Tag: eggs

04/23/14 12:37pm

Empire’s Bacon Egg and Cheese Delivers Southern Comfort

No Comments

Photo: Elyse Pasquale/Foodie International

PLEASE NOTE THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED

Biscuits of the Pillsbury variety—warm fresh and slathered with ersatz butter—were a childhood favorite. I didn’t try true blue fluffy Southern biscuits until many years later. After my good friend Elyse Pasquale forced me to visit Empire Biscuit in the East Village last night I’m convinced I don’t eat them nearly often enough.

I’m only half kidding when I say she forced me. We’d just eaten our body weight in hors d’ouevres—including a killer creation of smoked mackerel nestled in a curl of whey steamed onion, topped with shaved foie gras—at an event hosted by Tabélog at Skál. Elyse doesn’t play when it comes to food, so when she told me that they were the best biscuits ever, I agreed to undertake the long march from Chinatown to the East Village. (more…)

bacon, breakfast, closed, East Village, eggs, sandwiches, Skál, Southern, Tabelog

Forest Hills

01/14/14 11:19am

A Chicken, Egg (and Cheese) Story at Marani in Rego Park

No Comments

Marani’s chicken tabaka, crunchy and garlicky as all getout.

The running joke about the Uzbek kebab places in Rego Park is that they’re all pretty much the same restaurant. Sure some might have slightly surlier service than others or make a specialty of chebureks, , but they’re all basically about grilled meat—beefchicken, and lamb–on flat swordlike skewers. So I was intrigued when I heard about Marani, a relatively new Georgian joint.

Ever since I read about the decadent adajaruli khachapuri being served at Brooklyn Bread House in Sheepshead Bay and at Oda House in the East Village, Georgian food has been a feverish blip on my radar. So I was especially excited to learn of a restaurant right in my neighborhood that served the mythical cheese and egg bread. (more…)

bakeries, bread, cheese, chicken, eggs, garlic, Georgian, Rego Park

Twofer Tuesday

12/31/13 2:13pm

Big Puto and Balut at Krystal’s in Woodside

6 Comments

On a wintry night Filipino balut double as hand warmers.

By the time we got to the balut man on the corner of 69th Street and Roosevelt Avenue we’d trekked across two continents and eaten through four countries all without ever leaving the shadow of the 7 train. “No holds barred means balut,” I tweeted to my pal Elyse Pasquale, aka Foodie International, the impetus for this impromptu Queens food tour, several hours earlier. I am not sure of the balut vendor’s hours so I was quite glad he was there. I hate to disappoint a lady, especially when fertilized Filipino duck eggs are involved. (more…)

duck, eggs, Filipino, Little Manila, Woodside

09/25/13 10:21am

A DIY Filipino Breakfast Sandwich at Manny’s in Flushing

6 Comments

Breakfast of champions: Manny’s dasilog.

Manny’s Bake Shop, a Filipino restaurant and bakery, is in Flushing but it lies far from my Chinatown stomping grounds. And it’s pretty far afield from Woodside’s Little Manila. I came across it while on my way to volunteer at Queens General Hospital as I do every Thursday morning. Occasionally I duck in for a buttered pandesal and a coffee. Then one day I noticed the menu’s five-item “Native Breakfast” section. “I’ll be back,” I said to the gal behind the counter grabbing my coffee and buttered roll. (more…)

breakfast, eggs, Filipino, fish, fried rice, Jamaica, sandwiches

Twofer Tuesday

09/10/13 10:13am

A Duo of Thalis from Dhaulagiri Kitchen

Dhaulagiri”s fantastic fish thali.

PLEASE NOTE THIS RESTAURANT HAS CLOSED

Dhaulagiri Kitchen, a tiny Nepalese outfit that’s the latest eatery to take up residence inside roti bakery Tawa Foods, is easily my favorite place in Jackson Heights these days. It’s named for the third highest mountain peak in the world, but as far as I’m concerned the flavors here—fiery pickles; sukuti, an air-dried beef jerky; and spicy chicken choila—are the tops. Lately I have been partaking of this eight-seater’s thalis. Thali literally means plate and it consists of a mound of rice ringed by various accoutrements, including pickles, daal, fried bitter melon, mustard greens, and a center of the plate item like chicken beef, or goat. The rice and the sides are refillable.

One day I was eating a fish thali ($11) whose main attraction was two crisp fried hunks of fish, a nattily dressed gent entered. As I ate my fish and rice while picking at the gudruk, a Nepalese kimchi of sorts, and other pickles arrayed around the circumference of the thali he rolled up his sleeves and washed his hands. And then he got down to business. (more…)

beef, closed, eggs, fish, Himalayan Heights, Jackson Heights, Nepalese, rice, sukuti, thali

08/14/13 10:25am

Thomas Keller Makes ‘The World’s Greatest Sandwich’

I have never been to one of Thomas Keller’s restaurants, nor have I seen the film Spanglish, in which Adam Sandler plays a chef. But I am quite glad to have come across this video in which this chef’s chef makes a late-night snack with Opera Man as his sous chef. This short appears as an extra on the DVD and seems to have a been a consulting gig for Keller, and a delicious one at that. As some less culinary enlightened commenters point out, it’s just a BLT with a runny fried egg and cheese. Not quite it’s a BLT with egg and cheese made with chefly care and precision, which means there are such common-sense tricks as alternating the bacon. And then there’s gems like this: “Most chefs worth their salt carry their own salt box. Most chefs have such a high tolerance to salt that they need to have extra salt on everything.” (more…)

Adam Sandler, bacon, BLT, breakfast, cheese, eggs, sandwiches, Thomas Keller

05/29/13 9:52am

Oriental Express’ Titanic Tianjin Breakfast Wrap

Fried crullers wrapped in eggyfried flatbread.

Fried crullers wrapped in an eggy fried pancake

The other day I walked through Golden Shopping Mall, stopping to peer at the picture menu at Cheng Du Tian Fu and waving hello to the ladies at Xi’an Famous Foods, and Tian Jin Dumpling House. I left without ordering anything. This isn’t an unusual occurrence. Since I’m always on the lookout for new dishes I patrol the food court’s grotty corridors weekly. It was breakfast time and I was hungry, but nothing really struck my fancy.

So I headed over to Oriental Express Food, which lies a few storefronts south. The name on the sign—which features a locomotive chugging its way across a bowl of soup—is the only English in the joint. I headed to the last stall in the back, a hawker of thick scallion pancakes the size of manhole covers and other specialties from Tianjin. (more…)

breakfast, Chinatown, Chinese, doughnuits, eggs, Flushing, Golden Shopping Mall, sandwiches

Dish O' The Day

04/23/13 9:54am

Grill 43’s Menemen: A Vibrant Turkish Breakfast Scramble

Sunnyside

Outside it was gray, inside Mediterranean sunshine on a plate.

PLEASE NOTE THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED

I have a confession. The variety of delicious things to eat in Elmhurst, Flushing and Jackson Heights—dumplings, dosa, and Sichuan happy meals—is so amazing that I often overlook whole neighborhoods and whole cuisines. The Turkish scene in Sunnyside is a prime example of this gastronomic myopia. (Notice how I opted not to coin the word gastropia.)

The other night I was out to dinner with Max Falkowitz, the editor of Serious Eats New York—in Flushing natch—and he told me I should try the menemen, at Grill 43. “Menemen?” I asked between bites of crunchy Sichuan fish. “It’s like the Turkish version of shakshuka,” he said. “It’s really good.” I’ve never really dug the Israeli scramble that is shaksuka, but whenever someone whose taste I trust enthuses about a dish I know I’m in for a treat. And so it was with Grill 43’s menemen ($5.95).

The plate of fluffy scrambled eggs mixed with tomatoes and red peppers is as simple as it is delicious. An orange-hued liquid, the very essence of red peppers, sits at the bottom of the plate. Sopping it up with slightly salty wedges of homemade Turkish bread was the perfect antidote to what was an otherwise gray afternoon. As I was leaving the guy behind the counter said that some people like their menemen with cheese. Next time I’m going to ask him to make a Turkish egg and cheese sandwich.

Grill 43, 43-02 43 Ave., Sunnyside, 718-706-0600

breakfast, closed, eggs, Sunnyside, Turkish

Jackson Heights

02/20/13 10:05am

Anda Bhurji Pav: A Breakfast Sandwich By Way of Bombay