It's All Greek To Me

As we explore our area in Brooklyn more, we also develop favorites. We headed back to Tai Thai for some of that great green papaya salad. I tried a new item, the veggie dumplings, which were so soft and plump you could just eat them up. Which I did.

Dinner was at Kefi, a big beautiful Greek restaurant on Columbus. It was spacious, airy, and they had divided the eating area up into three sections, so no matter where you sat it felt like a smaller, more intimate space. The food portions were large and filled with feta. My favorite was probably the tomato salad that came with croutons, cauliflower, onions, and of course, lots of feta.


Green Papaya Salad (Som Tum):


Veggie dumplings:


So much Greek food:

Epilogue

I'm not going to cover the last day in depth. This part of our blog was about our shared experiences eating in New York and she went home one day earlier than me.

I will say a few things:

Our last meal together was at the mediocre Mexican place "Bonita".

I ate dinner with James in Astoria the night before I left at a great little place on 34th Ave., S'Agapo. I had lamb fricassee with artichokes.

That made it seven times I ate lamb while here in New York

Four of those time where at Oasis.

That looks like this:

We had Japanese food seven times.

And to top it all off at around midnight, the night before I left I got to eat Souvlaki at my favorite Souvlaki stand in queens.

The Souvlaki Man's Stand has gotten bigger

But the Souvlaki is Exactly the Same!

Day 14 (The Ultimate Day) Tai Thai & Kefi

We started our last day the same way we've done the entire trip; arguing about the question of brunch vs. lunch. After tramping up and down Bedford for our millionth and possibly last time we finally begrudgingly settled on going back to Tai Thai, the quite good Thai Place we'd gone to earlier that on our trip. It was just as good and efficient as I'd remembered.

For dinner we went with Kirstin's friend Sandra to a great Greek place on the Upper West Side called Kefi. The food was very good and priced pretty much as reasonably as anything I'd had back in my beloved Astoria.

We ordered four appetizers for the table; an amazing sort of califlower/tomato salad, a feta caper olive concoction and some sardines. Everything came with caperberries and feta cheese on it witch was just great by me.

I also finally got the branzino I was hopping for. It just the way I wanted it; perfectly pan fried and served with a nice mix of roasted tomatoes, potatoes and olives.

A meal full of feta and love.

Sandra and a large amount of food

My beloved Branzino

An Ouzo sour, the only drinkable ouzo I've ever had

Matter in General

Brunch was at The Rabbit Hole, which is the other eating place across the street from us. My goat cheese and lox omelet was delightful. I had requested fruit instead of a side salad from the waiter at the counter, and asked if that was possible. He said he would check. I heard nothing more and the dish came out with a beautiful arrangement of currants on top of banana and apple. A few minutes later, the woman who was working in the back came out to let me know that they don't normally do this sort of thing, and not in a nice "you're special" way. She told me not to expect this, nor to let anyone else expect this. I assured her I did not live in the area and she did not need to worry about me abusing the brunch substitutions. Nonetheless, the food was good.

We then headed to Astoria and to Socrates Sculpture Park to watch the sun set over Manhattan. According to our friend Erin, it was one of two days out of the year when the sun sets directly between the buildings along the grid of the city. We picked up some snacks to tide us over from Bakeway. I got a surprisingly good mix of thick plain yogurt with berries on top of granola, which I ate with my reusable spork. We enjoyed the sunset, sculptures, snacks, and a bottle of cheap champagne. We also enjoyed the sculpture that was just a sign that said "Matter in General: 937. Deep Fried in Oil, 938. On a Stick". Damian and I have often talked about how things on a stick are the universal food. I bet deep frying is pretty high up there too.

Dinner was at Philoxenia. The first thing I noticed were the candles. They were short and thick, like many restaurant candles, and they were made of wax. But the light was coming from a battery-powered source somewhere inside the candle itself. It looked very authentic until you looked at the wick and saw it wasn't burning. Food-wise, the best part was the beets with pureed potato and garlic, a mixture called skordalia. It was a delicious combination I would not have thought of, despite loving both beets and mashed potatoes (when asked on my college application if I wanted to include any additional information, I wrote that mashed potatoes was one of my favorite foods). The other highlight was the olive dip for the pita - very flavorful and a rich purple color. We definitely asked for seconds.

The bamboo spork makes another appearance:

Sculpture on a stick:

Philoxenia:

Day 7 The Rabbit Hole, Philoxenia

This morningwe had a completely opposite experience of the Rabbit Hole from the one I’d had the night before. We walked in and said we wanted to use our computers so they sat us in the bar with another guy and his computer.

I opened my computer and clicked on there network but I still wasn’t able to connect to the internet. Kirstin had the same problem so we asked the other guy there how his was working and he told us it was fine until about five minutes ago and that they probably just needed to restart their modem.

I asked the bartender if he could restart it and he told me they didn’t really offer wireless on the weekends so “it was probably just off” then he pointed a sign by the door as proof. The sign read “In order to maintain a more pleasant atmosphere we ask that all computers be put away by 5:30 p.m.” It said absolutely nothing about weekends.

I had a burger with no bun and fries which was fine but they really didn’t want to give me any ketchup. Kirstin had her usual eggs with fruit instead of potatoes. Half way through our meal, already feeling rather unwelcome, a woman came up to Kirstin and said “we normally don’t do that.” I had no idea what she was talking about. Was this about the ketchup? No it was about the fruit. She wanted Kirstin to know not to expect to be able to substitute fruit whenever she wanted to.

This was not the pleasant atmosphere I’d experienced there just 12 hours earlier.

For dinner we went to Philoxenia in Astoria, Queens. A little Greek place I’d gone to last time I was in town and have fond memories of. Having lived in Astoria for years before moving back to the bay area I was very familiar with Greek food and I missed it more than anything else about New York.

We sat outside on the patio at the same table we’d sat at last time. Me, Kirstin and Erin shared everything we ordered and we ate it all down to the last drop of sauce.

We had beets with skordalia, a Greek potato garlic dip, a green salad, grilled octopus, mussels with feta and Ouzo tomato sauce and lemon potatoes. Everything was perfect and just what I wanted. The beets served as a welcome and unexpected vehicle for the garlicky "skordalia" I’d missed so much (Erin says she’s going to give me her Greek grandmothers recipe). The salad was a mix of chopped romaine and olives perfectly tossed with a lemon oil dressing and fresh dill. The sauce for the mussels made me wonder why I don’t mix tomato sauce and cheese more often, the octopus was grilled perfectly tender and not at all rubbery and the potatoes, although not as good as the ones at their more famous neighbor Uncle George's, were still better than anything I’ve had back home.

This eating experience brought me back to my years living here in Astoria. The years where I first learned about food and cooking. Eating the simple elegant Greek fair I remembered again the joy of marveling at food you can just barely figure out how they made but could never make yourself.