Bathroom Behavior on the Subway

What is it with people who engage in acts in public that used to be relegated to the privacy of one's home? I'm talking about all those people I see on the subway during my daily commute clipping their nails or applying makeup as if the train were their personal bathroom.

Some people have told me that my violent reactions to public nail clipping are a bit over the top, that it's merely a minor annoyance. Minor my ass. That clip-clip-clip sound drives me nuts. And these clip-happy offenders don't just clip in broad strokes and get it over with quickly. No, they go at each nail with five or six minuscule clips in the most leisurely, ponderous fashion. That makes at least fifty clips for a pair of hands. Fifty annoying clicky clips! And then they leave the detritus of their bodies, crumbs and dust of nail, all over the floor of the subway car, a public conveyance, dammit! I don't know what annoys me more: the clipping itself or the lack of regard for others.

And then there are the women who apply makeup from scratch during their commute. I'm not talking about a quick lipstick refresher; I could live with that. I mean multiple layers, multiple brushes, the whole shebang. I know nothing about makeup, but I'm guessing that at the very least we're talking about foundation, blush, powder, eyeliner, mascara and lipstick. Have I left anything out and have they no shame? Isn't that what powder rooms are for? I realize that they're trying to save time in the morning by not doing this at home, but it annoys the hell out of me. Call me old fashioned, but there are some things one just doesn't do in public. Whenever I see one of these women doing their in-transit maquillage I secretly hope for a sudden jolt of the train that will bollocks up their handiwork.

In addition to the clippers and the makeup ladies, there are the nose pickers. And it's not furtive picking either. These people pick with great glee and gusto, oblivious to the passengers around them. Who knows how many boogers and pieces of fingernail I'm stepping on every morning.

I realize that some public behaviors I find annoying or disgusting are acceptable in other cultures. Indeed, while I was traveling in China I saw so many people spitting big gobs of sputum and phlegm onto train platforms that I felt like a party pooper for not joining in. But, unless I'm mistaken, there was a time in New York when people, for the most part, restricted their bathroom behavior to the bathroom. Something has changed over the years. My friend Manda believes the advent of the Walkman had something to do with it. It cut people off from the greater public as they tuned into their music and themselves.

There's probably no turning back, but I have a modest proposal for the New York City subway system. I propose that certain behaviors be restricted to certain lines. Nail clipping could be confined to the N train, makeup to the M train. Since N is already spoken for, we could put the nose pickers on the B for booger train. I'll tell you one thing, though. If my plan is ever adopted you can be sure as hell I'll be avoiding the number 1 and number 2 trains like the plague.

Of Norwegian Churches and Tacky Bar Mitzvahs

Last time I checked in I wrote, "I don't usually take photos at buffets." In an effort to make an exception that proves the rule, I brought my camera to the Wednesday lunch smorgasbord at the Norwegian Seamen's Church and shot the above photo of my first plateful of goodies.

When I was a kid smorgasbord meant two things. First, and foremost in my microcosm, there was the pre-dinner spread at bar mitzvahs and Jewish weddings at places like the infamous Leonard's of Great Neck, where my own lamented bar mitzvah took place. By the time my bar mitzvah date had rolled around I was already a resolute atheist, but these things are planned so far in advance that I still considered myself Jewish when the hall was booked. It was during my bar mitzvah lessons with Mrs. Goldstein, the gonzo haftorah coach, that I realized that all that bible and god stuff was a load of hooey, but I went through the motions nonetheless, in my rented tuxedo from Zeller's Formals, a black brocaded number reminiscent of tacky wallpaper.

In addition to smorgasbords, bar mitzvahs of this type featured menus where all the dinner items were listed in French, in an attempt, I suppose, to add a little extra class to the affair. Most ridiculous was the transformation of stuffed derma into "derma farci." And if you really wanted to impress the guests you'd splurge for the Viennese table, the lavish pastry table that is rolled into the darkened hall with sparklers a-sparklin'. Pardon my detour.

Back in the 'sixties there were also real Scandinavian smorgasbord restaurants in New York, and they were quite popular. The two I'm aware of were called Stockholm and Scandia, and were located in midtown; I never experienced either as a child. By the mid-seventies they were gone, and only recently has Scandinavian food made a comeback in Manhattan.

Though far from Minnesota, New York does have a certain Scandinavian history of its own. The Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bay Ridge and Sunset Park, for instance, were originally settled by Norwegians. You won't find many vestiges of Scandinavian history in those neighborhoods, however. Sunset Park is mostly Asian and Latino, and within the last couple of years Halvorsen's funeral parlor on Eighth Avenue finally got a new Chinese name. Bay Ridge is largely Italian and Middle Eastern.

The Norwegian Seamen's Church, at 317 E. 52nd Street (in Manhattan, that is), serves their buffet lunch most Wednesdays from September through May, from noon to 2 PM (according to the website, the next, and likely last, is on May 28). It's a great deal at a flat $18, which you pay up front, no additional tax or tip. The smorgasbord features a range of seafood, cheeses, cold cuts, salads, fruits, spreads and breads. I don't know if they vary the selection, but when I visited they had, among other things, smoked salmon, baked peppered salmon, gravalax, several kinds of marinated herring, cooked ham, a prosciutto-type ham, chunks of pork, roast beef, and some kind of aspic loaf that may or may not have been a kind of head cheese. There were probably about five or six kinds of cheese, including the quintessentially Norwegian brown cheese (at 7 o'clock in the photo), which I didn't really care for. They serve one hot item each Wednesday, and this time it was an excellent beef stroganoff. Dessert consists of little heart-shaped waffles and jam, and good, strong coffee. More than half of the diners are Scandinavian.

The icing on the cake, as it were, is the fact that the buffet takes place in a non-restaurant setting and only one day a week, so if you go you can feel as if you're in on a secret. And then you can tell it to everyone you know.

A Mess Aspiring to Be a Lump

As I mentioned when I launched this blog, I was dragged kicking and screaming into this enterprise. When I finally succumbed, I made two promises to myself and to my readers: that while Word of Mouth was active I'd do my best to post weekly, and that I would as often as possible try to post coherent narratives-that is, this wouldn't be a blog full of random musings, links to other blogs and articles with minimal commentary, or semi-illiterate web-age self-indulgence. No, I'm old fashioned, and I stand by well-crafted, literary self-indulgence. Still, there are times when I don't have a fully formed piece ready for release, or when I have something worth mentioning that just doesn't lend itself to the kind of package I prefer. Hence I offer this present mess aspiring to be a lump.

There's a story behind that last phrase, and it has nothing to do with the restaurant I'll eventually get to, which is neither a mess nor a lump.

As an undergraduate, at Brooklyn College, I was studying playwriting with Jack Gelber, best known for his play "The Connection." Indeed, before I turned to fiction it was my aspiration to be a playwright. Partly through Jack's influence, as well as through my reading of Pirandello and Genet and my awareness of trends in New York experimental theater, I was particularly interested in self-referential "metatheater." I was working on a play called "Audiences." It dealt with the witnessing of crime and atrocity as theater, and incorporated the Kitty Genovese murder, a notorious 1960s incident where a woman in Queens was murdered as neighbors looked on through their windows and nobody called the cops. It also incorporated the Lincoln assassination, including a performance of a section of the play he was watching, "Our American Cousin." Lincoln was to be seated in the audience, and shot by Booth when an actor said the fateful line, "You sockdologizing old mantrap!" In addition, for some reason known only to my long-bygone student self, one of the other characters was an anthropomorphized Tomato Herring. It was the kind of play that an ambitious nineteen-year-old could conceive, but not pull together, and I never finished it. But that's not the point of the story.

In one of my classes with Jack there was a guy, a middle-aged guy, named Arthur who was writing one-act plays adapted from Stephen Crane stories. The plays were flat and leaden, and we all wondered why anybody would devote his writing life to adapting Stephen Crane stories for the stage. On top of everything else, he was a pompous blowhard who liked to tout the fact that these plays were being produced by an off-off-Broadway theater. Nobody in the class liked him. I got a devilish pleasure when I read a review in the Village Voice of his adaptation of "The Open Boat" (or was it "The Blue Hotel"?). The reviewer referred to the play as "a lump aspiring to be a mess." We felt the same way about Arthur himself.

All of this, of course, has nothing to do with a Turkish buffet. But what, after all, can you really say about a buffet besides listing the items, commenting a bit on the quality, and noting the price? A favorite lunch spot near my new midtown-east office, the place I'm most likely to take friends, is Kanaat, a Turkish restaurant on East 55th that features a copious $10.95 lunch buffet. Formerly called Al Baraka, I believe the buffet format has remained unchanged. There's always a soup (the couple I've tried have been disappointing), a few salads (and the hummus is really outstanding), an array of hot dishes, and two desserts. The waiters bring some excellent hot clay-oven bread to the table that is identical to Indian naan. The hot dishes are a mixed bag. I've been there three times, and based on that I'm guessing that the four meat courses never change. The two I'm fond of are the lamb shank and the baked bone-in chicken. I've learned to avoid the bland stewed chicken and beef offerings. There are two or three vegetarian items, which do vary, and the mushroom and okra stews have been among the best. There are also two kinds of rice pilaf and two desserts, usually rice pudding and kazandibi (burnt-top pudding). It's not the greatest Turkish food in New York, and you won't find an array of grilled kebabs or pides, but at $10.95 it's one of the best lunch deals in midtown. And in case you're wondering, I don't take usually photos at buffets.

The last time I went to Kanaat I was joined by Holly Anderson, whose writing I would kvell about even if she weren't a friend. Holly has a habit of surprising people with food gifts. It was her birthday gift of wild rice from her native Minnesota that inspired my wild rice and chile challenge. Well, this time she handed me a jar of Swad Indian coriander chutney. I've always enjoyed coriander chutney as a condiment at Indian restaurants, but I never thought of buying any for my home. Holly has fallen in love with the stuff and gives jars out like calling cards. "It's great on so many things," she said. When I mentioned that I'd eaten a Cuban sandwich from El Gran Castillo de Jagua the night before, Holly said, "It would be great on a Cuban sandwich." I bet it would. I haven't tried any on a Cuban sandwich yet, but I did try some on a couple of Chinese tortillas, and it gave them a nice Indian twist. I like the surprise condiment gift concept. I might just do it with St. Dalfour kumquat preserves, a product I want to evangelize about.

One more thing. I was recently looking over some notes I made on dreams back in 2003, and I came across this food-related fragment. All I could remember about this dream was that I was on a plane, and it was mealtime. The flight attendant came by my seat with the food cart and asked, "Gnocchi or haggis?"

Kanaat
154 E. 55th Street (between 3rd & Lexington)
212-546-9007
Lunch 11:30-3:30

Which Padang Place Shall We Dine at Tonight, Dear?

The hot-spicy cuisine of Padang, the largest city on the island of Sumatra, is popular all over Indonesia. I haven't been to Sumatra, but I've eaten nasi Padang several times in Java. Nasi means rice, and nasi Padang refers to a serving style. At a nasi Padang restaurant, usually a humble little place, a plate of rice is served with small portions of a variety of dishes. This is most likely the ur-version of the Dutch-Indonesian rijsttafel.

There are two Padang-style places I know of in New York, both in Elmhurst, Queens. For a city that has been Indonesian-food-challenged until recent years, this is a modest embarrassment of riches. I've already written about Minangasli, and I recently dined at Upi Jaya.

Both restaurants are good, but there are significant enough differences that set them apart. First of all, Upi Jaya is the much more comfortable of the two. While Minangasli is basically a take-out place with a few tables, Upi Jaya is more a full-scale restaurant. There is much overlap on the menus, but Minangasli may have a little more variety overall, and Upi Jaya appears to have more to offer the vegetarian. Upi Jaya's menu is heavily weighted toward two categories of main course-thick, spicy, coconut-milk-based curries (gulai or sayur) and dishes smothered in ground red chili (balado).

We started our Upi Jaya meal with two appetizers, perkedel kentang (potato fritters), and lemper ayam (steamed glutinous rice stuffed with shredded chicken). I liked both well enough but was not bowled over by either. I was curious as to whether the name perkedel comes "frikadel," or Dutch meatballs. An online search revealed that perkedel kentang are literally "frikadel potatoes," and though the Upi Jaya version is vegetarian they often contain meat.

At Upi Jaya we tried several of the same dishes we had at Minangasli. The ayam goreng balado (fried chicken with chili), which was the runaway hit at Minangasli, was rather disappointing at Upi Jaya, while Upi Jaya's jackfruit curry was somewhat more flavorful and spicy than Minangasli's. Daging rendang, beef with dry curry, is a staple of Padang cuisine. While I think Minangasli does this one better, I actually prefer the Malaysian spin on rendang, which has a very thick curry sauce rather than a dry spice coating.

Sayur Nangka (jackfruit curry)

Gulai cincang was described as curried beef spare ribs, but the meat was served boneless. I think this was more successful than the rendang. I convinced my dining companions that we shouldn't order anything with petai, which Upi Jaya describes as "green Indonesian nut," but is more accurately described on Minangasli's menu as "stinking bean" and tastes like I imagine formaldehyde would. So when we ordered udang goreng balado petai (shrimp sautéed with chili and petai), we said "hold the petai." While the chili topping was quite good, the small shrimps were overcooked and short on flavor.

I'd have to give the edge to Minangasli in the food department, but Upi Jaya is pretty good overall and considerably more comfortable. I'm planning to give it a strictly vegetarian test-run this summer, when some vegetarian friends come to New York for a visit.

Upi Jaya
76-04 Elmhurst Avenue
Elmhurst (Queens), NY
E-F-G-R-V-7 trains to 74th St./Broadway/Roosevelt

Japanese Pub Fare

Ariyoshi, at 226 E. 53rd St., is an izakaya, a traditional Japanese drinking establishment with small plates to accompany your sake or shochu or beer. It's a tiny, casual place, and I'm told very much similar in feel to izakayas in Japan. An izakaya is pretty much the Japanese equivalent of a tapas bar. At Ariyoshi a wide variety of items, generally in the $5-8 dollar range, is available, including stewed, grilled, or fried meat and seafood dishes, sushi and sashimi, and salads.

I dined at Ariyoshi with a couple of friends, including Masa, who is Japanese; he was able to confirm the authenticity of the place as well as help with the ordering. Three of us shared about a dozen items.

The quality of the food ranged from decent to very good. Among my favorite dishes were the stewed pork belly (the staff recommended this over the grilled belly), fried chicken chunks in a vinegar sauce, and tempura smelts. Also excellent was a negi-hama roll (yellowtail and scallion) from the sushi bar. In the next tier were marinated fluke fin (raw, with a crunchy consistency), tsukune (chicken meatballs), and grilled squid legs. In general, the cold vegetable items--a seaweed salad and spinach with tiny fish--were bland and disappointing. Also disappointing were the grilled beef tongue, which looked great but was rather tough, and some limp gyoza.

squid legs

smelts

pork belly

fluke fin

The food at Ariyoshi is generally simple, homey fare. Nothing fancy. In other words, Ariyoshi's a pleasant place to chow down on some tasty food, have a couple of drinks, and feel like you're doing it all in Japan, but otherwise expectations shouldn't be too high.

Bananaphobia

There once was a man who was afraid of bananas. There are common and uncommon phobias, and while bananaphobia may be an uncommon one, it's a phobia nonetheless. You might find the idea of a fear of bananas funny, but to this man it was no laughing matter. He was more afraid of bananas than he was of snakes, heights, or even death itself. Any time he saw a banana the man would scream, "Eek! A banana!"--and run away.

This man had many enemies, and when they found out about his phobia they began to taunt him with bananas. But it wasn't only his enemies who taunted him with bananas. Sometimes his enemies would hire banana hit men to taunt him. Everywhere this man would go, he'd see strangers walking around with bananas. Sometimes they'd be eating them, and sometimes they would just carry them around, menacingly. And if that weren't enough, he noticed that many new fruit stands were opening near his home and place of work, all prominently displaying their bananas, clearly in order to make his life a living hell.

It's not as if the man lacked perspective, though. I'm just afraid of bananas, he thought. There are plenty of real nuts out there.

It's Cretan to Me

"Would you like me to take a picture of all of you?" the waiter asked, after watching me shoot photos of all the dishes we ordered--and there were quite a few, as I ordered solely from the extensive appetizers menu for the five of us.

"No thanks," I said, "I only do food."

"You only do food!" he repeated, amused.

The waiter and the owners at S'Agapo were impressed by the quantity of the food we ordered as well as by our particular choices. And I was impressed by the quality of just about everything we ordered, as was everyone else in the party, including one Greek-American, if that counts for anything.

S'Agapo is a laid back, friendly, family-run Cretan restaurant in Astoria, Queens (where you'll find New York's largest concentration of Greek restaurants). It's somewhat more upscale than most of the local competition, but a steal compared to high-end Manhattan Greek eateries like Molyvos or Periyali for food that's of near or equal quality, and, I think, with more character.

While the many of the dishes served at S'Agapo can be found at other Greek restaurants, there are noticeable differences, perhaps due in part to geography, Crete being, I believe, the southernmost part of Greece. A mixed dips plate featured some of the usual suspects like tzatziki (yogurt/cucumber) and taramasalata (carp roe spread), some Cretan specialties like parsley, red pepper, and grape leaf dips, an olive tapenade, and hummus, which I don't usually associate with Greek menus. The freshness and variety of flavors was breathtaking, but my favorite spread was one we ordered separately, made from fava beans with wonderfully aromatic olive oil. I found the gigantes (large white beans) and the dolmades (stuffed grape leaves), common on most Greek menus, much less exciting, though only in relation to the stars of the meal.


Small fried cheese pies, described as raviolis on the menu (I forget the Greek name), were served with honey, apparently another Cretan tradition.

The menu includes several varieties of saganaki (melted sharp (and usually, I believe, sheep) cheese), and we had a version with portabella mushroom. We accepted a recommendation for an off-menu special of flat green beans with potatoes, which were delightfully seasoned with a dill-leaning herb mix.

My favorite among the meat items we ordered was leg of lamb chunks cooked with white wine. We also had some excellent loukaniko (sausage) and keftedes (officially meatballs, but actually grilled patties at S'Agapo). The grilled octopus was quite good too. The quail were somewhat disappointing, though, not nearly at the level of the quail I fell for at Amazing 66 in Chinatown, and arranged helter skelter on the plate.

We certainly could have done without dessert, but that didn't stop us from ordering the cream cake (the waiter's recommendation) and a galaktoboureko (custard pie, and a particular favorite of mine). On top of those, we were comped with a plate of cookies.

I mentioned Periyali and Molyvos above. I've been to Periyali once and found it rather disappointing. I've been to Molyvos once and found the food fabulous and the service impeccable, but to be honest I prefer the homey atmosphere of S'Agapo. And, as I also mentioned above, it's plenty more affordable.

S'Agapo
34-21 34th Ave
Astoria, NY

I Was Culinarily Transgendered

A month or two ago I went to lunch at Ise, a popular Japanese restaurant on East 49th Street. There are a number of Japanese restaurants called Ise around town, but, just as with Grand Sichuan or Ray's Pizza, it's not clear whether or how they're all related.

Anyway, this midtown east branch fills up by about 12:15 every weekday. They offer a long list of copious, great-value lunch specials. The one that looked most interesting to me was called the "Ladies' Set." But could I bring myself to ask the waiter for a Ladies' Set? The answer is yes indeedy--enticing menu items will trump gender identity every time. I decided I was indeed confident enough in my own masculinity to order the Ladies' Set.

That day the Ladies' Set opened with a bowl of miso soup and continued with a box consisting of five more items: an ample serving of tekka don (tuna sashimi over sushi rice); chawan mushi (egg custard) with mushrooms and seafood; soba noodles in a seaweed broth; a salad with fried tiny fish; and a dessert consisting of green tea tofu pudding with berries and cream. All this for $12. I'm not sure what those little fish on the salad are called, but I've also had them over rice at Yakitori Totto. The quality of the tuna in the tekka don was quite impressive considering the quantity and the low price. And the dessert was a delightful finale. Here's to the temporary, honorary ladies who lunch!

I didn't have my camera with me that day, but I had quickly come up with the title for this piece. I decided that I owed my readers a photo of the Ladies' Set if I were going to write about it, so I went back recently, figuring I had given my hormone levels time enough to return to normal from any changes the first Ladies' Set may have engendered.

The Ladies' Set

This time the Ladies' Set followed the same basic contours, with some modifications. The tekka don was still the same; the noodle soup was now an udon with shrimp tempura--I preferred this to the soba; the chawan mushi had chicken and shrimp; the salad featured soft tofu (I much prefer the tiny fish); and the dessert still had green tea pudding, this time with sweet beans and a little fruit, but no cream. Overall, I think I enjoyed the first Ladies' Set a bit more. Perhaps it was the food, or perhaps I had become blasé about the transgressive nature of cross-dining.

The second time around I went with a bona fide lady. Since she didn't want to order the same thing as me, she went with the much more macho "Lunch Box," which consisted of gyoza in soup, fried chicken, grilled mackerel, and rib-eye with ponzu sauce. Truth be told, my masculine side coveted her lunch.

The Manlier Meal

New (Old) Deli

According to the New York Times, the 2nd Avenue Deli had been gone for about two years before reopening at a new location recently, but I thought it was longer than that. For some reason I thought the deli, at Second Avenue and 10th Street, had closed only a couple of years after the 1996 murder (during a robbery) of owner Abe Lebewohl, an East Village legend. Perhaps the fact that I've been gone from the East Village since 1987 accounts for my skewed sense of deli time.

For me, the 2nd Avenue Deli was the best of the surviving New York kosher delis, a dying breed. The grunge of Katz's never appealed to me, nor did I find their sandwiches up to Lebewohl's standards. I have no problem with "kosher-style" delis in principle, being a radical atheist who scoffs at all dietary laws and superstitions, but the two most famous of them, Carnegie and Stage, are mediocre, overpriced tourist traps.

When I was a kid, in Brooklyn, in the 'sixties, good kosher delis were still a dime a dozen, just like decent by-the-slice pizzerias, both now, for the most part, distant memories. I think I must have eaten deli, whether corned beef, or pastrami, or tongue, or "rolled beef" (virtually extinct, but available at 2nd Avenue Deli and Sarge's), or just a couple of franks with mustard and sauerkraut, at least once a week. We took good deli for granted.

So what happened? New York is still full of Jews, and most of the non-Jews I know, after years in New York, are certifiably "Jewish-style." Were the delis done in by those awful health-conscious years? Or perhaps by the death and/or assimilation of all those Jews with recent Eastern-European roots? Places like the Stage and Carnegie Delis are New York institutions, still on the inevitable tourist itinerary (once, at the Carnegie, I heard a hyper-goyish, Midwestern woman ask the waiter if they had "chocolate phosphates"). Everybody I know laments the loss of deli ubiquity, so what gives?

Whatever, the good news is that the 2nd Avenue Deli is back, though no longer on Second Avenue or in the East Village, but on 33rd Street between Third and Lexington. The prices, on the other hand, aren't the greatest news, but no worse than at the tourist traps that can't hold a candle.

For the first weeks at the new location there were constant lines out the door. I figured I'd let the idiots who couldn't wait wait, and I'd go when things quieted down. What's with people who absolutely have to go to some new hot spot pronto? As far as I'm concerned, it displays the same lack of proportion that prevents people from successfully dieting, i.e., from realizing there's always tomorrow for whatever you crave today. If the restaurant is any good it'll survive, for a while at least. If you'd prefer to wait in line with the rest of the sheep, be my guest; I'll see you inside in a couple of months.

Some of the early reports about the new 2nd Avenue Deli gave me and my dining companions some mild pre-meal jitters. There were reports of surly service and food that didn't live up to the deli of yesteryear. Perhaps the problems were due to improper preparation for the onslaught of humanity, but I can assure you now that, at least as far as the meat sandwiches are concerned, there's nothing to be concerned about. Corned beef and pastrami sandwiches, both on rye, had a platonic fat-to-lean ratio and flavor to spare, especially the pastrami, which in my recent deli experience has been eclipsed only by the transcendent smoked meat of Schwartz's in Montreal.

Two of the 2nd Avenue Deli's signature items, which I didn't try this time, are matzoh ball soup and the "whole hog" of chicken soups, chicken in a pot, boiled chicken with matzoh balls and vegetables. Both are still available, but do be warned that the latter is twenty-three bucks, so you'd better have a pretty bad cold.

One disappointment was that knoblewurst (garlic sausage), which used to be sold as a side, is now only available on a sandwich, so I didn't get to try any. I also seem to remember baked meat knishes at the old deli, though I might be mistaken. Anyway, what they have now is a fried meat and potato knish, mediocre and seriously overpriced at $7.95. The biggest disappointment, however, was the gummy, flavorless, and underheated stuffed derma.

Stick with a pastrami sandwich. And maybe a bowl of matzoh ball soup. If there are two of you, split the sandwich. They're enormous, and maybe you shouldn't eat a whole one until world hunger is solved.

Vegetarian Chinese Without Regrets

China has a venerable Buddhist vegetarian tradition. In China there are many vegetarian restaurants that make creative use of meat substitutes such as soy products, wheat gluten and taro. I ate at an excellent vegetarian restaurant in Guangzhou. There are several Chinese vegetarian restaurants in New York, but the best of them is, at best, acceptable. A much better idea, if you're looking for a vegetarian Chinese meal, is to dine at a Shanghai restaurant. Of all the major Chinese cuisines, Shanghai seems to me to have the greatest variety of excellent vegetarian offerings.

I recently arranged a meal for some visiting vegetarian (not "health vegetarian") friends at John's Shanghai, on West 46th Street. Three of the eight in our party were vegetarians, but I ordered strictly vegetarian for the whole table. I set out to prove that one could have a thoroughly satisfying, substantial, interesting, delicious, balanced vegetarian meal at a Shanghai restaurant.

We started out with steamed vegetable dumplings and scallion pancakes. The scallion pancakes were served with a nice plum dipping sauce. The dumplings were stuffed with greens that the waiter claimed was spinach, though we all agreed it was something else, a little more bitter tasting (in a good way), along with chopped water chestnuts and glass noodles. Vegetable dumpling fillings seem to differ from restaurant to restaurant. Many have a greater proportion of glass noodles, along with dried tofu and chopped black mushroom.

From there we moved on to the cold dishes, which are a major component of Shanghai cuisine. There was a spicy (only slightly, actually) bok choi salad, cucumbers with garlic, kau fu, and vegetable duck. Kau fu is made from wheat gluten puffs, usually with tree-ear mushrooms. The version at John's also had lotus root. I'm not sure what the seasonings are, but this Kau Fu was particularly good.


The vegetable duck was perhaps the most visually ducklike of any I've had in New York. Vegetable duck is made from bean curd skins and black mushrooms. It's a great source of protein, and the only officially "mock" dish we had.


We had a vegetarian version of Shanghai fried rice cakes (nian gow), which was a special request. This was a big hit with the diners who had never tried these addictive, chewy treats before. We got more protein from another famous Shanghai vegetarian dish, bean curd skins with preserved vegetable and soybeans (which I wrote about in another recent post on Shanghai cuisine).


In the green vegetable department, we had cabbage hearts (actually Shanghai bok choi) with black mushrooms, and sauteed snow pea leaves, wonderful (and relatively expensive) greens that are like a sweeter version of spinach.



Most of these dishes can be ordered at any of New York's Shanghai-style restaurants. Midtown options, in addition to John's, include Evergreen and Our Place. Two of the best in Chinatown are Shanghai Cafe and New Green Bo.

New York Yakiniku

Gyu-Kaku, a chain of yakiniku, or table-grill barbecue, restaurants with hundreds of outlets in Japan, has established a U.S. presence with a number of locations in California, one in Hawaii, and two in New York. I was recently taken to the midtown Manhattan branch, at Third Avenue and 50th Street, during their first-anniversary week, when they were offering all beef items (except Kobe) at half price. Though they do offer seafood, poultry and pork, as well as vegetables, for grilling, beef is the real focus. One orders various small portions of different cuts with a choice of marinades (the servers will help you match marinades, such as yuzu, shio, ponzu or spicy miso, to your selections). Selections range from about $6 on up (considerably up for Kobe beef), and you'll need about three per person, in addition to any appetizers or side dishes, not to mention drinks (they do a shochu version of the mojito, by the way), so your tab can add up quickly (especially if you go for the $40 Kobe filet).

Charcoal grills are built into the table, and cuts are very thin and cook quickly. The quality of the meat is really first-rate, and while I don't normally love cook-it-yourself restaurants, the results are so good as to win me over. We tried a number of items, including a couple of vegetables (corn and eggplant) and pork sausage. The plain, dry eggplant was a disappointment, but the corn, cut into sub-cobs, is a good side bet (though you have to pay attention and keep turning it). The sausages were smoky, looked like Vienna sausage, and tasted like upscale hot dogs, which isn't a bad thing.

We tried a number of cuts of beef, including the standard and premium versions of kalbi (short rib) and rosu (rib eye). The more expensive premium cuts (almost double for some) were noticeably better, but if you want to keep costs down the standard cuts are just fine. The skirt steak (harami) was also very good, but I don't think the brisket (yaki shabu) really holds up on the grill. One thing you must order is the tongue (gyu-tan, shown in the photo). Even if you think you don't like tongue, you'll love this. The thin slices are exquisite the recommended way, with a squeeze of fresh lemon and some salt. On every table are three dipping sauces for the cooked meat--soy, citrus, and spicy.

Yakiniku is influenced by Korean barbecue, and there are also Korean dishes on the menu like bibim bap, which could be shared as a side. The staff at Gyu-Kaku are professional and ready to inform, and the midtown restaurant is refreshingly spacious in an age of claustrophobic rooms.

The Great Staten Island Pizzeria Crawl

One of the great social benefits of the age of blogging and online discussion forums is the chance to hook up with others of similar obsessions for mutual obsessive behavior. For instance, for over ten years I've attended jazz concerts and festivals the world over with more than fifty flesh-and-blood friends I originally met in cyberspace. My participation in the online foodie community is more recent, but in the past couple of years I've broken bread with at least a dozen erstwhile strangers, many of whose mania for things comestible makes me feel like a rank amateur.

I recently joined three other foodies, one indefatigable blogger and two active posters on bulletin boards like Chowhound and Mouthfuls, for a tour of Staten Island's legendary pizzerias. I believe this outing was in the works for close to a year, with a couple of the participants doing exhaustive research and map annotation. I went along for the ride.

I know very little about Bronx dining options, but I'm certain that of all the boroughs Staten Island is the culinary bottom of the barrel. Only the recent influx of Sri Lankan immigrants and attendant restaurants has put Staten Island on my eating radar. I hadn't really given any thought to other food options in this twilight zone between New York and New Jersey until I was invited on this ambitious pizza expedition.

It makes sense that if it had anything to offer the foodie, this largely Italian-American borough would be a destination for New York-style pizza. Indeed, most of the places we hit have long histories. We originally had three pizzerias on the itinerary, but left open the possibility of adding another one. Man does not live by pizza alone, of course, so we had a few other stops planned: a legendary old soda fountain, someplace for a beer or two, and an ice cream parlor.

We left midtown Manhattan by car on a Sunday morning at about 10:45. Two of our three must-try pizzerias opened before noon, so we headed off for breakfast at Nunzio's, our first stop. At about 11:30 we were the first customers.


At Nunzio's, which has been around since 1942, we ordered a small pie with sausage. I was happy to limit myself to one slice, two others split a second, and the biggest fresser in the crowd, our sainted driver, had two whole slices (over the course of the day he would put away eight slices to my four and change).

Nunzio's Pie

Among the four of us, I was the least thrilled with Nunzio's pizza. It had a decent, thinnish crust, but not an awe-inspiring one. I think the biggest problem was that the sauce was rather bland, resulting in an overall flavor that lacked dimensionality. A good sauce is essential for providing a flavor foundation in any red pizza.

From Nunzio's we moved on to our next destination, the Bay Street Luncheonette, a fabulous old place frozen in time, for their quintessential egg cream. I grew up with egg creams, but they're not something I have cravings for, and this was probably my first in over 25 years. When I was a kid we had seltzer delivered in those spritzer bottles, along with Fox's U-Bet chocolate syrup, and my brothers and I made egg creams at home, with milk from Elmhurst Dairy, in those old wax covered cartons with the flip-top lids. And may I digress to say that the milk-carton paper that replaced the wax-covered cartons of old was one of the great leaps forward in American packaging technology. Oh how I hated those little flecks of wax that would sometimes find their way into a glass of milk or Tropicana orange juice.


Anyway, the Bay Street Luncheonette is no self-consciously retro spot catering to hipsters and poseurs, it's an endangered species--a true, old-fashioned New York soda fountain and luncheonette that has lovingly been preserved and kept going by its current owner, the exceedingly personable Vinnie. It's the kind of place that was ubiquitous when I was a kid. We called them candy stores, and there were three in my immediate neighborhood: Gus's, Janoff's, and our favorite hangout, Fred & Rudy's. Now this is what I'd call a destination. Be advised that hours are short: Mondays-Saturdays they close at 3 PM, Sundays at 1. As we were leaving, Vinnie said, "Next time you have to try my cherry-lime rickey."

Before I get around to the next pizza stop, let me tell you a little more about the egg cream. In my lifetime there has never been any egg in an egg cream, and there's no consensus as to whether there ever has been. One theory has it that the frothy head looks as if it contains egg white. There also has never been cream in an egg cream, but "egg milk" just wouldn't sound right. There's only one kind of chocolate syrup for a proper egg cream, Fox's U-Bet. Sometimes, when there wasn't any U-Bet in the house, we'd make them with Bosco or Cocoa Marsh, but they weren't true egg creams. We didn't know enough to call them ersatz creams, however. Not too many places make egg creams these days, but you can still get them at the East Village legend Gem Spa, on 2nd Avenue and St. Mark's place. I'm waiting for the Indians who work at Gem Spa to introduce the masala egg cream.

From Bay Street we moved on to Joe & Pat's, founded in 1960. This was the consensus favorite pizzeria of the day, and the only one I'd anoint a true destination spot. Joe & Pat's crust is pretty thin--not quite Roman, but I suspect close to a true Neapolitan crust (I've never been to Naples). The crust had a nice char, and a wheat nuttiness that was missing from the Nunzio's crust. The other factor that made the pizza a winner was the bold, tangy sauce. We had a pie with scungilli, wonderfully fresh, on half of it. Apparently Emeril Lagasse will be featuring Joe & Pat's on an upcoming program. It's worthy of such exposure, regardless of how you feel about Emeril.

Joe and Pat's Pie

Denino's is the most famous and oldest (since 1937) Staten Island pizzeria. We all found the "special" pie with mushroom and sausage a major disappointment. The first problem was the canned mushrooms. The crust, which was thicker than at the previous two stops, was somewhat leaden, and neither the sauce or cheese had any character. The sausages were the highlight of this pizza. I'm convinced that Denino's is coasting on reputation.

Denino's Pie

I was ready to call it a pizza day, but a woman who worked at Bay Street Luncheonette had recommended another pizzeria, Brother's. It was near Denino's, and the two most obsessive of the quartet insisted on stopping in. Since it was a "by-the-slice" place we didn't have to order a whole pie. We all ordered "grandma" slices, an item that has been showing up at New York pizzerias of late, but which I had never heard of as a kid in Brooklyn. A grandma pie is a homestyle, thin-crust square pizza with fresh mozzarella. We didn't know whether this was a specialty of the place, but my logic in ordering a grandma slice was that it was the smallest slice available. It wasn't especially good, and I ate only half of it.

One problem, perhaps, is that the pizzas are precooked, and slices are reheated when you order. This, unfortunately, is the norm at most New York pizzerias. When I was a kid this was not the case. Pizzas were never made in advance and left out to slowly rot as they are today. If a slice was available when you ordered it, you could be sure it was hot. Otherwise you'd have to wait for a fresh pie to come out of the oven. I think it was sometime in the 'seventies, when all sorts of things started going downhill, that most pizzerias started using inferior ingredients and reheating slices from cold pies cooked hours earlier.

As we left Brother's we started discussing our next stop. Earlier we had decided that at some point we'd hit Egger's, a famous ice cream parlor, and that we'd also go for some beers. I argued that we should go for beer first, then ice cream. It seemed obvious to me that you don't follow ice cream with beer, but this wasn't a given as far as everybody else was concerned. Still, since I had the more strongly held belief, the beer before ice cream approach prevailed. Now there were two bar options: the Nurnberger Bierhaus and Lee's Tavern. The attraction of Lee's to some was that they also served pizza. The attraction of Nurnberger Bierhaus to me was that they didn't serve pizza. We ended up at Nurnberger Bierhaus, and I'm glad we did. It was a very comfortable place, with a nice selection of German beers on tap at $4 a pint and a really friendly bartender and waitresses. They also serve German food, and yes, those same incorrigible two insisted that, at the very least, we had to share an appetizer. So we ordered a sausage plate, with three slim bratwursts and some warm German potato salad. It would be nice to go back in warm weather to check out their outdoor beer garden.


We topped off the day with some utterly underwhelming ice cream at Egger's. It was somewhat gummy, and really had nothing to recommend it. I ordered two scoops, cappuccino chip, which was serviceable, and pistachio, which wasn't. There was not a nut to be found in it, and the flavor and coloring may well have been derived from a three-dollar bill. I left most of the pistachio. The real Staten Island ice cream legend is Sedutto's, though it's no longer made on Staten Island.

Overall, though there were some decided disappointments, I'd say the outing was a rousing success for the quality of the pizza at Joe and Pat's, for the Smithsonian-quality interior of Bay Street Luncheonette, and for the beer and cheer at Nurnberger Bierhaus.


Nunzio's, 2155 Hylan Blvd.
Joe and Pat's, 1758 Victory Blvd.
Denino's, 524 Port Richmond Ave.
Brother's, 750 Port Richmond Ave.
Bay Street Luncheonette, 1189 Bay St.
Nurnberger Bierhaus, 817 Castleton Ave.
Egger's, 1194 Forest Ave.

Prominent Food Blogger Linked to Raw-Milk Cheese Ring

L'affaire Spitzer, while compelling in its own right, raises for me a semantic question regarding the initial newspaper headlines for the story. "Spitzer is Linked to Prostitution Ring," the New York Times announced. It was the "linked" part that got me. To me, the word "linked" implied that he was somehow involved in the business end of things, not that he was merely a customer, a client, a John, what have you. I also wondered whether there's a difference between a "prostitution ring" and a "call girl service," but that's another matter.

I was talking to my friend Donna about the Spitzer scandal, and I expressed my feeling that the word "linked" seemed imprecise or inappropriate. "If I buy a quart of milk," I asked her, "would it be correct to say 'Pete Cherches Linked to Dairy Distributors'?"

"That's not a good analogy," Donna said. "Milk isn't illegal. Now if it were unpasteurized cheese, that would be a different story."

"You're right," I said. "How's this for a headline: 'Prominent Food Blogger Linked to Raw-Milk Cheese Ring'?"

"Just as long as you're not linked to cheese logs of any kind," she replied.

Birthday Oyster Casserole at Phoenix Garden

I sprung forward yesterday, ahead of the clocks. To celebrate, I went with a handful of close friends to Phoenix Garden, easily the best Manhattan Cantonese restaurant outside of Chinatown. For many years there was a notable restaurant of the same name in Chinatown, but according to the staff this restaurant is no relation. Surprisingly for its midtown-east location, prices are no higher than at similar Chinatown restaurants. While most dishes at Phoenix Garden are quite good, one holds a special place in my heart, the oyster casserole with bean curd and roast pig. The clay pot is filled to the brim with those humongous oysters that I've only seen in Chinese restaurants, rectangles of fried bean curd, small chunks of roast pig with crispy skin, and a few vegetables for good measure in an amber-brown sauce. The dish is rich and wonderful, and is best shared by four or more diners. Other places make good oyster casseroles, usually with ginger and scallion, but the version with pig and tofu isn't so easy to find. In fact, before trying this dish at Phoenix Garden a couple of years ago I last had it in the 'nineties, at a now-defunct Chinatown gem called Tindo.

The other dishes we had to celebrate my big five-two were clams with lettuce (you roll up the clams in an iceberg lettuce cup and add a bit of hoisin sauce--it's more common to find this set-up with squab or chicken); salt and pepper shrimp; pan-fried noodles with eight precious (see this post for a discussion of eight precious); prawns and sea scallops in a taro basket (with chinese greens); snow pea leaves with crab meat sauce; and an excellent rendition of Peking pork chops, a Cantonese standby despite the name.

This is the third or fourth time I've had the oyster casserole at Phoenix Garden. On my prior visit it was unavailable for some reason, and a dish of sizziling oysters with black pepper sauce was so good I was glad to have been forced into trying an alternative. Also on the menu are salt and pepper fried oysters, and last night they were offering steamed oysters in the shell with black bean sauce. I think I need to plan an oyster-themed dinner at Phoenix Garden.

Phoenix Garden
242 E. 40th St., between 2nd & 3rd Ave.

A Tropical Illusion

A couple of years ago, when this blog was young, I received a comment on a piece I wrote about a favorite Latin American restaurant. I could have written the comment off as spam, as it was essentially a plug for Bogota Latin Bistro, but instead I decided to give the restaurant a try. I stopped by for appetizers and met the young man who had left the comment, Farid Ali, half-owner and half-Colombian, who turned out to be an extremely charming, savvy restaurateur. The food was good, and the place had an upbeat party atmosphere, with great Latin music playing, but I wasn't ready to write about it at the time. Somehow it's taken me close to two years to get back. A recent Sunday brunch turned out to be a pleasure on several counts.

First of all, we were seated in the heated sun deck out back. It was a clear, sunny day, and despite the mid-thirties temperature outdoors it was like brunching al fresco in summer, a tropical illusion. The brunch menu featured both breakfast and lunch items. Dishes ranged from $10-15, with a complimentary drink. I ordered a passion fruit mimosa and the enormous, delicious bandeja paisa.

Bandeja paisa, sometimes called bandeja campesina, is a hearty country plate that might be considered the Colombian national dish. It's one of those copious rustic plates that prepares you for a day in the fields. I fear that tackling the Sunday Times was not quite adequate for working off many of the calories.

The plate included skirt steak, chicharrón (pork rind), fried egg, rice, beans, fried sweet plantains, avocado, red cabbage salad, and an arepa. In Colombia, but not at Bogota Latin Bistro, the plate also typically includes a chorizo. I was given a choice of rice and beans and chose yellow and black. The traditional Colombian combo would be white and red. Colombian arepas are flat, white corn pancakes, very much like tortillas, which pale by comparison to the plump Venezuelan arepas.

Bogota Latin Bistro's menu is pan-Latino, but with a Colombian focus. The staff were friendly and adept, and Farid's sunny smile greeted us and saw us out.

Bogota Latin Bistro
141 5th Ave. (at St. John's Place)
Brooklyn

Overheard in my dream last night

Friend: I didn't figure him for a cream puff kind of guy.

Me: Yeah, whatever happened to men who drank chocolate chips straight out of the bottle?

Chefs Charm at Times Travel Show

I spent about five hours on Saturday at the New York Times Travel Show. I went mainly because I was interested in the Taste of the World stage, where I watched three hour-long presentations.

A talk called "Discover the Belly of Paris" was delivered by a food historian and an art historian who give cultural walking tours in Paris. Inspired by a Zola novel that is centered around the life and characters of Les Halles, Paris's central food market (until not too long ago), the talk combined Parisian culinary history with insights into the realist and impressionist artists who often trolled the market for inspiration. It was informative, in an academic way, but much more rewarding were the presentations by two charismatic chefs.


Rick Bayless, of Chicago's renowned Frontera Grill, talked about Mexican regional cuisines and his own passion for cooking, then prepared a shrimp pipian (pumpkin seed mole). The most endearing part of his talk was his tale of how, as a fourteen-year-old Oklahoma boy with dreams of far off places and an already developed culinary sense, he conceived, planned and booked a family trip to Mexico, their first trip to a foreign country. Rick's family owned a modest barbecue restaurant in Oklahoma City, so he grew up in the kitchen. Because of the restaurant schedule, vacations were usually short and within driving distance--places like Dallas and Kansas City. Rick finally convinced his folks to let him handle the arrangements for a trip to Mexico, and the teenager pulled it off. He fell in love with the country and the food, and subsequently devoted his culinary career to authentic Mexican regional food. I've never seen his TV program, Mexico--One Plate at a Time, but in person he's eminently likeable. The pipian, which audience members got to taste, was excellent, though to my taste it could have used some more chiles.


Suvir Saran is the co-owner of Devi, probably New York's top Indian restaurant, which I've written about before, as well as a successful writer of cookbooks. Flamboyant and somewhat egotistical, his childlike enthusiasm is infectious. He's an evangelist for the greatness of Indian cuisine, and an enemy of all those who have foisted heavy, greasy drek upon Americans in countless Indian restaurants. He talked about the different regions of India as well as his own adaptations of non-Indian dishes to Indian cooking styles and seasoning. Then he prepared a Goan shrimp curry that was absolutely fabulous. He explained, while making the dish, that if decent fresh tomatoes are unavailable one can use canned or packaged ones, but only tomatoes without additives--"make sure it doesn't have anything that George Bush can't read."

Bayless, the easygoing Okie mensch, and Saran, the theatrical Indian divo, were both a pleasure to watch in action. These are two men who clearly love their jobs and the cuisines they've chosen to champion.

A Winter's Meal

I would never try to tackle a Slovak meal on anything but a cold winter's day. No matter how thin you slice it, this is not warm-weather food. Surely there are warm, even hot summer days in Bratislava, but the cuisine doesn't have an adequate backup plan for those times.

I'd been curious about Milan's, a Slovak restaurant in south Park Slope, for some time, having passed it numerous times on my walks to Sunset Park. I gathered a group for dinner there on a February Thursday. Happily, it was a cold, windy night.

Except for a young woman and her toddler, we had the restaurant to ourselves. We perused the menu and proceeded to stock up on those needed (yeah, right) winter calories.

We started with an order of pirogies, a mix of mushroom-sauerkraut and potato-cheese. The choices of preparation were boiled and baked, but I'll be a monkey's uncle if the baked ones, which we ordered, weren't fried. They were excellent.


Halušky is a kind of Slovak pasta, gnocchi-like, and the bryndzové halušky is served with an artery-clogging sheep cheese sauce that has the consistency of sour cream. A further nail in the coffin is the lardy bacon garnish. Five of us couldn't make it through more than half of the enormous serving. I wonder if anybody eats an entire plate of this stuff. Unless you have a death wish, it's best sampled in small doses.


I liked the stuffed cabbage very much. It had a flavorful, dense meat filling and a not-too-sweet sauce. The roast pork loin was rather dry and unremarkable. We ordered a whole dish of this, and a small piece also came with the meat combination (domáca zabijačka) that included two kinds of sausage. The blood sausage was dry and overcooked, but the garlicy fresh sausage (kolbasa in Slovak, described as kielbasy on the menu, though it isn't cured like the Polish version) was one of the highlights of the meal.

Most of the main courses were served with potatoes or sauerkraut or both. That's about it for vegetables. Take it or leave it.

Blogger Dave Cook, who has Slovak blood (I don't know his cholesterol count, however), had urged me to leave room for the plum dumpling dessert. But his recommendation came with a caveat that I misheard at first. "Be forewarned that it's a Gotbaum dessert," I thought he said. What's he talking about? I wondered. Is this a favorite dessert of Betsy Gotbaum, and if so, why does it require a warning? Then my brain caught up with my ears and I realized that he had called it a "gut-bomb dessert."

My dining companions and I were unaware of how many bombs there would be, and how many megatons they each were, so we ordered two other desserts, the nut roll (a small piece of cream cake) and the raspberry palacinky (crepes). The palacinky, which in other Slavic restaurants are usually dusted with powdered sugar, were smothered in whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Was Milan trying to kill us?

The plum dumplings were good despite their leaden nature, but the favorite part of this dessert for most at the table was the brown sugar and butter topping.


Milan's is a little over a mile from my apartment, and I walked home as my friends headed back to Manhattan by train. I wasn't convinced that the walk was sufficiently therapeutic, and I seriously considered dropping in at Methodist Hospital for an impromptu carotid endarterectomy.


Milan's is at 710 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn, near 22nd Street. Take the R train to 25th St.

Another Score for Ghana

Some of you may remember my paean to Florence's, a Ghanaian restaurant in Harlem. Well, Florence now has a rival for my West African culinary affections, Mercy, the woman who runs Meytex Cafe in Brooklyn. And Meytex has the advantage of being within walking distance of my apartment.

There's a printed menu, but on the night I ate at Meytex Mercy's verbal description of what was actually available superseded it. One of the items, not on the menu, was a whole tilapia. It had a spicy rub and was garnished with peppers and onions. It was served with a side of boiled white yam.


A spinach and egushi (pumpkin seed) stew was delicious, with a smoky taste I couldn't identify.


The spicy fried plantains were not as addictive as the crunchy version with ginger (kelewele) at Florence's, but the rice and beans were wonderful. Mercy explained that the dark color of the rice comes from a leaf they cook it with, but when we asked the name she couldn't think of the English word. She consulted with several men at the bar and told us, "bay leaf." She showed us a bag of a ground herb which didn't illuminate much. I don't know if it's the bay leaf we're most familiar with.


The rich peanut soup with goat meat rivaled the one at Florence's. Fellow diner Dave Cook of Eating in Translation is a serious photographer with a serious camera, and his shot of this dish puts mine to shame.

There are some major differences in atmosphere between Meytex and Florence's. While Florence's is a bright BYO place with kids running around, Meytex has a bar, which I suspect accounts for much of their business. I tried a Ghanaian beer, the eminently drinkable Stone Strong Lager. I understand they also serve palm wine. The night we went Mecry and several African men were watching primary results on CNN on the large-screen TV by the bar. The Meytex menu says it's the "1st Food/Chop Bar in NYC." "Chop bar" is a common term in Ghana for simple eating establishments. If you're sharing dishes at Meytex, Mercy will give you plastic dishes and forks.

According to the blog Across the Park, Meytex has killer fried chicken. Unfortunately, it wasn't available when I visited. Maybe next time, which will be fairly soon, I'm sure.

Meytex Cafe is located at 545 Flatbush Avenue, close to the Prospect Park stop on the B & Q trains.

A Dream Featuring Roberto Benigni

In my dream I was watching an opera on television. Already this was strange, as in waking life I'm utterly uninterested in opera. It appeared to be a nineteenth-century Italian opera. A pair of twins—short, fat, bald, dark Sicilian-looking men in Renaissance costume—were singing an aria in unison. I knew that they were singing about guilt, but I don't know whether this was because I understood the words or was familiar with the libretto. Then I realized that one of the twins had just realized that the other twin was not his brother at all, but rather a manifestation of his own guilty conscience.

At this point, Roberto Benigni, the Italian comic actor, appeared on stage singing the same aria. He seemed startled and upset by the presence of the bald twins. He made exaggerated comic gestures that signaled his fear, as if in a silent film comedy. He ran to the back of the set and hid behind a curtain, then peeked out at the twins with an ambiguous smile on his face. At this point I could tell that Benigni had realized that the twins were not real people, but rather representations of his own guilt. This liberated him to leap out from behind the curtain and continue singing his aria. The twins had disappeared.

The perspective in the dream then shifted from the stage set on TV to the room in which I was watching the program. There was another man in the room, sitting in a chair with his back to me. He was a large, bald man. I had no idea who he was.

"What am I feeling guilty about?" I said to the back of the man's head.