Fat Tuesday in Park Slope; Dining Near the TentsPlus: a $38 eight-course meal to celebrate the Chinese New Year, and the best places to go in Park Slope for Mardi Gras, in our daily roundup of neighborhood food news.
Roosevelt Avenue Enjoys a Moment in the Sun
Roosevelt Avenue in Queens has always been one of our favorite strips: middle-aged-lesbian dance parties at Bum Bum! Baby-doll night at Flamingo! We like to eat there too, and apparently so does Good magazine which, we hear, will name “la Roosie” one of America’s best food streets. Their picks: El Sitio, Unidentified Flying Chicken, Krystal’s, Zabb Queens, and the Arepa Lady. The feature will be found here in the coming week (others, such as a writer’s attempt to bag a deer in suburban L.A., are up now); in the meantime Metromix and AM New York have joint-published a Joshua M. Bernstein piece in which he hits ten places on Roosevelt and spends just ten bucks — culminating in an ill-fated attempt to eat a fertilized duck embryo raw. If you want to try one of these without gagging, hit up Elvie’s Turo-Turo.
Issue 009: All You Can Eat [Good]
Dollar Grub: Roosevelt Ave. [Metromix NY]
Related: Riding the V Line: Guinea Pig on Roosevelt Avenue
Neighborhood Watch
Kellog’s Diner at Risk; the Definitive Banana BookCobble Hill: Trader Joe’s seems to think it’s opening a store on Court Street, even if a bunch of local bloggers don’t. [McBrooklyn]
Dumbo: Finally, the map to area eateries we’ve all been waiting for. [Gridskipper]
East Village: Want to read a book about bananas? Dan Keoppel reads tonight at KGB from Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World.
Fort Greene: Neighbors are looking for a friendly bar to watch Super Tuesday results. [General Greene]
Gowanus: Vandals have opened up the Whole Foods site on 3rd Street again. [Gowanus Lounge]
Jackson Heights: Sweet tooths rejoice over Cannelle Pâtisserie on 31st Avenue. [Chow]
Park Slope: Komboocha, a fermented tea, hits the co-op, but not everyone is psyched about it: “It’s expensive, tastes like crap, and claims to cure everything. Thus, it appeals to the rich and those addicted to Park Slopish consumer culture.” [Daily Slope]
Williamsburg: According to renderings, Kellog’s Diner will be wrapped up by a heinous new condo at Metropolitan and Union. [Curbed]
The Orange Line
Riding the V Line: Guinea Pig on Roosevelt Avenue
Roosevelt Avenue’s riches are almost impossible to exhaust: It’s a glorious land of tacos, papusas, Colombian hamburgers, Himalayan soups, late-night arepas, and fried chicken. But the last time we looked, there was only one place on “Rosey” to get guinea pig. And that’s Hornado Ecuatoriano.
Neighborhood Watch
Frying Pan Secure for Next Five Years; Whole Foods Selling Flat Beer on the LES?Chelsea: The Frying Pan has signed a five-year lease that will begin next May. [Chelsea Now via Eater]
Clinton Hill: Get your Oktoberfest on with a beer, cider, and sausage fest at 55 Lexington Avenue on September 29. [A Brooklyn Life]
East Harlem: Italian Americans are still mourning the August closure of Morrone & Sons bakery on East 116th Street. Especially the 72-year-old matron who opened the shop in 1956. [NYT]
Fort Greene: Crisp artichokes make a great burger topping at 67, even when the beef is greasy and overcooked. [Eat for Victory/VV]
Jackson Heights: Jackson Diner and Rajbhog Sweets are among some 85 restaurants participating in Queens Restaurant Week running September 17 to 20 and 24 to 27. [About.com]
Lower East Side: Whole Foods should top off beer-container refills with CO2 if they care about customers getting home to find flat beer. [Eat]
Park Slope: Frank Bruni was inundated with responses to his feature on handicapped-accessible restaurants, including one about his “beloved Franny’s” who wouldn’t slice “a pizza for someone who had just undergone neurosurgery on her (writing) hand because ‘the chef doesn’t do that.’” [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
Soho: Barcelona’s artisanal-candy chain Papabubble has settled on a U.S. location at 380 Broome Street and an opening date of October 18. [Papabubble via Down by the Hipster]
Neighborhood Watch
Red Hook Vendors Safe for Season; Fro-Yo Knockoff Welcomed in Jackson HeightsAstoria: Does Joey take a cut of Sicilian slice sales, or is Rose & Joe’s really worth a special trip? Let us know what you think of their square pies at grubstreet@nymag.com. [Joey in Astoria]
Chelsea: Toast Timbo at a Pier 60 fund-raiser tomorrow night offering copious amounts of food and drink in memory of a young victim of Traumatic Brain Injury. [Timbo Fund]
Dumbo: Blanc & Rouge pits Bordeaux against Burgundy in tasting on September 26. [Dumbo NYC]
Greenwich Village: BBQ on University closed without warning last night, but there is hope its greasy treats and fishbowls of fluorescent libations will return to another Eighth Street space. [Eater]
Harlem: There’s interest in pinpointing what’s lacking for restaurants in the nabe. [Uptown Flavor]
Jackson Heights: The next shameless knockoff to touch down in Queens: Yogurberry. [Eat for Victory/VV]
Red Hook: The Parks Department grants ball-field vendors extended permits letting them finish the season ending October 21. And maybe longer; Senator Schumer says that he “looks forward to eating goat tacos, ceviche and spicy corn on the cob at the ball fields for years to come.” [City Room/NYT]
West Village: Centro Vinoteca has a full new lunch menu highlighted by polpette burgers and “cubano toscano” sandwiches.
Mediavore
The Upper West Side Arrives; Clone Restaurants FlourishThe Upper West Side is “Manhattan’s hottest restaurant neighborhood” with a confluence of good places from name chefs and anonymous but high-quality local eateries. The addition of Daniel Boulud’s new wine bar is just the icing on the cake. [NYP]
If you like Peter Luger, Magnolia Bakery, or Pearl Oyster Bar, know that there are clones all over town. [TONY]
The glories of hidden Queens range from an Argentine steakhouse with “insane” portions to an ancient ice-cream parlor in Jackson Heights. [NYP]
VideoFeed
A Toddle Around Jackson Heights With Floyd Cardoz of Tabla
Many are the times that we’ve found ourselves wandering around the Indo-Pak wonderland that is Jackson Heights, wishing we only knew a little more about what was behind the counters in all those sweet shops, restaurants, and grocery stores. So we recruited Tabla’s Floyd Cardoz, arguably the country’s top Indian-American fusion cook, and asked him if he would give us a quick guided tour. Floyd assented, and we headed off to Queens in a 1990 white Coupe DeVille, with empty stomachs and open ears.
Mediavore
Restaurant High Trains Chefs of the Future; Les Halles Takes a BeatingWelcome to Food and Finance High, which trains New York’s future chefs and restaurateurs. They diligently study the work of Dave Thomas, the origins of pizza, and read Fast Food Nation in preparation for the job market. [NYT]
Les Halles is taking a beating: They’ve got a Department of Health closure uptown and construction troubles downtown . [NYP]
The Red Hook ball fields, home to one of the city’s greatest gatherings of Central and South American food vendors, may finally see the trucks roll in this Sunday. [Eat for Victory/VV]
Back of the House
The Lentil Menace Recedes
The New York Times revealed on Friday that New York is facing a major lentil crisis. Our first thought: Do they mean we might be forced to eat them? Apparently, the opposite is true: Due to India’s OPEC-like export ban on the tiny legumes, lentil prices have tripled all over New York. But what really caught our attention was the admission by one Jackson Heights restaurateur that “80 percent” of his menu is lentil-based. Really? We like Indian food well enough, but the crisis, it seems to us, is that too many people are eating lentils to begin with. We are not alone in our loathing of the pasty spheres, which we were frequently forced to eat as children as penance for too much kugel. “Whenever I tell somebody I hate lentils, they’re shocked,” Bobby Flay told the Times last year. “There are a lot of lentil fans out there.” We know! On behalf of our fellow city-dwellers, we hope the price goes down soon. But if it doesn’t, we won’t weep for the decline of the lentil. Secretly, we’ve been hoping for it all along.
“Trouble in Queens as Lentil Prices Rise” [NYT]
“I’m the Boss, and I Say No Lentils” [NYT]
NewsFeed
Art for Cart’s Sake
Ramin Bahrani’s Man Push Cart, currently doing boffo business at the Angelika Film Center, has done for the humble Pakistani street vendor what The Bicycle Thief did for poster hangers. The drama, which is about a roll-and-coffee seller with a mysterious past, comes on the heels of the Vendy Awards and increasing attention to legendary New York street vendors like midtown’s Muhammed Rahman or Jackson Heights’ “Arepa Lady.”
