“I don’t even come here for knishes any more,” a gentleman I shared a table with at Knish Nosh said to me yesterday. “I come for her cooking,” he said of Chef Ana Vasilescu, who makes killer perogies among other specialties. I had come for a bowl of matzo ball soup.
“Better than my mother’s,” my new friend remarked of the classic Jewish restorative. “Mine too,” I thought, remembering that I don’t have a Jewish mother. Then I noticed two golden brown patties next to his soup. “Are those latke?” I asked. (more…)
The Central Asian cousin of Taiwanese beef noodle soup.
Rego Park is home to so many kosher Uzbeki kebab joints that local friends and I joke that they’re all more or less the same restaurant, just with different specialties, and/or slightly surlier service. The latest entrant into the neighborhood’s crowded field of more than a dozen restaurants is a rather opulent looking establishment (think flocked Louis XIV wallpaper and chandeliers) called U Yuri Fergana. (more…)
As 2014 draws to a close rather than offer up a roster of resolutions—less chips more gym, save money, etc.—C+M presents a list of 14 of our favorite things, a highlight reel of the year that was. Let the mostly Queens-focused cavalcade of offal, mashups, secret eats, and overall deliciousness begin.
The rugelssaint at Andre’s Hungarian.
1. Sweetest mashup
Part pain au chocolat, part rugelach, all decadence the chocolate croissant—aka rugelssaint—at Andre’s Hungarian Bakery was my go-to guilty breakfast this year.
Ban Ga Ne’s got your large format goat feast needs covered.
2. Best goat meat bonanza Not only was the three-course black goat meat feast at Ban Ga Ne one of the best Korean meals I’ve had in a long time, it was some of the best goat I’ve ever had. Plus as the proprietor pointed out, it’s um, invigorating.
Zuppardi’s glorious fresh shucked Little Neck clam pie.
3. Best pizza Some friendsand I made a pizza pilgrimage to New Haven this fall. Everything we tried was good, but the real revelation came when we dug into the fresh clam pie at Zuppardi’s Apizza. Fragrant with Little Necks and oregano atop a crackling thin crust, it was simply astounding. (more…)
The double down of the deli world is piled high with brisket.
PLEASE NOTE THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED
Among my Jewish friends and relatives I am renowned for my knowledge of Yiddish. “You’re such a Jew,” an old girlfriend once proclaimed. Heck, I even have an adopted Jewish mother. So it’s a real shonda that I’m so late to the party on what’s surely the tastiest Chanukah gutbomb in Queens, the Meshugah Latke ($11.95) at Ben’s Best Deli. It’s been available since the Festival of Lights began, but I only got to try it on the sixth day. (more…)
One of the coolest things about pizzerias in Queens is ethnic hybridization. Sometimes it takes the form of outright fusion—witness the falafel slice—and sometimes a separate cuisine coexists with the pizza. The latter is the case at Tu Arepa Pizza Café a spot that sells slices side by side with such Venezuelan specialties as cachapas and arepas.(more…)
A Peruvian breakfast sandwich in a Rego Park diner.
An old school diner is the last place one would expect to find such Peruvian specialties as papa la Huancaina, sliced potatoes in a cheese sauce spiked with aji amarillo, and cau cau, a tripe stew. In Queens though, such cultural cross pollination is becoming more and more common. Take the Rego Park Café, where a separate menu called La Mistura Peruana went into effect over the summer.
I’ve been meaning to try out the diner’s 12-item “Peruvian mixture” for months. I had my hungry heart set on the chicharron con camote sandwich ($6.95), a typical Peruvian breakfast of pork and sweet potatoes. They were out of it the day I stopped in, so instead I slurped augadito de pollo ($4.50) a verdant chicken and rice soup that gets its color from handfuls of cilantro. (more…)
Rugelach and babka are the first things many people think of when they hear the phrase “kosher bakery.” You’d be hard-pressed to find either at Rokhat Kosher Bakery, though. The baked goods—round loaves of lepeshka and flaky onion filled piyozli qatlama—here skew savory, evoking Uzbekistan more than the Lower East Side.
Samsa—meat pies filled with beef or lamb—cooked inside a tandoor are a favorite snack among the Rego Park locals. Recently the bakery added a new item, manty. I discovered the beef dumplings (8 for $10) the other week when I stopped in to thank the owner for letting me take a tour group there.
A gent was tucking into a small plate of four. Thinking that four was too few, I opted for a full order. The operative word being full. The beef and onion stuffed packages resembled gigantic soup dumplings and made for a formidable morning repast. With three pieces of lovely lokum for dessert I was one happy glutton.
Rokhat Kosher Bakery, 65-43 Austin Street, Rego Park, 718-897-4493
The most delightful Middle Eastern sweetmeats in Rego Park, Queens.
“That’s Turkish delight,” the gentleman behind the counter at Queens Bazaar Foods told me and my tour group as I held up a box filled with amber colored disks and chunks rolled in pistachio. “Lokum, apricot and pistachio,” he said by way of further explanation.
It was my first time hearing the word lokum. I’d ever seen the confection looking quite like this. I am more accustomed to the gelatinous cubes dusted in white powder. Lebanese lokum is a world apart from those. It puts the delight in Turkish delight. When we left the shop my tour guests and I noshed on a few bites. Everyone agreed the chewy morsels flavored with pistachio, apricot, and rosewater were amazing. We only ate a little bit as we’d just taken down a gigantic xachapuri at Marani. I stashed the rest away, with the plan of writing about the best Lebanese sweets in Rego Park. (more…)
With such a diversity of culinary cultures Queens boasts all kinds of noodles from all kinds of places. Cold, hot, spicy, even dessert they come in all shapes, sizes and flavors. Here are seven of our favorites.
1, Da pan ji, Su Xiang Yuan One of the most surprising things about da pan ji, the Henanese specialty known as “big tray of chicken,” is that it’s actually a big tray of poultry, potatoes, and noodles. And not just any old noodles either, they are the very same springy broad ribbons that grace the specialty of the house at this stand whose name is often translated to Nutritious Lamb Noodle Soup. There’s no soup to be found in the tray though. Instead find hacked up bits of bird and chunks of potatoes atop a bed of hand-pulled noodles. The whole thing is crowned with fresh cilantro and shot through with dried chilies awash in a curry-like concoction with just a touch of star anise along with pleasant bursts of saltiness from preserved beans. The noodles are a perfect vehicle for all that sauce. Nutritious Lamb Noodle Soup, No.28, New World Mall Food Court, Flushing (more…)
“Best what we have,” from Mother Russia and Dadu via Rego Park.
When it comes to Russian luxury the first thing that comes to mind is caviar and Faberge eggs not ice cream. Nevertheless I could hardly resist this new brand of Russian ice cream I spotted yesterday at one of the many gourmet shops that line the Bukharian Broadway that is 108th Street in Rego Park. Russian ice cream is one of the reasons I love living in Rego Park, but honestly the packaging is usually more interesting than the ice cream itself. And so it proved to be with Dadu’s Luxury ice cream.
The package container a wafer cone packed with decent chocolate ice cream, hardly the equivalent of Magnum’s level of luxury. I’m just glad it didn’t cost more than $1.75. The real luxury was to be found in eating it as I walked down the street on the first real day of spring
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