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Cuban Chuletas in a Casa in Chelsea

20 Nov

Rick’s choice of a Venezuelan place in Chelsea quickly raised some eyebrows amongst our group when we were notified. A few months earlier, we traipsed to Inwood for Venezuelan cachapas on Dyckman Street Stalking Corn on Dyckman Street.  It wasn’t only the relatively quick repeat of a cuisine that was odd, it was also the location. Chelsea, in its present incarnation, is not a neighborhood where we would think to find our kind of restaurant; meaning one suited more for our penny pinching tastes.

Still, we gave Rick the benefit of the doubt and to El Cocotero we all planned to meet. But a couple of hours before our meeting time, Rick sent an email that read as follows:  “Guys. Just got a call from the wife and we have to go to the hospital! It may be a false alarm, but please go enjoy Venezuelan food without me.”

The false alarm was a reference to the impending birth of his first child; the due date set for early December. We all wished the best for Rick, but his pronouncement was just too sudden and late in the day to stop us from heading to Chelsea.

Before anyone else had arrived at El Cocotero, Zio had scouted it out. “It’s so dark in there, you won’t be able to find your mouth with your fork,” he wrote in a text.

You couldn’t tell that power had been restored weeks ago in Chelsea judging by the lack of light in El Cocotero.

When I entered, I immediately thought Zio was exaggerating. It was dim, for sure, but the flickering candlelight wouldn’t stop me from stuffing my face. Reading the menu, however, was a more challenging issue. Without my reading glasses, the menu print seemed as insurmountable as trying to read a Russian novel without a magnifying glass.    Thankfully, Eugene’s eyes were stronger than mine and he informed all of us that the cachapas were ten dollars—almost $4 more than what we paid at Cachapas y Mas on Dyckman Street.

To make matters worse, the table we were given was so cramped that there was the very frightening prospect of rubbing thighs with Mike from Yonkers while trying to get the food from fork to mouth.

“This is a date place,” Eugene blurted out.

Indeed it was, and Mike from Yonkers was not my date. Since Rick was not going to be joining us, there was no reason to endure eating at a romantic restaurant with the likes of Eugene, Gerry, Mike from Yonkers and Zio—and I’m sure the feeling was mutual.

Our group slunk out of El Cocotero, lamely apologizing to the manager as we exited.

The prospects of finding something Chow City like in Chelsea, we knew, were not good, but we had to try. I knew of a nearby Szechuan place that I liked, though it was probably as expensive as the Venezuelan we just left.

And then I remembered passing a Cuban diner on 8th Avenue on my way to El Cocotero that looked like something closer to our criteria. I mentioned it and our ensemble headed in that direction.

In front of Casa Havana was a placard advertising Thanksgiving dinner for $10.95 and another displaying a glistening suckling pig for $12.95. Eugene didn’t have to see anymore to be convinced. He was halfway to a table when Gerry, still out on the street, whined that he had eaten Cuban food the previous day.

We looked at him. You could never tell whether Gerry was joking or serious.

“Really, I did—in Montclair,” he said.

We all hesitated. Eugene came back out of the restaurant. “What now?” he barked.

This was becoming a fiasco and Gerry knew it.

“All right, let’s just go here,” he gamely conceded.

While our Mexican waitress brought the Cuban menus to our ample table, Dominican meringue played over the restaurant’s loudspeakers. Glancing at it, I noticed that the prices were lower than what we would have experienced at the Venezuelan place around the corner, but more than we would have paid for similar food uptown.

There was nothing out of the ordinary on the menu; rice and beans, fried pork, fried fish, roast pork, shrimp in garlic sauce, beef stew, etc.

“Do you have the turkey?” Eugene asked our waitress, referring to what was advertised outside the restaurant.

She shook her head. “No, we just have that for that other day,” she said, meaning Thanksgiving.

Instead, he settled on shrimp criolla while Zio, keeping to his fishy pattern whenever we gather,  ordered the “lubina frita,” fried bass.

After his Cuban meal in Montclair, Gerry eschewed the entrees and instead chose a Cuban sandwich with a small bowl of black bean soup. Mike from Yonkers was rebuffed by his first choice of fried snapper and had to go to plan B: the baked chicken. I decided on the “chuletas,” (pork chops) in red sauce with yellow rice and black beans.

While we waited for the platters to decorate our table, all of us except Zio, who sipped a mango “batido,” had $5 Mexican beers.

Embargo beer options at a Cuban Restaurant.

The food came and we plowed through it without many exclamations. No one complained. No one praised. The chuletas were skimpily thin and swimming in a non-descript tomato sauce that benefited greatly by a large dousing of the house hot sauce.

Shrimp Criolla, yellow rice and black beans

Because the food did not inspire discussion, we had no choice but to listen to Eugene describe the annual Christmas party he attends—the one with the Viennese dessert buffet—as well as the many meals he eats at the all-inclusive resort he frequents in the Dominican Republic.

Who knew Shakespeare vacationed in old Havana?

Gluttons for punishment, to name just one of the things we are gluttons for, we could have just called it a night in Chelsea. Instead, hoping we would find something to praise, we all had dessert. Sadly, even the desserts; coconut pudding, coconut cake, tres leches cake, and chocolate cake, did not surpass uptown standards.

And, as he suspected it would be, Rick informed all of us that indeed the trip to the hospital was a false alarm. If only we could have said the same thing about our trip to Chelsea.

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Injera Ingestion

14 Nov

“In all our time as a group, how have we missed eating at an Ethiopian place?” I asked Gerry, who was with me at an Ethiopian place in Harlem called Abyssinia.

“Too expensive usually,” Gerry responded, referring to our group’s tight $20 per person budget.

I looked at Abyssinia’s menu. Nothing was over $16. “Not here,” I said.

“No, definitely not here,” Gerry concurred.

It was a day after a nor’easter left a few inches of wet snow on the already soggy city streets and a little over a week after the big storm. Our group was scheduled to meet the previous day, but we were currently on hurricane hiatus. Though the group could not gather, Gerry decided to leave his still heatless Westchester home where he claimed there were no lines for gas, to drive into the city for what he hoped would be much needed spicy food.

His hopes were quickly realized. Not only was the small restaurant deliciously fragrant, it had heat—lots of it. And adding to the warmth from the clanking radiators was the heat from the meat “sambusas” brought to us by our pleasantly quiet waiter.

Similar to the Indian “samosa,” the sambusa was fiery and though berbere sauce, Ethiopian hot sauce,  accompanied it, the added spice was not needed.

Sambusas with Ethiopian hot sauce.

To get a good sampling of the meats, we ordered the “meat combo,” featuring three meat options along with a separate order of yebeg awaze tibs, cubes of lamb sautéed with onions and jalapeno in an awaze (berbere) sauce.

The meats came assembled on a colorful platter with each individual meat dish in a small mound along with a few vegetable sides and layered on top of the spongy Ethiopian bread known as injera.

The Abyssinia meat combo platter.

Along with the platter, we were given an additional plate of injera. There were no forks, spoons or knives on the table. With bread like this, who needed utensils? We scooped up the meat and veggies with the accompanying injera and shoved it into our mouths, doing our best not to let anything fall our already food-stained clothes.

These meats were not on the day’s menu at Abyssinia.

The doro wat, a chicken leg in a rich berbere sauce was tender, falling off the bone, the sauce identical to what coated the beef in the ye siga wat. The lamb, though not as tender as the beef or chicken, was aromatically addictive. Soon our “utensils” were gone and our waiter returned with another fresh plate of the injera for us.

We went through that plate as well and still much of the meat remained. We were not ones to waste anything, but we just could not continue. It was as if the injera had expanded in our gullets.

We ate all the “utensils.”

The waiter came to our table. He smiled slyly and examined what was left and then shook his head. “This is the best part,” he said, indicating the injera that the meats were layered and now saturated with their juices.

What was left did look delicious, but regrettably, any attempt to taste it might have resulted in a not very pleasant finale to what had been a much needed most comforting, post-hurricane meal.

As he took away the platter, I stared at it longingly. We both knew we erred, but if you do not learn from your mistakes, you are destined to repeat them…or something like that.  It would not happen again.

Abyssinia Restaurant
268 W. 135th
Harlem

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A Pair of Pepper Sauces

12 Nov

I heard tell there was a big wind coming our way. A super storm they were calling it. The terrace had to be cleared of potentially dangerous projectiles. The few herbs that remained were not a threat, but the never ending procession of hot peppers that were still going strong in late October had to be “terminated with extreme prejudice.”

In May I planted two types of hot peppers I bought in the Arthur Avenue Retail market in the Bronx including one I’ve grown before called “Portugal Hots,” a long thin pepper similar to the cayenne. The other was labeled an “Italian chili pepper.” I wasn’t sure what an “Italian chili pepper” was but hoped that it was similar to what was sold in the same retail market in the fall; bunches of slender, one-inch long red, fiery chilies still attached to their stalks. I was assured by the salesperson that it was.

Portugal Hots

In the abnormally warm spring and hot summer, the plants grew fast and when the first fruits began to appear, I was surprised by what I saw on the so-called Italian chili pepper plant. The peppers were growing upright and looked something like jalapeno peppers. Once they were green and fully formed, they were definitely not the Italian red chili peppers I had hoped for.

I scoured the internet to find a match to what I was growing. What I discovered was that the peppers were called “Fresno” and, according to my research, similar to a jalapeno. I was disappointed. I didn’t want a jalapeno or anything “similar.” The plants were healthy and the numbers of peppers on them countless. When the first pepper turned red, I tried it. It had very little heat adding to my disappointment.

A few weeks later, as more turned red, I cut up another. This time I was blasted by heat. And as the summer wore on and the peppers matured further, their fire became explosive—much hotter than a jalapeno, Serrano, and spicier than the Portugal hots that were growing next to them. I had some serious hotties on my hand. If the Scoville scale that is my tongue was any indication, these Fresnos were just a notch behind the habanero in heat quotient.

Fresno peppers

As both the Portugal hots and the Fresnos prospered throughout the summer and into early fall, I bagged bunches and put them in the freezer where they would last a year. Frozen, I use them in stews, sauces and anything else that required a blast of spice. I had more than enough already to last a year so I gave bags away to others who, like me, get masochistic enjoyment when the inside of their mouths are blistered.

Still, many peppers kept coming as summer faded and though some were still green, a super storm was on its way and I had no alternative but to harvest what remained.

As any self respecting citizen should, I have several bottles of hot pepper sauce in my refrigerator ranging from mild to hiccup-inducing hot.  Is there such a thing as having too much hot sauce? I didn’t think so. So inspired by a fellow bloggers at website caled Putney Farm who had a similar dilemma and turned that profusion of peppers into a homemade pepper sauce, I thought I would try it as well. But because I had two different types of peppers, I decided to make two different pepper sauces.

As I do with many recipes, I cull the internet and usually mix and match from a variety I like and try to come up with something my own.  The first, using the Portugal hots, was to be a “fermented” pepper sauce or one I would have steep in a brine for several days before actually pureeing into a sauce.

Since I just used what I had of peppers, the quantities of the ingredients I pretty much played by ear. For the fermented hot pepper sauce, I had enough of the Portugal hots, (green stems removed) to fill up a pint jar.

To the jar I added three peeled whole garlic cloves and two teaspoons of sea salt.

I then filled the jar with water and made sure the peppers and the garlic were submerged before tightening the lid of the jar.

Once the jar was sealed, I placed it in the back of a dark cabinet and let it ferment for about 10 days. You can ferment, from what I gathered, for as little as a few days up to two weeks. I was in no rush.

After ten days, I opened the jar and drained off the water (now a brine), saving it to add back into the sauce. I put the garlic and the peppers into a blender and added back half of the brine along with an equal amount of white vinegar.  Depending on how you like your hot sauce; chunky or smooth, is how long you puree. I wanted mine closer to smooth than chunky so I pureed long enough to get that consistency.

After pureeing, I poured the hot sauce back into the pint jar, sealed it, and put it in the refrigerator. The sauce will last a year—or until you are ready to make another batch next year.

Portugal Hot pepper sauce pureed smooth.

The recipe for the Fresno hot sauce was pretty much identical to what my friends at Putney Farms laid out in their blog post Homemade Hot Sauce. In theirs, they used Serrano peppers. The Fresnos I grew, as I said, were hotter than Serranos, but I didn’t think that would necessitate a change in the recipe.

Their recipe called for 8 ounces of peppers. I had more and adjusted accordingly. Not using rubber gloves, I sliced all the Fresno peppers, but made sure I kept my hands away from my eyes, nose, and private parts until I could sufficiently wash them.

Along with the peppers I sliced one large white onion and minced two garlic cloves.

To a medium saucepan, I put a tablespoon of olive oil. And then, on medium heat, added the peppers, onions and garlic. The recipe at Putney Farms warns of the fiery vapors that will be unleashed from the sautéing of the peppers. It was in the forties outside, yet I opened the windows, turned on the ceiling fan, and commenced the sautéing. For extra protection I wore a surgical mask. After a few minutes, however, I removed it. The vapors were helping to clear congestion in my chest. Just another one of the magical benefits of the revered and cherished capsicum.

After sautéing for about five minutes, I added two cups of water and two tablespoons of brown Demerara sugar.  I cooked all for about twenty minutes or until most of the water was evaporated.

Once the mix of peppers, onions and garlic cooled to room temperature, I added a cup of cider vinegar and pureed in a blender.

I poured the puree through a fine mesh sieve until only the thick skins and seeds still remained and what passed through was a smooth, creamy, pinkish mixture.

Now I had two hot sauces. I tried them both.

The Portugal hot fermented sauce had a mild pepper kick. The Portugal hots, I’ve found, can be inconsistent in terms of heat. Some are very hot while there might be a few that have barely a trace of fire. Knowing that, I still like them for their intensely sweet pepper flavor that when combined with the heat makes a unique taste. The sauce, however, though with a slight, vinegary tang, was overpowered by garlic. I would definitely limit the garlic if I decided to make the sauce again. Still, I looked forward to sprinkling a generous amount over roast chicken with yellow rice and beans.

Portual hots hot sauce

The Fresno pepper sauce on the other hand was everything I wanted. Just a few drops would suffice on any dish, it was that hot. There was also a sweetness from the inclusion of brown sugar and cider vinegar that added to the flavor. If anything, I would cut down on the sugar a bit next time.

Fresno hot sauce

 

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Today’s Special

7 Nov

 

So good, it’s worth having twice.

 

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Some Good News About Sandy

31 Oct

It’s been downgraded to a lechonera.

Time to remove the plywood and roast some pork.

I hope all my friends and followers are safe and moving forward post-hurricane.

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The Happiest of All Hours: Paris Blues

26 Oct

I was taking pictures of the scaffold-shrouded exterior of Paris Blues when a man’s head popped out of the door.

“Come on in,” the man said to me.

“I plan to,” I responded.

And after taking a few more pictures, I walked into the dark bar.

I took a seat and noticed a third person hunched at the end of the bar near the door sleeping comfortably.

It had been several years since I’d been to Paris Blues, but not much had changed inside except for the small stage where, at the time I walked in, another man was fiddling with a drum set.

The stage at Paris Blues

Live music was new—at least to me. The man who had gestured me inside was now behind the bar. He mumbled something about the other man up on the stage with the drum set.

“Taught him everything he knows about drums,” the bartender, who told me his name was Jer, short for Jerry, said.

“You play?” I asked.

“Used to,” he said.

Live music at Paris Blues

The younger man up on the stage snorted and soon their conversation turned to the Jets.

“They lost because they were playing scared,” the younger man said.

“No, they weren’t scared,” Jer said, ‘They lost, that’s all.” And that effectively ended the conversation.

A super-sized television set behind the stage that I knew had not been there when I visited last was on to a late afternoon rerun of  Bonanza.

The beer options, according to Jer, included Budweiser, Corona, “Heiny,” and Sugar Hill. I was in Harlem. I thought it only fitting to choose the latter.

The beer of choice in Harlem

After serving me the beer, Jer moved around the bar and roused the sleeping man who silently got up and went outside.

Paris Blues, Jer told me, had been open for 43 years.

“How many of those have you been working here?” I asked.

“’bout 30 or so,” he answered.

African American icons proudly on display.

I really didn’t know why it had taken me so long to return to Paris Blues. Trombonist Frank Lacey, who I once saw perform with trumpet player, Roy Hargrove on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, was scheduled to perform later that evening.

“You get lots of tourists here?” I asked as I sipped more of my beer.

Jer nodded. “Japanese, Germans, busloads of ‘em. They’ll be in here tonight.”

On the television, a rainmaker had brought rain to the Ponderosa and a little girl was healed of a television sickness. The Cartwright men all smiled at the end and then the familiar theme song played.

Happy hour entertainment.

I finished my beer and thanked Jer.

“Come on back,” he said as I was leaving.

I told him I would.

The man who had been sleeping inside was sitting on a bench outside the bar. I nodded at him and headed down the street. It was beginning to rain in Harlem. After about a block, I turned around.  I could see the man on the bench slowly get up from his seat. I watched for a moment as he walked back into Paris Blues.

Paris Blues
2021 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd
Harlem

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Cantonese Favors on Allen Street

23 Oct

The man in the red nylon sweat suit smoking a cigarette saw me peering into Cheung Wong Kitchen as I waited for Zio to waddle over from a half block away. I could see a bubbling cauldron of congee through one window while in the other hung roast ducks and chickens.

Congee on the fire.

“This place is the best,” the man said to me as Zio joined me. “For five bucks, you’ll eat like a king.”

There were only a few tables inside the small, somewhat dingy restaurant and most were occupied. One big round table was empty except for a carton of green beans that were about to be trimmed for cooking. It was starting to rain. There were other places we could go that had more space and maybe better, more comfortable accommodations.

I looked at Zio. He was thinking the same thing I was. We were on Allen Street in Chinatown, a few blocks east of Canal; comfort and space just were not the point.

“Let’s go in,” he said resolutely.

Cheung Wong’s window display.

The lone waitress placed two settings on the round table where she was also trimming the green beans. We glanced at the menu. There were traditional Cantonese items on one side of the menu; chicken with black bean sauce, roast pork lo mein, sweet and sour shrimp, etc—most priced more than five dollars.

The other side of the menu, however, were the “discounted” items—the dishes for royalty, which in this case included Zio and I. There was congee, noodle soups, Hong Kong style lo mein, and a two page spread of “rice plates.”

I zeroed in quickly on the rice plates and was intrigued by something called “double favor” on rice. I’m very used to misspellings on menus and never hold that against a restaurant. I see no correlation between a few spelling mistakes and good food. I assumed here that “favor” was meant to mean “flavor.”  Still, when the waitress came over to take our order I had to ask.

“Double favor is chicken and duck, or pork and beef,” she said, in, frankly, very good English.

I understood her answer to mean that it was a choice of two meats on rice. So I had to make a decision. The soy sauce chicken that I saw hanging in the window looked tempting. I paired it with what is usually an old reliable at a Cantonese place: roast pork.

Zio bypassed the meat and decided on fish stew with curry sauce on the rice.

I suggested to Zio that we should try something else on the menu. The additional item would increase our budget to around $7 as opposed to $5, but I didn’t think Zio would care as long as it involved more food for him.

And as I suspected, he endorsed my suggestion of beef stew with wonton noodle soup. But there was a stipulation.

“Shouldn’t we just spring and get one each. It’s only $5.50.” he whined, thinking I was being even cheaper with my money than I normally am and worrying that maybe it wouldn’t be enough for our collective king-sized appetites.

I told him to look around at some of the bowls others in the restaurant were slurping from.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “One should be enough.”

Beef stew noodle soup

And it was more than enough. The big bowl was brimming with fat encased beef in a rich meaty broth, thick with noodles and small tender pieces of winter melon.

While we ate the soup, the waitress took a few more minutes at our table to continue trimming the beans and then left, returning quickly, even before we could finish the soup, with our rice platters.

Double “favor” over rice: soy sauce chicken and roast pork.

The chicken and pork were chopped into slices and arranged neatly over the rice. Both were served at room temperature; the chicken incredibly moist and easily pulled from the bone and cartilage, while the pork tasted almost like jerky, but subtly sweet from the hoisin sauce.  This favor, or should I say flavor, was addictive.

I worked through the mound of food in front of me methodically, matched only by Zio’s devotion to the chunks of white fish, fried and smothered in a yellow curry sauce.

Curry fish over rice.

Eventually it was all gone with the exception of a few spoonfuls of broth from the beef stew soup. Our check came. We ate $7 worth of food each.  If $5 was enough for a king, what did the additional two dollars make the two of us if not kings?  The man in the red nylon sweat suit was no longer outside to ask.

Cheung Wong Kitchen Inc
38A Allen Street
Chinatown

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Baklava in the Bleachers

16 Oct

As I said in these pages about a month ago (New Year’s Penicillin), I’ve been spending a lot of time just off the 230th Street exit of the Major Deegan, sitting on crooked aluminum bleacher seats watching baseball on a small field. The field borders the Deegan and the hum of traffic is a constant.

The bleacher seats: no admission charge.

In between games or while waiting for the games to begin, I’ve become very familiar with the Kingsbridge neighborhood that surrounds the field.  A café con leche at Malecon Restaurant has become a weekly treat and as I reported here, I “discovered” a 50 year old Kosher deli named Loeser’s where the penicillin includes chicken broth, noodles, or maybe a matzoh ball.

More recently, as I waited for the games to begin, I happened on another place. Just a few paces from the 50th police precinct and across the street from the Nice Guys Car Wash, I found a small, shed of a diner called Christos Gyro & Souvlaki.

The souvlaki of Christos.

Christos, I learned, has been at its tiny location on Kingsbridge Road the past eight years—at least that was what the owner, Christopher, a.k.a Christos, said to me as he also proudly handed me a laminated Daily News article about his restaurant where that newspaper rated his gyro the best in the city.

The weather was changing. An Indian summer day was quickly turning into a brisk autumn one. I’d have to take the Daily News’ word on the gyro. I wanted something else. I didn’t need New Year’s penicillin, but the close Greek equivalent would do very well.

“You want the avgolemono?” Christos asked.

“Yes I do,” was my definitive response.

“Anything else?”

“Moussaka,” I said, not caring that I might miss the beginning of the game.

“Very good choice.”

The bowl of the yellow-tinged, lemon chicken soup was steaming. Spherical dots of orzo floated within along with slivers of chicken. The distinct citrus snap of lemon meshed magically with the hearty, comforting chicken broth.

I crumbled a few saltines into the bowl and slurped. It wasn’t long before the bowl was empty.

Christos’ avgolemono

Moussaka awaited, paired with a simple Greek salad, pita bread and a generous bowl of tzatziki. I dipped the pita into the creamy, garlicky yogurt…and then I double dipped.

The half inch of béchamel sauce on top of the ground beef and eggplant was airy, the filling scented with cinnamon. I alternated between bites of the moussaka and dips of the tzatziki until all was gone.

Moussaka, Greek salad, tzatziki

Christos came to clear my table. “You did good,” he said.

“I know,” I answered, happy to have made him proud.

As I waited to pay, I noticed a tray of baklava and remembered reading in the Daily News piece that Christos’ wife made them fresh daily. I pointed to it. Christos’ son was working the cashier—Christo’s was most certainly a family affair. “To go?”  he asked.

I nodded and took the bagged baklava back to the ball field. I devoured it watching baseball on the bleacher seats while like a continuous loop, the music of the Major Deegan played on and on.

Music to eat baklava by.

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Beer Therapy

12 Oct

Life presents many complex problems.

Beer is not one of them.

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One Tale From a Thousand and One Falafel Tales

9 Oct

“I was going to pick a Bolivian place,” Eugene said, “but I thought you guys didn’t want me to.”

We had been to Latin restaurants the past three outings,  so when Eugene mentioned the unnamed Bolivian place as a potential destination, we gently suggested another cuisine. Eugene took our suggestion to heart and came up with an alternate pick.

“Why, out of the thousands of falafel joints in this town, did you decide on Amir’s?” I asked wondering about the logic of Eugene’s choice of Amir’s where, on this night, just four of us were assembled. I should have known, however, that logic never factors into Eugene’s decisions. This is a man, a native of the New York suburb of White Plains, who always goes out of his way to root against all New York teams; a man who claims allegiance to other teams, most from Boston, but really gets his sports’ jollies more from a New York team’s defeat than one of his own teams’ victory.

That there were only four of us at Amir’s was probably a good thing. The small, eat in/take out place would have been a challenge for our usual brawny six. And it was probably better that Zio spend his wedding anniversary with The Colonel rather than dining on something he could get at a street cart closer to his love nest in Astoria. The question was, would what he could get at the street cart in Astoria, or at any of the other countless falafel places in the city compare to Amir’s?

Amir’s falafel

After our brief outing; ordering from the typically middle eastern falafel menu; falafel, hummus, babaganoush, along with what now are called “proteins” on many menus meaning meats; shawarma beef, chicken, and kebabs, the verdict, sadly, was yes. Though Amir’s falafels were relatively light, not drenched with oil, slightly sweet, and above average on the unofficial falafel meter, they were no more distinguishable than Mahoud’s, Ahmad’s, or any other above average falafel joint in the city, of which there are hundreds.

There’s protein somewhere in there.

The “protein” that Rick tried, a shawarma beef sandwich in pita, was not worthy of veering from the falafel while the “popeye,” a spinach pie Gerry bravely ordered, had an outer shell that to penetrate required the muscles of the cartoon character of the same name.

The “popeye.”

After our falafel experience, we strolled down Broadway, congested heavily with Columbia students. We again pressed Eugene on his choice. “I don’t know. I pick a neighborhood that I’ve never been to and then I find a place there. What’s the name of this neighborhood anyway?”

“I think it’s Morningside Heights,” Rick offered.

“The Upper West Side,” I said.

“It’s nice here,” Eugene added, successful in veering the conversation  to real estate and away from falafel.

We muttered collectively and though the meal was not as satisfying as we are used too, took solace in knowing that there was Bolivian food sometime in our future.

Amir’s
2911-A Broadway

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