In which the protagonist chronicles his adventures in trying to eat at every restaurant on the 2005 Village Voice Cheap Chow Now list and frequently posts other food-related musings.
His budget: $20 a day.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
CompUSA sucks, Kwik Meal rules.
A little background – as a kid living in Dallas when Dad brought home the family’s first IBM-compatible PC, a Hyundai (!) 286, I was enthralled by visits to the enormous Soft Warehouse for what seemed at the time like the neatest gadgets ever (pretty sure that’s where we bought our first mouse, and our first Sony Trinitron VGA monitor…the list goes on). Soft Warehouse, which later became CompUSA, is probably my earliest retail memory, in fact – considering that the first retail store in the chain was founded in 1985 in Dallas, around the same time as our first PC arrived, I’d say that I’ve grown up alongside the chain, missing it dearly when (from 1989-1997-ish), it didn’t exist in the Salt Lake City area.
Now flash forward to 8th Avenue and 57th St – this wretched CompUSA “superstore” may well be my roommate’s least favorite place in the universe, and it’s rapidly becoming mine. Over several visits, we have been struck by the general incompetence of the staff – from walking around with their heads down to discourage customer interruptions, to not knowing where things are stocked (okay, I don’t blame them for this – there are at least three separate aisles where USB cables are stocked in great variety, for instance), but the incompetence of management is probably the most important factor.
I was going in to buy a Serial ATA power adapter – they haven’t changed the good old Molex power connector in 25 years, until roughly 10 minutes before I bought a new hard drive last week. Lovely. Newegg.com, who are usually swell, didn’t seem to even mention this, so it’s probably my fault for not paying closer attention. Regardless, I now needed an adapter, and my first stop (J&R at Park Row) brought me no closer.
After gritting my teeth, I grabbed the C train uptown (the wait at Broadway-Nassau redeemed slightly by a bassist and saxophonist playing “Lickin’ Stick” by James Brown and “Stoned Out Of My Mind” by the Chi-Lites – pretty sure I was the only person on the platform who knew the second one). Once inside CompUSA, I looked around for a few minutes before flagging a red-shirted customer service guy, who seemed to me mostly disposed to cower in the corner. He didn’t shirk me, thankfully, though he wasn’t knowledgeable in the subject field, and led me to a manager, who pointed me to the places I had already looked. Strike one.
He then paged the section’s manager, who didn’t appear, and wandered off promising to send him my way. He did, about fifteen minutes later, but probably for an unrelated reason – head down, checking out his “list,” he charged into the back, and would have charged back into the store’s depths if not for me nearly clotheslining him and asking him.
It brought me no satisfaction – the answer? “We’re out.” Strike two.
At that point, I had identified two alternate options, both of which were expensive but offered the prospect that I could begin to use my new hard drive immediately – a new power supply with the proper connectors (cost: $60), or an adapter card (cost: $50) which included the proper cable. Did I mention that the prices I just quoted are close to 50% higher than the online retail price?
I have to admit, I almost talked myself into the power supply – and some DVD+R-DL media as well – but when I got to the front end, though, the line was six people deep, and the sole cashier was wandering around attempting to find someone to answer a question for her. From previous retail experience, I know this means that the manager has failed to respond to a page, because cashiers in any setting are taught not to leave the customer at the register alone (for security reasons as well as customer service ones).
Strike three. I ditched the nearly $100 in merch and walked out, swearing that this would be the end of my long relationship with CompUSA. Long live internet retail.
What does this have to do with food, you ask? Well, I met my roommate and some of his co-workers at a nearby bar, drowned my sorrows in a beer, and set off in the direction of the mid-Manhattan Library (he had to return a book). When I mentioned that a street vendor using Kingsford charcoal nearly made me buy a spontaneous kebab dinner, he suggested that we find the Kwik Meal cart, on the corner of 45th St. and 6th Ave. – the guy made famous by his half-zillion media appearances, because network morning shows get most of their story ideas by staring out the window. Culinarily, I have to say that his fame is well-justified, though – his absurdly clean cart produces one of the finest lamb sandwiches this side of Kings Highway. When you order (“The lamb’s the big seller,” says my roommate, who works nearby enough to know), the strangest smell starts to waft from inside the cart – butter! That’s right – a cart actually using butter instead of oil to cook something. Strange, no?
While we waited, I translated what I think must be the most hilariously random review clip I’ve ever seen posted – a review from Kurier, which is, in a sense, the Daily News of Austria, was posted on the side of the cart. I discovered that my slow German translation skills haven’t eroded much (though I was stumped by the word “Ingwer,” which is ginger), and my anticipation for the meal was only deepened with knowing that, according to Kurier, “for many New Yorkers, [45th and 6th] is the most important corner of the city.” Huh? They liked the lamb, though.
More inspiring was the chef’s quote in a New York Times review (I’m paraphrasing slightly from memory – the article is behind a Times Select wall): “I get to make the food I want the way I want, nobody yells at me, and I get to spend the evening at home with my family. God bless America.” It’s the culinary version of an inspiring end-of-Rocky-IV-style speech. Needless to say, we were psyched.
The lamb with pita was excellent. Buttery pita with tender, flavorful lamb, and just the right amount of veggies and a flavorful (some might say spicy – it wasn’t extremely so) sauce, it more than made up for the lost hours of my life in search of computer parts. At $5.75, on the expensive end of cart food, but on the far-low end of the restaurant price range – and this food tasted like it was made at a good restaurant.
Such was the yin and yang of yesterday evening: I may never have that hour of my life back again, but I’ll always know to stop by the Kwik Meal cart.
Those of you who read my first doner kebap article will recall how much I missed being able to walk to the nearest street corner and devour a lunch-sized portion of chicken or lamb mounted on bread with sauce. What I didn’t mention in that article was that I can conservatively estimate about a third of those doners (that’s what we called them!) were eaten as hangover reducers: the greasy meat, bread, and hot sauce combination was my original Advil, back when drinking was a multiple-day-a-week enterprise.
Why do I mention this? My roommate and I had a party last Friday night, and when my girlfriend and I rolled out of bed Saturday morning, we (and he) were definitely feeling bent. While sitting on the couch, lamenting, I had a brilliant plan: to visit Sietsema’s number one cheap eats destination, Memo, at 1821 Kings Highway. After convincing my roommate that it wasn’t a terrible idea to get on the Q train, we set off for Atlantic Avenue station.
We found Memo to be one of several restaurants on a commercial strip that stretched from the Q tracks to Ocean Avenue (and to Coney Island Avenue on the other side). As Sietsema mentions, Memo is certainly humble – a few tables, a small counter, and not nearly enough space, considering how many people filtered in and out while we were there. I guess it’s not surprising – doner kebap is inevitably a portable food, and most of the places I ate doner in Europe had counters, at best.
Two vertical spits with enormous hunks of meat dominate the front area – both chicken and lamb are offered here, and roasted correctly – unlike McDougal St.’s Yatgan, which barely seems to cook theirs at all in order not to ever have to waste any, the heat is turned up. If no customers arrive, they’ll still have to cut the meat off – this is one of the ways to tell a good doner place from a bad one, or at least a popular one from an unpopular one. But the high-temperature cooking, particularly with very fatty ground lamb, makes all the difference.
What differentiates Memo from my European doner adventures is the sheer enormity of the sandwich. No lie, the thing is at least twice as big as any others I’ve seen – you’ll need two hands and a stack of napkins. I ordered the mixed lamb and chicken on home bread – for $6.50, it could definitely feed two, if you don’t mind passing a messy sandwich back and forth. About the bread – Memo offers both regular pita and “home bread” – the latter is the only kind I saw ordered, and it’s half a loaf of flat, dense Uzbek-style bread that’s perfect for soaking up all of the sauce and grease, for better and for worse. I can’t imagine not ordering it, but there’s always a charlatan somewhere who wants store-bought pita.
Of the two meats, I actually preferred the chicken, but I think that’s because the lamb and chicken flavors don’t mix exceedingly well. I don’t think I ever saw a place in Europe with both kinds of meat, and I certainly never had a doner with both kinds, so I wonder if this is a Brooklyn invention. Sauces are of the standard white yogurt and red spicy varieties – I had both, in addition to lettuce, tomato, and onion.
Memo might not be the absolute best doner kebap I’ve ever had, but it’s hard to be certain, since it’s competing mostly against distant memories (almost four years since I was in Graz – astonishing). At any rate, I’m glad delicious doner is once again just a train ride away – a longer distance than when I lived in Europe, but certainly shorter and cheaper than a plane there. And for those hangover days, there’s nothing better.
My girlfriend and I went to Rocco’s Calamari last night, which occupies the 44th spot on Sietsema’s list and a rather bizarre corner of Brooklyn. In no real neighborhood, at the corner of what my roommate and I used to call “the FHP” and 65th Street, Rocco’s is most unimpressive from the outside. The first time we tried to visit, we were stymied by a combination of Columbus Day and Mondays – as it turns out, Rocco’s is never open on Sundays or Mondays anyway – and we were greeted by drab red letters and a pulled-down metal curtain. Yesterday, the red letters were lit, and the curtain was up, but we were confronted instead by a drab, large, empty room with a counter full of food and all the makings of a take-out emporium.
We ambled over to the counter once inside, spotting Sietsema’s preferred roast pepper appetizer (with capers), as well as several other things that looked appetizing: seasoned baby mozzarella, eggplant rollatini, and a meat sauce manicotti dish unlisted on the menu. Once back at the table (our desire for table service seemingly at odds with the waitress’ desire for tips), we augmented that grouping with an order of fried calamari. A few hunks of peasant loaf were presented to us as well.
The calamari ($9), which arrived last, was by far the best dish, and the least generic. Fresh, perfectly fried, and flavorful, this was among the best presentations of that oft-abused shellfish I’ve ever tasted. We had forgotten to order the spicy dipping sauce, but I daresay that it would have been unnecessary. These squid are good enough to eat sans sauce.
My second favorite dish was probably the pepper/caper appetizer ($4.50), which arrived tossed with the mozzarella and a bit of olive oil. As suggested by Sietsema, mounting the peppers and olive oil on the bread was extremely effective. I found the mozzarella ($4.50) less wonderful, not immediately distinguishable from the supermarket variety.
My girlfriend loved the eggplant, rolled up with several kinds of cheese after being thinly sliced, breaded, and fried – an order of three cost $6.50, but the waitress said an order of one was also available. I also found it good, but too similar to the manicotti (which I think cost $3.50 for one piece), and the manicotti was drenched in the far superior meat sauce.
The lasagna, which Sietsema had also praised, was unavailable on the night we were there, sadly, and we didn’t try any of the pastas (despite the garlic and oil fettuccini looking amazing).
As Italian non-pizza restaurants go, Rocco’s is certainly one of the cheapest I’ve been to. However, other than the fried calamari, none of the dishes were truly exceptional. That said, my girlfriend and I left with full stomachs and a slightly giddy sensation (I think an FDA sticker warning of this effect should be affixed to each and every kind of cheese), so it’s definitely a worthwhile excursion.
My Rocco’s suggestion? Wait for a baking hot summer’s day (Mermaid Parade or Siren Festival time, perhaps?) and check out Coney Island. On the way back, take the N to Fort Hamilton Parkway and walk the four blocks to Rocco’s. Celebrate your independence from the dirty, sweaty hipsters by reveling in Rocco’s air-conditioning (the menu advertises it, so it must work well!), calamari, and beer. Jug wine also available.
Happy New Year: spectacular spicy lamb at Grand Sichuan.
Okay, I keep going on and on about Grand Sichuan, and I realize that I’m to some extent belaboring the point. I wouldn’t be tempted to keep writing about it, though, if I didn’t keep having incredible meals there – last night’s being, without question, the best yet.
My roommate and I slid in to a table at the Chelsea location last night – not wanting to trek to the outer boroughs, but craving soup dumplings, he had suggested it. And why not? It’s a great place, and I wasn’t in absolute need of a new restaurant to write about (guess I’ll do that article tomorrow, heh). Upon inspecting the menu, I had an urge to try new things, particularly after the successful experiment documented in last week’s article. While my roommate ordered his beloved soup dumplings, I ordered a spicy dan dan noodle.
The soup dumplings (crab and pork) were up to their usual standards. The dan dan noodles were quite interesting – very soft spaghetti served with spinach and spicy oil. The oil arrives only in the bottom of the bowl – the noodles aren’t pre-dressed. After mixing, I quite enjoyed the noodles, and I’m sure they could have been enough for a whole dinner. The spice level wasn’t overwhelming, and didn’t seem to grow out of proportion with the quantity of noodles consumed, which was nice.
The real kickers came with the entrees, though. Remember how I complained that Sichuan peppercorns were rare as hen’s teeth in Grand Sichuan? Turns out I was ordering the wrong stuff. Yes, my roommate’s twice-cooked pork (which is apparently available in both fatty and lean iterations – I’d probably order fatty, but the lean was decent), we found few peppercorns in and amongst the scallions, water chestnuts, ginger, and green peppers (ironically, most peppercorns seemed to be hiding inside the peppers). In fact, we wouldn’t have noticed them there at all, if not for his biting into one and noticing that half of his tongue went numb.
Of course, we were excited, and picked over the remaining pork and peppers with a fine-toothed fork, chewing on errant peppercorns until our tongues were good and numb. I say “we” because my dish didn’t arrive until his was practically finished – I had ordered something called a “spicy lamb casserole” from the special Chinese New Year menu. Understand, of course, that I had NO IDEA what was going to emerge from the kitchen. “Spicy lamb” runs the gamut from merguez to noodle soups, right?
More like a stew than anything else, my lamb casserole emerged from the kitchen both spectacularly late and spectacular looking: a black crock containing brown broth with extraordinarily tender hacked lamb pieces (including fall-off-the-bone rib parts, joints, and god knows what else), dried red chiles, ginger and some kind of melon. The dish also crawled with cracked Sichuan peppercorns, sometimes in clusters of three or four. The peppercorns had lent their flavor and some of their analgesic properties to the stew, but the flavor of the broth would have been just as good without it. Not overly spicy but far from bland, it tasted somewhat like the broth at Super Taste. It made me wish I hadn’t had all those damn noodles already.
I realize that the lamb casserole is a splurge at $15, but this could easily feed two adventurous people, provided they didn’t mind sucking the meat off of various bones (the meat is tender and flavorful enough to make this rewarding). Again, this is seemingly a limited-time-only menu addition – given that the Chinese New Year celebrations run through mid-February, you have absolutely no excuse not to go to Grand Sichuan and check out the casserole and whatever else looks good from the special menu.
Some business: I give belated but appreciative credit to reader TJ Jackson for suggesting a link to Sietsema’s lists – an obvious idea that had totally eluded me, given that I work from printed copies of the lists. Anyway, it’s now the first link in the right column, so check ‘em out. Thanks, TJ!
Imagine my elation, on a recent fall day, at seeing a post on chowhound.com trumpeting a new banh mi purveyor. Imagine also that this restaurant was situated not three blocks away from my apartment, on Bergen St. just off Smith. Given my previous adulation for banh mi, you can easily imagine me pestering friends and acquaintances with progress reports over the next three months, as the shop took shape. No more pestering, though – Hanco is open and serving sandwiches.
I’m sure most of the people who actually were the beneficiaries of my status reports would probably rather have been talking about something else, but this is banh mi – the sandwich king of the eastern hemisphere, and one of the city’s premiere cheap eats. Banh mi shops moving from Sunset Park northwards are still a big deal, as when Nicky’s established the banh mi’s northern perimeter the East Village. (And, incidentally, just like it was a big deal when the Easy Street Café in Waitsfield/Warren, Vermont served a “Vietnamese sandwich” with most of the right ingredients – unlike the bizarre slab of cold liverwurst I found between the bun, the idea of banh mi seems to be spreading.)
Hanco opened Friday, according to one of their employees, and business has been quite brisk since that time (I saw what looked like a big line on Saturday, with plenty of people sipping on bubble tea – Hanco’s other specialty). I stopped in Sunday after a run to pick up a classic sandwich ($4.25), which I toted home with all the glee of a third grader with a sackful of Halloween candy. Tearing into the sandwich, which I had ordered spicy, I immediately noticed a few things. First, somewhat unsurprisingly, it wasn’t spicy at all (no red sauce present, no jalapeños present). I’m going to stare them down (hypnotism?) while saying spicy next time, a tactic which seems to work best in the non-Sunset Park banh mi shops. Second, the usual banh mi cold toppings were augmented by slivers of a green pepper, which presented some additional crunch, and the only hint of spice in the whole sandwich. Maybe they were outside slices of the jalapeños – they tasted somewhat similar.
Fortunately, the meat and bread were as warm as they should be, though the bread could have been a bit toastier. I wouldn’t say that the sandwich is as big as Banh Mi So 1 or Ba Xyugen, either, but it’s larger than I remember Nicky’s being. Also, the mixed bunch of carrot/lotus root seemed to be rather precariously placed on top of everything else, such that an un-careful bite might result in the entire blob coming off in your mouth.
Minor concerns, really – the banh mi has made it to Boerum Hill. Hopefully this second step into the gringo-populated nabes is a harbinger of things to come. For instance, I’d be extremely pleased to have banh mi walking distance from work, even if my friends weren’t – I’d certainly start pestering them with status reports anew.
Chongqing and the Cheburekis (remastered, with bonus gherkins)
Hey, gang. Sorry about the lack of update yesterday, but this week has been a “greatest hits” of sorts – took my roommate to Cheburechnaya, where we sampled some of the things I loved before, along with the potato and cabbage chebureki (I’d recommend only the latter) and the skirt steak kebab (which easily outpaces the beef). They also have the better of the two versions of chak-chak I’ve had: fried bits of cracker dough sewn together with honey, which may or may not be named after a Zoroastrian pilgrimage town in Iran. The other dessert was a mildly camphor-tasting pistachio pastry with the consistency of marzipan – my roommate liked that one a lot.
Of course, I spent nearly as much as we did on the meal at one of the Russian deli-groceries on the way back. They had open pickle and olive vats in the back, from which I selected some full sours (haven’t had a chance to try them yet, though). Some yummy frosted things packed in a Ziploc turned out to be (probably) tea biscuits, which made my roommate quite happy. Also some black and mint tea, gingerbread cookies with strawberry filling, and a slab of sugar wafers called “Prince of Chocolate,” – the wafers were coated with chocolate and peanuts.
Last night I met my engineer buddy at his studio in Hell’s Kitchen; we grabbed some dinner at the Grand Sichuan on 9th between 50th and 51st. This was my first time to this location, and I was surprised to find that they didn’t have my usual ma la pork dish. I put myself in the hands of the waitress, explaining that I wanted something as hot and with as many Sichuan peppercorns as possible.
I ended up with Chongqing chicken from one of the additional menu pages tacked on to the back. The presentation of the dish is impressive – served in a vegetable steamer placed in a bowl, the dish is probably more than half dried red chilis. The chicken contained therein acquires such a powerfully potent spice that my friend, upon tasting it, was shocked at my ability to consume it (guess I’ve trained myself right). I didn’t eat too many of the chilis, but the one I ate didn’t seem too much spicier than the chicken. Not many peppercorns, alas, despite my request for them.
His dish was no slouch – the spicy diced chicken contained a normal-person level of spice, as well as diced cucumbers and chicken in a sauce I’d swear was vinegary. Good, but hard to evaluate rationally while your mouth is on fire. Making matters worse, I poured the run-off from the bowl under my steamer onto my rice and ate that last. Let’s just say I drank a lot of tea and water.
We retired afterwards to a nearby diner, where my friend ordered an Oreo milkshake to wash down his cheesecake, much to the waitress’ bemusement. Now THAT’S a dairy bomb.
Good news! This entry is (more or less) my 75th food-review entry in this blog. If it were a wedding anniversary, you’d be downright amazed that I was still alive – now I know how my doctor feels. In other milestone news, I’ve now eaten at 33 of Sietsema’s top 100 cheap eats lists (not counting the one I didn’t eat at before it closed). You think, well, at 365 days in a year, I should have this banged out in about five months, right? Um, yeah. Considering that I printed out five other lists, started reading chowhound, and (more recently) acquired Sietsema’s recent book, I doubt I’ll be done any time soon.
The 33rd restaurant was, specifically, Tulcingo del Valle Grocery, on 10th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen, and (much like Mexicali) I was thoroughly disappointed. Admittedly, I may not have approached this restaurant with the usual thoroughness – instead of reading Sietsema’s full review online before departing, I relied on the list-blurb (#12, if you’re keeping score at home) for recommendations. This proved to be a problem, because the mole poblano I thought he was talking about was unavailable last night. (As it turns out, he also recommends that sauce, but the blurb was talking the “mole al estilo Tulcingo.”)
Never fear, I thought. We’ll try the sandwiches of poblano, called cemitas, and I’ll order beef tongue while steering my roommate towards the more conventional dried beef. Surely a sandwich won’t be disappointing, right?
Wrong. The sandwiches were nearly inedible, for reasons we couldn’t fully explain. It wasn’t bad avocados – they seemed agreeably mushy. The white cheese seemed to be okay, too, and my roommate got his without. Could it have been bad chipotle sauce? The bad flavor and worse smell seemed to be emanating more from that area than anywhere else…or perhaps I don’t know what real chipotle tastes like? Either way, we could both taste it for hours afterwards, and it left us shaking our heads.
As to the meats contained therein: my roommate wasn’t wild about the dried beef, which was tough to chew through. I’d agree, though we had a momentary visual confusion as to whether he was accidentally was served the tongue. Assuming what I was served WAS actually tongue, it was quite tender – melt in your mouth, in fact – and I’d be curious to try it again without the ickyness nearby.
The sandwiches were expensive, unfortunately, at $7. The guacamole and chips we were served to begin weren’t as awful, but the guac was thin and bland (like the German version entitled, forebodingly, “avocadocreme”) and the cilantro sprinkled on top was a poor substitute for actual flavor. Honestly, if a McDonald’s subsidiary can make passable guac, in this day and age, there’s no reason to even bother with the bad stuff, particularly when it’s $4.
Just to satisfy my attempt to identify something positive about every place I go, I liked the Mexican seltzer water, and the modern-ish conquistador graphics on the wall were kind of fun (particularly the one where the dude on a horse is holding a cell phone pointed towards a satellite). It’s just too bad the food made me want to call in a pizza.
If it’s a nasty night and you don’t want to stray too far from the nearest subway stop, you’re in the same boat that my girlfriend and I were in on Saturday. Absolutely gross weather, but we were in the mood for good food with a side of adventure. What to do? We ended up at La Maison du Couscous, on Bay Ridge’s 77th St. – it’s close enough to the R train to brave Mother Nature, and, though it’s a little expensive, the food is worth traveling to try in any weather.
Our meal at La Maison du Couscous was the second dinner in a row for us at a restaurant that claimed to be Moroccan. The first, I will briefly say, was located on Avenue A (Manhattan), had a name that would seem to attract more dieters than foodies, and was rather horrible. I mean, REALLY bad in a “rancid olive and hummus” kind of way. Thankfully, LMdC (love the acronym – wonder if this will bring in the WTC redevelopment readers) redeemed the genre – beating the Avenue A place in every category, including atmosphere and ambiance.
The excellence starts early – the moment we sat down, we were informed of the restaurant’s BYOB policy (a liquor license is said to be in process), and I scampered back out into the rain to grab us beer (the deli across 5th Ave. had the most enormous can of Asahi I’ve ever seen). When I returned, I found my girlfriend noshing on one of the more delicious pieces of warm bread I’ve had in a few weeks, coated in butter and a few sesame seeds – the perfect sponge for the sauce that comes with it. Made with sundried tomatoes, hot peppers, and olive oil, this stuff was absolutely fantastic. We demolished two loaves of the bread just finishing the sauce and the excellent hummus ($4-ish) – unusual for me, because I’m usually saving room for the main dish. Also notable and served free to us was a dish full of green olives and chopped veggies – the olives (and I’m not usually a big fan) were quite good.
Of course, after the hors d’orgy, we over-ordered mains, but I don’t feel like I could have escaped without trying both a tajine and a couscous (both in the $12 range). The tajine we ordered was the house version, with peas, carrots, artichoke hearts, and potatoes in a brown sauce that reminded me a bit of my mother’s beef stew. The merguez that (our requested meat) looked more like Jimmy Dean than Bedouin Tent, but the taste was agreeable, if not quite up to the Tent’s high (and spicy) standards, and the sausage was thankfully free of grease.
The couscous (interestingly also served in a tajine – I have no idea if this is typical) was sweet in an earthy kind of way, with golden raisins, prunes, and dates. This was probably a poor pairing with a strongly-flavored lamb shank that had good tenderness but was a little dry (sounds odd, but I can’t think of how else to describe it). The pasta itself was cooked to what seemed to me to be the right level of stickiness, and I’d order it again with a more neutral meat (or just by itself).
Like I mentioned above, the atmosphere at LMdC is several notches above average. With a friendly waiter and a dimly-but-warmly lit dining room, you could do a lot worse for a date location, particularly if you’re usually dragging her all over creation to places that could best be described as grittily functional (thanks, hon!). That’s not to say that LMdC is perfect – the sweets ($2), described as chef Fatima’s special, were disappointingly over-honeyed pastry-marzipan rolls, and they seemed a bit on the stale side. Thankfully, you’ll probably be too full for them anyway.
Sometimes the stories write themselves – yesterday’s visit to DeMarco’s, at the corner of W. Houston and MacDougal Sts., was one such occasion. After inspecting the exterior menu and taking a deep price-related breath, I walked in determined to order a slice or two to go. The moment I walked in, though, things changed slightly. Instead of a traditional New York pizzeria, where the oven dominates the room, the pies sit out front, and the décor is usually recycled from a 70’s fast food restaurant demolition, I was confronted by a clean, modern, if plain restaurant, with a single customer gabbing in Italian with the chef and a bored waitress slumped on the bar. This would require further investigation.
I took a stool and gave a cursory glance at the menu before ordering what the other customer had – what’s known in Europe and certain places around these parts as a Pizza Margherita. It’s the simplest Neapolitan pizza out there – just crust, tomatoes, fresh basil, and mozzarella di bufala. It’s also the easiest to screw up – there’s not much margin for error with so few ingredients, and if any of them are off (or out of balance), the pie just isn’t the same.
Fortunately, I was in the hands of a chef who was having an extremely good day. The gent at the bar turned out to be a former co-worker who the proprietor had hired at his first job in America – and who saved all of his money (the chef told a story about finding a bureau drawer full of cash while looking for a pair of pants to borrow) and went into “business” for himself – doing very nicely in the process, if his $10 tip on $14 worth of pizza is to be believed.
At any rate, this man’s presence made the chef pleased as punch and very happy to talk about his pies – I discerned that his ingredients were all imported from Italy, and that he changes the kind of water he uses in the crust based on the humidity of the air (I didn’t dare ask how the two were related – seemed like I was already being let in on a secret). He revealed that he has someone else put the pies in the oven and take them out, because he always seemed to screw that step up somehow (the burn marks on his arms seemed to confirm this fact). I also heard stories about at least two different mutual friends of the men who resorted to credit card scamming and were ruined. Unsolicited advice: if you’re going to borrow credit cards that patrons leave behind to do a little shopping, don’t go to places in your own town with security cameras.
Soon my pie arrived, and I was in hog heaven. The 12” Margherita is the most European pizza I’ve ever eaten in America – while I had bad experiences with pizza in Italy, this pie was more than a match for the places I used to frequent in Berlin and Prague. Starting with a firm but chewy crust, a tomato sauce with a flavor that I’ve never had in America, and finishing with a hint of fresh basil and a generous layer of mozzarella, the pie was to die for. My one and only complaint was that the center of the pie was a bit soggy – the addition of olive oil as a last step is a phenomenon I’m still trying to understand. Make no mistake, though – I lapped up the pizza like a kitten does milk.
After his buddy left, the chef disappeared into the back, coming out only to collect my plate and make sure that I was satisfied. The waitress eventually ambled over and intimated that she didn’t know why she was there, and that it had thus far been a bad day. Not being a truly alert conversationalist, I neglected to ask why, but I remarked that working for that chef must be exciting, in a sense. She sighed, and I could tell that all she really wanted was a job where she wouldn’t have to deal with this crazy guy all the time. Personally, I don’t think she knew how good she had it, but I left her a big tip anyway…and also because they had no one-dollar bills, or change.
A juice bar seems like a strange place to find a ground lamb sandwich. Yet that was the scene for last night’s dinner – Nectar, which seems to be primarily in the business of concocting various fruit juice blends, also serves food. Juice and Mediterranean/Middle Eastern food go together more often than you’d expect, though, and Nectar’s food, at least, is good enough to make me curious about the juices.
A block away from the Smith St. dining strip, across from the corner of Wyckoff St. and Court St., Nectar is a tiny little storefront with only a couple tables and a bench on which to wait. It forgoes the relaxed atmosphere of a restaurant or coffee shop in favor of something a little brighter and more functional – the orange juicer is on the front counter, for example, and the table area seems designed to attract the odd stroller-pushing couple who can’t easily take their food to go.
Nectar offers various kinds of sandwiches and salads, and most of the salads are also available in wrap form. My roommate and I both ended up with the Moroccan lamb wrap, the salad form of which had been recommended by a co-worker of my girlfriend. No juices this time, though I was tempted by the selection of Ciao Bella sorbets and gelatos.
We toted the food home (after a stop to pick up dessert at the adjoining Tasti-D – no Ciao Bella by any means) and cracked open our plastic containers. Accompanying a small-sized (for a burrito, I guess – not a fair comparison) wrap was a container of cole slaw that seemed to have a hint of cilantro. The wrap itself was full of ground lamb that had the consistency of freshly sautéed hamburger – greasy, tasty, and flavorful. The grease was balanced by the presence of feta cheese, onions, a little lettuce, and the chewy (but not stale) herbed tortilla that surrounded the whole enterprise.
How does Nectar’s wrap rate on the global scale of lamb sandwiches? Well, I wouldn’t pick it over a good doner kebap, nor is it the equal of Bedouin Tent’s lamb or merguez sandwiches (both of which, I might add, are cheaper) – both bread and meat at Bedouin Tent are superior. But, for a change of pace, or for those Cobble Hillers who just need a quick bite on the way home, the Moroccan lamb wrap ($7.75) is a fine choice.
With regards to the un-sampled juices: my favorite Syrian restaurant in Berlin also has a few juices to choose from – in the Middle East, apparently, juices are not considered just a kids or breakfast drink. So Nectar’s concept of a juice bar with Mediterranean food isn’t that far off the mark, though I’m unsure if that’s exactly what the owners were shooting for (considering the rest of the menu, including the all day breakfast, betray little Mediterranean influence, maybe not). Given the equipment present, the juices are apparently a much fresher than my beloved cherry-banana juice (which, at Al Kalif, is mixed from two bottles of Looza). So Nectar has improved considerably on that part of the formula, wittingly or not – if their juices are as good as their sandwiches, Nectar could be even more appealing.
"Comfort food" cafeteria leaves veggies, this critic cold.
Let me be perfectly honest – I don’t understand Mama’s food shop. Just flat out don’t understand it. And I suppose that’s fine, because they’ve been around forever and probably will stay around as long as they keep slinging ten buck plates of veggies. It will elude me just as long, though, as to why it’s popular.
Mama’s, in the number 52 spot on Sietsema’s list, leaves me wanting for reasons culinary and otherwise. Let’s start with the convoluted ordering system – you walk into the door, trying not to trip over the tables and those standing at the cash register, and move to the counter or the rear of the line approaching said counter. Don’t forget to grab a menu on the way in (wedged between the cash register and the front door), though, otherwise you’ll never figure out in advance that you get one meat dish and one side or three sides for ten bucks. Also, if you don’t choose your veggies in advance, you may be reduced to pointing like you’re at a Chinese steam table, except with far less sympathetic counter help.
After the lunchlady-apparatchik is done slopping your food from the steam/refrigerator table (more on that in a second), you pay and attempt to find a place to sit. Main dining area seems full, you say? Well, you could try and navigate through the kitchen to the other room, but it’s not very big, either, and you’ll be making trips back to the pitcher of ice water. It's time to snuggle up to some strangers, just like in those cafeteria days of yore. Maybe you’ll make a new friend, though that sort of connecting was easier to deal with before your table-mate was converted to misanthropy by years of eating at places like Mama’s.
So I sat down with my enormous plate of food and started to eat. The macaroni and cheese is, indeed, quite tasty – I’ll give them that much. But the veggies and starch really leave something to be desired. They’re served cold! I realize that the afore-mentioned menu explains that they’re served that way because “Mama” said to do so, but I have a feeling that this “Mama” isn’t the sort I’d want making my holiday dinners. The egregious laziness of cold vegetables is made particularly obvious by the presence of a microwave (WTF?) near the cash register (and, for what it’s worth, I don’t care that they’re crispy as hell because they’re made in a convection oven if you’ve still got to nuke them like they’re week-old leftovers). I tried the bok choy, the green beans, the turnips, the broccoli, and the sweet potatoes, and none made an impression large enough to overcome their lack of internal energy.
But, hey – “Mama” says to shut up and eat it (it’s right there on the menu!). So I did, mostly, except for the bok choy, which I’m not as much of a fan of in its larger version (and particularly not cold). Besides, the last time I finished something green just because mama said so, I was threatened with the confiscation of my Oreos. This time I just skipped dessert of my own volition – I’m tired of paying four bucks for a single serving, I guess (particularly not after I scarfed Ben and Jerry’s factory seconds as fast as I could this past weekend, at $2.69 a pint).
The indignity of the end of the meal only serves to reinforce why Mama’s won’t attract my return business: scraping my leftovers into the trash bin and putting my dishes and silverware into the metal sink just reminded me a bit too much of a dining hall my friends and I fondly used to call the “dirty D.” Don’t think that I’m just against busing my own place, either – at the Easy Street Café this weekend, near Waitsfield, Vermont, I did so twice with nary a complaint. The difference: the food was much better, and at no time did I gaze into a sink full of dirty plates and have a flashback to my kitchen during senior year of college.
I surmise that “Mama” (or the actual proprietors, whoever they might be) would crow about Mama’s lack of affectation. Much like the hipster who spent an hour making his or her hair look disheveled, however, Mama’s “lack of affectation” is a front for its extreme peculiarity, and not in the good sense of that word. For nearly ten bucks a plate, with service bordering on zero and veggies that could charitably be described as half-prepared, Mama’s is a real motherfucker.
One good reason to get out of NYC occasionally is the inevitable reminder of how one’s definition of “cheap” gets skewed here. Witness, for example, Al’s French Frys [sic] in South Burlington, Vermont, for example, not far from the miniscule Burlington International Airport. Al’s is so goddamn cheap that you’ll think you conked your head and woke up in 1984.
I have to admit, we were sucked in by the sign, though. Monday afternoon was (after two days of skiing) my and my girlfriend’s chance to explore certain personal historical sites in and around Burlington – to my father’s great amusement, I seem to have inherited his compulsion to drive by any old residence of mine, regardless of whether I can remember it, and the house I spent the first two years of my life was our first stop. Me: Unborn generations of future Kings are already groaning in the back seat... Dad: Yep, but they'll do it too! Sorry you got that handed down. Pretty funny though. Yeah, funny. That’s the word I was looking for, or maybe “tragic.”
Afterwards, though, we were cruising down Williston Road towards downtown Burlington, and Al’s sign (along with the vintage “Parkway Diner” sign a little further east) stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the new-ish Starbucks, Ground Round, and McDonald’s signs that populate the strip. (If anyone can find a picture of the sign, please send a link along – we didn’t have a camera along and I can’t find one online.) We immediately fixated on Al’s as our lunch destination. After driving downtown, with a stop at UVM and a quick gaze at the Lake Champlain waterfront and downtown Burlington, we returned to Al’s with high hopes.
We were certainly not disappointed – the black-and-white-tile-clad interior with red booths was every bit the kitsch palace I had imagined from the road, and hearing the Crystals singing “He’s A Rebel” over the restaurant’s PA made me happier than it probably should have. The menu was surprisingly extensive – chicken, corn dogs, fish, pepper steak, and the dreaded “wrap” all found a place on Al’s menu. Of course, we weren’t about to be caught dead with any of those things – I ordered a double cheeseburger, a pint of fries, and a medium diet Coke, and my girlfriend contented herself with a medium chocolate milkshake and several of my fries.
First, the namesake fries ($1.86 per pint) – seemingly cut from fresh potatoes, and with the skin left on, Al’s “frys” were awfully good. They reminded me of my recent Eat-A-Burger fries, sans spice rub – just a good potato fried in good oil. While I’m reluctant to anoint them one of the top fries I’ve ever had, due to their not being mind-blowingly excellent, we wished we had ordered another pint to go (a good sign, right?).
Al’s double cheeseburger ($2.56) was a bit in the style of a fast food chain, but much better. Be sure to check out the fry cook flipping the extra-thin patty (the griddle is at the front of the restaurant, next to the line). When he’s finished, the guy in charge of toppings will ask you what you want on your burger. Should you ask for everything, you’ll get ketchup, mustard, green relish, and chopped white onions – this isn’t a Blue 9-style lettuce and tomato palace by any means, though you could order them for an extra $0.50. (Bacon, somehow cheaper, is available for $0.25.) I might have skipped the onions and mustard next time, but the sloppy burger was excellent – a well-seasoned griddle is essential, particularly when the burger is so thin, and Al’s seems to have a good one. Pizza burgers are also available, for the discerning masochist.
I shared my diet Coke ($1.40, with a good ratio of syrup to carbonated water) in return for some milkshake tastes – good thing, as the shake ($2.05) might have been the best thing we had. Made from real vanilla ice cream and displaying the wonderful thick/thin inconsistency (that McDonald’s has spent millions trying to eradicate) as a result, the shake was given its flavor with chocolate syrup. This process generally results in an extremely sweet shake, and this one was no different – absolutely delicious, and a perfect accompaniment to the savory-salty potatoes and meat.
Our bill ran to an outrageous $8.58, including tax – eat your heart out, Burger Joint.
Note to restaurant owners: if your place smells like a chemical toilet, you will drive away customers. Or, at least, that’s the theory I came up with while sitting in the nearly-empty Pink Teacup, an apparently-august West Village institution, and my lunch destination yesterday. Unlike my usual eating trips, this one was unpremeditated: I was walking on Grove St. between 7th and Hudson and needed to get lunch – my new (not New Year’s) resolution not to pay any ATM fees having led me a few blocks out of the way.
Despite the odor, the sudden stop was well worth it. Advertising a lunch special set at $7, I chose the fried pork chop option, with sides of collard greens and black eyed peas. The meal began with a perfunctory salad and soup – the salad greens were fresh but a choice between French (actually more like Russian) and creamy Italian dressings left me a bit cold. I’m kind of surprised to find salad in a soul food restaurant, in any case, and the soup may as well have been vegetable-flavored Progresso.
Considering the bland starters and the irritating odor, I wondered how the Teacup could possibly have stayed in business for so long. The décor sure isn’t the reason: the primary paint color is pink (though, oddly, the teacups aren’t), and signed headshots, primarily by black actors, decorate one wall. I realize that this photographic name-checking is kind of a NYC tradition, but I prefer Katz’s method, where the celebs are proven to have been there. Of course, there’s the unintentional comedy – no matter how bad they look standing under the florescent light, the portly owner next to them looks worse.
Fortunately, my entrée arrived to save the day: far and away the best fried pork chop I’ve ever had. Seriously flavorful, not too greasy, and tender and juicy in a way that La Taza De Oro’s, for example, wasn’t, this chop was a strong contender for best pork I’ve had in any format. I actually wanted another chop after I was finished – at La Taza’s, by contrast, I finished one of two and was more than satisfied.
The sides I selected were collard greens and black eyed peas – the greens were bland until I fired them up with the hot sauce the waiter provided (with the entrée and almost ceremonially, in a way that suggested that the use was mandatory – I can’t disagree). The peas had a smoky flavor that might have come from bacon, but they weren’t cooked perfectly. The hybrid cornbread/dinner roll was warm when it arrived, which always makes me happy – so does butter that’s not too cold to spread.
For just over $9 with tax and tip, this isn’t a bad lunch choice for the discerning carnivore lost in the wilds of the West Village. I’ll brave the faint stench of urinal cake for more chops, and probably to try other dishes, too. Actually the combo also included dessert – I took the tasty bread pudding to go, but the Italian tourists (guidebooks, maps and all) across the restaurant sampled what I imagine to be their first Jell-O salad. I never thought “dolce far niente” could apply to eating Jell-O, but I think the slogan might be a more effective marketing tool than Bill Cosby, at this point.
Note: Taking the day off Monday - Vermont skiing beckons. Back Tuesday with more shizzle-sizzle.
Seemingly everyone and their mother has eaten at the Burger Joint, that quasi-secret enclave of fast food inside the Meridien hotel on 57th St. You can now add my girlfriend and I; we checked off the 85th entry on Sietsema’s list last night. I get the feeling that the place is some kind of sick joke, actually. The hotel lobby at the Meridien looks like a Hungarian bathhouse, for god’s sake, not a place to stuff a griddle and deep fryer.
Nevertheless, following that neon burger sign will lead you into a place that looks as much as possible like a windowless frat house basement. Out-of-date movie posters? Check. Beer tap? Check, though it’s a frat-boy-grown-up beer (Sam Adams) that’s served here in lieu of “beast light” or “the golden bullet.” “Borrowed” furniture? It sure looks like some hotel chairs got drafted to augment the standard seating, much like we used to “borrow” tables from Buildings and Grounds to play Beirut. Graffiti-covered walls and pictures of famous blondes? Check – the caveat here is that the picture is of Paris Hilton signing her name to the celeb-signature space on the back wall. We’re still in midtown Manhattan, folks.
Regardless of surroundings, the true test of the Burger Joint (strangely unrelated to the chain of mini-burger places with the same name) is the feed. How would it stack up to my last burger and fries, which I chronicled here just before Christmas?
Well, I think Burger Joint is good, but I’m puzzled as to the cult that worships at its wood-paneled altar. The best thing about it may well have been the speed with which the burgers, fries, and shake were delivered – not a minute or two after my girlfriend ordered (I had staked out the table), her name was called, and we were happily devouring our cheeseburgers ($6.50 each) moments after.
Mid-wolf, I stopped and noted the visually-appealing construction of the burger – red tomato, green lettuce, purple (red) onions sliced thin, and green pickles shared space with orange cheese and a burger which could have been pinker (medium rare seemed more medium-well). I was surprised, not having seen the menu, to note the presence of mustard with the usual mayo and ketchup combo – always a pleasant flavor, but too rarely encountered in the burger world. (Then again, I don’t exactly go adding it when it’s not there. Clearly I have no point.)
The fries ($3), which arrived in a paper bag big enough for a tall boy at a bodega, were good, but not on the level of the Goodburger fries of several months ago, despite possibly being from the same potato cut (I read that on chowhound, I think). They just lacked that extra flavor ‘oomph’ that used to put McDonalds’ fries over the top – was it the cooking in beef fat? I’d have to ask the Goodburger folks how they replicated it, but one more obvious problem was that the Burger Joint fries weren’t as salty as they might have been.
The $3 milkshake (yes, I went for the coronary trifecta) was on the thin side, which I think is perfect for this context. Thick milkshakes are great, but they start to feel like more of a dessert and less burger-complementary when you can’t suck them with a straw. Burger Joint’s version is relatively small, though – same size cup as the soda ($1.50).
I enjoyed my meal at Burger Joint but I don’t think it’s a destination – it’s slightly too expensive and slightly less delicious than several more-convenient (to me) alternatives. I did enjoy the food, though, and I also appreciated the effort the proprietors have put forth in re-creating my college memories – if only our dirty basement had somehow been attached to the home of the President of the College.
Getting back into the swing of things, and trying to get back to the Sietsema list (I’ve been pretty distracted from it for a couple of months), my girlfriend and I visited Rego Park, Queens for the first time last night – our destination was Cheburechnaya, the 26th entry on that list. Frankly, I though it should have been ranked much, much higher – despite the relatively far-out location, Cheburechnaya is one of the best deals and best meals I’ve yet encountered in my quest.
Taking the V to 63rd Drive is SLOW. Once there, though, you’ll be astonished by the level of development – a mall with a Marshall’s and Sears is in the middle of a brightly lit commercial corridor that goes up 63rd Drive and 63rd Road. Queens Boulevard is massive, too, providing a totally different ambiance from Jackson Heights or Elmhurst.
Since I was warned in advance that Cheburechnaya was BYOB, we stopped in at a grocery store to get a couple of beers. Of course, we also ended up with candy from Belarus, a locally-produced honey-wheat-walnut snack, cookies from Poland, and raspberry jam of interminate origin (no English on the packaging). The lesson, as always: never go into a grocery store on an empty stomach.
We hurried on to Cheburechnaya, which we were surprised to find occupying a large space with huge windows. I guess I’ve been to so many hole-in-the-wall places that it’s surprising to find a place that looks different. It sounded different, too – flat-screen TVs on the wall piped in what I imagine to be Russian (or are they Uzbek?) pop music videos, and the accompanying audio was occasionally interrupted by skits with what must be the Gong Show’s leftover sound effects. Nothing better than a good “boingggg” noise, right?
As to the food – amazing. Despite never having eaten Uzbek before, I feel that it’s similar enough to Russian and Middle Eastern food to make that claim. To start, we ordered the amazing cracker-bread noni toki. It looks like a giant Carr’s cracker in the shape of a dish, approximately the size of a truck hubcap. Paired with a great hummus (second only to Hummus Place’s iteration in my recent memory), it would be the Geary clan’s favorite hors d’oeuvre, if they could only get it at Stop and Shop in Harwich.
Soon afterwards, our chebureki arrived. I had ordered two beef and two of the “special,” with the expectation that they’d be roughly the size of a large pierogi, but I was dead wrong. These fried envelopes are the size of half your plate – they’re surprisingly light, though, particularly when eaten immediately. I’d choose the special, which seemed to feature herbed buckwheat and some kind of meat, over the beef. Oddly, the shape of the pie is shown on the menu – it varies from flavor to flavor.
I just remembered that I ordered bread that never arrived. Hope I didn’t get charged for it.
The skewers arrived last. I ordered four, of which the vaunted lamb fat was my favorite. Possessing of an amazing charcoal-lamb flavor and a melt-in-your-mouth consistency, I immediately considered the possibilities of using it to cook. Eggs? Meatloaf? Apple pie? It’s hard to imagine a context for grease where this flavor wouldn’t be welcome (okay, questionable on the pie – I can hear my grandmother’s objections already).
The other three kebabs were nearly at that level. A very salty piece of meat, tinged pink, I was unimpressed with the first bite of veal sweetbreads (a little rubbery), but enjoyed it more from there. It’s a unique flavor, to be sure, and (I thought) a great way to try sweetbreads for the first time. The lamb kebab was probably the better of the beef kebab, but both were grilled to the same standard of taste as the lamb fat. I just dig that lamb flavor, I guess.
Cheburechnaya is absolutely worth the trip to Rego Park at your earliest convenience. It is both cheap and delicious – we over-ordered and still only spent $26 and change before the tip. (Sorry not to have specific pricing, but I’m out of practice and forgot to grab a menu on the way out.) I give it my highest recommendation. Don’t forget to buy some booze to take – a bottle of Hennessy, perhaps, like two separate tables of locals we noticed on the way out. (No kidding.)
Welcome back! Seems an eon since my last New York City review – this holiday season really was ridiculous for me. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I ate about three meals last week in restaurants that were overpriced and under-delicious – fortunately, I wasn’t paying, but it definitely made me yearn to be back in the restaurant-review saddle.
Unfortunately, my 2006 restauranting got off to a very bad start last night – Mexicali, on Court St. between Atlantic and Pacific, is easily the worst place I’ve eaten in recent memory, and a strong contender for worst ever. What gives, you ask? Well…
Let’s flash back to New Year’s Day. In the evening hours, with the weather being pitiful and my extreme exhaustion making it hard to sit up straight, my roommate and I ransacked our cache of takeout menus. We could only come up with $17 between us, so our options were somewhat limited. After calling a few places that were closed, including Mexicali, we settled on Bombay Dream on Smith St. I had, however, noticed the appearance of mole poblano and pipian on Mexicali’s menu, and resolved to sample both at my earliest convenience.
As it turns out, we were fortunate that Mexicali was closed on the 1st – we might have otherwise starved to death. Arriving with high hopes, I took a table in the front and watched the rather boring streetscape. Chips and salsa arrived, and I had what I thought to be a few too many nearly-stale chips (fueled by a salsa that only burned when you stopped eating it – this kind of thing is designed, I think, to sell more beer). I ordered a dual helping of chile relleno (stuffed green chile peppers), a dish I’ve rarely seen on Mexican menus east of Utah. Maybe the fact that the chiles were supposedly slathered in mole verde and mole poblano should have been my first clue to stay away, but I guess I was out of practice. I also ordered a side of the pipian sauce to try.
I can say without hesitation that, if I was surprised to see chile rellenos on the menu, the chef must have been doubly or trebly surprised to see them ordered – they came out with the coating (which I assume was an attempt at pan or deep frying) roughly the texture of driftwood, and without the pleasant salty taste. I mean, this stuff tasted like shit. Picking it off, I managed to salvage some of the chiles, which didn’t seem very stuffed, but were at least somewhat edible.
I scraped the mole poblano into the beans (after picking off the melted cheese) – it was actually the best thing I was served, though it was more chocolate than spice, and the sesame seeds were raw and carelessly strewn on top, rather than toasted and stewed. I might have done the same with the mole verde, except that it was basically ruined by a dollop of sour cream plopped on top, and from what I could tell, not very good to begin with.
The pipian was equally disappointing. It arrived a pallid shade of yellow, displaying none of the telltale bright green hue of crushed pumpkin seed. It tasted like the inside of a can – acid and iron-flavored. I scooped it onto my rice and tried to make the best of it, which was probably a mistake. I finished the last few chips off with as much salsa as I could manage, hoping that the painful spiciness would wash my taste buds and memory of the awful-tasting meal.
I was dispirited afterwards – I wandered into the Korean bodega that my roommate and I call ‘Munchie Heaven’ and bought two pints of Double Rainbow Soy Cream. There is some truth to the rumor that I briefly considered pairing the dessert with a box of tissues and a weepy movie. The Mexicali blues are not to be trifled with, much like the food itself.
