilaf of brown basmati rice, raisins, carrots, and sliced almonds. We also ordered a kebab combo platter, which included a lamb tikka kebab, a beef kofta kebab (ground beef), and a chicken kebab, accompanied by more brown basmati rice and topped with more raisins. The lamb and chicken kebabs were solid but unremarkable; the beef, however, was beautifully loaded with fresh herbs, and had a nice, greenish hue to it. And everybody loves spicy green meat, right?

the greenish meat is the best... no, really

The food was perfectly good, but I smelled an unfortunate whiff of desperation in the inflated prices of our meals: we paid $21.95 for the kabuli palau, and $18.95 for the kebab combo. It seems that the restaurant has dramatically raised its rates since the construction started: I’d grabbed a takeout menu from the restaurant last year—just before construction started to wreak havoc on neighborhood businesses—and the kebab combo was listed at $13.50. A (presumably more recent) listing at menupages lists the kebab combo at $16.95 and the kabuli palau at $18.95. The place appears to be bumping up its prices, presumably in a desperate attempt to compensate for the falloff in business—and that’s never a good sign.

To be fair, Afghan Kebab House II is a pretty cute little cave of a restaurant, and I can see how it might be a worthwhile place to enjoy a long, calm night out with a few friends. And the food was perfectly good, if not mind-blowing; if you’re looking for an interesting, relaxed place in the Upper East Side, Afghan Kebab House II might be as appealing as anything in the neighborhood—even with the (arguably) bloated prices.

But it’s hard not to worry about the independent restaurants in the neighborhood—including the always-wonderful Burmese spot Café Mingala—when foot traffic has been decimated by the din of heavy machinery. Sure, once the new subway opens, there will be a huge boom in the neighborhood. Until then, our Afghan and Burmese friends will just have to muddle along and hope for the best.

green hot sauce goes really well with green meat

Afghan Kebab House II
1345 2nd Avenue, Manhattan
Subway: 68th Street—Hunter College (6 train)

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