I Eat NYC

Documenting daily culinary adventures in the five boroughs.

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A blog about burgers and the creative lessons they teach us.

This is what happens when a design firm starts a food blog. MINE photographs and writes exclusively about hamburgers in San Francisco.

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Anna's Café Sandwiches/Deli Brooklyn : Flatbush : Nostrand & Ave. I At the end of 2012, the company I worked for in Midtown was sued by Mayor Bloomberg and eventually shut down by the city of New York. That's true! So I suddenly found myself having to get a new gig, and the one I came up with was located in Flatbush, Brooklyn. This bummed me out for a number of reasons. I sincerely loved working in Midtown: It felt like "New York" to me. I liked the park, the beautiful architecture (my favorite building in the City, the Standard Radiator building, overlooked Bryant Park, where I would eat lunch everyday) and, more than anything else, I loved how much great food was within only a couple blocks of my office. Working in Flatbush was something else entirely. Where walking out of the subway at 42nd Street immediately greeted you with the park and skyscrapers, walking out of the subway at Flatbush Ave. only greets you with pawn shops and fast food restaurants. I worked there for the entirety of 2013, and finding food to eat was always a struggle. However! There was some decent food to be found in Flatbush if you knew where to find it, and having spent a year there, I think I have. For example: I don't miss much about Flatbush (I have a hard time imagining I'll ever want to go there again), but I do miss having a place like Anna's Café around. Anna's is one of those old New York diners that are just about extinct in 2014. They serve passable American fare for super cheap, the guy manning the cash register had an accent that couldn't be mistaken for anywhere but Brooklyn and the diner's patrons have the kinds of conversations that are familiar to any working class area. I heard the same people say the same things in blue collar Michigan, and there's something comforting about finding them alive and well in Brooklyn. Williamsburg seems like a world away from Flatbush. Anna's was particularly helpful in satisfying two cravings I have constantly: pancakes and BLTs. You could get three pancakes for about as many singles, whipped butter included! What a way to start the day! A BLT was about the same price. It's nothing fancy, but if you occasionally crave bacon as I do, it will absolutely hit the spot. That's mostly what I ate at Anna's, although I would be ecstatic if a similar place opened up near my house so I could continue to satisfy those two cravings as cheaply and easily now that I've left Flatbush for good. I would also occasionally get a hamburger at Anna's, which was decent but never really got the job done like the BLTs and pancakes (although adding cheese and bacon helps). If you happen to be in Flatbush, you could do a lot worse than Anna's. In the future, I'll try to hip you to a few other food discoveries I've made in this godless land of Applebee's and shitty Chinese food.

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Weren’t Those the Bad Old Days? The Poison of New York City Nostalgia

Forget the reduced crime of Bloomberg—de Blasio’s mayoral inauguration was suffused with a longing for uglier, more ‘authentic’ times. And this irrational forgetfulness is everywhere.

Here's a great counterpoint to everyone's New York Nostalgia for the "bad old days," including my own. And relating to food, chef Florent Morellet has the best line when asked about being priced out of the Meatpacking District:

On the island over there [Manhattan], people bug me. They say to me, ‘Oh, my God, you were a genius, you had the greatest restaurant on the face of the earth.’ And the next sentence is, ‘Isn’t it terrible what they did to you?’ I’m like, ‘No, I think it’s great...I’m so glad it’s over.’ I’m so sick of everyone in Manhattan complaining about the way things used to be.

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(And to be clear: Transplants are not the problem. Transplants are, and always have been, what makes New York great. From the black, Irish and Italian immigrants of antebellum Five Points to the rock musicians looking for a practice space in Bushwick, passionate people moving to New York are why the city is desirable place in the first place. People who actually want to live here, and are willing to be poor to do it, are only beneficial to the health of the city.) I still have a lot of love for Manhattan and, honestly, its unattainable nature has always been part of the appeal. But Manhattan used to have room for both: the upper crust and crust punks both. It doesn't have that anymore. Manhattan has become homogenized, and homogeneity in any form is a poison. Nothing good ever came from keeping people out, a fact made apparent by the irony that Manhattan's most desirable neighborhoods are the ones in which young, interesting people transformed only to be pushed out. Brooklyn, for the time being, still has room for everyone, but it seems to be going down the Manhattan path at twice the speed. It's one thing for there to be rich neighborhoods. Not preferable but acceptable. It's another thing entirely for there to be rich cities. They already have Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo, but now they want Fort Greene. Now they want Bed-Stuy. Now they want Red Hook. And each time they set their sights on a new neighborhood, the people who made that neighborhood attractive in the first place are forced out. Where are the middle and lower class supposed to go when every neighborhood is a rich neighborhood? It isn't fair to anyone and it's tremendously detrimental to the city as a whole. Again, what I'm saying is not new in any way, but it is worrying to me and I think about it a lot because the uncertain future of the city scares me. I see what's happened to Manhattan and it makes me concerned the same is happening in Brooklyn in double or triple time. And then what? Will "regular" people go to Queens? The Bronx? Eventually we run out of places to run to. Eventually we're pushed out of the city entirely and New York City as "the greatest city in the world" ceases to be. What's left is New York City, "the world's largest gated community." No artists. No musicians. No normal people at all. Just a homogenized super rich who will almost certainly get bored with the toy they just broke and move on to some other culturally vibrant place to torch anew. All of which is to say: I love New York precisely because there are places like Villa Pancho, as trivial as that seems. You can get a mole chicken burrito for $7 and it's fantastic. This pace exists to serve a new demographic: the young, "hip" set that flocked to Bed-Stuy to pursue their passions, whatever they may be. But realtors look at this cool burriteria as proof the neighborhood is "up and coming," their favorite coded phrase, which means young white people live here now. Sensing that they can get more money from these young white people, and hoping to entice other, richer people, they raise the rent. The cycle starts again and the feedback loop never ends.

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Jolie Café Café/Crêperie Brooklyn : Bed-Stuy : Bedford & Hancock After leaving Red Hook I ended up in Bed-Stuy. I was aiming for Clinton Hill, mostly because when I started looking at apartments in the area I found bike lanes everywhere, but also because the neighborhood was much prettier than I would have assumed. I didn't quite make it to Clinton Hill proper, instead ending up on the Bed-Stuy side of the border, but the bike lanes are still there and I've been impressed with how many truly interesting places Bed-Stuy has to offer. The Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood was once considered one of the worst in Brooklyn. During the second half of the 20th century, it was a frequent location of gang violence and rioting. During the '77 blackout, hundreds of stores in Bed-Stuy were looted or set on fire. In the '80s and early '90s, it was hit hard by crack. But at the beginning of the 21st century, with rents raising all over New York and Brooklyn, Bed-Stuy's handsome brownstones and tree-lined streets started to look pretty good and the neighborhood began gentrifying. Obviously, not everyone is crazy about this development either, but to a food fan, it's leading to some pretty incredible options in a neighborhood that even very recently was not particularly renown for its cuisine. Case in point: One day I was walking home from the subway and I passed a new café opening up. As I was reading the menu, the owner introduced himself and told me to come back in a few days when they were open because he made either the best crêpes in Brooklyn or New York – I can't remember which. Either way, though, he might be right. I did come back to Jolie Café and I ordered the Crêpe Suzette, an orange and caramel crêpe that was absolutely one of the best I've ever had. A couple weeks later I came back and got the Crêpe au Fromage, filled with brie, apples and caramelized onions. It was insanely good. Jolie Café isn't only a crêperie. It serves some other dishes like hamburgers and panini as well as coffees and juices. All I've had is the crêpes, but they could very well be the best I've had in New York. Jolie Café is still only a few weeks old by this point and it hasn't ever been super busy when I've gone in (although it's never been empty, either). Hopefully, though, Jolie Café will get the attention it deserves. There's no doubt its reasonably priced crêpes match or surpass anything I've had in Manhattan.

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Umami Burger Comes to New York, Armed With One Addictive Ingredient

Fleischman’s Umami Burger— ... rich in the mysterious, controversial Japanese “fifth taste” called umami—turned the L.A. burger world on its ear more or less overnight.

I'm intrigued, but this guy isn't doing himself any favors shit talking Shake Shack. For one thing, I question his taste if he doesn't think there's any value to be found in the ShackBurger. For another, his seems like a very different kind of burger joint. Surely there's room in New York for the simple minimalism of Shake Shack and this decidedly more haute (or, perhaps, pretentious) alternative.

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Defonte's Deli/Sandwiches Brooklyn : Red Hook : Columbia & Luquer I Eat NYC is now a year old. I've been writing about all the things I shove into my face for a full twelve months now, and in that time a lot has changed. I started this project as a sort of writing exercise for myself –   I was working freelance and not really getting enough to do. Then I got a full-time job and then another one, all the while my daily food blog started to take the weekends off, then became a thrice weekly blog, then a twice weekly blog and then finally a weekly-unless-I-don't-get-to-it blog. The job I have now, especially, is all writing, so it's hard to really be stoked on writing more when I get home from work. But I still like this little experiment, even as I increasingly don't have enough time for it. So in its second year, I'll probably update it even less, but I'll try to keep it going. Another change that happened over the past year is I moved from my beloved Red Hook. This just happened, in fact. It's a very strange set of circumstances that resulted in my needing to relocate – I certainly didn't want to, but I feel like everyone in New York needs some weird housing situation to have the story for later. This place was definitely mine. It was great while it lasted, but it was also obvious from the beginning it couldn't really last. So I had to leave Red Hook, but I thought for this anniversary it'd be nice if I eulogized my old neighborhood with a post about what is undoubtedly its most famous eatery. Even though Defonte's was literally right around the corner from my house, I lived in Red Hook for months before I finally ate there. I knew about it from the beginning; Defonte's has earned itself a reputation as a stalwart of old Brooklyn. It's a hold over from a time when Red Hook was still an industry neighborhood, serving the dock workers during their lunch hours. Today, the industry is gone – the factories have been converted into lofts and the shipping has all moved to New Jersey. But Defonte's remains and its clients are still decidedly blue collar. I'm not really sure where they even come from, but during its esoteric hours, Defonte's is full of the same kind of Brooklyn laborers that have been patronizing it for the past century. It's those incredibly bizarre hours that led to me living around the corner for months and never going in. It's not that I didn't want to, it's that it always seemed to be closed. Even stranger: the hours aren't even listed anywhere. Not on the building itself (unless it actually is open) and not on the website. You just have to know! Those hours, by the way, are about nine in the morning to about four in the afternoon, Monday to Saturday. I know; it doesn't make sense to me either. It's a sandwich place that's open for breakfast but not dinner. But it must match the working schedule, because it's always full when it actually is open. And it's no wonder – Defonte's lives up to its reputation. The sandwiches are pretty big. If you're hungry, you'll happily eat the whole thing, but at about $11 or so, they're reasonably priced for the amount of food you're getting. They're also very good. It's not the best sandwich I've ever had (Syd still reigns supreme in that regard), but the ingredients are fresh and the sandwich is well made. One popular theory around these parts is that Defonte's is the "secret sandwich place in Brooklyn" Liz Lemon refers to in 30 Rock, a hypothesis I fully believe to be true. Even if it isn't mentioned by name in 30 Rock, Defonte's has gotten some explicit screen time over the years, most notably on Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, hosted by the nü-metal leprechaun himself, Guy Fieri. It's also worth mentioning that there's another Defonte's in Gramercy called Defonte's of Brooklyn. I don't really know what the relationship between the two Defonte's is, and I haven't eaten at the Manhattan location, but I've walked by and, judging from the interior as well as their disparate websites, it doesn't seem like they're exactly the same. Anyway, the original Defonte's is a nice little slice of a Brooklyn that has mostly disappeared. You get the impression it's been more or less the same for close to a century, which makes it worth trying to get there in its limited window of operations. The fact that the sandwiches are pretty great is a nice bonus.

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Awash Ethiopian Brooklyn : Cobble Hill : Court & Baltic I had Ethiopian food for the first time a couple nights ago. I've never even seen an Ethiopian restaurant before coming to New York, but they're all over here. I've been curious for a while, and when a friend and I were walking around Cobble Hill one night, it provided a good opportunity to try it out. Forgive me if I'm being stupid and describing something everyone already knows, but it was all new to me. Ethiopian food consists of meats and vegetables, often spiced or in spicy sauces, served on what is essentially a large crepe. Smaller crepes come along with it, and you use these to pick up the food in lieu of cutlery, which isn't provided. Luckily, my friend knew enough to explain this to me so I didn't look like an idiot and ask for a fork. I had the Tibs Wit, beef strips cooked in a slightly spicy sauce called Berbere, and Awash Chicken, which was marinated chicken breast with vegetables. I also had some very good red beets, collard greens and something called Yater Kik Alicha, a sort of hummus. Everything I had was pretty great, and the whole meal was only $16. Oh! And Awash also serves a few different Ethiopian beers but, after a long back and forth with the waitress, we learned the only ale they offered was the stout. We both ordered it and, though it was much lighter than any stout I've ever had before, it was also very tasty. It wasn't dissimilar to a cream ale, in fact – not very strong but still creamy and kind of sweet. So I now know Ethiopian food and I'm a fan. Unfortunately, my limited experience doesn't allow me to necessarily rate Awash in particular. My friend said it was good but not the best she's had, so take that for what it's worth. For my own part, I enjoyed the meal and it seemed very reasonably priced. I wouldn't mind having some more Ethiopian to compare Awash to soon.

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El Olomega Latin Brooklyn : Red Hook : Bay & Clinton New York eaters and lovers of life, please be advised: As of this past weekend, the Red Hook Food Trucks have returned to their post beside Red Hook Park to offer impossibly delicious and ridiculously cheap Latin American fare, including the pupusa, which independent studies have shown may be the best thing ever, although further tests are required and forthcoming. You may recall last year I wrote about one of these trucks in particular: Solber Pupusas, which serves those insanely tasty stuffed corn pancakes and introduced me to them in the first place. But Solber Pupusas has always been joined by El Olomega, which claims to be "The Original Red Hook Salvadoran Pupusas," a bit of a telling off to their next door neighbor. According to El Olomega's site, however, they deserve the distinction, having set up shop in Red Hook a full 25 years ago back in 1988. Wow! I visited the Red Hook Food Trucks a few times last year, but I usually went to Solber because El Olomega always had a monster line. I was curious, sure, but you have to wait long enough at Solber, and I couldn't really justify waiting even longer for the same product. Last weekend, however, I stopped by for the Food Trucks' opening day and El Olomega's line was, while still longer than Solber, reasonably short. So I decided to give the competition a shot and found they do have a few different varieties of pupusa on the menu. I ordered one standard pork and cheese pupusa (which they call the Revuelta (revolt) for some reason) and a sweet plantain and cheese pupusa to go along with it. I already knew I was going to love the latter; the plantain is one of my absolute favorite foods and I snatch it up whenever I see it available. I don't know why it isn't used in American food, in fact. It's like a banana, which is already good, but better in just about every way. Anyway, the plantain and cheese pupusa was phenomenal. I love plantain arepas too, but I think this was even better. The sweet and savory combination is insanely good. The Ruveulta was also great, and so was the drink I ordered called marañon (cashew), which is a juice that does taste slightly like cashews and wasn't at all unpleasant. That whole meal, drink included, only cost $8, by the way. You'd pay more to get fast food! It's absurd! It's hard for me to say El Olomega makes a better pupusa than Solber Pupusas because it's been a few (long, cold) winter months since I've had one, but they do have plantain pupusas so I think I might be waiting in Olomega's longer lines with everyone else in the months to come. What I will say is this: As much as I could have a single favorite food, pupusas may have earned that distinction. 

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Conflict Kitchen: Its Ethnic Foods Seduce, Its Wrappers Engage

Conflict Kitchen is a Pittsburgh take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries with which the U.S. is in conflict. Its owner tells us why.

I love this. It's not located in New York, unfortunately, but what a cool idea. Check out how everything--from the name on the sign to the graphic design to the food itself to even (apparently) the guy in the window--changes every six months to reflect a different country. This is more art project than restaurant, but I want to eat there so bad.

See more at Conflict Kitchen.

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Crumbs Dessert Manhattan : Greenwich Village : University Place & East 13th St. Crumbs is a cupcake shop that first opened in 2003 in the Upper West Side; it now has a number of locations in Manhattan (and one in Brooklyn) as well as a handful outside New York. It's not the kind of place I would go of my own accord, but Brokelyn alerted me to this free cupcake offer--You still have time to snag one yourself; the vouchers are good through April. Anyway, though I'm not the kind of guy who'd buy a cupcake, I'm not the kind of guy who'd turn down a free cupcake either, so I headed to Crumbs' Union Square location, voucher in hand. Crumbs makes a number of cupcake varieties daily, including something they call Colossal Cupcakes which are made to be brought home and shared. Which is just a cake, right? I'm pretty sure we have giant cupcakes already; they're called cakes. Here's some of the flavors I remember seeing there: Cookie Dough, S'Mores, Margarita (I don't know; the frosting, I guess?), Oreo-Something-or-Other, Chocolate Mint and, of course, Red Velvet. Bitches love a Red Velvet--which, by the way, is just chocolate cake with a ton of red food coloring in it. That's what they're losing their shit over. Okay, anyway: I settled on Chocolate Pecan Pie, which was a chocolate cupcake topped with pecans and some caramel frosting. It was okay, but here's my problem with the gourmet cupcake thing: If I had paid for that cupcake, it would have been $4. That seems pretty insane, especially because the differences separating a "gourmet" cupcake and a regular, child's birthday party cupcake are minimal to say the least. This is the rich white lady version of gorging on a box of Oreos. There's no difference, not only in that they are both completely empty foods, but also in that they taste essentially the same. No matter what flavor your cupcake is, it'll always just mostly taste like sugar. And you'll eat it and you'll like it because our dumb brains have evolved over time to like sugar and want more of it, originally because nutrition typically came along with it, although that's not the case anymore. But eating cake, as with the bag of Oreos, doesn't really taste like anything aside from the generic sensation of "sweet." Eating cake is not like eating a great meal or even a great pie or a great cookie, where the flavors can be complex and satisfying. Eating cake is just a few steps removed from poring sugar directly into your mouth. There's not much else going on there. So that's my beef with the so-called "cupcake craze" of the 2000s. It's just a slightly more bourgeois version of the processed, empty substances food science has been pushing on us for decades. But the cupcake craze may finally be coming to an end, at least according to Gothamist, who reports Crumbs' sales and stocks are steadily falling. I don't think cupcakes are going anywhere for now, because I've never walked by Magnolia in the West Village and not seen it absolutely packed with middle aged white women. But If all the Crumbs in the city disappeared overnight, I certainly wouldn't miss them. Those locations would be better served by just about anything else. I guess that explains the free cupcake voucher in the first place. The idea, I suppose, being that you'd get a free cupcake and like it so much you'd keep coming back. But who needs cupcakes on any regular basis? I can't imagine stopping off for a cupcake after work. It seems absurd to me--I'm not a child. I think I probably eat a cupcake once every three or four years, and that's plenty. If there were enough people eating cupcakes every week to make Crumbs expand to close to 70 locations in ten years, I'm not disappointed to see their numbers diminishing.

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Wacky Wok Chinese Manhattan : Alphabet City : D & 9th All neighborhoods in New York go through changes, but I don't think any has changed quite as dramatically as Alphabet City. The little area east of the East Village, identified by its lettered avenues extending past 1st Avenue, used to be notorious for being the de facto home of Manhattan junkies and other criminal types. The neighborhood, and its central Tompkins Square Park, were known as a needle-strewn no man's land no respectable person ever ventured into even in the middle of the day, nevermind at night. In fact, there's an old joke that the letters of the avenues in Alphabet City stand for the kind of person that would visit them. Avenue A is for the Adventurous. Avenue B is for the Brave. Avenue C is for the Crazy and Avenue D is for the Dead. Of course, Alphabet City isn't what it used to be. Avenue A now has new (and undoubtedly very expensive) apartment buildings. Avenue B has gourmet coffee shops. Avenue C has art galleries and Avenue D has Wacky Wok. A bourgeoise Chinese take-out specializing in organic vegetables, home made sauces and free-range meats, Wacky Wok allows you to create your own wok by selecting each individual ingredient. I hate the name, but I liked the custom wok idea enough to walk over to Avenue D one night to risk life and limb (totally kidding) and give it a try. It works like this: First you pick a protein. I went with the chicken but you can also get pork, beef, tofu, shrimp or the market fish of the day. Then you pick your vegetables. I got baby corn, pea pods, eggplant and carrots. Next, you pick your sauce. Mine was a coconut milk based curry. Finally, you choose your rice or noodles. I went with rainbow rice–white, wild and long grain–but there are a lot of options for noodle fans as well. I decided on the large size wok for $9.75 which ended up being so much food I kept a good third of it for lunch the next day at the office. And there was plenty of chicken left over–they're not skimping on the meat, that's for sure. The regular size is only $6.75, so either way, you're getting a really good deal. The organic and free-range aspect of the ingredients is definitely a welcome addition and the vegetables are clearly much fresher and nicer than an average Chinese place. I guess that's not saying much, but what I'm trying to convey is that Wacky Wok seems serious about using quality ingredients. I read some complaints online that they don't include enough sauce with the woks and I think those complaints are valid. You could barely even tell the curry was there, but I will say the rice, vegetables and chicken were tasty enough on their own that I didn't have to cover them up with anything. Still, I'm sure those home made sauces are very good if there was enough on the wok to tell. When I did get a good forkful of it it seemed very nice, so I wouldn't have minded a bit more. But overall, this was a very good and very inexpensive meal–for the quality as well as quantity of food. The only real knock I have against this place is that the Thai iced tea I had, while also clearly home made, just wasn't up to snuff. It tasted almost bitter, which is sort of the opposite of the ideal. But the quality food, the customizable dishes and the generous portions all make Wacky Wok something of a hidden gem, tucked away, as it is, all the way out there on Avenue D. This place would undoubtedly be a huge hit for the lunch hour set in Midtown; hopefully this location will be successful enough that a franchise could become a reality. I think even 10 years ago, if you were to tell someone there'd be an organic, eco-friendly wok shop opening on Avenue D, they'd think you were out of your mind. But one of the great pleasures of this city is that it never stops changing. Sometimes for the worse, as anyone who has to pay rent to live or operate a business here can tell you. But often, in this case and so many others, it changes for the better.

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Mamoun's Falafel Manhattan : Greenwich Village : MacDougal St. & Minetta Ln. I've been going to the IFC Center in the Village a lot lately. First because they were having a Stanley Kubrick revue, so I needed to see Spartacus, 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining. I wouldn't have minded seeing all of them, honestly, but three out of thirteen isn't bad. Then I went back to see Share Carruth's new film, Upstream Color. Carruth's first film, Primer, is one of my absolute favorite films ever made. It's one of the few movies I truly get something new out of every time I watch it and it's also the only time I can remember wanting to immediately watch a film again right after I saw it. Because I love Primer so much, I was both excited to see what Carruth has been doing for the past nine years and also kind of scared that whatever it was couldn't possibly live up to his debut. I still think this is true, based on the one viewing I had of Upstream Color. It's a very pretty film and I like that there's a lot of tangled threads that need to be teased out, but it's nothing like the impossibly intricate Primer, a film so dense it makes every subsequent viewing revelatory. Still, I'm just glad Carruth is making more films. He's far too talented not to be. He also gave a brief Q&A after the film that revealed a little about how he writes his films (and then eventually does everything else as well, from acting, directing, editing and composing). It also revealed that he seems like a really sweet and nice guy. I hope we don't have to wait nearly a decade to see him again. After that screening, I walked over to Mamoun's on Bleecker to get a falafel. There was a line out the door at Mamoun's when I visited while a falafel place literally across the street was empty. I took this to be a good sign (and also vastly preferred Mamoun's signage, which is how I make most of my food-related decisions, to be honest) so I stood in line with the rest. The sandwich was good. The falafel was moist and the vegetables were fresh and it was a good dinner/snack for $3.50. I also spotted an inexplicable Terrible One sticker inside. That's my brother's old Austin-based BMX company. What was it doing there? I don't know -- I certainly didn't put it there -- but I feel it adds to Mamoun's cachet.

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Pink Pony French Manhattan : Lower East Side : Ludlow & Houston Pink Pony opened in the Lower East Side a full two decades ago and, in the ensuing years, has earned a reputation as a classy eatery that nonetheless retains some of the old LES' eccentricities. Unfortunately, last month the Pink Pony closed its doors when the landlord raised rent by $6,000(!), from $14k to $20k. I visited Pink Pony sometime in the autumn of last year, I believe. I was walking around the Lower East Side and craving french toast, as is often the case, when I saw the Pony and decided to give theirs a try. Honestly, it wasn't what I was looking for – their french toast wasn't made with the fluffy white bread I was craving but with a crunchy baguette instead. It certainly wasn't bad, and the price was pretty reasonable, but you know. When you're craving something specific, you don't really have any patience with inventiveness. Still, the Pink Pony was undeniably a beautiful little place. It's walls were covered with old bottles, books and paintings, and everything from the ceiling tile to the walls themselves looked appropriately vintage. It's always sad when a restaurant goes out of business, especially one as much a part of the neighborhood as this. The Lower East Side – the city in general – is worse off without it.

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Little Italy Pizza Pizzeria Manhattan : Midtown : 45th & 6th Hello, friends and fellow countrymen. I have returned to New York after a couple weeks in Rio de Janeiro, which is a beautiful city filled with gorgeous beaches and attractive Art Deco architecture. It's also filled with a lot of graffiti and some unfortunate pollution, which was somewhat surprising, but even the shadier, dirtier areas were really lovely, all things considered. I went to most of the famous neighborhoods. Copacabana is pretty but the beaches in Ipanema have even better views of the surrounding mountains. Cinelândia is interesting and has some of the best buildings, even though very few of those buildings are cinemas anymore. (And the ones that are mostly show pornographic films.) Flamengo and Botafogo have their charms, and Lapa is interesting but a bit crazy for me, really. My favorite neighborhood, in fact, was the veritably sleepy Santa Teresa, with its narrow, hilly roads and gorgeous, brightly colored pastel houses. My friend told me there even used to be trolley cars as recently as two years ago. An at a party at one of the houses there, I looked out over the balcony and could see a huge part of the city lit up by the beaches below. Delightful. The food was a bit of a disappointment, really. A lot of it was sort of junk food – lots of pastries and cheeses and things. There was also a lot of pizza around, but Brazil's disregard for proper pizza etiquette is pretty horrifying. Not only do they use forks and knives, which is enough to warrant dirty looks from New Yorkers, they also frequently put catsup and mustard on their slice. Catsup and mustard! That's real! The most common eatery in Rio by far are the juice bars which also serve the aforementioned pastries. You can find one on almost every corner and they have a wide selection of juices, mostly from fruits I didn't recognize in any way. These juices were not often very sweet and the flavors seemed odd to my American palette, but they were interesting, I suppose. And juice bars on every corner is probably much healthier than the coffee shops (well, let's be honest: Starbucks) we have on our every corner. One juice I liked quite a bit was made from sugar cane. It wasn't as sweet as you'd think, but it was strong. It was sea green in color, completely opaque and kind of frothy. Incidentally, the most popular alcoholic drink by far is cachaça, made from sugar cane juice allowed to ferment. It ranges from fairly sweet to paint-thinner strong and comes in seemingly infinite varieties. Some of it is quite nice, which is lucky because it's next to impossible to get any good beer in Rio. So maybe don't visit Rio for the food, but do visit, if you have the chance. It's a really pretty, interesting city with plenty to recommend it. And even the ocean water is super warm, which was a nice break from New York's interminable winter. Speaking of pizza, back in the city there's a place called Little Italy Pizzeria which is not located in Little Italy at all, but rather the lunchtime metropolis that is Midtown, Manhattan. It's not a great slice, but it isn't terrible either. I wouldn't recommend it, but at the very least, there's no catsup and mustard involved.

[ieatnyc]

Gosh! I'm going to Brazil tomorrow so IEatNYC will be taking another short hiatus while IEatRio de Janeiro. In the mean time, why not enjoy a mixtape over at Grand National? There's four up there already, and a fifth is forthcoming. Até mais!

[ieatnyc]

My Little Pizzeria Pizzeria Brooklyn : Downtown Brooklyn : Court & State Located on the Downtown Brooklyn side of Atlantic Avenue, right next to Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights, My Little Pizzeria is a local parlor that has, nonetheless, secured quite a reputation for itself. I can't remember where I saw it – probably on Yelp or something similar – but My Little Pizzeria has been described by at least one online commenter as the best pizza in New York. Wow! It is a cool little place. It feels very much like an old school Brooklyn joint, complete with an old fashioned cash register (cash only, of course). And the pizza itself is good, but calling it the best in New York, or even Brooklyn, seems to be quite a stretch. Personally, I vastly prefer my local place, Mark's, which is also cheaper than Pizzeria's slightly inflated prices. My Little Pizzeria is a nice, very Brooklyny place, and it'll definitely do when you just want to bring home a decent pie, but ultimately, that's all it is. Which is fine, because that's clearly all it's trying to be.