Please allow me to indulge in a ridiculous, fattening fantasy for a moment.

if you shove Moldavian veal tongue in my face, I promise to like it

In my alternate-universe version of New York City, all ethnic restaurants would proudly serve their national dishes.  Nobody would hide in the international food closet.  There wouldn’t be any more Bengalis masquerading as “Indian” chefs, Senegalese restaurateurs claiming that they’re merely “African,” Algerians allowing themselves to be mistaken for Moroccans, or brilliant Laos who spend their days making Thai and Vietnamese food.  Makers of “obscure” ethnic foods would proudly shove their national dishes in our faces, and make us like them.

So I was pretty thrilled to see some serious Moldavian chest-thumping at the aptly named Moldova Restaurant in Brooklyn.  If you visit the restaurant’s website, you’ll be greeted by a rotating array of proud taglines: “Feel the atmosphere of welcoming Moldavia!” or “You can’t say you know the taste of Moldova until you try authentic mamaliga!”

OK.  If you insist, I’ll try some authentic mamaliga.  And so will eight of my friends, including Dave Cook from Eating In Translation, Eric Malson from Eric Eats Out, and Peter Cuce from Project Latte.  We had way too many cameras.  It was kind of embarrassing.

camera-toting food bloggers are embarrassing, but not even food bloggers can ruin fried pork belly and fried mamaliga

The food wasn’t embarrassing at all, though.  Because the website told us to, we ate lots of authentic mamaliga (polenta):  mamaliga with fried chicken livers ($9.99), mamaliga mixed with sour cream and feta cheese, mamaliga with grilled pork neck ($12.99), mamaliga with scrambled eggs (mamaliga trapeza, $12.99), and—this is the really exciting part—fried balls of mamaliga stuffed with feta cheese, and served with fried pork belly (ursuleti, $6.99).

The ursuleti is a Best Dish Ever nominee, simply because the combination of salty fatty pork and salty fatty cheese and salty fatty fried polenta is absolutely irresistible.  (I’ve probably accumulated about 250 Best Dish Ever nominees by now…but who’s counting?)

After the website’s instructions to “try authentic mamaliga” worked so well for us, we decided that it would probably be smart to meticulously follow every instruction that appears on the Moldova Restaurant homepage.  The website told us to “feast every day.”  So we feasted.

maybe the tasty Moldavian sausage made Frumos fat?

We had some tasty chilled veal tongue with horseradish sauce ($6.99), an obligatory plate of pickled vegetables (cucumbers, cabbage, and red and green tomatoes, $9.99), a side of potatoes fried with mushrooms, and some phenomenal seared kielbasa served with peas and onions (carnaciori, $8.99).  We even ate a cheese- and meat-stuffed pelmeni doppelganger called “Coltunasi Fat Frumos” ($6.99).  I have no idea who Frumos is, but I totally understand how he got fat.

or did the avocado and imported shrimp fatten Frumos?

But the most intriguing line on the website was probably this one:  “There is no sea in Moldavia, but there is the amazing Dunarea shrimp salad. ”  (Yes, the smiley face actually appears on the website.)  The Dunarea shrimp salad was a terrine of shredded daikon, avocado, cucumber, shrimp, and fish roe, all coated in a mildly spicy, lightly mayonnaise-y dressing.  The dish reeked of California Asian fusion cuisine, and it was easily the biggest non-sequitur of the meal.  How, exactly, did landlocked Moldova develop a dish with shrimp, avocado, and fish roe?  I mean, the website was right and everything—the salad really was amazing, if somewhat heavy for something called a “salad,”—but the dish was definitely a curiosity.

tastes even better than it looks, just like the website says

Since everything had gone pretty much perfectly so far, we continued to obey the Moldova Restaurant website when they told us that “our desserts are even more delicious than they look.”  So we ordered one of everything, including cherry-stuffed blintzes (clatita cu visina, $6.99), baked pears and apples stuffed with nuts and honey ($5.99 each), an order of stuffed dried plums ($6.99), and a stellar pumpkin-stuffed crepe ($3.99).  I’ll agree that the desserts were pretty, and I’ll also agree that the desserts probably tasted even better than they looked… but in fairness, they all resembled similarly fruity, simple, delicious desserts that you would find in other Eastern European eateries.

But that didn’t stop the Moldova Restaurant website from bragging:  “Yo Romania!  Hey, Ukraine!  Look over here, Russia!  Moldavian food kicks your country’s culinary ass!  BOOM!  In your face, Eastern Europe!”

OK, fine.  The website didn’t say that.  But it probably could have.

Keep thumping your chests, Moldova Restaurant.  You’ve earned the right.

just do what the nice Moldavian food website says, and you’ll be happy

Moldova Restaurant
1827 Coney Island Avenue, Brooklyn
Subway: Avenue M (Q train) or Avenue N (F train)

Just over a year ago, I looked at a map of Africa and thought: I’m screwed.

Moroccan spiced salmon and Gabonese pate… and this is barely the tip of the huge, tasty African iceberg (photo courtesy of www.ganxy.com)

At the time, I’d already visited—or at least eyeballed—nearly every African restaurant in NYC. But there are roughly 50 countries in Africa, and I had only been able to find food from about a dozen of them within the city limits.

The sad truth is that I had pretty much given up on my dreams of inhaling food from every country in the world, simply because of the challenges of finding African food. I was still inhaling plenty of food, but I figured that I’d never even begin to approach country #160.

And then, thanks to the magic of Dave Cook’s Eating in Translation website and a well-timed tip from fellow chowhound Glendale is Hungry, I found out about the 2011 United Nations African Mothers Association (UNAMA) fundraiser, where I encountered food from 16 African nations, including 10 that had previously been un-findable in New York City. Thanks to UNAMA, my gluttonous goals no longer seemed impossible.

This year, UNAMA once again fed me some spectacular homemade African food for the incredibly reasonable price of $35, with all proceeds benefiting Hurricane Sandy relief. Sadly, I wasn’t able to attend the event in person, but my favorite technology entrepreneur generously agreed to act as my stunt-double. Aleks took tons of photos, met amazing event organizer (and professional caterer!) Eva Forson, and brought a monstrous tray of food home for me to eat the next day. And you know that few things make me happier than massive trays of African food, even if they’re leftover.

a four-pound take-home tray of African food… thanks, Aleks!  (and yes, I think he actually weighed the tray)

I’ll crash my own website if I try to describe every single African dish offered at the fundrasier, but here are a few highlights:

• Burkina Faso: riz harricot and sauce au poulet (chicken stew and rice cooked with beans)
• Gabon: fish pate and turkey pate
• Benin: delicious corn flour patties topped with a gentle tomato-based stew, vaguely resembling the excellent Angolan cou-cou from the 2011 event
  

  Burkinabe and Beninese dishes.  But remember:  corn just visits.  (photo courtesy of www.ganxy.com)

• Niger: a wonderfully fluffy couscous with meat and vegetables
• Guinea-Bissau: goat stew with olives, tomatoes, potatoes, and parsley, served with mildly garlicky fried codfish cakes, which are always pretty awesome
• Sudan: kufta, which resemble heartily spiced, cigar-shaped meatballs
• South Africa: malva pudding, traditionally made from wine and apricot jam
• Ghana: plantain bread and stewed black-eyed peas
• Tanzania: chapati with a hearty meat stew
  

  You know what NYC really needs? A Tanzanian chapati food cart. Can I be the first customer? (photo courtesy of www.ganxy.com)

• Algeria: stewed vegetables, chickpeas, and meat, reminiscent of the tagine served in my favorite Algerian restaurant
• Angola: chicken-eggplant-okra stew
• Madagascar: the legendary banana donuts of Madagascar, along with a delicious but  less-heralded chicken and green peppercorn stew

I’ll be honest: by eating leftovers more than 24 hours after the event, I missed out on the full awesomeness of the African feast. Fufu, for example, really isn’t as appealing when it’s been microwaved. The same is true of the Gabonese fish pate, which had a wonderfully nuanced flavor, but probably had a better texture when it was fresh. That’s my fault.

But you can never go wrong with Ghanaian plantain bread, Nigerien (not to be confused with Nigerian) couscous, or Bissau-Guinean goat stew, even when it’s a day or two old. Heck, you can never go wrong with monstrous quantities of homemade African food under any circumstances, but especially if it’s for a good cause. See you in 2013, UNAMA.

I almost conquered a four-pound tray of African food! Jiggle jiggle.

As a white boy who loves to travel, I absolutely live for the moment when a friendly foreign host gets that evil glint in their eye at a street stall.  It’s a mischievous glimmer that says, “heh heh heh, it’s going to be hilarious to watch the white American boy eat this.”  Previous evil-glimmer experiences involved noodle-stuffed pig intestines in Seoul, chilled pigs’ feet with hot sauce in Mexico, grilled brains in Argentina, and more animal innards encounters than I can dream of counting.

does anybody else think that duck tongue kind of looks like a misshapen bug?

I honestly love the evil glimmer, even if I never managed to develop a taste for brains.  I always get to taste something interesting, and I occasionally get to try something delicious.

In the incredibly underrated city of Kuala Lumpur—which is, for my taste, an even better culinary and cultural destination than Singapore—we stayed in a spectacular guesthouse called Sarang Rooms, and the amazingly friendly co-owner, Christina, offered to take us on a tour of the night market.  And it turns out that the entire tour is an Evil Glimmer Tour.

no really… it’s not bad

We started with spicy duck tongue, which looks pretty hideous when you see it at the stall.  It’s like an emaciated and horribly deformed chicken wing, with some extra cartilage attached.  And it tastes like… well, an emaciated chicken wing, with lots of crunchy cartilage and an appealingly spicy sauce.  Not bad.

For our next stop, we tried century eggs.  Our wonderful hostess prefaced our snack by explaining that century eggs get buried for 100 days until they become black and congealed. And then she told us that century eggs were featured on an episode of Fear Factor, and everybody on the show yakked.  And then she took us to the vendor that sold them.

So yes, century eggs are black and congealed—they look like blackened orange jello with a dark puke-green-black yolk, and this particular Malaysian Chinese stall served them with pickled ginger and pickled papaya.  It was one of the scarier-looking things I’ve ever eaten, but it just tasted like a fairly normal deviled egg—slightly creamy and a little bit gelatinous, but perfectly tasty, especially with the ginger and papaya.

Christina also tried to feed us stinky tofu, but the line at the stinky tofu stall was unbelievably long, so we had to settle for a few minutes spent basking in the irresistible sweat-sock odor that lingered in the warm Malaysian air.  I wouldn’t have minded a few bites of the tofu–at least I would have gotten some calories in exchange for the agony of trying to breathe in the general vicinity of the tofu stand.

And then we found this stuff.  I could swear that one of the creatures in the bottle got an evil glimmer in his eye as soon as he saw a pair of white people walk by.

As threatened in a crusty old blog post about Australian food, I finally spent a month in Australia.  And for most of the trip, I felt a burning sensation in my ass.  I think it was caused by the fact that money was flying out of my wallet so fast that it created sparks, which singed my anus.

Nothing against Australia, but the exchange rate was not exactly my friend.  Pretty much everything was about 30-40% more expensive than in New York City.  Including the food.  And that makes me unhappy.  Our entire trip was like a money hemorrhoid.

(Incidentally, I’m very proud that I managed to use the word “hemorrhoid” on a food blog.  Do I deserve a cookie?)

So during our trip to Australia, we weren’t exactly dining in five-star restaurants… but then again, I never really do that sort of thing, anyway.  But we still managed to have some pretty ridiculously great meals, if not quite as often as in, say, Hawaii.

At an upscale Greek restaurant in Sydney (paid for, thankfully, by an Aussie friend’s corporate expense account), we ended our meal with baklava ice cream, featuring layers of pistachios, shredded phyllo, and honey wedged between layers of ice cream.  Here, look at this picture and get jealous:

baklava ice cream (money hemorrhoid and singed anus not shown)

Since nothing else was terribly affordable, we ate sh*tloads of Aussie pies during our month in Australia, in at least a dozen different flavors:  beef and mushroom pies, cracked pepper pies, apple pies, egg and cheese pies, mashed potato pies, chicken curry pies, vegetable pies, chicken and vegetable pies… well, you get the point.  The cracked pepper (and ground beef) pie from a tiny bakery in Bombala, New South Wales was definitely my favorite, but all of the dozens of pies we ate were pretty decent, and they were—by Australia’s cash-hemorrhaging standards—reasonably inexpensive.

Strangely, none of the pies we ate in Australia were quite as good as the brekkie pies at Tuck Shop in New York City, though.  Good job, Tuck Shop:  you made the bakers in your home country look inferior.

you still win, Tuck Shop

Things got a little bit more interesting in the little outback town of Coober Pedy, where pretty much everybody lives underground to escape the heat, and where most of the locals are part-time opal miners.  It’s an interesting, dusty place, with a total population of about 1700 residents.  We slept underground.  It was awesome.

our underground hotel room

In addition to being a fascinating little town, Coober Pedy is home to a restaurant called John’s Pizza, which serves some of the best pizza I’ve eaten outside of Alaska.  Highlights included an emu pizza ($12 for a 9” pizza… not bad) topped with asparagus, Camembert cheese, cranberry sauce, and emu metwurst. John’s also serves a smoked kangaroo pizza ($13) with eggplant, peppers, and olives.  The kangaroo just tasted like smoked beef and the emu metwurst just tasted like a mild sausage, but the pizzas were outstanding, with or without the unusual choices of meat.

Here, look at a pair of pizza pictures, and see if you can identify the exotic bush meats:

mmm… exotic bush meat

And of course, since Aussies told me that I had to be careful not to get eaten by a crocodile, I thought I should launch a pre-emptive strike, and eat a crocodile before it ate me.  So I did.  Not the whole thing, though—just a burger-sized chunk of crocodile at Litchfield Caravan Park, an hour or two south of Darwin.

preemptive wildlife strikes always taste better with beets, carrots, cucumbers, and French fries

Crocodile meat isn’t the most glamorous stuff on earth:  it tastes like a cross between chicken, a mild whitefish, and calamari steak.  It doesn’t really have much flavor besides a very vague ocean-y taste, and the meat is a little bit rubbery.  I inexplicably really liked it, though it was helped along by a generous dose of beets, a fried egg, Aussie bacon (which resembles Canadian bacon), onion, lettuce, shredded carrots, and ketchup.  But really—I swear that I could taste the vaguely ocean-y meat under all of the toppings, and I could swear that I actually liked it.

My wallet, on the other hand, liked nothing about Australia.  Besides, perhaps, boarding our flight to Singapore, where we would at least be surrounded by cheap frog porridge.

is it my imagination, or is the happy eminent frog reaching for his ‘nads?

According to potentially unreliable internet sources, there are 64 McDonald’s restaurants, 27 Subway restaurants, and at least 15 Starbucks outlets in Hawaii.  I don’t mean to be cruel to America’s favorite chain restaurants–I am, after all, apparently enough of a McDonald’s expert to be cited as reference #58 on a Wikipedia article about McDonald’s.  But there’s something particularly sad about the proliferation of crappy chain food in Hawaii, because Hawaiian food is effing amazing.

Why didn’t anybody tell me about Hawaiian food before we went to Hawaii?  Almost every American I’ve ever met has been to Hawaii, and the only thing anybody ever mentioned was some bullpoop about Spam sushi.  And my mom couldn’t stop talking about some delicious-looking fried doughnuts called malasadas, which are actually of Portuguese origin.  But nobody ever told me about poke or lau lau or chicken long rice. WTF?

Apparently, tourists in Hawaii are too busy eating Big Macs to even notice that Hawaii has its own cuisine.  It makes me sad that McDonald’s seems to massively outnumber Hawaiian restaurants, especially near touristy areas like Waikiki.  Really, would you rather eat some fish prepared by a smiling Hawaiian, or would you prefer to eat a boxed meal served by this creepy dude?

this is why I have scary dreams about clowns… I mean, the guy isn’t even offering any food, he’s just standing there, smiling and looking creepy, like he’s going wait until I turn my back, and then club me over the head with a brick of lard and eat my innards

Anyway, we managed to dodge the millions of Happy Meal-munching tourists at Waikiki, and we headed up to a small North Shore town called Hauula, where we rented an awesome little studio from a really nice Hawaiian family.  They fed me a ripe papaya straight from the tree in their yard (“grown with aloha”), and that means that I’ll love them forever.

And if that wasn’t enough, our Hawaiian hosts kindly sent me across the street to a place called Papa Ole’s Kitchen, where I ate an amazing dish called pastele stew, made from shredded pork, olives, and Hawaiian chili peppers, and served with two large mounds of rice and some (tasty, but totally unnecessary) cole slaw.  Really, the world needs more dishes made from pork, olives, and Hawaiian chili peppers:

mmm… massive mounds

After Papa Ole’s whet our Hawaiian food appetites, we decided that we needed to try lau lau and poi, so we found a deli in Kaneohe called Masa & Joyce that serves a “Hawaiian plate.” For a mere $11.50, our new Hawaiian friends fed us lau lau (spiced shredded pork, cooked in some lily-like greens called ti leaves), chicken long rice, white rice, lomi lomi salmon, and a dessert called haupia.  The lomi lomi salmon was basically a fishy version of pico de gallo, but the chicken long rice was an absolute revelation.  It’s like the best chicken soup ever, but with cute clear noodles instead.

Our $11.50 meal also came with a dessert called haupia–it’s sort of like a chewy coconut jello cake, except that it’s actually really good. We also felt obligated to try poi, a Hawaiian staple made from mashed taro root.  It wasn’t really my thing–it’s a glutinous, flavorless purple glob, served slightly chilled–but I can see how it might go well with lau lau if you’ve developed a taste for the stuff.

poi might also go well with brains

And then, we discovered the awesomeness of Hawaiian poke (pronounced “POKE-eh”).  It’s basically Hawaii’s answer to ceviche, made from raw fish or squid or octopus or seaweed or even edamame, soaked in any of a number of soy-, chili-, garlic-, algae-, seaweed-, or citrus-based marinades.

Very few restaurants on Oahu’s North Shore serve the stuff, so we raided a Foodland grocery store for soy-garlic edamame poke, a wonderfully tender imitation crab poke with marinated onions, and some fantastic ahi limu poke, made from ahi tuna marinated in soy sauce, garlic, chili flakes, and a type of Hawaiian algae called limu.

For our final breakfast in Hawaii, we returned to our friends at Papa Ole’s Kitchen, and tried the loco moco ($9.25):  two big scoops of rice, a massive (easily ¾ of a pound) hamburger patty, and three fried eggs, all topped with a wonderfully salty beef gravy.  I’m pretty sure that “loco moco” is Hawaiian for “holy shit you crazy little white dude, you’re going to eat this whole thing?!?”

yes, the hamburger patty is large enough to stick out from under three fried eggs… and yes, of course the little white dude is going to eat the whole thing

I ate the whole thing, with the exception of a few stray bits of rice and burger.  And that was just breakfast.  My dreams of fitting into my bikini were completely ruined, but at least I was happy, and had avoided the ubiquitous Hawaiian Egg McMuffin during our trip.

I win! (Bikini not shown.)

Papa Ole’s Kitchen
54-316 Kamehameha Hwy
Hauula, HI (yes, tourists: you can take a bus there)

Masa & Joyce
45-582 Kamehameha Hwy
Kaneohe, HI 96744

Sometimes, I panic-eat.

much tastier than the garbage I shoved into moving boxes

Buried in a heap of hastily-crammed moving boxes and facing the end of my time in NYC, I could no longer tell whether I was surrounded by a pile of valuable personal effects, or a decomposing mountain of trash that had inexplicably cluttered my NYC apartment for three years. I started to feel claustrophobic surrounded by all of this garbage, and I thought that I might feel better if I ate something. Like a garbage plate.

So I sent panicky text messages to every sexy, slender person I knew in NYC. Especially the ones from Rochester, NY, home of the legendary Rochester garbage plate. And really, what’s more American than something called a garbage plate?

conclusive proof that beer and garbage plates make you thin and pretty

The garbage plate, in case you’ve never tried one, is a truly American work of art. It consists of a base of macaroni salad and fried potatoes, topped with either two hot dogs or two cheeseburgers, and then the whole mess is slathered with diced onions, mustard, and a spicy beef sauce. So it’s, like, low in fat and calories, and is perfect for helping you build that statuesque six-pack that looks great on the beaches of Rochester.

The original garbage plate was created by Rochester’s own Nick Tahou Hots, which serves the stuff as a cheap way for Rochester partiers to fill their alcohol-soaked bellies. My Rochester pals tell me that a true garbage plate should cost less than $7, be incredibly greasy, and be served in a Styrofoam container.

The New York City garbage plate, served only at Daddy-O in the West Village, is a more refined affair, served on actual plates for $14. And it’s not even particularly greasy. That’s weird, and probably blasphemous.

God bless overpriced tabouleh, too

It was delicious, though. Who wouldn’t love a plate with two cheeseburgers, meaty hot sauce, fried potatoes, and macaroni salad? God bless America!

But I wasn’t done panic-eating. Moving is stressful. Food is not. More food means less stress, or at least a food coma severe enough that you can’t feel the stress anymore. So I zipped over to the East Village outlet of Moustache, a small chain best known for its “pitzas.” As far as I know, Moustache is NYC’s only remaining Iraqi-owned restaurant, now that Hells Kitchen’s short-lived La Kabbr restaurant is no longer with us.

(And yes, I realize that it’s, like, kind of ironic that I panic-ate American and Iraqi food in the same night. Call it panic-eating for international peace if you want.)

To my chagrin, nearly everything on Moustache’s menu was standard, familiar Middle Eastern fare—hummus and kabobs and schwarma, in addition to the pitzas. None of the dishes stood out as uniquely Iraqi, so I checked the Wikipedia entry on Iraqi cuisine; tabouleh salad was at the top of the page, so I ordered some. The serving was runty for $6, but it was phenomenally fresh, with finely-diced mint, parsley, tomatoes, cucumbers, and bulgur wheat.

I feel healed already

For my main course, I went for the ouzi, which was probably the least-familiar Levantine dish on Moustache’s menu. It was pretty damned tasty, with golden raisins, peas, white and dark meat chicken, onions, and carrots in a pocket of phyllo dough that was pulled straight from a giant oven. The ouzi was served with a light yogurt-cucumber sauce, not unlike a pleasantly runny, not-too-garlicky tadziki sauce.

I was impressed by the ouzi, though it was arguably overpriced ($15). But it’s all good. If nothing else, I felt far calmer after a bout of international panic-eating. And sometimes a good food coma is all you need to heal from the pain of cramming useless crap into moving boxes.

Yes, I moved. United Nations of Food (NYC) will be on hiatus until December, while I eat my way through Hawaii, Myanmar, Indonesia, Colorado, Laos, Australia, Thailand, California, and Hong Kong… but probably not in that order.

Daddy-O
44 Bedford Street, West Village
Subway: W. 4th St. (A, B, C, D, E, F, M trains) or Christopher St.-Sheridan Sq. (1 train)

Moustache Restaurant
265 East 10th Street, East Village
Subway: Astor Place (6 train)

Full disclosure: I f*cking love Brazil. I’ve spent a total of about four months there, and have fallen in love with Brazil—and in Brazil—over and over again.

black beans and plasticware are sexy and tropical, no?

So it’s really hard for me to be reasonable about Brazilian food. I’ve had some mind-blowingly great meals all over Brazil—especially in the northeastern corner of the country—and it’s hard not to envision sexy tropical food whenever I walk into a Brazilian restaurant… even though New York City restaurants aren’t at all tropical and sexy.

In an effort to compensate for NYC’s lack of tropical sexiness, I decided that it would be a good idea to eat Brazil’s national dish, feijoada—and anything else in our path—in three different Brazilian restaurants in a single afternoon. You know, to help us comprehend Brazil’s culinary diversity. Or maybe just to help us contract a spectacular disease known as bigfatfuckitis. You decide.

Either way, I might be totally mean to NYC Brazilian restaurants that can never be quite as sexy and tropical as the real thing. Consider yourself warned.

cheese bread is round, soft, milky, sexy, and tropical, no?

We selected three Brazilian restaurants in Astoria that serve Brazil’s national dish, feijoada, which is a thick stew made from black beans and pork sausage, served with sides of rice, collard greens, and farofa (toasted cassava flour). Our first stop, Pao de Queijo (Portuguese for “cheese bread”), is a laid-back quick-service spot that serves Brazilian juices (including untranslatable treats like cupuacu, acai, and acerola) for $4, Brazilian sandwiches for as little as $3.50, and eponymous chunks of cheese bread for $1.75.

Like the restaurant itself, Pao de Queijo’s feijoada is pretty informal stuff, served in a plastic bowl, accompanied by rice and greens and farofa plopped on a plastic plate. You could argue with the presentation, but the feijoada was perfectly solid, with just enough spicy sausage to give the stew a nice bite. And it was pleasantly gentle on the wallet ($9), just like everything else at Pao de Queijo.

mmm… porky

During our second stop, we moved way upscale to Favela Grill, a shiny restaurant in the opposite corner of Astoria. They have miniature clothespins on the napkins and very fancy-looking menus mounted on wooden boards. It’s all totally unnecessary, and I could hear my wallet wailing for mercy as soon as we walked in the door.

Unsurprisingly, the feijoada at Favela Grill cost more than twice as much as the stuff at Pao de Queijo. It was served in a fancy, miniaturized cast-iron pot, and the stew definitely had more meat and a more intensely porky flavor than the feijoada we ate earlier. But it cost $21. Was the miniature clothespin and extra porkiness really worth an extra $12? I mean, I love extra porkiness. A lot. But still: ouch.

mmm… castrated moqueca

We also tried Favela Grill’s version of moqueca, a seafood stew from the northeastern state of Bahia. Moqueca is made from coconut milk, fish (or, if you’re really lucky, shark), onions, garlic, cilantro, tomatoes, hot peppers, and dende oil—which is supposedly one of the world’s most difficult-to-digest (and delicious) oils.

If I’d never eaten moqueca before, I would have thought that Favela Grill’s version was reasonably impressive—basically, it was a semi-castrated Thai fish curry, but without the curry spices. Not bad. But compared to the moqueca that I ate in Bahia years ago, it was an abject and expensive failure. I still enjoyed it, but the price ($20) made me want to drink several caipirinhas in a row. So I did.

mmm… salty and porky

I don’t know if the Brazilian food was getting tastier or if we were just getting drunker, but the feijoada at our third stop definitely tasted the best. We went to another unnecessarily classy Astorian-Brazilian place called Malagueta, named after a vicious little hot pepper grown in Brazil and Mozambique. Malagueta’s feijoada ($20) featured a particularly crumbly, flavorful sausage, and the resulting stew was blissfully salty and porky. And I like things that are salty and porky. Like my belly when I sweat.

But despite the tasty feijoada and incredibly attentive service, I still felt like something was missing. Besides the fact lots of money was suddenly missing from our wallets, some tropical spunk seemed to be missing from our food. We tried Malagueta’s rendition of acaraje (blackeyed pea fritters, traditionally fried in dende oil and slathered with spicy shrimp paste), which is normally fiery enough to burn a hole through tourists’ unsuspecting gullets and make white American boys cry like little girls. But at Malagueta, acaraje is a disturbingly refined, bland appetizer. I don’t get it.

I may never understand why somebody would make bland, castrated acaraje, but I definitely understand why somebody would eat craploads of feijoada and drink tons of caipirinhas. Astoria definitely isn’t as sexy and tropical as Brazil, but once we had enough black beans and Brazilian booze sloshing through our systems, we barely cared.

I’m not crying

Pao de Quiejo
31-90 30th St., Astoria
Subway: Broadway (N, Q trains)

Favela Grill
3318 28th Ave., Astoria
Subway: 30th Ave. (N, Q trains)

Malagueta
2535 36th Ave., Astoria
Subway: 36th Ave. (N, Q trains)

I’m sure that my blog is peppered with assloads of unintentional international food comedy. One of my posts might rant and rave about how much I loved a meal from a particular country, while readers from that country are thinking “Dude, that slop looks nothing like our food, you stupid American slop-eating fool!” And the stupid slop-eating American food blogger will never know the difference.

bounce-inducing zaatar bread and labneh

So it’s always a treat when I can bring, say, a Syrian food expert along with me to a Syrian restaurant. It’s even more of a treat when the Syrian is literally bouncing with excitement because the food really is just like her mom’s.

Waterfalls Café on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn has served Syrian food for at least 15 years, but our Syrian friend—an energetic, brilliant law student named Lena who sometimes bounces when she gets excited—had never been there. In fact, she’d never been to a Syrian restaurant in the United States, despite living here for much of her life. And considering that her mom and her aunts sound like they can work some serious kitchen magic, why would she ever bother to set foot in a Syrian restaurant?

bounce-inducing kibbeh

Even though there were only three of us at the table, we didn’t hold back when it came to ordering food. We started with a huge, round, freshly-baked slab of zaatar bread, coated with sesame seeds and sumac; I’m not a zaatar bread expert, but it was easily the best I’d ever eaten, and put Damascusland Bakery’s rendition to shame. The zaatar bread was particularly amazing when slathered with labneh, a phenomenally smooth spread made from homemade yogurt, mint, and olive oil.

As if we needed more appetizers, we ordered some fried kibbeh balls, arguably the national dish of Syria, made from bulgur wheat and ground beef. And then we did our best to make a dent in a large fatoosh salad, topped with parsley, tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic, and toasted pita.

madly addictive (bounce bounce)

And then we kept piling on main courses: a phenomenal bowl of okra stewed with tomatoes and served with a side of rice pilaf; zucchini stuffed with ground beef and topped with an energetic tomato sauce; and my personal favorite, a madly addictive dish called mulukhiyah, featuring  chicken stewed with onion, garlic, lemon juice, cinnamon and sturdy, collard-like leaves. It was good enough to make all three of us bounce happily.

Even the beverages were fresh and interesting. We ordered two different versions of airan, a yogurt-based drink. One version was a salty smoothie made from garlic, parsley, and yogurt, akin to a salty, less-chunky, extra-garlicky version of Greek tsatziki sauce. The other was a mango-yogurt blend that resembled a south Asian mango lassi. Both were outstanding and inexpensive ($2.50), though one version was far kinder to our breath than the other.

delicious, but really bad for our breath (bounce bounce)

And just to clear up some Waterfalls-related confusion: the restaurant changed hands a few years ago, and the affable new owner hails from Egypt. The original Syrian chef is still working her magic in the kitchen, though, and the menu is thoroughly Syrian.

As soon as we met the Egyptian owner, Lena tossed out an adorable bit of warmhearted cultural stereotyping: “In the Levant, we’re known for our food. Egyptians are known throughout the region for being charming people.” I’ve only met about a dozen Egyptians in my life, but Lena might have a point: every one of them was warm and charming. Unless, of course, you’re a pigeon, in which case you might have a different opinion about Egyptians.

But no matter where you’re from—or how much you hate pigeons—it’s hard to argue with the spectacular, cheap chow at Waterfalls. Lena, for her part, was literally bouncing with excitement through much of the meal. I think it’s safe to say that the food really was that good, and its awesomeness wasn’t just a figment of my ignorant, slop-eating American imagination.

not slop

Waterfalls Café
144 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn
Subway: Borough Hall (2, 3, 4, 5 trains)

closeted Tajik kabobs with onion doilies?

At a glance, one might assume that Salute Kosher Restaurant (sometimes listed online as “Salut 2000” or “Restaurant Salute”) is just another Uzbek-Bukharian place, much like Cherburechnaya or Tandoori or Aladdin. The word “Uzbek” appears twice on the menu, and the restaurant was featured in a 2006 New York Times article, which specifically mentioned that Salute serves “Uzbek plov.” So clearly, Salute is just another of New York’s many Uzbek-owned eateries, right?

But then I noticed an odd turn of phrase by the “Uzbek” restaurant owner interviewed for the article:  ”‘We had the most wonderful fresh lake fish in Dushanbe,’ Ledya Moses, an owner of Salute, said.”

Wait a second. Dushanbe? That’s in Tajikistan, not Uzbekistan. Hm.

So I rounded up a handful of friends—all of whom happen to be thin, intelligent people with impressive appetites—and we headed over to Salute to investigate. And to try to make my pals less thin.

“Central Asian” pickled green tomatoes are effing amazing, wherever they’re from

The menu at Salute features classic Bukharian fare, including hummus and babaganoush, plenty of pickled vegetables, plov (rice pilaf), and craploads of kabobs. Interestingly, only two nationalities were mentioned on the menu: several dishes were supposedly from Uzbekistan, and the pickled cabbage was “Armenian.” Crap, maybe these guys weren’t from Tajikistan after all.

When we ordered our first round of food, I asked the waitress where the owners were from. “This is Central Asian restaurant,” she responded, cryptically. After some good-natured coaxing, she finally relented: “The owners are from Tajikistan, from Dushanbe.” Congratulations, we found yet another restaurateur hiding in the NYC food closet! Maybe you could argue that Tajik food closely resembles Uzbek cuisine, but a small homage to Tajikistan on the menu would be nice, right?

“Central Asian” cheburek

Whatever. The food was phenomenal, even if humble Tajikistan wasn’t specifically honored on the menu. We had an inevitably excellent platter of pickled vegetables ($7), including pickled green tomatoes, which are rapidly becoming one of my favorite post-Soviet food obsessions. We had insanely fresh bread (lepeshka, $2), pulled straight from a tandoori oven, and plenty of charcoal-grilled lamb and chicken kabobs ($3.75). We even sampled Salute’s version of herring and potatoes ($6.50), some tasty fried chebureks ($1.75 each) stuffed with ground meat and onions, and some crunchy marinated eggplant (ochor, $6). Nearly everything we ate was beautifully executed and wonderfully fresh—definitely a notch or two better than, say, the mayonnaise-y goop at a certain Belorussian restaurant in Brooklyn, and at least as good as the Uzbek joint that serves horsemeat salad.

not quite as amazing as the babaganoush, but definitely crunchier and more photogenic

A few dishes were particularly impressive, however. Babaganoush (eggplant paste with garlic, $5) is a standard dish served throughout a wide swath of territory from Greece to Central Asia, but Salute’s version had an addictive smoky flavor, and was probably the best I’d ever eaten. Another highlight was the “Armenian” pickled cabbage ($5.50), which was both ridiculously crisp and ridiculously spicy, even if it wasn’t ridiculously Tajik.

As you know, I’m always vaguely sad when I see a New York ethnic food closet-case, and I sometimes wish that places like Salute would fly their national flags more proudly. But when the food is this good, who really gives a crap if they hide in the food closet?

“Armenian”

Salute Kosher Restaurant
6342 108th Street, Queens
Subway: 63 Dr.-Rego Park (M, R trains)

You might have noticed that I really like food.  You might also have noticed that I very rarely eat home-cooked meals.

dill-sprinkled Bulgarian flag, anyone?

For those of you who don’t live in Manhattan, here’s some exciting news:  this island is effing expensive.  So we rented a slightly flawed apartment to save money:  there’s no direct sunlight and no kitchen, just a microwave, a cranky hot plate, and a tiny sink (9”x11”) that’s barely larger than a standard sheet of copy paper.

(Sacrificing a kitchen is arguably worth it—if you live in NYC and I tell you how little we pay in rent, you’ll want to kill me out of jealousy.  If you don’t live in NYC and I tell you how much we pay in rent, you’ll want to kill me, because I’m clearly too stupid to deserve to live.)

You can do some pretty cool sh*t with a microwave these days (like marshmallow peep jousting), but eating out is usually a better option than eating frozen burritos or microwave-singed marshmallow peeps.  Legit home-cooked meals are special treats, usually enjoyed only when we take a trip out to “the countryside”.

tarator, without fizzy fermentedness

Living in Midtown Manhattan, we think of places like Brooklyn and Iowa as “the countryside.”  They have quaint, kitschy country stuff like backyards.  And direct sunlight.  And kitchens.

Lucky for me, Phil The Bulgarian, an old pal from high school, lives in “the countryside” in Brooklyn, and he and his wife (we’ll refer to her as Jasmina The Almost-Bulgarian) generously agreed to prepare a home-cooked Bulgarian meal for us.  Home-cooked food?!?  Truly exotic, even if it doesn’t come in a ziplock bag.

We warmed up with tarator, a deliciously fresh yogurt-cucumber soup, sprinkled with dill and walnuts.  It reminded me of Azeri dovga, except that the yogurt wasn’t fermented and the soup lacked dovga’s fizzy fermented taste… and the walnuts also added a nice crunch.  We followed the soup with shopska salad, made from a mix of green peppers, red tomatoes, and white feta cheese, mimicking the colors of a dill-sprinkled Bulgarian flag.  (No disrespect meant toward Bulgaria or any other country, but I would probably eat more flags if they were sprinkled with dill.)

kebapche

For our main course, Phil The Bulgarian and Jasmina The Almost-Bulgarian spoiled us rotten with some incredibly tasty kebapche (Bulgarian sausage, similar to cevapi served throughout the Balkans), with a beautifully crispy casing—definitely a huge step up from the cevapi I’ve eaten in Bosnian and Serbian and Montenegrin places.  We also enjoyed a heap of golden potatoes (kartofki), roasted with dill, based on a recipe from Phil The Bulgarian’s father.

I could have happily chomped on the kebapche and dilled potatoes all night, but our Bulgarian hosts outdid themselves by feeding us an amazing dish with a brief, thoroughly anglicized, easy-to-pronounce name: Pulni Chushki na Lili Milanova.  I think the translation is “stuffed peppers with a few extra words.”  The peppers were stuffed with a dill-egg-feta cheese mixture, and they were extremely lovable.  So lovable, in fact, that I’m posting the recipe over here—and that’s a United Nations of Food first, since I’m generally way too lazy (and kitchen-deprived) to bother collecting recipes.

non-disastrous, backlash-free Bulgarian dessert

Jasmina The Almost-Bulgarian even spoiled us rotten with an amazing dessert called banitsa, a distant cousin of baklava, consisting of a tasty pumpkin filling baked inside a soft pocket of phyllo dough.  I thought it was absolutely delicious, though Jasmina The Almost-Bulgarian poked at it apologetically before the meal:  “Sorry, it looks like crap—I’ve never made it before, and I don’t know how to fold the phyllo dough.”  She even asked that I refrain from publishing the recipe, “for fear of a backlash.”

If the delicious banitsa is Bulgaria’s version of a backlash-worthy kitchen disaster, then Bulgaria must be pretty damned awesome.  Someday, when (if?) I ever grow up, maybe I’ll have my own kitchen in the “countryside,” just like Phil The Bulgarian and Jasmina The Almost-Bulgarian.  And if my kitchen “failings” look anything like theirs, I’ll be a happy, well-fed man.

yes… happy and well-fed