A while back, Layne Mosler of Taxi Gourmet approached J.O. and me with her newest project: a series of self-guided food tours, written by local experts and sold through a mobile app used to explore good food throughout the world.

I signed on because Layne’s approach to food is very much like my own: Go to a new place, find the special bites that you can only take in that place, and make good on life. I’m not linguistically skilled enough to hop into a cab in Argentina and ask where the best sausage sandwich is, but I’m happy to know someone out there is doing so on a regular basis.

Rama Food is free to download from the Apple App Store; however, each tour is sold for a price set by its author. An Android version is slated to follow.

The app’s goal is to immerse readers in the food and the culture of its subject, while showcasing some of the best dishes in town. I’ve contributed two tours as part of Rama Food’s initial release: a NYC BBQ tour and a double Chinatown tour. The former will point you to the city’s best smoked beef ribs, pork ribs, burnt ends, pulled pork and brisket – a difficult task, given how inconsistent barbecue menus can be around here. The latter will take you on a 6-stop tour of regional Chinese cuisine, with tips on how to make the trip from Manhattan to Queens quick and stress-free.

All things considered: If you’re a regular Chowhound or a seriously dedicated New York eater, you might find that my tours don’t add a ton to your own experience. However, if you’re a reader of this blog, a casual fan of good food, or a traveler wanting to make the most of your meals, then by all means check out Rama Food and purchase one of my tours. You should check out J.O.’s tour of Little India in Queens while you’re at it.

Once downloaded, each tour is fully functional without 3G or wifi access, which is great for those of you who hate waiting for things to load while you’re making your way to the next bite. So try this out, and let me know what you think! I’ll be making changes and additions as I get feedback from readers, so the more I hear from you, the better. This could be really cool, and I want to make the experience worthwhile.

The bakers’ “crusty bread” ($4.95) – a heavy loaf with a deeply toasted, beautifully cracked crown and taught, rustic belly – is my new high water mark for the daily slice. Referred to by Russians as “serii” (grey), this type of dark bread is a meeting point between German and Russian traditions. The body of the bread is satisfyingly dense. Its flavor is low on rye, slightly sour, slightly salty and subtly aromatic – as if fresh black tea had been baked into the dough. Taken with high-fat, sweet cream butter and a cup of tea, it’s sustenance of a kind sorely lacking on American breakfast tables.

Brighton Bazaar
1007 Brighton Beach Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11235
718.769.1700

If you’ve wondering where exactly I’ve been over the past few weeks, the answer isn’t “Chicago” – all of these Chicago meals (the last of which will be on Serious Eats national in the near future) took place at the end of July.

For the past few weeks, the answer has actually been, “chained to a computer at ungodly hours of the night.” But it was all worth it, because Real Cheap Eats NYC now has 50 more recommendations under $10. It also has a much smoother Android and iOS user interface, so whip out those smart phones and start eating cheaply!

You can also keep up with Real Cheap Eats via Facebook, Twitter, and our new NYC blog. And to those of you who couldn’t give fewer shits about this: New stories and single-serving recs from New York and elsewhere are on the way! The Eaten Path is still alive and well. ]]> http://theeatenpath.com/index.php/2011/10/12/real-cheap-eats-nyc-the-fall-edition/feed/ 0 http://theeatenpath.com/index.php/2011/07/19/real-cheap-eats-nyc-2011-launch/ http://theeatenpath.com/index.php/2011/07/19/real-cheap-eats-nyc-2011-launch/#comments Wed, 20 Jul 2011 03:59:14 +0000 James Boo http://theeatenpath.com/index.php/?p=10633

There’s an entire world of restaurants within the borders of New York City. Frankly, I find it hard to give a shit about the newest opening, ambitious concept, or chef’s achievement when virtually the entire world also exists within the borders of New York City.

It exists in the form of a bowl of Xi’an hand-pulled noodles, a Brooklyn brisket sandwich, a pair of Jamaican patties, a prized Venezuelan patacon, a Sichuanese ma-la salad, a shard of Filipino-style deep fried pork knuckle, and countless other meals that so densely populate this city that one could lose sleep over the prospect of ever experiencing them all. It exists in affordable, accessible, exciting food that (if we’re lucky) will forever outnumber its fine dining counterparts at pennies on the dollar.

Yet this world rarely finds itself in the spotlight when it comes time for the food writers of lifestyle magazines to represent New York’s culinary communities. Nowhere is this clearer than in “cheap eats” lists that are too often anything but. I don’t mind New York being represented to the rest of the world as a glamorous restaurant capital, and I was overjoyed to see New York Magazine stepping up to give Queens the coverage it deserves in their guide this year, but to define “cheap” as less than $25 or even less than $15 is to beg for a second opinion.

With the launch of Real Cheap Eats NYC, New Yorkers now have one. In fact, they have more than one: this simply designed digest of cheap eats highlights 123 recommendations from over 20 New York food bloggers, including heavyweight explorers, seasoned journalists, prolific bloggers and local experts. It does so in a guide that’s meant to be used, not repeatedly clicked through for the sake of page-view statistics. And it’s entirely free of charge.

If you live in New York or plan on making a trip here this summer, check out the guide and let me know how to make it better. This is a project that can only accrue value from year to year, and it’s something all of us on the Real Cheap Eats team are exceptionally proud to offer to the city that inspires us. ]]> http://theeatenpath.com/index.php/2011/07/19/real-cheap-eats-nyc-2011-launch/feed/ 0 http://theeatenpath.com/index.php/2011/04/26/dough-doughnut-plant-new-yorks-fancy-donut-trend/ http://theeatenpath.com/index.php/2011/04/26/dough-doughnut-plant-new-yorks-fancy-donut-trend/#comments Tue, 26 Apr 2011 07:21:46 +0000 James Boo http://theeatenpath.com/index.php/?p=10051
I grew up in a doughnut town. As soon as I was capable of grasping a tiger tail, I relished trips to our local doughnut shop. Not just because the mixed aroma of weak coffee, fried dough and sugar was the next best thing to freshly baked chocolate chip cookies for a kid, but also because when my mom picked out a dozen doughnuts to take home for the day, I could sense the joyful gravity of this ritual.

Sunday doughnuts were a gift to all, an adult’s admission to her child that yes, bad foods taste good, and we all deserve a bite now and then. And in southern California, doughnut shops – invariably run by immigrants seeking a foothold in local business – were the American intersection of class and craft over Formica tables, pink cardboard boxes and small styrofoam cups. To my faithless eyes, the doughnut counter was a holy place, where people of all colors and car models shared five minutes of small talk as their fingers sauntered from one doughnut to the next.

The newest wave of fancy doughnuts in this town attempts to elevate the doughnut to gourmet status. In the case of Doughnut Plant‘s raised doughnuts, this means plastering gummy, dried-out doughnuts with overwrought glazes. Their “fresh strawberry” is nice enough as a frosting, but in a New York minute it’s revealed as little more than sugar shock. Biting into this one feels like eating a doughnut straight out of an episode of The Simpsons.

The toasted sesame glaze has a more distinctive flavor, but its accompanying doughnut is still clunky, with no spring to its texture and a marked lack of fluffiness. Doughnut Plant’s raised doughnuts exemplify why I used to avoid raised doughnuts altogether, and no measure of inventive topping or filling will change that fact when I’m paying $2-$3 a pop.

Cake doughnuts, however, are Doughnut Plant’s strong suit, and this oatmeal cake is a marvel. Balancing sweet, toasted, nutty and fruity flavors, it’s also texturally complex; between the bits of toasted oat, salt-inflected crust, and morsels of fruit baked into the dough, it’s nothing short of a baker’s masterpiece.

In gaining my respect, Doughnut Plant loses my loyalty. Its best cakes – the chocolate “blackout,” the tres leches, and the creme brulee – stray just far enough from what I connect to as the American doughnut to make me feel awkward using the word “doughnut” to describe them. I like cake, but I have no use for ring-shaped cakes with a doughnut hook when what I really want is a box of crusty old-fashioneds, a mug of coffee, and a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Brooklyn’s Dough makes a much better case for the fancy doughnut. No less gourmet than Doughnut Plant, the $2 raised doughnuts at Dough carry themselves with the same decadent vibe, as evidenced by the ring of grease that turned this sheet of waxed paper into my window to weight gain.

One bite into Dough’s hibiscus raised doughnut reveals something fundamentally different. Far from re-branded cake or dressed-up mediocrity, it’s truly a yeast doughnut on another level: moist yet fluffy, with an almost crisp exterior and just enough spring to make each bite last until it melts onto the tongue. The hibiscus frosting has a bright, fruity flavor that starts with a tart punch, then offers a brief brush of sweetness before receding perfectly into the wonderful, familiar flavor of fried, yeast-raised dough.

Likewise, Dough’s lemon poppy is a pronounced twist on a traditional glazed raised. Not as in-your-face-fruity as the hibiscus doughnut, but essentially following the same approach, its tart lemon flavor rides a wave of sugar with a sense of restraint. The proportion of glaze to doughnut ultimately emphasizes the doughnut, not the glaze, and this substantial tire of a doughnut is good enough on its own for this approach to be a winner.

Dough’s chocolate earl grey drapes a hefty coat of milk chocolate frosting on top of an already hefty doughnut, making this one impossible to imagine as a morning ritual. Still, it’s suitably luscious as a midday dessert. A brush of aromatic earl grey is present in the frosting on its own, but once it merges with the doughnut, subtleties vanish and it becomes an oversized paean to the chocolate frosted rings I would eye from across the counter as a kid.

Dough’s doughnut holes are the best option for those looking to take the greasy edge off of the full-sized rings. Like a good batch of homemade hush puppies, they’re pleasingly irregular, and one of Dough’s homages to the doughnut’s simplicity. Paying $1.00 for four of these might stab at my strip-mall-raised heart, but in a doughnut shop with this much character, I’m more than happy to point at the basket and add a few to my order.

I don’t doubt that fancy doughnuts can be incredibly delicious, but my favorite doughnuts – fancy or not – are still the ones that inspire a sense of common uplift. When things come full fried circle, I’ll remember the doughnuts that elevate not the dough, but the customer – just as they did, dozens at a time, on the shelves of my own Americana.

I am incapable of drinking butt.

I didn’t always know this about myself. One day I walked into Papaya King with a friend. I ordered two hot dogs and a smoothie.

After watching me take a sip of my smoothie, my friend asked me, “You got the papaya?”

Then, he raised his eyebrows and said, “That stuff tastes like butt.”

Almost instantly, my gag reflex turned on me. It’s funny how readily my taste buds identified the flavors of butt despite the fact that they, at least as far as I knew, had never previously been exposed to the taste of butt. That moment drew a fine line between instinct and intolerance and begged the question, “Why does my body reject certain foods?” As I threw my smoothie into the garbage, I suspected that maybe my gag reflex acts more as a psychological barrier than a biological defense.

I got a chance to test that suspicion when another friend of mine invited me to Flushing to try stinky tofu. For those of you who’ve never heard of it, stinky tofu refers to dishes that ferment tofu in a brine of milk, vegetables, and meat for up to several months before being served in a variety of ways.

Alternate translations that friends of mine have offered for chou doufu include “homeless tofu” and “fucking nasty.” But stinky tofu is essentially a comfort food. It’s a lot like Japan’s natto or Korea’s kimchi — I have yet to meet a Taiwanese national who doesn’t absolutely love stinky tofu. Only in the guise of a foreign substance does it trigger a warning.

That’s not to say that it doesn’t stink. The tofu set on our table was clouded in funk, with an aroma comparable to a garbage can filled with gym shoes steeping in five gallons of foot sweat. By the time I picked up my chopsticks it was too late for me to push the image out of my mind, but I tapped a chunk of the deep-fried bean curd against a pool of soy sauce… and took a bite.

The opening of that bite was surprisingly mild, with crisp edges and a soft, springy body. A slightly briny flavor colored what would otherwise be a neutral bite of tofu in a way that was totally enjoyable.

Then, I noticed that I wasn’t allowing the tofu to reach the back of my mouth. My gag reflex had actually been pre-empted by my tongue reflex, which until that point I didn’t know was something that existed. It was as if my nose has sensed something so foul that it alerted my tongue to the fact that my hands were abetting some damn fool idea that my stomach had managed to hawk to my brain.

Before my mouth could demand a refund, my pride stepped up and declared, “TOO LATE! TRANSACTION MADE!” And I swallowed.

I’d like to say something eloquent here tonight, as most of us would, about broadening my palate and transforming the intimidation of exoticism into a craving for cultural authenticity — but the fact is, I haven’t made another attempt to turn the fermented page of stinky tofu since that day.

And as long as I’m incapable of eating butt, I don’t know if I ever will.
Because that shit is fucking nasty.

In my neighborhood, South Brooklyn Pizza’s newest branch has started to cash in on the fact that location alone can anchor a pizzeria – especially one open until 4:00 a.m. to the weekend crowd of three nearby pubs. Owner Jim McGown, a former developer and anonymously reviled landlord, is no stranger to this lesson – and with two Park Slope locations, an East Village outpost and several more South Brooklyn walk-in branches in the works, he’s making a major move into the real estate of the neighborhood slice.

McGown is taking this turf with major muscle behind the pizza counter. Though I’ve heard mixed reviews at best on his original dine-in location in Carroll Gardens, slices at the new South Brooklyn walk-ups are cut from another pie entirely.

Sicilian and grandma slices are part of the South Brooklyn menu, but on each of the six occasions I’ve stopped off between the train and lured into the glow of late night pizza, I’ve stuck with the margherita, which is a wisp of smoke away from perfect. Each pie is laid out with a bright and sweet tomato sauce, spotted with fresh mozzarella and fontina, crowned with a near-reckless crop of fresh basil, and sprinkled with a mild grana padano.

Before being cut, each margherita pie is drizzled with a spiral of olive oil, a finishing touch that stretches from the first notes of No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” to the bass kick of the song’s first chorus on the radio. Small jars of oil-bathed roasted garlic and sliced cherry peppers sit aside the pies, complements on the house.

Despite this heavy hand of olive oil, South Brookyn’s crust maintains great structure. Its underside, taut to the tip, has a fine, cracker-like crunch residing beneath a clearly defined layer of chewy, porous dough. The edges of each slice are nicely browned and joyously crackly. There may not be much character to this pizza crust in terms of pure flavor, but as far as texture goes, it’s a serious show of craft.

It’s also a show of consistency. Each location seems to share a common architecture: strong location, simple setup, fresh ingredients, and – most importantly – a head cook who cares about the quality of the slices being sold. I’ve never walked into the joint without a fresh pie on the counter or minutes from it, and the cooks on 4th Ave. take no shortcuts in serving their customers. I’ve read even greater things about the man running game in the East Village.

I can’t help but feel that the result is a Di Fara knockoff. South Brooklyn’s slice is lighter and more delicate than Dom’s, but the style is unmistakable to anyone who’s paid a visit to South Brooklyn’s most fabled pizzaiolo. McGown and whoever’s helping him roll out the new South Brooklyn Pizza have gone where Dom has not, mirroring the Di Fara experience in a quick, accessible, strategically deployed phalanx of corner slices. Local gripes over his $4 price tag may abound, but as long as it’s got good location and good product, South Brooklyn’s dough will rise.

While the formula holds on 4th Avenue, I’ll no doubt be stepping out of the subway every night with the taste of a great slice tugging at the back of my mind. And when the cooks responsible eventually take their leave or lose their touch, I’ll still be swinging by after hours for a late night bite around the corner. Assuming, of course, that I’ll be able to put one foot in front of the other.

South Brooklyn Pizza
64 4th Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718.399.7770

Dine in Brooklyn, this season’s restaurant week in the borough of Biggie, is here – but I’m not too excited.

It’s not the event itself but the basic practice of “restaurant week” that annoys me. Beyond being mazes of dubious value propositions, restaurant week lists refract New York’s sheer accessibility to good food. Dine in Brooklyn, for example, represents the entirety of Sunset Park with a “Mexican Bistro” and leaves Joe’s of Avenue U, a South Brooklyn institution, entirely off the PDF. I don’t mean these gripes as swipes at the organizers, but in a city as over-glamorized as New York, food could stand to be championed more as a cultural equalizer and less as a promotional gimmick or discounted admission fee to good taste.

That said, every restaurant week does have its share of highlights, and at the very end of Dine in Brooklyn’s list is mine. Kenny’s Trattoria, an American Italian restaurant in a neighborhood full of American Italian cuisine, has become a go-to for me because it stands by the fundamentals of restaurant business. Run by the former proprietor of Brick Oven Gallery, Kenny’s offers a cozy and casual dining room, warm and attentive wait service, and reasonably priced proof that there will always be a place for homemade pasta. The total lack of a line to get in only sweetens the deal, while proximity to Best Pizza and the many alcohol-fueled diversions of Williamsburg and Greenpoint make for destination dining I can get behind every day of the year.

Every table at Kenny’s receives a complimentary plate of what is basically unadorned pizza crust straight from the brick oven. This bread is especially good with one of the menu’s trademarks, “Brooklyn caviar” – a smoky, spicy marriage of roasted eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and olives that’s one of Kenny’s holdovers from the Brick Oven Gallery.

More playful is “prosciutto sushi,” a heavy appetizer that wraps slips of prosciutti around slices of roasted pepper, roasted eggplant and fresh mozz, then drizzles the Brooklynite’s maki with a full-bodied balsamic vinegar. Taken with bread, this dish can easily be a meal on its own.

Kenny’s menu is modest, offering only three meat-centric dishes. I don’t have a lot of experience with saltimbocca, but the chicken-based rendition here is as savory and rich as one would expect from a pounded chicken cutlet sauteed beneath a blanket of spinach, prosciutto and mozzarella. The roasted vegetables served with this entree, which I’ve tried and failed to bargain out of the kitchen on the side after my first visit, were even better than that night’s saltimbocca, which was texturally beautiful but a bit too salty for my tastes.

The same goes for Kenny’s specialty pizzas. While the proscuitto and parmagiano/reggiano shaved atop “Peter’s Favorite” are plenty flavorful in their own right, they’re more overwhelming than complementary as pizza toppings. The house’s margherita, which draws more attention to the chewy and porous crust, sweet tomato sauce and nicely browned bits of mozzarella, is a more satisfying option from the brick oven.

Pasta dishes at Kenny’s are elegantly prepared and set out with sharing in mind. Marinara here balances sweet, tart and savory flavors for a light and lively taste, even when it’s used to suffuse a rich bolognese with a Brooklyn-sized portion of red sauce. When spooned onto a generous plate of gemelli, this meat sauce makes a great comfort meal.

Kenny’s gemelli with funghi does a good turn for restraint, tossing the same hearty pasta with a light, buttery cream sauce. Scraps of sauteed chicken and mushroom and a hint of lemon provide a sharp contrast to the plodding cream sauces of chain Italia, a virtue fundamental to the function of a good restaurant.

Shrimp fra diavolo, served over spaghetti from scratch, seals the house’s cred as a purveyor of simple, noodle-based pleasures. Backed by roasted garlic and punctuated by kicks of heat from red and black pepper, Kenny’s fra diavolo is a welcome and bright alternative to the kitchen’s more substantial cream-and-tomato based sauces.

Homemade ravioli, Kenny’s daily special, might be the apex of the man’s menu. Nowhere near the pre-fab nuggets of pasta I grew up on, this plate of ravioli with spinach are painfully tender slips of pasta swimming with shreds of sauteed spinach in a gorgeous pool of marinara. When a fork cuts through the ultra-thin layers binding these ravioli, a light and fluffy ricotta filling tumbles out. The cheese then mixes unassumingly with red sauce to create a creamy, soothing texture and enriched taste that’s a process of flavor.

The best argument I’ve heard for bugging over restaurant week is that it gives me a chance to try something I wouldn’t normally afford. But places like Kenny’s Trattoria remind me that a good restaurant is not defined by its barriers to access. It’s not food I need to order weeks in advance, an event that sets of a flurry of chattering in the twitterverse or the roost of a celebrity chef.

More often, a good restaurant is just a Brooklyn joint that serves better Italian food than anything I imagined as I was growing up in suburban California. And it’s a reason for me to keep dining in Brooklyn when the flyers come down.

Kenny’s Trattoria
7 Withers St.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718.599.2700

I didn’t know it was acceptable to use those words until my first visit to Blue Sky Bakery, a modest hallway of a bake shop just a few steps from where I lay my head in Park Slope. A muffin and coffee from Blue Sky quickly became my last-resort breakfast on weekdays and my after-breakfast bite on weekends.

Early this afternoon I noshed my way to my first free muffin and coffee from the bakery, a gift offered for anyone who brings his muffin card to the counter a dozen times. Have I been to any other New York eatery a dozen times in the past two years? Aside from Peter Pan Bakery and Minca ramen, it’s highly unlikely. It’s the best $3.50 I can recommend spending between dawn and lunchtime.

Danny once referred to Blue Sky’s blueberry muffin as “life-altering,” and I have to agree. Biting into one of these beauts redefines the word “muffin” for anyone used to dense clumps of chewy cake batter, sugar-crusted lumps of oil, and joyless heaps of bran that seem to be forged in black holes of dryness.

Like that of an artisanal bread, a hefty, well-defined crust encases Blue Sky’s muffin. A thin coat of sugar brushed atop glistens just slightly on a sunny morning, and when your teeth penetrate the surface they’re met with a confident crunch. Each tray’s innards differs slightly, but the classic varieties share a moist, fluffy texture that never dips into the excess of cake.

Blue Sky’s fillings sit in the center of the muffin, more often then not still warm when served in simple pairings and trios. Cranberry and peach; blueberry and sweet plum; zucchini, raspberry and chocolate; pumpkin, apple and walnut; and an endless string of other combinations strike with a freshness and purpose impossible to imagine in the stock muffins sitting behind the glass display at the local coffee shop.

Even Blue Sky’s bran muffins are heavenly. Just look at that glorious crust!

Though noticeably more heavyset than their white-flour sisters, these muffins somehow feel less dense; their texture is porous, spongy and moist. Where one would normally brace for the dry, crumbly and insipid charms of ye olde bran muffin-shaped conscience soother, Blue Sky offers a nutty, grainy and all-around pleasant way to bid last night’s post-beer French fries adieu.

Every so often I step in to Blue Sky and order something that is not a muffin. Particularly nice are the bakery’s croissants, which I’ve praised in the past as a light, buttery antidote to the shitty croissant blues. They’re not as life-altering as the muffins, but they earn just as much karma for protecting the sanctity of a baker’s classic.

My favorite muffin among the Blue Sky roster is anything made with pumpkin, so I sprang for this pumpkin, raspberry and pecan treat when free muffin day came about. It’s my perfect mate to a black dark roast – slightly sweet, slightly aromatic, slightly spiced, plenty nutty and punctuated by the occasional tartness of half-liquified raspberry.

It was this Tuesday’s breakfast of last resort, but even as food on the go it forced a pause for every bite. After all, this was the best god damned muffin I’ve ever eaten.

Blue Sky Bakery
53 5th Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718.783.4123