Sometimes my commute gets me back into Queens late at night without having had dinner. In those situations, Ittadi is totally vital: they serve amazing, filling Bengali food until 2am every night. Ittadi is counter-serve but they have a large seating area as well. I will generally go up to the counter and ask them […]
Ferdinando’s Foccacieria isn’t a bread shop. It also isn’t one of those classic Italian-American red-sauce restaurants. Opened in 1904, Ferdinando’s Foccacieria makes real Sicilian food and, though a relic from over 100 years ago, still makes it really well. We began with antipasti, as you do. This platter has pickled cauliflower and peppers, cold fried […]
New York City has a surprisingly large Albanian population. I first became aware of this when I was at a COVID test site at LaGuardia Airport and saw the list of languages for which the test site had interpreters. I recognized most of the languages, but the one that stood out as unusual was called […]
Queens has a wealth of South American food, but, as far as I can tell, only one Bolivian restaurant. Bolivian Llama Party’s specialty is a variety of empanada from Bolivia called a salteña. A salteña is to a standard empanada as a xiao long bao soup dumpling is to a standard dumpling: that is, filled […]
Atlas Kitchen specializes in the cuisines of the provinces of Sichuan and (especially) Hunan in southwest China. Hunan cuisine, like Sichuan cuisine, is characterized by the extensive use of chilies, but while Sichuan food uses primarily dried chilies, Hunan food relies on the blunter heat of fresh chilies. We got three cold appetizers. Two were […]
It’s easy to get mediocre Mexican food in New York, but Jackson Heights has it good. There’s a large population there from the central states of Puebla and Morelos, just south of CDMX and the State of Mexico. Tacos Morelos is a particularly good example of this food and, as a bonus, is open until […]
I love Georgian food and Oda House’s is great. Georgian cuisine is heavily influenced by the cuisine of Persia, which can be seen in its extensive use of herbs, walnuts, and pomegranates and emphasis on sweet-tart-savory flavor profiles. The appetizer known as nigvziani badrijani or eggplant rolls is a prime example of this: eggplants rolled […]
One of my favorite Ethiopian restaurants in New York is in a basement. It’s called Meskerem and it also has some of the best vegetarian food in the city. Unlike India, Ethiopia is not a country with a lot of vegetarians. However, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, of which almost half of Ethiopians are members, […]
It’s practically a crime to live in Queens for a whole year without going to the monthly Indonesian Food Bazaar at St. James Parish House in Elmhurst. But that’s what I did. I’m so glad I’ve now remedied this error. We started by making several loops around the Bazaar to see what was on offer. […]
Once a year, it’s nice to have a fancy meal, and this year’s was Claro, an extraordinary Oaxacan restaurant in Brooklyn. Upscale Mexican cuisine can be a mixed bag, but you can tell when a chef has a deep understanding of a cuisine, and that was certainly the case here. The evening began with wonderful […]
