Atlantic Antic

This post is a week late, so lets see if I can remember everything. Amar, Jordan, Ursula and I strolled through the Atlantic Antic last Sunday, tasting all the offerings of the festival vendors and of the restaurants residing on Atlantic Ave between 4th ave and Hoyt street. First the good: Key Lime pie, Red Velvet cake, mozzarepa (surprisingly!), and the bad: corn dog (that thing was as dry as a bag of popcorn) and cucumber-flavored lemonade (vegetable does not mix well with lemonade.)

We started with veggie samosas from a Thai (or was it Malaysian?) restaurant close to 4th ave. They were pretty good, the samosas tasted strongly of curry sauce and were awesomely greasy and drippy. It was a little hard to eat these things and walk at the same time...so I think we were all walking around with our mouths wide open, hunched over our little styrofoam plates (see picture.)

Next up: mozzarepas, the bi-racial child of an arepa and a mozzarella cheese stick. I was a little skeptical, but one bite and my uncertainty - over a food that sounds like something Rachel Ray would come up with - quickly disappeared. Cause that thing was good! Gooey cheese sandwiched between soft cornmeal pancakes...a little bland perhaps but also oddly satisfying. (Hey, nice mani!)

I made a beeline for the stand that was selling red velvet cake. No complaints here...moist and rich, with a nice cool cream cheese icing. This cake was pretty good, but i think i still prefer Sugar Sweet Sunshine's red velvet cake with chocolate almond-flavored icing. I like the cream cheese icing, but i like a chocolate icing better. Also, Sugar Sweet's cupcake is more dense.
And finally, Key Lime Pie from Steve's Authentic Key Lime in Red Hook. I'd heard a lot about his key lime pies and had been wanting to try one for a long time. It was good - not as amazing as I had originally expected. The pie was very tart and although I'm not sure if authentic key lime pies are supposed to be so tart, but I definitely prefer pies that don't taste so much like a sour patch kid.

It was really interesting to walk down Atlantic and see how the ethnic/cultural make up of the neighborhoods change so quickly and so suddenly...from West Indian to yuppiehood to Middle Eastern to old, rich Brooklyn.