After the pair of billion-calorie meals I ate earlier in the week, I started to realize that I might just get fat doing this little project.  That worried me a little bit, so I decided to go out for a nice plate of palm butter.  Yes, “palm butter” is a classic Liberian entrée, and I’m sure that it’s about as healthy as it sounds.

anybody home?

Most Americans would probably think that Maima’s Liberian bistro is a little bit strange.  When we walked in at 2:00 in the afternoon, there wasn’t a soul in sight.  Maima’s is a six-table affair in a distant corner of Jamaica, so we weren’t exactly expecting a maître’d… but this was a little bit creepy.  No music, no customers, no kitchen noise.  Just an awkward silence.

My buddy Rene and I stood around feeling stupid for a few minutes, not sure whether we had inadvertently trespassed in an empty building that masqueraded as a restaurant.  Eventually, we wandered back into the kitchen, and finally spotted an older African gentleman at the back of the building.  He ambled over, and we awkwardly asked him for a menu.  He said something that I think meant “there is no menu, but we have some stuff that involves chicken and okra and palm butter.”  My buddy and I looked at him blankly, and asked him to repeat.  I think we ordered two dishes, called “chicken” and “okra.”

I have very mixed feelings about what happened next.  After about ten minutes, we were served two massive plates of rice, along with two massive bowls of oil.  The green and yellow bowl of oil had pureed okra and bits of

tastier than it looks... but probably exactly as healthy as it looks

meat and bone, and the reddish bowl of oil had some large chunks of chicken floating in it.  We were also served a tiny dish of an oily brown sauce.  The kindly cook/server smiled at us, and just said “pepper.”

Rene and I both love spice, so we threw a few flecks onto our okra oil.  Seriously, we’re both pretty tough when it comes to spice.  I’m a veteran  traveler who occasionally eats marinated jalepenos straight from a can.  Rene is a beefy Puerto Rican who once did a few months in military prison… and everybody in the brig was afraid of him.  He practices Krav Maga, which is probably the most brutal martial art in the world.  The little flecks of pepper almost made us both cry.  Very cute.  Two points for Maima’s, just for almost making my badass friend teary-eyed.

probably less healthy than it looks

(And just in case I’m making Rene sound like a shaved-headed militaristic animal:  he’s actually one of the nicest, most intelligent guys you’ll ever meet.  Built like a tank, but very non-threatening.)

The chicken dish was reasonably tasty, but not amazing.  It consisted of oil, chicken, oil, bits of pureed tomato, oil, lots of spices, oil, onion, and more oil… so I guess that maybe the sheer quantity of oil was amazing, even if the flavor wasn’t.   Communication was an issue, so I couldn’t quite tell whether we were actually eating the dish called “palm butter,” or if this was something else.

In any case, I think there’s something mildly terrifying about the fact that a dish called “palm butter” would be eaten as a main course.  It sounds like something that one might spread on tropical bread, or at least use sparingly as a condiment on breadfruit.  A whole bowl of it?  Straight to the hips.  Or straight to the arteries.  Or both.

The okra, on the other hand, was absolutely delicious.  The bowl contained oil, okra, oil, spices, oil, onions, and oil.  The oil overwhelmed the chicken dish, but it didn’t seem to overwhelm the flavor of the okra and spices.  If I were smarter, I would tell you more about the spices involved.  But I’m not that smart, and I did a really crappy job of asking questions while we were at Maima’s.  Sorry.

you mean that nice gentleman was a hostage?!?

By the time we had finished inhaling our mountains of rice with giant bowls of oily stuff (hey, it slid right down!), the matriarch (let’s call her Maima) had returned to the restaurant.  A few other African customers had come into the restaurant, but Maima took a particular interest in the pair of random white-ish guys who had somehow found their way to her establishment.   We asked her about dessert, and she said that she had banana bread and grapefruit pudding, but that we had to be careful of the banana bread because it was a little bit spicy.

Of course, we weren’t remotely hungry, and we knew that we wouldn’t be remotely hungry again until sometime next week.  But when a restaurant owner warns you that dessert is spicy, it’s awfully tough to resist.  And we also were worried that grapefruit might cause some curdling issues in any sort of milky pudding.  Which meant that we had to order some.

By some miracle, the grapefruit pudding was uncurdled, rather milky, and shockingly tasty.  Grapefruit is a fairly bitter fruit, so I struggled to imagine how it would work with milk and sugar.  But it actually had a great balance to it, and we both loved it.  I also managed to finish a big chunk of the banana bread, which was made from rice flour, bananas (duh), and a ton of ginger—which provided the spice that Maima warned us about.  Tremendous stuff.

The worst part about Maima’s is that it’s past the end of the subway line in Jamaica, and it was easily a one-hour trip each way from Midtown.  I should also mention that white Manhattanite weenies (disclaimer:  I’m white) who worry about “bad neighborhoods” would probably be uncomfortable in this area at night—we were easily the palest people around.  I’m not saying that this area is necessarily dangerous, but I know that many Manhattanites would feel awkward in much of Jamaica.  Just a friendly warning.

Is it worth the long subway ride?  For the dessert, probably.  For the main courses, probably not.  But Maima’s definitely has a certain novelty value (where else in the United States would you find Liberian cuisine?), and the food is very reasonably priced—we paid a grand total of $21 for two entrees and two desserts.  If you live in Queens or don’t mind a long trek from other parts of NYC, drop by for a bite or two.

Maima’s Liberian Bistro
106-47 Guy Brewer Road, Jamaica, Queens
Subway: Jamaica Center (E, J, Z trains)

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In a way, I suddenly feel like I’ve cheated myself:  for my first two stops on the United Nations of Food (NYC) tour, I’ve sampled cuisines from countries that I’ve already visited.  Pretty lame, huh?

About six years ago, I spent a long weekend visiting an old friend in Krakow, Poland.  Unless you’re Polish, you probably have never thought that Polish cuisine could possibly be anything all that impressive.  You might have a vague suspicion that knishes and pierogies and (if you’re really smart) Polish sausages have their roots in Poland, but that’s probably about it.

But contrary to popular belief, you can actually get some outrageously tasty, varied cuisine in Poland.  I ate myself into a very happy stupor during my brief time in Poland.  Sure, we ate great pierogies, but also some amazing stews, goulashes, breads, kebabs, sausages, fresh hams, and salads.  Yes, salads.  I have a vague memory of a trip to a cafeteria that specialized in several dozen different types of salads, including a seemingly infinite number of variations on lentils, beets, cabbage, kohlrabi, and tomatoes.  That was pretty exciting stuff, especially considering that I was backpacking through Eastern Europe in January.

So I saw some good reviews of Greenpoint’s Karczma online, and decided that I should give it a shot.  The place has an over-the-top Polish countryside theme, complete with a fake wooden wishing well and waitresses in traditional Polish peasant garb.  All of the furniture was made of very large, manly slabs of dark wood, much like a few of the “traditional” places I visited in Krakow (which invariably catered primarily to tourists—I don’t think that most Polish restaurants necessarily look like some stereotypical cartoon image of the Polish countryside).

my Russian half is officially confused

The bad news is that I came into Karczma with high expectations, thanks to the online reviews and my own experiences in Poland.  I was far from disappointed, but I wasn’t completely thrilled, either.  We started with a bowl of white borscht ($3.50), served in a very tasty fresh bread bowl.  This particular borscht apparently had nothing to do with beets, which would deeply perplex the Russian branch of my family.  It was a sausage, potato, and ham-based concoction that was vaguely reminiscent of a porky, creamless version of the potato-leek soups that frequently appear in American and continental restaurants.  The soup was served with a small side of pureed potatoes garnished with chopped ham, which added a nice heft to the borscht.  No complaints so far.

Our main courses involved some serious meat and potatoes.  I ordered the Plate of Polish Specialties ($10.50), which had a pair of fried potato pancakes, a big chunk of kielbasa, three good-sized pierogies, some stuffed cabbage, and a

perfectly palatable Polish pu-pu platter

cabbage-based mush called hunter’s stew.  A good dish overall, but some bits were better than others.  Fried potato pancakes (nearly identical to the potato latkes that mom used to make) are always tasty—it’s awfully tough to make fried potatoes taste bad.  The big hunk of sausage was also a safe bet—it lacked the nice little kick of its Ecuadorian counterpart, but I wasn’t expecting anything different.   The pierogies were fresh and tasty, but not astounding.  The hunter’s stew looked and tasted like a dark blob of slightly burnt, warm cole slaw.  Not a winner.  Perhaps it’s an acquired taste.

Since I ordered the combo platter, I forced my buddy Ryan to order something different.  He chose the Spicy Beef Goulash ($8.50), which was a monstrous plate of stewed cow, served with a side of potato pancakes and pickes.  The goulash

monstrous plate of cow

didn’t have any particular flair to it—just beef, in a perfectly reasonable, non-spicy reddish stew.  It was a massive quantity of food, and that’s a good thing.  It was tasty, and that’s a good thing.  Again, no complaints.

From a food perspective, I would give a solid thumbs-up to Karczma.  The food was good.  Actually, I’d even say that the food was very good, with the exception of the hunter’s stew.  But if I wasn’t writing a wordy blog post about it, I would completely forget about the meal within a few weeks.  It was good, but not astoundingly unique or mind-blowing or groundbreaking in any way.  Worth the trip to Greenpoint (Karczma is located one block from the Greenpoint Ave. station on the G line, which hardly ever runs when you really want it to) if you’re curious about Polish food, but not a must-see if you have no particular reason to crave Polish food.

I do have to take a quick potshot at the service, however.  The waitresses in their cute little peasant outfits were efficient, but I had a funny feeling that they hated us for no particular reason.  I didn’t take it personally—they probably acted like they hated pretty much everybody, except for people that they very specifically did not hate.  This wouldn’t stop me from coming back, but if you’re sensitive to service styles, you wouldn’t be too happy here.

And if you get excited about vegetables, you also wouldn’t be too happy at Karczma.  The only crappy part of our meal was the hunter’s stew—which happened to be the only thing that actually contained vegetables.  Basically, meals at Karczma generally consist of meat and potatoes, accented with just enough cabbage to push everything else through your bowels.  So if you’re ready to get your meat-and-potatoes fix, you’ll leave here with a smile and one hell of a food coma.

Karczma Polish Restaurant
136 Greenpoint Ave., Brooklyn
Subway: Greenpoint Ave. station (G train)

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There is absolutely no reason why I started with Ecuador, other than the fact that my girlfriend had already made lunch plans with an Ecuadorian friend of hers today.  Since I’m lazy, I thought I’d let somebody else (luckily, a real Ecuadorian) do the food-hunting for me.  Our lovely friend Andrea called her father, who insisted that Corona’s Mitad del Mundo has NYC’s finest Ecuadorian cuisine.

Before I continue, a disclaimer:  once upon a time, I spent a month in Ecuador on a deeply dysfunctional tour with a bizarre modern dance company.  I wasn’t particularly impressed with Ecuadorian food during the trip, and I now realize that I got the total shaft, at least from a culinary perspective.  During our three weeks in Quito, we ate a continental breakfast in our hotel pretty much every morning, ate lunch at our sponsor’s café every afternoon (all I can remember was the ceviche, which was invariably amazing… and, for some reason, served with popcorn), and I can barely remember any of the dinners.  I think we ate Clif Bars when we didn’t have time for much else; if we weren’t buried in rehearsals or performances at night, we probably went out for empanadas or burgers or Chinese food.  Aside from the ceviche, I didn’t eat anything that I couldn’t get in most other countries in the world.  Sad, right?

After the tour was over (all I really need to say about the dance tour is that  A) there were four directors and only five “rank-and-file” dancers, which was a recipe for disaster, and B) our only full dress rehearsal ended in a bilingual shouting match among three directors—none of whom were actually bilingual, and C) thousands of Ecuadorians have seen my penis), I ran away to a little fishing village near the Colombian border for a week.  For breakfast every morning, I ate rice, eggs, and fried plantains.  For lunch, I ate rice, fish, and fried plantains.  For dinner, I ate more rice, more fish, and more fried plantains.  My diet didn’t vary at all for a full week.  I gained five pounds, and was very happy.

And I apparently learned nothing at all about Ecuadorian food.

With some coaching from Andrea, we ordered the three dishes that were, in her estimation, the most “typical” Ecuadorian options on the menu.  I recognized exactly none of them.  That should be conclusive proof that I completely blew it when I was in Ecuador.

plantain fried rice?

I ordered the chaulafan ($11),  which is Ecuador’s version of fried rice.  It had an unholy mixture of shrimp, pork, chicken, chorizo, onions, peppers, plantains, and other random bits of vegetable and animal.  It seemed like the sort of dish that starts as a household inevitability (“let’s fry random scraps of whatever we have with some nice, cheap rice, and pretend that it’s a full meal”) and grows into a beloved national staple.  It was pretty darned tasty, if not terribly remarkable—if it weren’t for the chorizo and plantains, it would be nearly indistinguishable from some of the fried rice variations served in Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants all over the globe.  I definitely enjoyed the dish, but it really wasn’t much of a story.

My companions were much smarter than I was.  My girlfriend ordered a tasty little number called mote pillo ($11.95), which

sausage-like objects in picture may be larger than they appear

consists of massive chunks of white hominy (imagine a bloated version of Mexican posole if you’re familiar with it; otherwise, just picture nickel-sized kernels of chewy white corn) fried with eggs and little flecks of tomatoes, onions, and peppers.  It wasn’t the prettiest pile of food, but it was huge… and really, really tasty.  Easily three-fourths of the dish was corn, but the eggs held it all together, and there was just enough spice to the eggs to overcome the blandness of white corn.  I absolutely loved it, and ate an embarrassingly large amount of Amber’s plate.

We did a thoroughly crappy job of reading the menu, and didn’t realize that the mote pillo came with a steak and a large chorizo.  So in addition to the epic plate of corny stuff, Amber was staring at about a pound of meat.  Awesome.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about the meat itself.  In much of Latin America (Argentina is a notable exception), steaks are often broad and paper-thin, and are usually cooked too well for my taste.  This one was no exception; it had a nice charred flavor to it, but was a wee bit too chewy.  Most Americans would be a little bit disappointed in that part of the dish.  Chorizo, for its part, is awfully tough to ruin.  Mmm… spicy pig intestine.  All good there.

mmmm... pig belly

Andrea, as our token Ecuadorian, ordered something that would terrify most Americans:  guatita ($9.95), which translates roughly as “little belly.”  So, um, yeah… belly and other intestinal bits, stewed in a bright orange sauce.

Believe it or not, I’ve eaten a lot of pig stomach in my life.  Virtually every time I’ve traveled outside of the United States, one of my local companions inevitably gets an evil glint in their eye at a restaurant or roadside stand, and decides to introduce me to a local delicacy of some sort.  Often, these delicacies involve animal parts that Americans don’t usually eat.  I’ve had plenty of intestines (I actually liked the rice noodle-stuffed pig intestines served on the streets in Korea), an occasional encounter with heads or hooves (I now know for certain that boiled, chilled pig’s feet with chile sauce is NOT my thing), and a fair amount of stomach.  I could never quite get over the texture, honestly.  Way too chewy, though I had a spicy stomach dish in Spain once that had an astoundingly tasty sauce.  Too bad I couldn’t handle anything more than dipping my bread in it.  (Yeah, fine, I’m a wuss.)

Mitad del Mundo’s “little belly” was actually the best I’d ever had.  The sauce was a mildly spicy goo made primarily from pureed potatoes, peanuts, peppers, and onions, and it was pretty darned nice–the peanuts were far from overpowering, and I actually thought that the sauce was some sort of spicy squash-based stew until told otherwise.

The impressive part?  The belly was actually chewable.  Chewable belly… I had no idea that it was even possible.  Andrea explained that Ecuadorians are more patient than other nationalities, and that stomachs are stewed literally for days before being chewed.

So if I have any complaint about Mitad del Mundo, it would probably be that the service is a little bit unfriendly and indifferent.  Otherwise, two thumbs up for this place.  Mote pillo is the sort of dish that I would eat over and over and over again…or at least, I would eat it every damned day if I wasn’t worried about turning into a blimp.  I’d be lying if I told you that I would ever eat stomach with any regularity, but I at least have to give the place some credit for cooking up a version that didn’t make me squirm like a piglet in a sausage factory.

Mitad del Mundo Restaurant (no website)
10410 Roosevelt Ave., Flushing, NY
Subway: 103rd Street – Corona Plaza station (7 train)

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