Category Archives: food adventure

Food Adventure: Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Shop

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So, it took me until the Times article came out last week to finally get myself over to Cobble Hill to sample the delicious, homemade sodas at Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Shop, but boy was it worth it! The decor, inside and out, is straight out of the 1950s, and the atmosphere was fun and energetic, full of patiently-waiting families and waitresses with their order up’s reaching across both sides of the counter.

I sat at the counter and read, while my order moved along in the queue. I watched the barbacks whip up delicious sundaes and egg creams; blend the perfect milkshakes; and mix up sodas from the syrups on hand. When my Pink Poodle finally came, I was shocked by how delicious it was. I grew up loving coke floats (but don’t get a root beer float anywhere near me please) and somehow hadn’t quite connected the dots that I had essentially ordered that, flavored with hibiscus instead of cola. It was surprisingly refreshing and delicious after the long bike ride over, and I couldn’t help feeling like kid again as I alternately sipped the soda and spooned out the ice cream. It was so hard not to drink it down in one fell swoop.

Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Shop
513 Henry Street at Sackett St.
Cobble Hill
Brooklyn, NY 11231

Food Adventure: Rice Pudding

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I have had rice pudding on the mind for over a year, but I have somehow never gotten around to making the dish, despite having bought all of the ingredients. So when I read about mighli in Annia Ciezadlo’s Day of Honey and started to plan a Middle Eastern dinner party, I thought it might be the perfect time to try out the dish.

Mighli is a rice-based dish served throughout the Middle East for a variety of occasions, according to the culture. In some places, like Lebanon, it is the dish of celebrations, such as the birth of a child. In others, it is a dish of sorrow, perhaps to commemorate a death. Regardless, it is a dish that gathers people together to acknowledge the cycles of life, so it seems like a wonderful thing to have in one’s culinary repertoire.

I tried my hand at the dish, drawing inspiration from a variety of sources and from my own pantry. Warning: this makes a LOT of rice pudding.

  • 3 cups water
  • 1 1/2 cup basmati rice
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3 cups whole milk
  • 1 cup heavy whipping cream
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/2 vanilla bean, split
  • 1 tablespoon freshly ground ginger
  • 1 tablespoon rosewater
  • 1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Bring water, rice, and salt to a boil; simmer, covered, until water is absorbed. Add the remaining ingredients, being sure to scrape the seeds from the bean. Return heat to medium heat, stirring occasionally as the mixture comes together, about 30 minutes. When it achieves a thick, creamy, pudding-like texture, remove from heat. This can be made ahead of time, refrigerated, and kept for up to a week.

Food Adventure: Eat-fest 2010

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Whenever I am with my parents, we eat. It has established itself over the years as one of our favorite past times, and this weekend it took first place. Yes, the cultural excursion to see Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice was mind-numbingly good (emphasis on the mind-numbing part). Yes, the exploration of Court Street in south Brooklyn was interesting. But really, it was all about the food. I won’t go into the litany of every dish we tasted, but I will share a few highlights.

Le Comptoir

Since I came to New York for the first time at age 16, my mother and I have always gone to La Goulue for a meal when we are in the city together. Chef Sebastian Chamaret from the now-defunct Upper East Side restaurant has opened up a new spot in Williamsburg, so we had to try it together. Everything about this meal was divine, from the company to the cuisine. Alexxa and Stevie joined us for charcuterie, seared foie gras, duck “a la plancha,” the most succulent chicken breast I’ve ever tasted, served over a squash puree, and more. It’s still BYO for a few more weeks until they get their liquor license, so Stevie brought us the 2009 Baudry Chinon Blanc, a Chenin Blanc that was lovely and round, with a high level of acidity that proved to be a real crowd-pleaser, as well as a 2001 Burgundy from Hubert Lignier Morey-St.-Denis, a bright, beautiful Pinot Noir with a lot personality.

251 Grand St. between Driggs Ave. and Roebling St., Williamsburg, Brooklyn
718-486-3300

Diner

Another neighborhood adventure, we met for brunch at Diner, the refurbished yet rundown dining-car-cum-restaurant down the street from me. I thought my dad would get a kick out of the décor, which makes you feel as though the place has survived more than one earthquake, as well as the food. Although I enjoyed my grits, Mom her root vegetable hash, and Dad his sausage gravy, the real highlight was the Bloody Mary: tomato juice, thick with horseradish and rimmed with kosher salt.

85 Broadway, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
718-486-3077

Buttermilk Channel

After an ordeal to get a cab and over an hour wait for a table, I thought this meal was bound to be a royal failure. However, once we finally sat down and got our food, the first words out of Dad’s mouth were: “This is a really good burger.” Phew! Both Mom and Dad had opted for the quarter pound of house-ground beef served on the “perfect” bun, which was neither too soft nor too stiff, and both were members of the Clean Clate Club (as the saying has gone in my family since my brother was unable to properly pronounce “plate” as a baby). Admittedly, I helped out with the extra crispy fries, but I was mostly busy digging into the Eggs Huntington, the restaurant’s own version of the Benedict. These eggs were perfectly poached, the whites and yellows both set, requiring two stabs of the fork to pierce the yolk and soak the deliciously dense buttermilk biscuit beneath. The only drawback of this meal was that my side of greens was bare.

524 Court St., Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn
718-852-8490

Momofuku Ssam Bar and Milk Bar

For our last meal, Dad requested something different, and my mind jumped to the East Village Momofuku restaurants. Chef David Chang is a Korean-American who doesn’t understand the word “vegetarian;” he is one of the chefs that has brought pork belly into the limelight in American cuisine, if that gives you any indication. I thought it might be a great fit: a killer combination of “ethnic” food and meat lovers, topped with some hefty spice. We started out on the right foot, ordering their famous pork belly buns, the fatty meat layered in soft, doughy steamed buns alongside thinly sliced cucumbers. A bit of the Sichuan spicy sauce made this an instant hit for my dad (Mom was less enthused). However, we made the mistake of ordering not one but two fish dishes, the pufferfish and the albacore tuna. The pufferfish tails were lightly fried and served with squid ink and squash, a unique blend but slightly difficult to eat. The tuna, on the other hand, was overcooked, and its barley accompaniments were as bland in color as they were in taste. Thank goodness for the final dish (all plates are meant to be shared), a spicy pork sausage ragu served with chewy rice dumplings. This one was so spicy the waitress took the Sichuan sauce away so we wouldn’t be tempted.

For dessert, I wanted my parents to try something in keeping with the eclectic theme of the night. Momofuku Ssam Bar is connected to the Momofuku Milk Bar via a passageway (also accessible from the street), and we headed over to try their various desserts. Pastry chef Christina Tosi has taken her love of youthful treats — from milk and cookies, chips, and cereal — and created one of the most interesting pastry shops in town. The cereal milk soft serve and compost cookie (literally made of chips, pretzels, chocolate chips, and more) are certainly not for everyone, but we had fun tasting through the sampler of ice creams and a few of the cookies.

Ssam Bar: 207 Second Ave, East Village, New York
212-254-3500

*Milk Bar located around the corner on 13th St.

Food Adventure: Day Trip to Flushing for REAL Chinese Food

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Yesterday afternoon, because Stevie had a car in the city for a few hours, we went on an escapade – to Chinatown in Flushing, Queens. Right where the 7 train ends, there is an entire area of the city that is full of Chinese signs, faces, and strange meat and produce lining the streets. Stevie had scoped out a few places she wanted to go, namely to try steaming pork buns filled with mouth-burning broth, amazing pork and cabbage ramen soup, and the coup-de-grace – hand-pulled noodle soup from Langzhou Handmade Noodles.

The menu. We selected roast duck hand-pulled noodles.

This little noodle shop was located at the corner of Main Street and 41st in the equivalent of an underground food court. Stevie’s got a few germ issues which definitely came to the forefront in this cramped but delicious-smelling space full of various food stalls, but she happily overcame them to watch this man knead and pull noodles before our eyes:

The noodle man, kneading

He kneaded the dough, pulling it like taffy, until it formed long, thin strands, which then were thrown into a pot with duck bones and delicious vegetables. Stevie even wandered over to touch the dough. This took some effort and miming, since the man and his assistant did not speak English and the shop’s translator had his head down in a corner, but she eventually succeeded in bringing over a small lump of dough for us to play with. The soup was served, steaming hot, in a plastic bowl which we had to share (another phobia that was gallantly overcome).

The soup in all its deliciousness.

While sitting and munching through noodles and meat-covered bones, Stevie spotted a green soda can with a strange fruit on it. She tried to ask the lady working the counter what it was – which means we ended up ordering a can to share:

“white gourd” canned beverage

This might have been the best decision of the day. Whatever white gourd is, it tasted like liquid caramel corn, whose chilled sweetness really complemented the soup. We took turns sipping at it until I took a sip and the ominous end-of-the-line slurping sound surfaced – at which point the can was turned over to its rightful orderer. We then got two more to go.

This is what happens when I say “smile.”
Pure unadulterated joy on that face.