Harefield Road

Recommended: brunch at Harefield Road in Williamsburg. $12 gets you a
brunch cocktail, bottomless coffee/tea and an entrée. My poached eggs
with smoked salmon was delicious. And something must be said for high
quality English Breakfast tea. The worst is weak and watery tea. If
you want an post brunch snack I hear there is a White Castle nearby.

Bacchus Wine Bar

I was pleasantly surprised by my meal at Bacchus Wine Bar. I picked this restaurant purely for its location. I was in Carroll Gardens, Sarah was in Bed-Sty and Samantha was in Lefferts Gardens, and I had to find a place that was relatively easy to get to for all of us. I was expecting decent french bistro food, but our meals were really good, above and beyond what I was anticipating. The restaurant is tiny - only around 7 tables. We went on a Thursday night and place was pretty much empty, but don't let that deter you. I recommend the escargots, scallops, mussels and the skate. Bacchus Wine Bar is located on Atlantic btw Bond and Nevins.

Baked

Down the street from Hope and Anchor is Baked, a bakery that serves
the best hot chocolate. It has a perfect consistency - not cloyingly
thick and not too watery. Their cupcakes, which rival those from Sugar
Sweet Sunshine, are also highly recommended.

Hope and Anchor

Hope and Anchor in Red Hook serves classic diner food, with less
grease. They have an expansive burger menu, all-American dinner
entrees and a fun snack menu. I have my eye on the mac n cheese
fritters. I went there Saturday morning for brunch and my meal was
lovely. I got the vegetable hash, which comes with mushrooms,
tomatoes, spinach, potatoes and a few other unidentifiable veggies.

The food is simple, nothing crazily inventive, but very satisfying.
Prices are very reasonable!

Hibino

I finally made it to Hibino last night, a Japanese restaurant on a residential stretch of Cobble Hill. Located at the corner of Henry and Pacific streets, the restaurant serves the usual Japanese fare, as well as daily "Obanzai" specials, or home-style Japanese version of tapas. The food is very good - simple, unfussy and satisfying. The sushi was also the best I've had in a long time. The service was also great, our waitress was attentive but not obstrusive, appearing at all of the right times.

To start, we ordered one of the obanzai specials: the curry croquette, which came with a thick ponzu dipping sauce and the Hirousu, which are tofu cakes served with a mild soy broth. The curry croquette looked like a McDonald's hash brown and tasted sort of like a samosa. That description doesn't sound appetizing, but it was actually my favorite dish.

Our bill for two obanzai (obanzais?), two rolls of sushi, a glass of wine and a glass of beer came out to about $35. That's a pretty good deal.

http://www.hibino-brooklyn.com/

Frankies 457

Last night, Sam and I had dinner around the corner from my house at Frankie's Spuntino. The meal was amazing, I ordered one of the best pasta dishes I've had in a long time. My linguine with fresh fava beans and tomato sauce tasted like bowl full of spring...the fava beans were bright green and tender, the tomato sauce was light and subtle. The pasta was cooked perfectly al dente with that great chewy texture. The dessert was possibly even better than the meal. I was initially opposed to ordering the red wine stewed prunes with mascarpone cheese, because i don't usually associate prunes with dessert, but Sam talked me into it. It. was. good. The mascarpone was so smooth and creamy, it literally melted in my mouth. It tasted like a thicker and creamier version of clotted cream. The red wine sauce was rich and only slightly sweet, which was the perfect compliment to the light flavor of the mascarpone. The prunes were sweet and meaty doubled as receptacle for scooping up the cheese. Oddly enough, this dessert felt more decadent than a piece of chocolate cake. The meal was great and i spied an outdoor garden that is going to be awesome when the weather gets warmer. Now i understand why there was a 45 minute wait at 8 o'clock.

Sariwa

I noticed a new restaurant...actually I wouldn't call it a tiny restaurant, it's such a tiny space...it's more of a take-out place, on 16th street at Prospect Park West. The new restaurant, a Filipino place called Sariwa, has a short menu and serves up foods like Chicken Adobo and Beef Empanadas. Best part has to be the fact that it delivers to my neighborhood! Amar and I decided on an order of Chicken Adobo, a beef empanada, Vegetable Lumpia (spring rolls stuffed with green beans, jicama, carrots and tofu) and Pancit, a traditional Filipino dish of rice noodles sauteed with cabbage, carrots and green beans.

Overall, the food was pretty good but it appears that Sariwa is still working on its delivery skills. The food was a bit late and while Amar's food was piping hot, my Chicken Adobo was icey cold.

The Chicken Adobo reminded me of a dish my Dad often cooks back home: he stews chicken or pork, potatoes and hard-boiled eggs for hours in a soy sauce mixture until the the meat is falling off the bones. It's the ultimate comfort food and is just the right thing on a chilly and windy night. Anyways, this Chicken Adobo had a very similar taste. The Chicken is stewed in a soy sauce, vinegar and garlic mixture until the meat is tender and has both a salty and tangy flavor. The extra soy sauce and vinegar sauce was a perfect dressing for the rice. I thoroughly enjoyed my dinner, too bad I had to reheat it first.

Amar decided to order a mish mash of things: two empanadas, spring rolls and a noodle dish. The Pancit was very good - the noodles were also cooked in vinegar so it had a very tangy and tart flavor. The spring rolls had a very distinct taste - different from Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai spring rolls. The spring rolls are lightly deep fried and stuffed with green beans, so the flavor is light and subtle, but has an almost meaty texture. I can't say much about the empanadas - it was dry and cold by the time I got to it.

Given a few more weeks, maybe a month or two, I think Sariwa will be really good. I'm just so excited that there's a new delivery option in my neighborhood! Click here for the menu.

PS - the Izzy/George storyline on Grey's is really getting on my nerves.

Sultan Grill

The General and I biked all the way down to Coney Island Avenue and Newkirk one night with the intention of eating at Bahar, this Aghan restaurant I read about. It was a pretty hot night and the restaurant wasn't air-conditioned, so we nixed the idea of eating there pretty quickly. We wandered a few doors down to the corner of Coney Island Ave and Parkville and saw what appeared to be a spanking new restaurant called Sultan Grill. We gave it a go and it turned out to be a really good find. The restaurant has two menus - a Pakistani menu and a Turkish menu. We ordered the Chicken Tikka, Daal, Roti and Naan off the Pakistani menu. The Pakistani menu offers the basics: curry, tandoori, grilled meats, biryanis, etc. The portions were perfect, not too big so that we were stuffing ourselves but just the right amount of food for two people. The Chicken Tikka was smokey and juicy, without much excess oil. The Daal was also very good...a little different from daals I've had at other restaurants. The lentils weren't as mushy and the dish wasn't as liquidy as most other ones that I've had. The fresh ginger topping was a little bit too strong but other than that the dish was very light and non-greasy. My favorites might actually have been the breads. The naan and roti appeared to be freshly baked and steam was still coming off the top as the waitress placed it on our table. The naan was light and fluffy without any charred burnt bits that you often see. A good, simple meal that didn't make me feel the slightest bit sleepy afterwards. The atmosphere isn't great - bright florescent lighting, drab walls and tiled floors, but the food is fresh and satisfying. Thank you Mr. Sultan for making my stomach happy. Now I am going to watch Britney's VMA video for the 11th time and THEN watch her I'm a Slave for U VMA performance and cry tears of longing for the old awesome Britney.

Di Fara Pizza

On a balmy and breezy Tuesday night, the A-man and I made a pilgrimage to Di Fara in Midwood. If you've never biked down Ocean Parkway in the early evening hours, i highly recommend it. The benches lining the street are packed - old smelly dudes playing chess, their counterpart old lady friends sitting around gossiping, little brown kids squealing and running around, Hasidic couples strolling along with their 9 kids, young Eastern European guys lounging around and staring at you suspiciously...it's like a tour of the EU. Anyway, after biking down a quiet and deserted stretch of Avenue J, we arrive at our destination: an unassuming, almost run-down pizza parlor at the corner of Avenue J and 15th street. We walk in and immediately smell fresh out of the oven pizza and see the herd of people crowded around the counter. The most adorable old Italian man, Dom DeMarco the owner of Di Fara, is slowly and methodically making pizza after pizza: stretching the dough, pouring the sauce marinara sauce, spreading the mozzarella slices and sprinkling the parmesan cheese, drizzling the olive oil, adding the finishing touches once the pizza is out of the oven. It seems like he's in his own world, barely noticing the crowd gathered in front of him, anxiously waiting for a taste of his amazing pizza. The decor isn't anything to talk about - bright and uncomfortable florescent overhead lights, grimy tables and chairs, aged linoleum floors.


The walls are plastered with articles from every major magazine and newspaper proclaiming Di Fara as the best...best pizza, in brooklyn, in new york, in America! The pizza is good. Damn good. Probably one of the best slices I've ever had (although Totonno's in Coney Island is pretty good too.) The crust is thin and both crispy and chewy. The cheese has a slight tang and saltiness to it and the sauce is just perfect - a tad sweet. The pizza is greasy, but not in a gross-i-feel-sick-after-three-bites sort of way. The olive oil increases the intensity of all the other flavors and gives the pizza an added richness. I'm not quite sure why this pizza tastes so much better than all the countless ones I've eaten...maybe it's the combination of sweet and salty that just hits your taste buds spot on. Make the trip to Di Fara, it's worth it. Oh and stick with the plain slices, the best parts are the sauce and cheese.

Red Hook Ball Fields

I finally got the chance to try some of the offerings at Red Hook Ballfields a few weeks ago, when Jia (chinese school friend/fellow food enthusiast) was in town. There was so much to choose from - tacos, quesadillas, empanadas, ceviche, tamales, roasted corn, papusas, fresh fruit, freshly squeezed fruit juices...I didn't know what to eat first! After wandering out in a salivating daze for about ten minutes, I decided on a bean and cheese papusa. The dough was chewy interspersed with a few chewy crispy bits. The bean and cheese filling was salty and soft - a perfect consistency.


To wash down all the salty goodness of the papusa, taco and empanada, I bought a fresh watermelon juice from the vendor selling the roasted corn and fruit juices. There's a lot of talk on the internet about all the great food available at the ballfields, but how come nobody ever talks about the fruit juices? I don't know if it was because I was really thirsty and sweaty, but I swear that watermelon juice was the best drink i've ever had. It was refreshing and slightly sweet, without being too sweet. I could have had another two cups of the juice, but I was already on the verge of bursting. Anyway, I would back just to get the juice.


I might have been very full, but I still had enough room in my belly for a roasted corn on a stick. It was a little bit shocking to see the cook scoop a gigantic chunk of mayo out of a Costco sized mayonnaise jar and slather it on the roasted corn, but oh well. The cook then rolled the stick of corn in a large box filled with cheese (parmesan i think?) The corn was juicy, the cheese was crumbly and salty and even the mayo didn't taste bad. Cafe Habana can suck it.

The food stalls at the Red Hook Ballfields are open on Saturdays and Sundays through October. Go and get some delicious and cheap Mexican, El Salvadorian and Ecuadorian food.

Battle of the Brooklyn Noodle Soups

Yes, I know this is my second post in a row involving noodles - what can i say, I love mian tiao. I've made a few trips to the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn over the past few weeks. One time I was in the neighborhood picking up some groceries (ok, I was stocking up on rice), and I just happened to drive by a hole-the-wall noodle shop serving hand-pulled noodles. Hand-pulled noodles are made by stretching and twisting a solid chunk of dough into strands of thin and delicate noodles. It reminds me of a game of cat's cradle, except no string or children are involved. Just dough and old Chinese men. The noodle shop I'm referring to is called Lan Zhou Hand-Pulled Noodles and is located at 60th street and 8th ave.




























Aside from the beef and noodles, the soup also includes spinach, cilantro and a spoonful of preserved vegetables. The noodles are soft and chewy at the same time. The broth is flavorful, without being too salty. I am generally not a fan of preserved vegetables, but this time it added extra flavor to the soup.

My second trip to Sunset Park was caused mostly in part by a raving review of a Yunnan Noodle Shop I read on Chowhound. I had Yunnan rice noodles (mi xian) once in Bejing and I was curious to see if this place was truly authentic. Yunnan is a province located in the southwestern region of China. Their noodles are made with rice flour and are whiter and plumper than your average Chinese noodle.














Yunnan Snack Shop, another hole-in-the-wall restaurant located at 49th street and 8th avenue, similar to the Lanzhou Hand Pulled Noodles set-up. The soup looks pretty much the same too, but the flavors and textures are completely different. The Yunnan rice noodles are much chewier and kind of hard to swallow. I had to swallow a lot of them whole because I was having trouble biting down. This broth is also very spicy and more salty. Interesting flavor, but I'm not sure if I'll go back again. I definitely prefer the hand pulled noodles over the Yunnan rice noodles.

Fez

It was a cold and blustery night. Trash bags were being blown around by the wind, similar to the that trash bag scene from American Beauty. Prospect Avenue was dark and mostly deserted. I felt like I was in a scene from a film noir movie. Too bad it wasn't foggy, otherwise it would have been perfect. Fez's storefront is tiny, it's very easy to walk right by the restaurant if you're not looking too carefully. I stepped into the restaurant and was immediately engulfed in warmth and delicious smells. The walls are painted a dark orange/reddish color and adorned with Moroccan-style lamps and wall sconces.

I started with the Harira soup:














Harira is a tomato-based soup chock full of lentils, chickpeas and long-grain rice. It came piping hot and was the perfect way to warm me up.

Next came the Tilapia Tagine:






(Where was the tall conical lid that come with tagine dishes?!)






The fish came with tomatoes, carrots and potatoes in a light and tangy lemon sauce. The fish was incredibly tender and flakey. Although the flavors of tagine weren't incredibly strong and more subtle, it was still very satisfying.

Every time I have Moroccan food I think of the meal I had during my trek to the desert near Marrakech. We were staying in bivouacs in the middle of a desert, our tour guides (who looked about 18) pull two bunsen burners, a big old pot, raw carrots, potatoes and onions out of their rucksack. I was a bit skeptical - can a decent meal be made without a kitchen and decent cooking utensils? The tagine our tour guides made was ridiculous - it was probably one of the best meals I've ever had. I ate until I thought I was going to throw up. Anyywayyys...sidebar.

Fez is a great choice if you're looking for a light, but filling meal. I liked the Harira soup so much that I decided to make it myself! It's a really simple soup, you basically throw all the ingredients into a big pot, stir and simmer. Just like the story of Stone Soup! Perhaps if the Israelis and Palestinians could join forces to make Harira together, each taking turns stirring the soup...oh look, the Iranians are here to add their own contribution to the soup....and oh my, is that Kim Jong Il here to add some kimchi to the pot....and of course good 'ol Condi Riz-ice is there overseeing the whole operation....then there would be peace in the Middle East.

Recipe for Harira Soup:

Ingredients -
2 16 oz cans of diced tomatoes
1 can of chickpeas
1 cup of lentils
1/2 cup of long-grain rice
1 can of chicken stock
4-5 cups of water (depending on if you like your soup thick or thin)
a few bunches of flat leaf parsley
2 medium-sized onions
salt

Directions -
Sautee the diced onions for a few minutes, until the onions become translucent
add the drained chickpeas, sautee for another few minutes
add the can of of chicken stock
After the chicken stock has come to a boil, add the salt, 2 cans of tomatoes, water, lentils, rice, chopped parsley to the pot
simmer for 45 minutes - 1 hour, or until the lentils are tender
add additional parsley at the end, salt to taste
Stir in few tablespoons of lemon juice give to give it an extra tang

The original recipe I used called for saffron threads, but i didn't use any since it is way too expensive. The soup came out fine without the saffron.

Abistro

It's been quite an eating frenzy this weekend! Friday night, I went to Abistro, a French/African restaurant in Fort Greene, on Carlton Ave. at Myrtle. The restaurant is tiny - not much bigger than a studio apartment...I counted about 8 or 9 tables. The outside of the restaurant is completely unassuming, no sign above the door or awning, just a plain white facade. The interior of Abistro is just as simple: dim lighting, cream-colored walls, basic wooden tables and chairs. A short, square dark wood pedestal holding a shiny red apple acted as the centerpiece of each table. Since the restaurant is so small and the kitchen is completely open, I felt like I was bathed in delicious garlic flavor all night. It's definitely a quiet, relaxing restaurant where you want to linger for hours.

The five of us started with the plaintain gnocchi and crab cakes - both of which were excellent.

I ordered the grilled tilapia w/ mushroom risotto and sauteed swiss chard. The risotto was fantastic, the consistency was perfect - thick and almost gooey, but not mushy. There was definitely a strong mushroom taste, but also subtle enough so that it wasn't too overwhelming. The fish was incredibly flakey and tasty. I've made tilapia and it always comes out a bit too bland.

For dessert, we split the chocolate cake and bread pudding. Both were great, but I liked the bread pudding better. There was a hint of spice, from the cinnamon and nutmeg.

The restaurant is byob...which made the food taste all that much better! Definitely a new favorite.

Enduro

Enduro is a new yuppy Mexican restaurant that recently opened in the Lefferts Garden neighborhood of Brooklyn. The first time I went there was back in December with Samantha and her parents. I had the fish tacos, which were delicious. The fish is lightly battered, fried and served with a citrus-flavored cole slaw. Not too heavy and perfectly filling. I went there again last night with Amar, after a lovely trip to the Target at the Gateway Shopping Center. Target recently started carrying Boots beauty products! I wandered into the Boots aisle in the pharmacy section and thought I was back in London. Oh Boots...the most amazing drug store known to man...they really should expand into the US market, it would put Duane Reade and CVS to shame. Anyway, so where was I...right..Enduro. This time I had the Wild Mushroom quesadillas, which was delicious as well. The presentation was great - red, green and mole sauce lightly drizzled on top. Amar had the Beef Burrito, which was pretty good, but not as the quesadillas. For dessert, we had the vanilla ice-cream crepe: two giant scoops of vanilla ice-cream wrapped in crepes, topped with chocolate sauce and candied pecans (or was it walnuts? some sort of nut.) Overall, a great meal. For two entrees, dessert and drinks (two beers), the bill came out to about $35. Lastly, I need to mention the decor. The restaurant is cozy, with exposed wooden beams and orange walls. There is also working fireplace, which makes the place nice and toasty. Great place to go on a cold winter night! And to think we almost ended up at Taco Bell.