The Mango Lassie

I am a fan of the classic New York hot dog. They may not be quite as good as my beloved Vienna Beef Chicago dogs or the beer-boiled brats I eat when I go to Wisconsin, but sometimes a hot dog from one of the Sabrett carts on every New York street corner can really hit the spot. One of those times is late at night after a few drinks. Unfortunately, many street-corner hot dog vendors have packed up by then. That’s the genius behind Bark, the carefully sourced hot dog spot on the edge of Park Slope, that is open until 2 am on Friday and Saturday nights. Empanada Boy and I stopped in on Friday on our way home from seeing “Sleep No More,” the fascinating interactive production of the story of Macbeth being staged in a Chelsea warehouse. We had an early start time for the performance and had not had time to eat beforehand. We also had drinks at the venue’s bar, including potent absinthe and elderflower cocktails. The combination was enough to have me conked out on the subway. Only food could revive me at that late hour. Bark was open and ready to receive us.

The inside of the restaurant is typical Brooklyn minimalist, with a number of long, high communal wooden tables and a few smaller individual tables. Patrons sidle up to the counter and order from a large chalkboard menu. This includes hot dogs with seven or eight different toppings, such as the bacon cheddar dog and the chili cheese dog. There are also burgers and other sausages like brats and weisswurst, in addition to various kinds of French fries, shakes and a few other sandwiches. Always one for a classic, I orders the Bark dog, made with sweet pepper, onions and yellow mustard. EB went for the pickle dog with two kinds of house made pickles, mayonnaise and mustard. We also asked for one order of fries to split between the two of us and sat down at one of the high tables to wait.

The dogs and fries were delivered in short order, and we ravenously began to dig in. The hot dogs, made exclusively for Bark by Hartmann’s Old World Sausage in Rochester, NY, had a commendable snap to them, their skins releasing flavorful juices with each bite. But the toppings on my dog were fairly unimpressive: Chopped red onions were pedestrian, and sweet peppers were few and far between. EB’s toppings were a little more noteworthy. His dog sported crunchy sweet and sour pickles, which set off the richness of the mayonnaise. The buns had more flavor and more satisfying chew to them than your average street corner hot dog, but nothing can replace Chicago’s traditional poppyseed bun in my mind.

Nontheless, we downed those puppies in a matter of minutes, pausing only to snag some of the thin, crispy fries. I like to dip my fries in mustard (ketchup being a little too sweet for my taste), and I was delighted to find both plain yellow and Dijon varieties on the table. There was also malt vinegar, another favorite condiment of mine. According to the detailed “Resources Menu” section of Bark’s website, all condiments are house made except for the ketchup (Heinz’s), yellow mustard (French’s) and mayonnaise (Hellman’s). Bark doesn’t hold a candle to Chicago favorites like Hot Doug’s in my mind, but for a New York dog, this is about as good as it gets.

Bark Hot Dogs
474 Bergen St.
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718.789.1939

Last spring, my cousin Leftover Girl relaunched her fashion blog, Neon Mamacita after a post-college hiatus. The blog always had well-curated photos of cutting-edge fashion, but now it has a whole new dimension: original photographs of Leftover Girl and friends modeling vintage fashion that she is selling on her own Etsy site. A vintage clothing addict myself, I have become a huge fan of Neon Mamacita Vintage and look forward to Leftover Girl’s weekly posts. Part of the reason I love it so much is that most of the original photos are shot by Leftover Girl’s brother, Cousin Ketchup, who is a professional photographer and a great artist. Now you may be wondering what all of this has to do with food. Well, despite being the only two bloggers in our family Leftover Girl and I never thought of collaborating until last week. Over dinner at a restaurant, we hatched the idea of doing a combination vintage fashion shoot and food review. Neon Mamacita Vintage currently has an abundance of great midcentury dresses, so we decided to dress up as ladies who lunch. Of course, if we were really doing ladies who lunch, we would go to tea at the Plaza or go to the Palm and pick at our cobb salads, but this is The Mango Lassie, so cheap gets the final word. We also wanted proximity to my house to avoid having to walk too far in public in our period finery.

I knew the perfect place. We would head up Fifth Avenue in Park Slope to Trois Pommes Patisserie, a quaint little spot with tiled floors and small marble cafe tables, that serves fantastic pastries, along with Stumptown coffee and fine teas. Chef and owner Emily Isaac was once the pastry chef at the stellar Union Square Cafe. Her pedigree shows in the delicacy of her crusts and the complexity and creativity of her offerings. The last time Mango Mama visited, I hosted a brunch at my house and didn’t have time to make my traditional coffee cake. Mango Mama walked into Trois Pommes and bought a dried cherry cornmeal cake that was to die for, as the ladies who lunch would say. Mango Mama told me today that she still thinks about it months later.

Leftover Girl and I strolled toward the bakery in our dresses, coats, hats and kid gloves. We pretended to gossip about whose son was getting into Dalton and who was buying a new summer home in the Hamptons. Ketchup followed, camera in hand, snapping shots of us as we walked. I wore a pink and white dress with a bow at the waist that looked like something Betty Draper might have worn in her more innocent, more demure days. (It’s for sale on Neon Mamacita!) On my head, I had a wide brimmed pink hat, which doubled as Gael Greene-esque way to preserve my anonymity on this blog. My coat (also for sale) was a sort of brocade with a blue willow-like pattern and a velvet collar. White pearls and my grandma’s white leather gloves and rhinestone brooch rounded out the ensemble. Leftover Girl wore a white dress under an animal printed hooded coat with red velour pumps and a feathered hat hand-beaded by our aunt, Okonomiyaki, an exceptional artist.

This being our lunch, we walked up to the counter in the patisserie (not minding the sideways glances were got from a few people inside) and ordered a mini bacon quiche. For dessert, we snagged a lemon meringue tartlet. We sat down at the bench in the window and dug in– while still maintaining our ladylike sense of propriety, of course. That quiche, which we ate slightly warmed from the oven, was by far the best one I’ve ever had. The buttery crust was flaky, rich and melted in my mouth. But it was the filling that set this quiche over the top. The eggs were mixed with cream to form a luscious custard. This was embedded with squares of smoky bacon. Ketchup took a couple bites and decided to get a quiche of his own. He tried the spinach variety, which was equally creamy but not quite as decadent as its meaty friend. We washed these down with a raspberry iced tea (Leftover Girl) and an almond rose hot tea (me). Trois Pommes only serves in cardboard takeout cups and on plastic plates. Utensils were all plastic too. While these made for slightly inconvenient eating and less attractive fashion photography, we thought it fit our “on a budget” caveat pretty well.

Dessert was the lemon meringue tartlet whose crust was as butter-kissed as those of the quiche. The filling could have been a bit tarter for my taste, and the slightly chewy texture of the meringue was a bit unsatisfying. In truth, I probably would have been ecstatic to be served this tartlet at any patisserie in the city, but even this delicious dessert couldn’t outshine those quiches. Perhaps the red velvet “Twinkies” in the case could have done it, but I doubt it. Filled with butteriness, we saved a quarter of the lemon tart for Empanada Boy who had opted not to join us. After all, ladies who lunch should not be seen cleaning their plates.

Ketchup took more photos of our clothing against the backdrop of the cushioned window seat. The patisserie really did make a lovely, colorful, sensuous backdrop for Neon Mamacita’s fashions. We put our coats back on to head back out to the street to pose in front of a stately brownstone or two. But before we left Trois Pommes, we clinked our paper and plastic teacups together in a toast to our food and fashion collaboration. Based on the success of our first joint effort, it’s safe to say that the Mango Lassie and Neon Mamacita will meet again soon.

For more views of the clothing we wore, see NeonMamacita.com.

Trois Pommes Patisserie
260 Fifth Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718.230.3119

I have a policy of never reviewing the food my friends make. I see it as a largely pointless and potentially harmful exercise. If I say good things about a friend’s food, my readers may think I am merely being nice. If I say bad things, then I may lose a friend, something worth eating many an overdone chicken breast or mystery tofu scramble to avoid. As it is, friends rarely invite me over for a meal. I am left to conclude that this is either because they think my standards are too high, or because they simply don’t cook. But I am going to break my own rule today by describing what is only the latest feat of culinary skill expertly executed by my friend Oyster: Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Great Turduckening!

First, a definition: A turducken is a deboned chicken, stuffed inside a deboned duck, which is then stuffed inside a deboned turkey. Actually, the turkey still has its leg and wing bones, but no thoracic cavity. As I found out yesterday, turducken is traditional in Louisiana, which is where the idea of stuffing fowl inside each other allegedly first made landfall on this side of the Atlantic. People outside of the South sometimes eat turducken on Thanksgiving for a change of pace. Oyster was recently in New Orleans, which is where he hatched a plan to bring the turducken tradition back to his friends in the Mid-Atlantic. He would cook enough to feed us all, in addition to providing New Orleans-style beans and rice and a keg of Natty Lite—or was it Miller High Life?

Before I get into the details of this elaborate affair, I must mention some of the other food-focused parties Oyster has had this year. In February, he earned his name, buying 300 oysters from a wholesale supplier, shucking some to put into a delicious stew, some to bake and whole hell of a lot to slurp down raw with a squirt of lemon juice. Then in April, while I was (sadly) in San Francisco, Oyster held a crawfish boil for which he purchased 100 pounds of mudbugs from a dude down in Louisiana and had them shipped up. There were also alligator steaks. Most recently, in July, Oyster went to Cape Cod and caught a bunch of quahog clams. He brought them home and topped them with bacon-herb bread crumbs, baking them until the topping was crisp (pictured here). Again, he invited his friends to partake. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: Oyster is a giver, and all of us who love to eat count ourselves lucky to be among his friends.

For the this feast, Oyster decided to buy his turducken preassembled. If anyone might have figured out how to debone three birds and properly assemble them into this portmanteau of birds, it would be Oyster, but the man has a full-time job. He first tried calling the premium New York meat purveyor Lobel’s, but he was told the two turducken would cost him $275 each. Oyster is generous, but not stupid. He called up a butcher in New Orleans, and his more affordable turducken were put on the next flight out. (I heard from one of his colleagues that the birds were shipped to the office, creating quite a stir.) We had all assembled in Oyster’s cement side yard where we drank beer as we awaited the main course. Eventually, a big pot of delicious andouille-laden beans and rice came down from the apartment kitchen. The first turducken, now sliced into large rounds exposing rings of each meat, arrived soon after. Beer-filled and ravenous, we lost no time in digging in.

The meat was tender, a testament to Oyster’s care, but I found it somewhat bland. It took me a minute or two to puzzle out why. It basically boils down to this: Two of the things that make poultry taste good are bones and crackled skin. By definition, the turducken has minimal amounts of both of these things. Duck, in particular, is nothing without the skin. As a gamier meat, it also benefits from being cooked slightly rare, something that could not be achieved with a turducken because the chicken in the middle must be cooked through.

For dessert, I made a brown butter nectarine cake featured in a Melissa Clark column in the New York Times earlier this summer. I figured we might as well eat nectarines before all the nectarines are gone, and what better way to eat them than atop a brown butter-infused base?

Any criticism of turducken I have detailed here is, of course, not to say that I didn’t appreciate Oyster’s supremely competent effort. Not having tried another turducken, I can only assume that he cooked these to perfection. I would have been so unsure of my ability to prepare one of these that I never would have attempted it in the first place. I may have implied above that the turducken is a flawed concept, and I’m not going to go so far as to moderate that stance. But, flawed or not, I am entirely willing to eat turducken, especially when it is cooked by a good friend.

Many thanks to one of Oyster’s college friends for the top photo. He had a much better camera than I did.

The culinary aspiration of the moment for the liberal elite of urban America seems to be finding ways to keep themselves (or should I say ourselves?) from feeling guilty about the ethical and environmental impact of eating hamburgers. My visit a few weeks ago to BareBurger, the new organic, grass-fed burger joint up the Slope from my house, lent weight to this theory. It was further confirmed just a few days ago in Portland when Flava Flav and her boyfriend Hot Dog took me to Little Big Burger, a minimalist spot boasting high-quality, local ingredients (including ketchup) and truffled-oiled fries. Are either of these new gourmet guilt-free burger joints worth the price or hype? These are the kinds of questions the Mango Lassie was born to answer.

Empanada Boy and I went to BareBurger with my good friend Red Pepper and her fiancé, McIntosh Apple to bid them goodbye before their move to Evanston, Illinois. The restaurant is a chain in the making with a location in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, two locations in Manhattan and another three opening in Astoria, Chelsea and the Upper East Side, respectively. The Park Slope location has only been open for about a month, and it has had lines out the door since day one. This company has obviously done its market research. We were told it would be a 45-minute wait to sit down, but it ended up only being about 25 minutes. The four of us sat at a high wooden table under a chandelier fashioned out of old spoons. We ordered a pitcher of the Belgian-style Hennepin Ale from Ommegang in Cooperstown, NY, one of the many local beers the restaurant offers on tap. We also got an order of the assorted pickles, which include spicy sriracha-habanero pickle chips, bread and butter pickle chips and garlic-dill pickle chips from Rick’s Picks, along with a zingy housemade coleslaw. In addition to being local, Rick’s Picks are tasty, though perhaps not as good as the ones I make myself. Still, I never say no to a pickle.

BareBurger offers 14 different six-ounce burgers ranging from the Classic with dill pickle relish and grilled onions ($8.45) to the Big Blue Bacon Burger ($11.95), topped with Danish blue cheese, sauteed mushrooms, grilled onions, applewood smoked bacon, lettuce and peppercorn steak sauce. The BareBurger Supreme ($10.95), pictured above, comes crowned with two onion rings. Each of these burgers can be ordered with patties made from beef, turkey, vegetables or portabella mushrooms. For an extra $1, the adventurous can order patties made from lamb, elk or bison. (EB, of course, had the bison.) Ostrich meat is available for market price. I have long held that the only good way to determine the quality of a burger joint is to try the basic burger without any fancy toppings—no cheese, meat or wild game. I ordered the Classic cooked medium-rare and served on a brioche bun. The grass-fed beef was tender and delicious (as it should be for that price), making this the best burger I’ve had in the neighborhood. The combo basket of French fries and onion rings we ordered to share were nicely crisped and came with a veritable refrigerator’s worth of condiments: curry ketchup, peppercorn steak sauce, spicy chipotle mayo and BareBurger special sauce. BareBurger was good, not because of the fancy toppings and menagerie of meat choices, but because the meat was of a high quality and properly cooked.

Little Big Burger is channeling a retro minimalist aesthetic popularized by California’s In-n-Out. The burgers are small (1/4 lb.) and simple. In fact, the menu consists of a mere six items: a hamburger, a cheeseburger, a veggie burger, fries, soda and floats. Now, it must be said that these burgers are not just any burgers. They are made with Cascade Natural Beef—pasture-raised, grain-finished beef, grown by local ranchers. And while the fries may look simple and basic, they are also not just any fries. They are laced with truffle oil!!! The question was whether any of these extra flourishes would result in notably better food.

Flava Flav and I got hamburgers, and Hot Dog got a cheeseburger with Swiss. The burgers are only $3.25, but they are closer in size to a slider than to BareBurger’s massive offerings. The bun was tasty, but I found the meat a little dry and overcooked. It crumbled in my mouth as I took a bite. Flav said she thought the patties had been better prepared on her previous visits. The fries were well made, although I only tasted the truffle oil during a few illusory bites. Truffle oil isn’t really made with truffles anyway, which makes it something of a gimmick to begin with.

One thing I definitely liked about Little Big Burger was the locally made condiments. There was a bright and tangy ketchup (“catsup” as the bottle calls it) and a “fry sauce,” a blend of mayonnaise and ketchup. Both are made by Camden’s, a line started by Portland chef Micah Camden, exclusively for the restaurant. I still pined for mustard, my favorite condiment, but these were distinctive and worthwhile. I originally thought Little Big Burger was a stand-alone spot. Upon further research, I learned that, like BareBurger, it is also a burgeoning chain. The restaurant has two locations in Portland, one opening in Eugene and another opening in Los Altos, California. Personally, I prefer the Vancouver, Washington-based regional chain Burgerville, which also uses Cascade Natural Beef and makes excellent milkshakes and sweet potato fries. But perhaps Little Big Burger will start to grow on me as it adopts the quality control necessary for a chain. Either way, I know I will again be shelling out the big bucks for BareBurger the next time I want to eat a lot of meat and maintain a relatively clear conscience.

BareBurger
170 7th Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718.768.BARE

Little Big Burger
122 NW 10th Ave.
Portland, OR 97209
503.274.9008

Perhaps Empanada Boy said it best when he observed: “The main difference between ramen and pho is that ramen costs at least twice as much.” While that’s certainly not a precise assessment, it captures the way I often feel when ordering ramen at a restaurant. I think to myself: “This had better be good because I’m paying $14 for this bowl of soup.” This thought crossed my mind the other day when EB and I met my friend Oyster at Zuzu Ramen, a restaurant on Park Slope’s industrial 4th Ave. Oyster lives nearby, and the pork belly in the signature dish had been tasty enough to beckon him back more than a few times. It turns out that Oyster’s instincts about this being more than the average ramen joint were right on. The chef at Zuzu, Akihiro Moroto, has worked at fine dining establishments such as the now-shuttered Lespinasse and at Jean Georges. But did that make a bowl of his Zuzu ramen worth $14? I was game to find out.

The small wood-panelled restaurant has high counters and tables, equipped with stools. It has large windows looking out into the street and windows at the bar, offering patrons views of the chef at work in the kitchen. As I sipped an interesting Japanese IPA, I watched the chef using a torch to crisp the long thin pieces of fatty pork that would soon grace our soups. Oyster and I ordered the namesake Zuzu ramen, with charshu (the blowtorched pork), bamboo shoots, bok choy, Thai basil, noodles and a slow-cooked egg, served in a slightly spicy, fragrant dashi broth. EB went for what turned out to be a somewhat spicier green curry-miso ramen, redolent with cilantro and featuring charshu and a slow-cooked egg. We sipped our beers and eagerly awaited the arrival of our soups.

In due course, three steaming bowls of soup were delivered to our table. I started with a bite of the charshu, which was floating, silken and buttery, at the top of my bowl. It was certainly tasty. The noodles had a nice chew to them and a springiness that shows they were fresher than average. Breaking the soft-cooked egg allowed some of the yolk to run satisfyingly into the broth. The broth itself was tasty, particularly bites that included Thai basil, but it was not remarkable. I preferred the green curry-miso broth in EB’s bowl. It was punchy and flavorful, but still nuanced, and set off the richness of the meat and the egg more clearly. It was also $11, compared to the $14 Zuzu ramen (the latter admittedly delivered in a slightly larger bowl).

There is no doubt that Zuzu makes the best ramen in Park Slope. It’s far better than the fairly generic bowls I’ve had at the recently-opened Naruto Ramen around the corner from my house. I don’t think it quite holds up to the addictive ramen at Ipuddo, the Japanese chain with a single New York location in the East Village. But then again, I’ve waited for a table at Ippudo for more than an hour and was once simply turned away at the door at 8:30 pm or so because the list of people waiting was so numerous. There would never be such a wait at the relatively serene Zuzu. And while I could always go to Chinatown and fill my soup craving with a $5.75 bowl of pho, there are times when the top-notch ingredients in a good bowl of ramen, and the subtleties of the flavors they create, really hit the spot. When that contemplative mood strikes me—or when I’m simply craving a nice slab of braised pork—Zuzu Ramen will be right there near the top of my list. Is that occasional feeling of pure satisfaction worth $14 a bowl? I suppose it is.

Zuzu Ramen
173 4th Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718.398.ZUZU

Naruto Ramen
276 5th Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718.832.1111

Ippudo NY
65 4th Ave.
New York, NY 10003
212.388.0088

When Empanada Boy and I moved to Park Slope, Brooklyn from Washington Heights, the heavily Dominican and Puerto Rican neighborhood at the northern tip of Manhattan, I thought that even though we might be leaving tostones and arroz con pollo behind we would at least be getting some good bagels and challah. After all, Brooklyn has the largest concentration of Jews outside Israel and Park Slope is home to the largest reform Jewish temple in Brooklyn. When we got here, there were delicious bagels aplenty, but finding good challah was a struggle.

Back in the Heights, we typically bought Zomick’s challah (see above), which is made on Long Island and is sold at most New York grocery stores in a green-checkered plastic bag. It’s soft and fluffy, with a slight chew and a little sweetness. It makes a pretty good French toast (essential to preserving my family’s Saturday morning tradition). It also miraculously stays fresh-tasting for much longer than it probably should and only comes in plain or raisin varieties. Do poppy and sesame seeds just cut too far into the already slim challah profit margins? I’m not sure. All I know is that after doing our best to sample all the challah varieties that our Brooklyn surroundings have to offer, we are now back to where we started, buying Zomick’s at the grocery store, and no closer to the challah ideal than when we first arrived in New York. How did we get here, you might ask? Allow me to recount the steps.

The first place we tried after moving to the south end of the Slope was Lopez Bakery. It was an unlikely first choice because it’s a Mexican bakery, specializing in various kinds of pan dulce and some basic breads. We selected it for it’s proximity and for the fact that it’s actually a bakery, meaning breads are baked on the premises. This turns out to be a very rare thing in Brooklyn and in New York in general when it comes to savory breads. In Portland, I can count at least five bakeries that make their own breads, including fantastic challah— and it’s not exactly a Jewish hotbed. But I digress… the challah from Lopez actually tasted a lot like pan de muertos, the egg bread made for Day of the Dead, minus the anise flavoring. While this traditionally has many of the same ingredients as challah, it also tends to be dry and a little stale tasting, which this challah also was. Our next thought was to try the challah made by Hudson Valley bakery Bread Alone. This one is sold at our food coop, where we do almost all of our shopping. But like nearly every other Bread Alone product I’ve sampled (so overrated!), this one was dry, bland and disappointing.

Our third try was somewhat better. We have always liked Amy’s Bread one of a handful of great bread bakeries in New York City. When we saw that Grab Speciality Foods, a gourmet mini mart near our house at the time, sold challah by Amy’s, we thought we had finally found a surefire winner. Amy’s makes a long, flattish loaf with a matte surface, compared to the glossy, egg-coated Zomick’s (see above photo). The bread wasn’t bad, but it didn’t taste like challah. It took us a few bites to figure it out, but this challah tasted like bagels. It was ultra-chewy and somewhat dense, but its flavor really reminded me of biting into a bagel. The problem is, I’ve had much better bagels and much softer, eggier and more flavorful challah. This leaves Amy’s challah a middling choice, which we promptly checked off our list of worthy candidates.

Feeling frustrated, I complained to my colleague Salt Man who lives on the Upper West Side (a veritable challah heaven with Silver Moon Bakery leading the way). We happened to be stopping in at Mahattan Judaica near our office to buy Hannukkah candles during our lunch hour, and Salt Man had the bright idea to ask the shop’s owner where to get the best challah in Brooklyn. The owner thought for a moment and said, “Well it depends on whether you like sweeter or more savory challah.” I said I liked it more savory, but the truth is I just wanted to know what was THE BEST in his mind. My wish was granted when, without further hesitation, he said: Ostrovitsky Bakery.

Ostrovitsky is a kosher bakery in the heavily Jewish Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn. It’s not that far from our house, but it’s definitely not close enough to walk. And it’s a hike from the nearest subway station to the bakery itself. But EB and I decided we had to try it, so one Friday he put his bike on the subway and rode to the Avenue I stop on the F train. He then rode up to the bakery where patrons in various degrees of Orthodox garb were snatching up loaves of some beautiful looking challah. When we ate our shining poppyseed (!) loaf that night, we knew we had found the challah ideal. It was perfect in every dimension: fluffy with just a hint of chew, slight sweetness, delicious eggy exterior, I could go on and on. And the French toast the next day was amazing. That guy at Manhattan Judaica really knew what he was talking about!

So after hitting challah nirvana, why are we back to eating Zomick’s? Convenience—perhaps the single most important factor in any New Yorker’s life. We just don’t have the time to trek over to Midwood every Friday afternoon. My fundamental question is why can’t good, fresh-made challah make its way to Park Slope? There are plenty of hipster artisans looking to revive old crafts in the neighborhood and surroundings. Couldn’t they abandon their now-tired cupcake shops and pickling companies and open a bonafide neighborhood boulangerie instead? One that makes a good challah would be ideal. I’m sure I wouldn’t be the only one to abandon supermarket challah and start shopping there.

Zomick’s Challah is sold at:
Union Market
754-756 Union St.
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718.230.5152
and many other locations.

Lopez Bakery
647 5th Ave.
New York, NY 11215
718.965.0289

Bread Alone challah is sold at:
Park Slope Food Coop
782 Union St.
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718.622.0560
and many other locations.

Amy’s challah is sold at:
Grab Specialty Foods
438 7th Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718.369.7595
and many other locations.

Ostrovitsky Bakery
1124 Avenue J
New York, NY 11230
718.951.7924 ‎

Last night, Empanada Boy and I joined our friends Bass Drum Crumb and Curly Fries at the new Park Slope location of Fornino, a restaurant and pizzeria that has already made a name for itself in Williamsburg. I had read about the fantastic Neapolitan-style pies at the first location and saw the mouthwatering pictures of them on the restaurant’s website. A great Williamsburg foodie attraction had made its way to the less hipster ‘hood of Park Slope! This was worth a celebratory cheer and a visit. What I didn’t know was that Chef Michael Ayoub had decided not to build the requisite wood-fired pizza oven at his Park Slope spot. Instead, he opted to grill his pies and serve a bunch of other Italian pastas and more elegant fare. I didn’t realize this shift until our pizza arrived at the table. (The menu for the Park Slope location is not on the website, but I eventually found it here.) I was disappointed not to be eating the chewy bubbly crust of the Neapolitan-style pizza I had been craving, but the company was great and the grilled pizza had its merits, which I will be discussing below.

We started with two tasty antipasti: eggplant caponata and a salad made with radicchio, peaches and goat cheese. The caponata had a nice balance of sweetness from the roasted eggplant and saltiness from black olives that were blended in. It came with a nice herbed focaccia that had just the right chew (a true rarity, in my experience). The salad was vibrant and beautiful in its color contrasts. My only complaint was that the dressing was a little too mild. A bolder, tangier dressing could have set off the sweetness of the peach wedges nicely. Next came our pizzas. We ordered the Funghi Misti with wild mushrooms taleggio and white truffle oil and another one called the Calabrese, made with tomato, fior di latte (cow’s milk mozzarella) and a spicy pepperoni called caciatorini a diavolo. The crust on these was quite thin and almost cracker-like at the edges. It had good flavor with a hint of smokiness, but none of the blackened, bubbly pockets that come from an oven. The mushrooms on the first pizza had strong flavors of their own, but didn’t seem to have been seasoned enough while being cooked. One variety of darker color mushrooms dominated the others. But the flavors that won the fight for dominance in this dish was definitely the white truffle oil. I could have done with less of it.

Instead of the Calabrese, our server ended up bringing us the Pizza Vinny Scotto. This one had all the ingredients of the Calabrese, but added bel paese (a semi-soft Italian cheese), pecorino, ricotta and a bell pepper aioli. Crumb had been hesitant to order this one because he wasn’t into big clumps of ricotta, but the clumps turned out to be fairly small we decided to keep it when it came. Perhaps we made a mistake, though, because there seemed to be too many ingredients on this pizza. The sheer number of cheese alone was enough to create a conflicting flavor profile that didn’t successfully highlight the quality of any single one of them. The best part of this pizza was the caciatorini. It was hot and well-spiced and not as greasy as the generic pepperoni found on so many pies.

Speaking of ricotta, this cheese also featured prominently in the cheesecake topped with strawberries that we ordered as one of our desserts. I am not a fan of American-style dense cheesecakes, but this one had a pleasant lightness to it, and it was not too sweet. The fresh strawberries made for beautiful color contrast and added seasonal freshness.

Our second dessert was a torta di limone, a cake with a thin crust of brown around the exterior and and moist, but light, lemony interior. This was a great dessert and one I would like to try making at home. Curly Fries and I had enough to drink between the two bottles of Italian wine we ordered as a table and the glass of white she ordered for herself, but EB and Crumb wanted to keep the party flowing…I mean going. They each ordered a glass of grappa from the fairly lengthy list. EB’s ended up being smoother than Crumbs, which was more like a whiskey in its smokiness. Both were quite strong, but the Italians believe they aid the digestion, and I’m not inclined to argue with centuries of tradition.

In the end, the pizza was good but not great. The ingredients were nice and the restaurant itself was pleasant, but I had really been looking forward to that Neapolitan crust. Maybe it was just a question of managing expectations.

Fornino Park Slope
256 5th Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718.399.8600

I’ve written before about my strange tendency to avoid my own neighborhood when contemplating places to go out to eat. When I’m home, I just think: Why not make dinner at home? But a few weeks ago, Empanada Boy and I were getting stir crazy and decided to try a restaurant that was not only in our neighborhood, but catty-corner from our house. We had heard good things about Java Indonesian Rijsttafel, an Indonesian restaurant (obviously). Not having tried much Indonesian food, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But EB and I are always up for adventure, so we decided to put the speculation to rest and give it a try.

The restaurant is small and simple, apart from a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The kitchen door is behind a screen, and at least when we went, there was only one woman (presumably the owner) working the floor. Unsure of what to order, we opted for some of the dishes with “Java special” in parentheses next to their names. The first, from the appetizer section, was the pastel, basically Indonesian empanadas, stuffed with thin rice noodles and vegetables. They came with two dipping sauces, one that was quite spicy, probably made with chilies of some kinds, and another that was a savory-sweet combination of peanuts, soy sauce and sugar. These were tasty in the way that most pockets of filled dough are. The fillings were flavorful, but I particularly liked the sauces. They added vibrancy and verve to the dish, which wasn’t remarkably seasoned on its own. After that, we had a traditional salad called acar, made with sliced cucumber, carrots, string beans, and onions, marinated in a sauce of vinegar and turmeric. The salad was refreshing, and I liked the crispness of the cucumber and carrot, but the string beans seemed a little limp as though they had been allowed to cook for too long. Turmeric gave the onions and cucumber a yellow color, but it added only a subtle flavor to the dish because of the dominant vinegar dressing.

Our final dish was another Java special called semur, made with beef stewed slowly in soya sauce. The meat was a little tougher than what I had been imagining, and the sauce was more like a soup. The abundant liquid had muted flavor without very distinctive or assertive spicing and was generally too watery. Still, the lemon zest on top added a nice acidity, and we hungrily sopped up much of the sauce with the accompanying rice. The leftover sauces from the pastel added a welcome occasional kick.

After hearing so many great things about Java Indonesian, EB and I really wanted to love it. In the end, we enjoyed it, but didn’t think it stood up to the hype. We may consider giving it another try the next time we set aside the time to dine in the Slope, but there are so many restaurants to visit that we’ll likely end up moving at least a few doors down the street.

Java Indonesian Rijsttafel
455 7th Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718.832.4583

Unlike in Cannon Beach, Oregon—where I spent the long weekend, and which is still under a rain cloud— signs of summer are starting to appear in New York City. The weather has been in the 80s, and we’ve even had a few sticky humid days. People are out in the park, and most of all, people are starting to barbecue. There’s no better accompaniment to meat grilled outdoors than a nice potato salad. In honor of being on the cusp of summer, I decided to dedicate my June tribute to Gourmet magazine to a recipe for Potato Salad With Olives and Peppers from the June 2007 issue. The flavor combination of the starchy potatoes, the salty olives, the fresh parsley and the slightly sweet smoky peppers was spot on.

My only complaint is that there seemed to be too little dressing. I halved the recipe based on the number of potatoes I used, but It seems like I could have used half again as much dressing to really bring out the flavors in those potatoes. It would be an easy problem to fix. Either way, there are numerous potential variations on this recipe, offering the opportunity to add a twist here and there. I think it would be good with anchovies, lemon juice or capers added to the mix. It’s food for thought, but happy almost summer, nonetheless.

Potato Salad with Olives and Peppers

yield: Makes 6 servings
active time: 30 min
total time: 1 1/2 hours

Ingredients
3 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons Sherry vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried hot red-pepper flakes
5 tablespoons olive oil
3 pound hot cooked small (2-inch) boiling potatoes, quartered
2/3 cup bottled roasted red peppers (4 ounces), rinsed, patted dry, and chopped
2/3 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves

1/3 cup pitted brine-cured black olives, halved

Preparation
Mince garlic and mash to a paste with a pinch of salt using side of a large heavy knife. Transfer to a large bowl and whisk in vinegar, salt, and red-pepper flakes, then whisk in oil.

Add hot potatoes to vinaigrette and toss to coat. Let stand until potatoes cool to warm, about 30 minutes, then stir in peppers, parsley, and olives. Serve warm or at room temperature.

See my other Gourmet, Unbound posts:
May 2010, Moroccan-Style Mussels
April 2010, Shrimp Scampi Pasta
March 2010, Chicken with Black Pepper Maple Sauce
February 2010, Mexican Chocolate Ice Cream
January 2010, Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Garlic and Pancetta
December 2009, Walnut Spice Cake with Lemon Glaze

After not having eaten a burger for months, I have somehow spent the last few months eating what must be near a whole heifer’s worth of them. As I discussed in my post on Flipster’s and Five Guys, some of these have been better than others. Most recently, I dined at Corner Burger in Park Slope, only to follow it up a week or so later with a visit to Corner Bistro in Greenwich Village. These two spots merit comparison only because they are both burger joints and because they both have the word corner in their names—reason enough in my book.

I’ll start out by saying that while the burger at Corner Bistro had its drawbacks, Corner Burger’s was pretty much a flop. Of course, that doesn’t reflect at all on the company we had there: Empanada Boy and I went to Corner Burger with my colleague Chopped Salad and his lovely wife Vinaigrette. Chopped Salad had heard that the burgers were good, so I proposed that we meet there to give them a try. I was also intrigued when I learned that the restaurant recently started serving poutine, the gravy-and-cheese-curd-topped French fries of Montreal. Chopped Salad and Vinaigrette weren’t sure about poutine, but EB and I wanted to try it. I ordered the classic poutine ($6.50) instead of a burger. It wasn’t a great first impression for this culturally iconic dish. I could see how poutine would be amazing if the fries were hot, thin and crispy and the gravy more inspired, but the dish had none of these qualities. The cheese curds were squeaky, though, an attribute which I have learned to appreciate now that I have family in Wisconsin.

The burgers ($6.50) at looked far better than they tasted. EB ordered the one above with Swiss cheese and mushrooms. As I have said before, I consider cheese and other toppings undesirable because they obscure the taste of the meat. In this case, the meat needed obscuring. The burger arrived on the rare side of medium-rare, which would have been perfectly acceptable if the meat had been seasoned. It hadn’t been. We found ourselves biting into rare, bland meat, which proved a very disappointing combination, even despite the cheese and mushrooms. Chopped Salad and Vinaigrette ordered burgers too and were similarly disappointed. The curly fries may have been the only saving grace. We were among the only patrons there when we sat down and the only ones there when we left. We now understand why Park Slopers are staying away.

EB and I visited Corner Bistro with our friends Porky Braiser and Sweet Tooth who were visiting from Chicago. We were planning to get drinks at Little Branch in the Village, so we looked for some good cheap chow in the general vicinity to eat beforehand. A dark, old-timey and decidedly unbistro-like bar, Corner Bistro fit the bill. We waited for a seat in a pretty long line that snaked through the bar area. The wait wasn’t so bad, though, because we were throwing back $2.50 mugs of McSorley’s. In a city where it typically costs $6 or $7 for a pint, that alone is reason to visit. Soon we got a seat at a tiny cramped wooden booth. We had a good view of the Heinz ketchup bottles lined up near the kitchen window like soldiers awaiting deployment.

I ordered the basic burger ($4), while Sweet Tooth got a cheeseburger ($4.75). Porky and EB naturally ordered the Bistro Burger, made with cheese and bacon, but still a steal at only $5. And we got three orders of French fries. The fries were nothing special. They weren’t hand-cut and weren’t quite as crispy or hot as we like them. Clearly people come here for the burgers. The patties were juicy, tasty and well-cooked. That is what matters most in a burger, and that’s what Corner Bistro does well. Where it falls short is in its buns (whimpy, airy and easily destroyed by the meat juice) and in its toppings (flavorless American cheese, faded iceberg lettuce). In general, I found I could overlook these drawbacks because of the quality of the meat, the no-nonsense atmosphere and the excellent prices.

I’ll go back to Corner Bistro, especially when I’m looking for a real New York experience. I don’t think I’ll go back to Corner Burger. It may well close before I get a chance to. But first, I think I’ll take a hiatus from burgers and let my arteries unclog for a bit. There will always be more to try once I have a hankering again.

Corner Burger
381 5th Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718.360.4622

Corner Bistro
331 W. 4th St.
New York, NY 10014
212.242.9502