156 of 170 countries eaten
(click on a country above to view blog post)
Know anybody from Burundi, Botswana, Oman, or any other
hard-to-find country? If so, I'd love to hear from you! unitednationsoffood@gmail.com
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It’s not that I don’t love Italian food. What sort of goofball doesn’t freaking love good Italian food? But tons of journalists, chefs, and bloggers spend their lives writing about Italian food, and I have 167 other countries to worry about (wanna help?). So I rarely say much about Italian food, unless I encounter a variation that’s truly unusual and special.
but some nice Sardinian mussels might make me more talkative
So yeah: Arco Cafe on the Upper West Side. It looks like a nice, normal Italian restaurant, on a nice, normal corner of Amsterdam Avenue. But hiding inside are some hard-to-find treats from Sardinia, an island off the coast of Italy that is woefully underappreciated by American devotees of Italian cuisine.
If you sit down at Arco Cafe, thinking that it’s a standard Italian place, you might expect to start with some nice, crusty Italian bread. Yeah, Arco Cafe has that. It’s fresh and delicious.
But Arco offers something far more interesting: Sardinian pane guttiau, a wafer-thin flatbread, flash-grilled with olive oil, salt, and rosemary. As we started munching, Daniele Fiori, the charming and patient Sardinian who co-owns the restaurant with his sister Francesca, explained that the flatbread was developed in Sardinia because it’s far less likely to spoil in the Sardinian climate than traditional bread, and Sardinian herders were able to transport the pane guttiau across long distances. Plus, it’s awfully tasty, especially if you’re enjoying it with a beautiful charcuterie plate.
yeah, like this
For round 2 of our meal, we were blessed by a pair of excellent Sardinian seafood plates. The first was zuppetta di cozze, mussels in a spicy tomato sauce spiked with Vermentino, a Sardinian wine. But I was absolutely obsessed with the moscardini al Cannonau, a bowl of ludicrously tender baby octopus, stewed in a deliciously subtle tomato-and-wine sauce, made from Cannonau, a Sardinian version of Grenache. As one might expect from islanders, Sardinians clearly know a thing or two about preparing seafood. (Mainland Europeans, incidentally, sometimes resort to violence to make octopus tender.)
deliciously drunk, but not abused
As one of our main courses, we had a fantastic Parmesan risotto, with braised short ribs. But that’s standard Italian fare: perfectly wonderful, but you’re here for Sardinian food. So you need malorredos: blissfully airy pasta, traditionally made by crushing the dough against a straw basket. These are gnocchi’s much brighter, airier, and more refined cousins, served at Arco with sweet sausage in a spicy tomato sauce. And I hear rumors that Daniele and his team will make malorredos with squid ink when the right ingredients are available – a uniquely Sardinian treat.
malorredos alla Campidanese
Maybe it was just because I’d drank too much of that lovely Sardinian wine that I rarely see in NYC (bottles of Cannonau and Vermentino, as recommended by Daniele), but this was one of those deeply enjoyable three-hour dinners that makes you do really silly things like ask the staff and owner to pose for a picture. Um, yeah… I, um, totally did that.
eat whatever these guys tell you to eat (pudgy goofball customer not pictured)
Fine, I admit it: I’m a goofball, sloshing with Cannonau and Vermentino. Now go eat Sardinian food.
As you may know, I’m a little bit salty about the African food scene in NYC. Don’t get me wrong: I still haven’t met a plate of African food that I didn’t like, and our city is blessed with some phenomenal African chefs. There just aren’t quite enough of them here.
Something like 15 of Africa’s 50-plus nations are represented in New York City restaurants. Some are represented well: for example, we have excellent Senegalese, Nigerian, Ghanaian, and Somali restaurants here. But the other 35 or 40 countries? Sadly, nothing. Heck, our president is the son of a Kenyan, but there are no Kenyan restaurants in New York. As eaters, we’re doing a lousy job of supporting African cuisine in New York, and that still makes me sad.
but this will cheer me right up
Fortunately, New York’s African food void is filled once a year by the wonderful women of the United Nations African Mothers Association (UNAMA), who offer a beautiful, home-cooked African buffet at their annual fundraiser each December. It’s a rare opportunity to cram countless hard-to-find African treats onto a single plate for just $40; in the most recent edition of the event, all proceeds supported the development of a school in Burkina Faso.
Moroccan chicken pastilla
As usual, somewhere around a dozen nationalities were represented in the UNAMA spread, and I did my best to sample some of everything. Highlights included a delicious whole fish from Equatorial Guinea, roasted with bacon and potatoes; an excellent South African breyani (similar in spirit to an Indian biryani) with matemba, a small dried fish; and a Moroccan chicken pastilla, consisting of layers of chicken and phyllo dough in a sweet, nutty syrup. It’s like a really phenomenal, meaty baklava, except that you don’t have to feel bad if you decide to eat a huge chunk of the stuff as your main dish.
no reason to feel bad about eating a huge chunk of Mozambican food, either
As in past years, I encountered a few dishes I’d never seen before, and managed to add a few new countries to the “eaten” list. I enjoyed my first taste of Mozambican food: shrimp curry, stewed in coconut milk, served atop rice. I also tried Cameroonian ndole for the first time: cassava leaves – which, incidentally, I absolutely love – cooked in peppers, onions, and stockfish. This rendition was pleasantly bitter, with a mild fish flavor; I thought it was delicious, but when I went back to the buffet for a second helping, I startled an African onlooker, who exclaimed, “Americans never like cassava leaves!”
what, we don’t love cassava leaves?!
Another highlight of the meal was the Libyan lamb tagine. Tagine is a fixture in Algerian and Moroccan restaurants, and it usually consists of large, delicious chunks of stewed meat, cooked with an array of vegetables and spices that can differ considerably from region to region. This was a different beast entirely: the tagine was served in meatball-sized pieces, topped with a sliced black olive. The tagine tasted strongly of dill, which pretty much made my day.
Well, not that my day needed to be made: there aren’t too many things that make me happier than the UNAMA lunch. See you next year, friends.
Special thanks to Marie Taqui and Lynn Walsh for providing details for this year’s event. As always, if you know anybody who might be willing to prepare a meal from other under-appreciated African nations, please email me at unitednationsoffood@gmail.com, or contact me via Twitter or Facebook.
The Baltic countries have provided an interesting trio of experiences during the course of my project. I had an absolute blast at a Latvian community center called the DV House – where I ate an outstanding, hearty holiday meal with a fleet of friendly Latvians — and at the New York Estonian House, where I ate pickled herring, drank enough Estonian booze to become flammable, and pretended to be a barn swallow.
I’m not so good at Lithuanian, but I’m guessing that “skanaus!” means “woohoo, tasty bacon everywhere!!”
Lithuania, though? My first attempt didn’t work out so well. I arrived at an awkward church event, had an unfriendly interaction with the priest, sheepishly nibbled a few baked goods, and that was it. I knew that my experience wasn’t a fair reflection of Lithuanian food or culture, but it was all I could find at the time. I checked the proverbial box somewhat unhappily, and moved on.
Fortunately, a friendly reader named Ramona (thank you, Ramona!) offered a chance for a do-over. The Avenue Restaurant & Bar, a wonderfully friendly neighborhood pub in Glendale, sporadically serves a Lithuanian brunch, roughly once a month. And it features lots of bacon. And I mean, like, lots of bacon.
koldunai (dumplings) served with… drum roll please… bacon!
The menu for the Lithuanian brunch is limited to just four items, and our wonderfully warm (non-Lithuanian) server kindly walked us through all of them. Koldunai, she explained, are small meat dumplings, served with sour cream and bacon. Kugelis is a hearty potato-and-egg casserole, served with sour cream and bacon. And cepelinai are giant potato dumplings, stuffed with meat and served with sour cream and bacon.
outside of a dumpling, bacon is a man’s best friend; inside of a dumpling… well, how about some tasty sausage?
The fourth and final menu item was a combination plate, with kugelis and desra. Our wonderful server explained that desra is type of sausage.
I rudely interjected: “Does it come with sour cream and bacon? I like it when my sausage is served with bacon.”
“No, it’s sausage, so it doesn’t come with – wait, actually, yeah. It’s in the combination platter with the kugelis, so it does have sour cream and bacon.”
I liked this place. A lot.
nope
You can’t go wrong with koldunai, which resemble small, pelmeni-like dumplings, stuffed with a beautifully seasoned nugget of beef and pork, and topped with bacon and sour cream. The kugelis was equally tasty: picture a three-dimensional potato latke, but with a hint of egg and plenty of bacon. And my favorite was probably the cepelinai, mostly because they seemed just a little bit more decadent: it was like eating a sausage meatball encased in a dense potato softball, topped with bacon. It was freaking delicious, and not something that would allow you to fit into clothes at the Leaner Men’s Shop across the street.
But who needs to shop at the Leaner Men’s Shop, anyway? You probably need to eat Lithuanian food instead.
no, really: you probably need to eat Lithuanian food
The Avenue Restaurant & Bar
Call ahead for information on Lithuanian brunches
(347) 725-3853
71-22 Myrtle Ave., Glendale, NY
Subway: Fresh Pond Rd. (M train)
There’s only one thing that you really need to know about Balkanika, a Macedonian-owned restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen: they serve cheese wrapped in chicken wrapped in bacon. It’s sort of like something you would use to tease a dog, except that it’s totally real and totally amazing.
Balkanika is part of a small cadre of dog-teasing somewhat upscale Balkan restaurants in NYC, joining the likes of Kafana and… OK, fine, maybe just Kafana, which is also pretty spectacular. The dining room is tastefully designed, the service is excellent, and the Macedonian chardonnay is tasty; you could reasonably bring a date, a business associate, or a stodgy parent for a meal there.
There’s a ton to like about this place: fantastic grilled meats, solid bureks, and a wide array of fresh mezedes. Our sprawling crew opted to share a combination platter of mezedes – including hummus, babaganouj, taramosalata, and an excellent kalamata olive tapenade, among other treats – bargain priced at $18 for six or $26 for a sampler of 18.
Though great mezedes always make me really happy, today’s winner remains… drum roll please… cheese wrapped in chicken wrapped in bacon. The delicacy is called chicken uvijac, and we ate it as part of the mixed grill for six people ($130), along with leek, spinach, cheese, beef bureks ($10 each).
Here, I’ll shut up:
(whimper)
I rarely say much about the service at the restaurants I visit, but Balkanika deserves some special love because we were total buttholes, and our server – a lovely Serbian woman – was an absolute Zen master. I spent 12 years working as a waiter and bartender, and I still have plenty of lingering pet peeves from my years in the restaurant industry. For example, I totally despise people who make a reservation for a large party, and then have their group show up late, with more people drifting in and out during the course of the meal.
We were totally those people. Two visitors ordered nothing and just occupied seats for a while; we ordered slowly, and ate even more slowly. We also didn’t order enough – the bill for our herd of 12 barely touched $20 per person. And we occupied the nicest corner of the restaurant for pretty much an entire Friday night.
And the server didn’t bat an eye. Clearly, she’s as great as the restaurant she works in. And you know what that means, right? She totally deserves some cheese wrapped in chicken wrapped in bacon…
…or at least a nice burek
Balkanika
691 9th Avenue
Subway: 50th Street (C, E, 1 trains) or 49th Street (N, Q, R)
When I first started this blog a few years ago, I had no idea what, exactly, I was trying to do. I started the blog only because I hoped that readers might tip me off to interesting food that I wouldn’t find on my own. Plus, the blog gave me an extra excuse to oink incessantly explore every corner of NYC, meet people from all over the world, and act like a complete porker.
But I had no idea how to write about food, and I sometimes fell into the trap of acting like an amateur food critic. Early in the project, I ate some meals that weren’t very good, and I wasn’t shy about saying so. In retrospect, that was not awesome. On a food blogger scale of 1 to a plate of nachos, I was moldy cat food.
monfongo is way better than moldy cat food…
…especially when you top it with tasty shrimp
For example, I ate at a solid-but-uninspiring Dominican restaurant in Harlem that gave me a mild case of indigestion. I completely hate that blog post now. There are plenty of excellent Dominican eateries in NYC, and I was being an impatient buttmunch when I wrote about one that I didn’t love. Now that I’m on the last leg of my project (wanna help?), I wish that I hadn’t been such a cranky biyatch about some of the meals I ate. In particular, I didn’t do the Dominican Republic justice. Sorry, D.R.: you deserve better.
As luck would have it, a friendly Dominican reader gave me an opportunity to atone for my crimes against Dominican cuisine. A lovely student named Earlene emailed me out of the clear blue sky, and invited me to her mother’s restaurant in Union City, NJ, so that they could dazzle me with some top-notch Dominican cooking – and an amazing immigrant story.
The restaurant, Juana y Gloria, is named after Earlene’s mother and aunt. The pair of sisters were brought to the U.S. a few decades ago by their brother, who initially came to here to become a monk, and then decided to ditch the monastery to become a successful businessman, just so that he could afford to bring the rest of his clan to the states.
Yes, Juana and Gloria’s brother is a monk-turned-immigrant-patriarch. You can’t make this stuff up.
well, pork with tallota is pretty much a religious experience, right?
The restaurant – now in business for around 20 years – is one of those places that features a different menu for every day of the week, and that’s usually a wonderful thing. On this particular Friday, I enjoyed a platter of pork stewed with chayote (a vaguely squash-like vegetable, known as tallota in the Dominican Republic), accompanied by side dishes of avocado, plantains, beans and rice, and some blissfully tender yuca.
As much as I loved my dish, I was sorta jealous of two of my companions who wisely ordered mofongo. Mofongo is the Dominican Republic’s gift from God rough equivalent of mashed potatoes, except that it’s made from mashed green plantains and it can be topped with any number of things, nearly all of which are much awesomer than gravy. My lovely wife ordered the mofongo topped with stewed chicken; our infamous Puerto Rican pal opted for the mofongo with shrimp, onions, and peppers, and that automatically makes him a superior human being to, like, pretty much anybody who doesn’t eat mofongo.
(And yes, I’m totally sucking up to him, hoping that he’ll let me steal more of his food next time. That dude eats quickly.)
yes, the cute short-haired woman is about to pounce face-first into the dessert
And just when we were all slipping into a pork-and-mofongo-induced coma, our wonderful hosts brought six desserts – one of everything on the menu. If you’re the a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that I don’t eat tons of dessert, so it never really occurred to me that the Dominican Republic might quietly be a hotbed of dessert genius. You can never really go wrong with flan, rum-soaked tres leches cake, or rice pudding – all of which were excellent. But since I’m from Iowa, you’ll have a special place in my heart if you feed me corn pudding. Juana y Gloria’s coconut-spiked milk pudding was even better, and the mildly misnamed dulce de naranja (literally “orange candy” or “orange sweets”) – made from honey-cured grapefruit rinds – was particularly outstanding and interesting.
view from the cute short-haired woman’s nose, two seconds later
And just when I thought that the meal couldn’t get any better, Earlene spoiled us with an after-lunch shot of mamajuana, which looks like a mildly misspelled illicit drug, but it’s actually an herb-infused libation, made by soaking wine in a blend of Dominican roots, herbs, and chunks of tree bark. The version Earlene offered tasted like a cross between spiced rum and mulled wine; it was delicious, and it’s traditionally thought to have curative properties. In particular, I think it helped cure any lingering remnants of my formerly sh*tty attitude toward Dominican food.
So, Dominican cuisine: you really are lovely and I’m sorry that I done you wrong. Now, Dominican cuisine, feel free to hit me in my mouth or my belly. Or just jump right in there anytime you want. Please?
A very belated thank you to Earlene, Juana, Gloria, and the lovable staff at Juana y Gloria for a great meal. And a very belated apology to Dominican food: sorry, I used to be a real dick.
Juana y Gloria
1801 Bergenline Ave.
Union City, NJ
