Tag Archives: Food

A Certifiable Czech

13 Dec

Zlata Praha
28-48 31st Street
Astoria, Queens

“Polish cuisine,” Mike from Yonkers wrote in his email to our group alerting us of his Astoria-located choice called Zlata Praha, and what he thought they served there. “Unlike most of you, I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure with that part of the world.”

He was obviously absent when, years ago, we traveled to Greenpoint to the Old Poland Bakery and endured silent glares from the waitstaff and local clientele as we devoured enormous platters of kielbasa, pierogies, and boiled beef for next to nothing.  But after a quick visit to Zlata Praha’s website  http://www.zlatapraha.cc/main.htm, I noticed the proclamation that the restaurant was the city’s number one destination for Czech and Slovak cuisine. Mike from Yonkers was going to have the pleasure of dining on food from that part of the world, though in this case, just a little bit west and south of Poland.

Walking past the bar area where pictures of Czech and Slovak celebrities; hockey players, tennis stars, unknown singers and actors adorned the walls, Zio and I entered the empty dining room where only the rumbling from the N and R trains on the elevated track above 31st Street intruded on the silence. We were shown to a table with table cloths and cloth napkins tucked ornately into stemmed wine glasses. A stuffed deer head smoking a pipe peered over the room.

Some of Zlata Praha’s rustic decor.

Zio noticed that there was an outdoor garden. It was a pleasant evening; we hadn’t dined “al fresco” in many years, possibly since we ate in the back garden of Uncle Sal’s Ribs and Bibs in the Bronx where we were surrounded by a junkyard and serenaded by a nearby boom box. So despite what Zio, showing off his expertise in such things, pointed out was a decorative rock that really was camouflaging rat poison, and with the distinct smell of fresh bug spray in the air, we decided to eat outside.

I was thirsty and the Pilsner Urquell displays were enticing, but our smiling waitress, instead, recommended her favorite Czech beer called Staropramen. I figured she knew her stuff and went with her choice. She returned with a thick, cold mug of what was a full bodied, rich colored brew that was better even than the very good Pilsner Urquell.

We sipped the beer and pondered the typically hearty Eastern European items on the menu; schnitzels, sauerbraten, goulash, pierogies, potato pancakes, and assorted dumplings.

Of the cold appetizers, a selection of head cheese was debated roundly between us. “I’d get it,” Mike from Yonkers said boldly, but he was the only one that would dare attempt to penetrate the gelatinous mix of animal body parts that was an acquired taste none of us had the desire to acquire.

A no to the head cheese.

The head cheese was nixed, instead replaced by an order of the comparatively tame herring in cream sauce. We rounded out the appetizers with a sampling of potato pancakes, dense and bland, the accompanying apple sauce very much needed and a kielbasa, Czech-style, which tasted just like the Polish counterpart with mustard, ketchup, and fresh horseradish that was minus the accustomed zing.

While we waited for our entrees, we listened to Zio complain about his current residence on a rustic Connecticut lake. “I gotta get outta there. There are canoes,” he moaned and shook his head.

Before we could make sense of his objection to canoes, the entrees arrived. The ever smiling waitress placed a plate in front of me with a Frisbee-sized, flattened piece of pork fried in potato pancake batter while Rick, sitting next to me, was the recipient of half a duck that looked like it had been cooked with a blow torch. He offered samples for all. I declined, but Gerry took a bite. “Very good,” he proclaimed. “Good and gamey.”

“Definitely gamey,” Rick sighed.

I sawed through the wiener schnitzel cutting off portions for all who wanted a taste. I was more than happy to share the pork that could have used a generous portion of Tabasco to spice it up. I was more protective, however, of the very good potato salad that accompanied the meat.

Wiener Schnitzel: serrated steak knife mandatory.

Trying not to be negative and suppress the unusually good spirits he was in; the prospect of a trip to Italy within days will do that, Eugene mentioned that the sauerbraten he ordered “didn’t have much meat,” under the brown, soup like gravy it was immersed in. Mike from Yonkers had the same gripe about his goulash and agreed to help Zio with his order of chicken paprikash that was supposed to be red with paprika but had a goulash/sauerbraten-like dull brown tinge.  Gerry, however,  is generally easy to satisfy and he plowed through his order of spaetzle with feta cheese without objection.

Sauebraten or goulash?

Zio and Mike from Yonkers were the only ones who could manage the large portion of apple strudel topped by whipped cream and ice cream after that leaden meal. And the more I sat there after all that food, the nearby rat poison and the smell of bug spray still evident, the more I wanted out of Zlata Praha no matter how enjoyable the company and food was.

I signaled to the waitress and asked her for the check. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the moment she was waiting for. Her ever present smile was now glowing “Here I am,” she said and stood there, waiting for my response.

The food and beer had obviously dulled my thought process. Gerry nudged me with a grin. “Get it,” he said. She was still standing there smiling and I still didn’t get it.

And then the Czech went to get the check and I finally got it.

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The Jamaican Beef Patty Gospels

9 Dec

As seen in the People’s Choice Kitchen.

And the beef patties were good too.

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Biryani Joy

6 Dec

Rawal Ravail
641 Lydig Avenue
Bronx

A little bit of Pakistan in the Bronx

The din from the uptown/downtown 2 and 5 trains on the elevated tracks above White Plains Road was really nothing more than background noise to the constant cacophony that resonated in the frantic Morris Park section of the Bronx where Gerry had summoned us. It was our third straight session in that borough proving that the Bronx could hold its own with Queens and Brooklyn in ethnic food diversity. This time we were to sample Pakistani food; strictly Halal; meaning no pork and no alcohol.

Located next to the Islamabad Deli, an uplifting message on the Rawal’s window read: “Everyone brings joy to this restaurant. Some when they enter and others when they leave. Thank you. Management.”

Forced joy is not one of my strong points, but I told myself to at least make the effort. The lone person inside the restaurant—a young man wiping down a table—didn’t even notice me or my joy as I entered. Compared to the frenzy outside, even with the babble in Urdu coming from the gigantic flat screen television tuned to a Pakistani television station, inside it was calm.

The news from Pakistan was from what I could translate, not good.

No one else had yet arrived and due to a last minute work engagement where pork might be served and alcohol most definitely would be, Rick had already bowed out. Soon the others arrived including Eugene, who was daringly dressed in short pants.

Rawal’s only menus were of the take-out variety and we quickly discovered, pretty much useless. The dour owner begrudgingly had our group come with him to the steam table where he could explain what was available that day. There he pointed to each tray where there were various curries; chicken, goat, and kidney/liver, two vegetable dishes, three solitary small grilled fish, a tray of bright red chicken tikka, and another of chopped grilled chicken. He lifted up the rice containers; two biryanis and one with plain white basmati rice.

The process was more complicated than it should have been. To make things easier, we had him fix each of us a platter with a sampling of some of the dishes. And this he did with not a trace of joy.

Rawal Ravail’s steam blurred steam table.

Within a few minutes, a female server in traditional Pakistani dress, brought us a plate of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, chilies, and a raita dressing. Soon, the man in charge returned, accompanied by his female helper with our individual plates and five, Frisbee-sized loaves of nan bread. Each curry, goat, chicken, and liver and kidney, were fiery. Even the channa (chick pea) and cabbage curry was hot. The only respite from the spice was the rice and bread. All the curries were delicious, but, with the exception of the unique texture of the kidney and liver, very much alike and, crowded on our platters, they bled together making them somewhat indistinguishable.

Channa and cabbage and…biryani

Despite the heat, we quickly devoured our plates with the exception of Mike from Yonkers who was deliberately picking at his liver and kidney, dabbing each forkful into the cooling raita. We tried to be patient and display some level of dining etiquette, but Eugene and I could wait no longer.

While Mike from Yonkers continued to maddeningly play with his liver, we headed toward the entrance of the restaurant where there was a display of sweets including a few that were alarmingly colorful. Among them was a tray of milk where blobs of dough bobbled, a pink rice pudding, an orange coconut pudding, and a carrot orange sweet along with a white, nut-filled sweet. Eugene took a bite of the latter and proclaimed it second only to the “lima bean dessert” we had years ago at a Filipino restaurant in Queens, as the worst dessert he ever tasted.

Dessert offerings.

Zio added that the carroty orange thing had a distinct cardboard taste. Everyone agreed that the orange coconut pudding was the best of the bunch, though Gerry had no complaints about any of them and what no one else would touch further, he piled in front of him to quickly finish off.

The tab; well below our group’s $20 per person allotment left plenty of leeway for a generous tip despite the lackadaisical service. And after handing over our cash to the owner, for the first time that evening a smile was apparent on his face. The message on the window, prophetic, for we indeed, upon our exit, brought joy to the restaurant.

Our tip left the staff of Rawal Ravail extremely joyous.

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The Fusion Files: Neighborhood Edition

2 Dec

I’m all for diversity, especially when it comes to food options. But what does it mean when a neighborhood famous for a certain type of food is now accepting of something new and totally different for that neighborhood? Is it a good thing; further evidence of New York’s welcoming melting pot? Or will those foreigners begin to deteriorate the formerly close-knit fabric of that neighborhood.

Case in point: Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, also known as the “Little Italy of the Bronx.”

Between shopping for soppressata at the Calabria Pork Store.

And scamorza at Calandra’s Cheese.

You can now, between these two stores on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, dine on sushi and/or tacos instead of pizza and pasta fagioli.

I don’t know whether to throw up my hands and say “there goes the neighborhood,” or rush into Estrellita Poblana III and try their cecina azada con napales (grilled salted steak with cactus pads).

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A Slice of Ernie Ottuso Square

29 Nov

Louie & Ernie’s Pizza
1300 Crosby Avenue
The Bronx

The day after dining at Louie & Ernie’s pizza in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx, I saw a man wearing a John’s Pizza t-shirt that proudly and in quotes stated “No Slices.”  I’ve been to John’s on Bleecker Street several times. It’s one of just a few remaining of the city’s original Italian-American, coal-fired, brick oven places. And they make a decent pie, though now, with a branch in Times Square, on the Upper East Side, and in Jersey City, they have slipped a bit into tourist trap mode. And, no, they don’t serve slices. You have to wait for a table (and sometimes the waits are interminable) and order a whole pie. Now there is nothing wrong with that, but the proclamation on the t shirt was, after sampling Louie & Ernie’s where they, refreshingly, do serve slices, took, in my opinion, pizza arrogance to a level it should never go to. Maybe John’s really doesn’t mean it, but the “no slices” policy implies that because  they don’t serve slices, their pizza is better than those who do. Or maybe I’m just a little oversensitive.

Yeah, yeah, we know.

With our group in full attendance for this, Zio’s pick, we immediately found out that there was no such pretension at Louie & Ernie’s. Located below a typical Bronx 1950’s row house, on a stretch of Crosby Avenue renamed Ernie Ottuso Square after one of the original owners, and with the constant roar of arriving planes into LaGuardia above, this was old school New York pizza, slices and all.

The six of us squeezed into one of the small pizzeria’s largest tables and glanced at the menu. There were no surprises; pizza and calzones was all they served. Anchovies, meatballs, sausage, and all the other usual toppings were available. But, according to the accolades on the walls from various publications, it was the white pizza and the calzones, including a broccoli rabe calzone, that were the standouts at Louie & Ernie’s.

A slice of white.

We ordered three pizzas: a fresh garlic, sausage and onion, and a white pizza along with a few broccoli rabe calzones; the greens a little something to offset the starch onslaught.

All the pizzas had thin, nicely charred crusts from a conventional pizza oven. The combination of sauce to cheese was balanced properly and both ingredients fresh and flavorful. Oozing with creamy fresh ricotta and mozzarella was the white pie and it was as good as advertised.

The calzone

The sausage, out of its casing and crumbled in clumps, made in house was tangy with bits of fennel but unfortunately was paired with onion which overwhelmed both the sausage and the sauce. The pie with the addition of fresh garlic was a mistake and unnecessary. Good pizza really should be eaten with as little adornments as possible. Despite these very minor shortcomings, we devoured the pies, and the outstanding calzones, oblivious of the ongoing football game that was broadcast on the television in the front of the restaurant. Even our chatter was kept to a minimum, so intent were we on our mission.

Not even football could distract us from our mission.

With just a few bites remaining of the multiple pies, Zio turned to me and in a soft tone said, “Did you think the sausage was a bit undercooked?”

I replied that I did not and went back to finishing the pizza but was distracted when I noticed Zio’s finger in his mouth, probing for something.

Does the sausage look undercooked?

“I think I chipped a tooth,” he hissed.

On what, we wondered? The creamy mozzarella? The broccoli rabe? He opened his mouth displaying a tiny gap in his front teeth that wasn’t there before. He now bore an eerie resemblance to the British actor from the 1950’s Terry Thomas, but with a Sonny Bono haircut and smile. He had indeed chipped a tooth. But he shrugged it off, not holding it against Louie & Ernie’s, even ordering two broccoli rabe calzones to go.

Did Terry Thomas lose a tooth eating Louie & Ernie’s Pizza?

To add to our starch intake, Theresa’s Bakery next door offered freshly made cannolis. It was a mild night and we ate ours standing outside Louie & Ernie’s while children played, dogs were walked, and the planes above continued to make their descent into LaGuardia.

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A Green(s) Thanksgiving

24 Nov

Chop and wash the collard greens (enough to fill up a large pot).

Chop one large onion.

Mince two cloves of garlic.

Take a big pot and saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil until they soften, careful, don’t burn the garlic.

Throw in a few smoked turkey necks or turkey wings (optional).

Add the chopped greens until the top of the pot can barely be covered.

Add about three cups of chicken or vegetable stock.

Sprinkle in some dried hot red pepper.

Salt to taste.

Bring to simmer and cook about an hour or until the greens are tender.

Add a tablespoon of cider vinegar and a few dashes of Tabasco for some extra kick.

Enjoy with turkey.

He who hesitates…

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The Place Where They Don’t Count the Shrimp

22 Nov

Sabrosura
1200 Castle Hill Ave
Bronx

Zio and I were waiting in front of Sabrosura for Gerry, Mike from Yonkers, and Eugene to arrive. The corner restaurant had a no reservations policy and also one where the full party had to arrive before being seated. The latter policy usually reeks of arrogance and over confidence; the restaurant thinking that holding tables with one or two people of a larger party will slow down the turnover.  But despite the policy, Sabrosura showed no signs of pretension or arrogance and when I first entered, the owner, a pleasant man of Chinese heritage, who, I later learned was born and raised in Santo Domingo, took my name and offered me a very small seat near the busy take-out section of the restaurant where I could wait for the others. The night was mild, however, so Zio and I chose to wait outside.

“The food’s the best around here,” said a man who had exited the restaurant behind me and observed my situation. “It’s worth the wait.”

After our last couple of outings; mediocre African in Harlem and tasteless Fujinese in Chinatown where we struggled through webbed duck feet, fish stomach, and a very spiny eel, I thought we needed to get back to basics. And Chino-Latino, the food offered by Sabrosura, was as basic as it got for me.

One of the first restaurants I dined in after moving into the city was a dingy place on West 72nd Street called La Dinastia. It served Latino specialties like rice and beans, huge plates of roast chicken with platanos or maduras (green or ripe plantains) ropa vieja (shredded beef), picadillo (spiced ground beef) and fried king fish along with Chinese-American staples; wonton soup, barbecued ribs, lo mein, fried rice, and sweet and sour pork. To me, at the time, it was a revelation. It was cheap. It was hearty. And the restaurant’s total lack of atmosphere perfect fodder to my then creatively downscale brain. Friends I brought to La Dinastia didn’t always agree and it was nicknamed by one as “Dinasty”. But that just spurred my loyalty to the place. Even the presence of a dead cockroach floating in the duck sauce one time I dined there did not sour me on the restaurant. That, in a way, was part of its appeal.

La Dinastia, now known as DInastia China

“They don’t count the shrimp or anything,” the man, who was in his early thirties, burly, wearing a tight sport jacket, neck tie loose and collar half turned up, who told us he was Dominican, added. “The other places around here…they only give you a few shrimps in your asopao. This is the place to come in Castle Hill.”

We didn’t have to prod him for information about Sabrosura or the state of dining on Castle Hill Avenue where Sabrosura was located; it flowed from him…until he got the signal that his take-out order was ready.

We spotted Eugene and Gerry in Eugene’s car looking for a parking spot. Zio and I went in the restaurant, but still they were hesitant to seat us. “Looking for a parking spot? Ha, that’s what they all say.”

Upon quickly glancing at the colorful menu filled with photographs of many of the various dishes, Eugene, obviously still stinging from our last inedible experience blurted; “Finally, there’s something we can eat here.”

And he was right, but the menu was vast and offered a number of combinations, some in triplicate, and even including Chino-Latino “Bento Boxes,” so the dilemma for us was to narrow the options down.

One thing La Dinastia, or most of the Chino-Latino restaurants I ever visited never had was that Puerto Rican/Dominican specialty, a mash of twice fried plantains, pork cracklings and garlic called mofongo. Sabrosura had a number of different types available and, as the menu stated “All mofongos normally include garlic and crispy pork skin; if you don’t want either, just let us know!” That was the kind of place Sabrosura was; anything for their customers. But we most definitely wanted garlic and pork skin with our mofongo and we wanted ours with shrimp. Gerry was concerned that one would not be enough until he saw that size of the bowl that was coming our way. The huge bowl was  a hollowed out mofongo filled with shrimp in a tomato-based gravy and topped with a few slices of avocado.

Chinese Chop Suey Soup

Along with the mofongo to start, I couldn’t resist trying the “Chinese chop suey soup.” My experience at Chino-Latino restaurants was that the soups were actually very good; whether they were wonton, or called “Chinese soup,” or “Special Chinese soup,” they were usually in a light chicken broth, brimming with bok choy, cabbage, bean sprouts, noodles and bits of roast pork, ham, and shrimp. At Sabrosura they didn’t care if they used the very old school word “chop suey” to describe their soup and neither did I. What I tasted was reassuringly familiar and after finishing it, left me, predictably, with a slight MSG buzz.

Bourbon boneless ribs and plantains

The feast proceeded from there. Mike from Yonkers slowly devouring a monstrous platter of broiled fish that looked exactly as it did on the menu. Eugene working his way through a combination called the “Mojito;” roast chicken and boneless bourbon barbecued ribs.  Zio experimenting with a Bento Box of fried fish, pork, and anything else that might immediately stop his heart. Gerry digging through a mound of fried rice topped with shrimp and squid called chofan, and I with my old standby, ropa vieja with yellow rice.  No one complained. No one moaned. Everything was eaten.

“old clothes” with yellow rice

After a sampling of the restaurant’s excellent flan, we staggered out onto Castle Hill Avenue all of us very happy that at Sabrosura, they do not count the shrimp.

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Saltfish Season

18 Nov

I’m not sure why,  but the chill in the air  and the impending holiday season brings on a distinctive and maybe unnatural craving for the taste of saltfish. Also known to Italians as baccala,(a ditty to that Christmas Eve treat was published in these pages last year titled Baccala Blues )to those of Spanish background as bacalao, and to the Portuguese as bacalhau,  Saltfish is the West Indian name for what we know as salt cod.

Not the most appetizing to look at or, for some, to smell, but after the dry, salted fish is soaked to rehydrate it to a moist tenderness and then simmered,  a man can get very used to the taste.

“Very well I like the  taste
Though the smell, sometimes out of place
It hard to take, but make no mistake
I want you to know, it’s because it extra sweet it smelling so boy it’s

Saltfish”

The words above are from the great Calypsonian, Sparrow’s love song dedicated to saltfish’s wonderfulness named, appropriately, “Saltfish.” He does a much better job articulating the appeal of saltfish than I ever can, so I’ll let him do it for me.

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F(e)asting on Fuzhou Style Fish Stomach

15 Nov

Best Fuzhou Restaurant
71A Eldridge Street
Chinatown

I got the call from Zio a few hours before we were all to meet at Rick’s chosen destination, Best Fuzhou Restaurant. “How you doing,” I asked.

There was a pause, and then Zio replied, “Not good.”

It was his knee, he explained. He did something to it and had to see a doctor in Connecticut the next morning. “I’m not gonna make it tonight,” he said.  I didn’t ask how it happened; I assumed it was in the line of duty. In Zio’s case, that meant possibly squatting in a crawlspace in search of termites or carpenter ants.

It wasn’t until later, after our Best Fuzhou experience that I suspected Zio might have just used the knee as an excuse not to be subjected to what we just were. That maybe he read the Robert Sietsema review of the place from the Village Voice that Rick attached to his email. I didn’t. I never read reviews of restaurants until after I’ve dined there. I didn’t even open up the link. Maybe if I did I would have seen the review’s headline and sub heading “Enjoy the Fish Stomach at Best Fuzhou: A Lower East Side Fujianese also Kindly Peels Your Goose Feet.” That might have at least tipped me off as to what to expect. As it was, I went in pretty much clueless except that I knew we were meeting in Chinatown for a regional variation on Chinese.

Our goose feet were peeled and cooked…I think.

Did Zio know that the aforementioned goose feet were, yes, kindly peeled, but also as inedible as the cow foot he tried to eat at Salimata, our previous restaurant? Did he know that the colorfully named “do do frog’s leg” that caught Rick’s attention on the menu required surgical precision to remove what meat there was on the frog’s skinny legs? Or that the conch that accompanied the goose feet (or web as it was listed on the menu) was as equally tough to eat? I wasn’t sure.  But one had to wonder.

When I arrived at the harsh fluorescently-lit restaurant on the Lower East Side fringe of Chinatown, the Westchester boys, Gerry, Eugene, and Mike from Yonkers had already arrived. I told them the news about Zio and hesitated before sitting while one of the waitresses grabbed a mop and began clearing the table next to ours and the floor around it from spilled, smeared brown sauce, and stray, smashed noodles. Rick showed up soon after and even with just five, the table seemed crammed; Zio’s girth would have severely limited any elbow space between us.

With the many exotic dishes on the menu and Sietsema’s apparently glowing review—the waitress, who spoke almost no English, proudly showed us a copy of it—Best Fuzhou seemed a natural for our group. For his part though, Eugene was immediately skeptical. Maybe the menu was a little too exotic. Studying it carefully and bypassing fish head with bean curd, crispy jelly fish skin, duck kidney with cauliflower, goose intestine with tender leek, stir fried pig stomach and other intriguing options, he finally settled on the safe, hot and spicy fish fillet.

On the other end of the spectrum, for Gerry, the more exotic the better and he gambled on eel with black bean sauce which carried no price, only the dubious “S.P” (Seasonal Price) next to it meaning it would be more expensive than anything else on the menu. To her credit, our waitress, in her struggling English, was able to make clear that the price for the eel in black bean sauce that was evidently in season was $28. Gerry hesitated, but only for a moment, before nodding that it was okay despite overshooting the $20 food limit stated in our very loose food group bylaws.

I tried to find a happy medium; something a bit out of the ordinary, but not a stretch like, do do Frogs legs, Rick’s choice. So I settled on the clams with pan fried noodles. As it turned out, the rice noodles lightly fried and speckled with strips of clam was the only dish we all enthusiastically approved of.

water melon with fish stomach and unidentifiable red stuff

The same couldn’t be said for the Sietsema recommendation, water melon soup with fish stomach, which arrived in a big bowl and was gingerly distributed into little bowls by our waitress who also added dollops of a blood red liquid I assumed was chili oil. After sampling the soup with the mysterious red condiment, there was no spice kick—no discernible taste at all.  Red dye? Fish blood? As I write this I’m still not sure what it was. The clear soup had chunks of water melon, a white, bland vegetable nothing like the watermelon we know surrounded by bits of fish stomach reminiscent to the egg whites floating in the opaque broth. Eugene could only manage a few sips. Only Gerry dared attempt a second bowl. And from there it got worse.

Mike from Yonkers, speaking loudly so he could be heard above the constant parade of big black garbage bags dragged on a noisy dolly through the small restaurant and out to the street, proclaimed to all who might think to listen that he never ordered the goose web. But the proof was on the menu and, unfortunately on our table. Again, it was Gerry who was the only one who could make any headway of the truly impenetrable peeled goose foot. Eugene would not even attempt a nibble and when the do do frogs legs arrived in a thick brown sauce, he picked up the serving spoon, noticed a few mushrooms surrounding the skimpy frogs’ legs and then put the spoon back down with a disgusted grunt. For a man who portends to have a worldly appetite, Eugene has an unusual aversion to mushrooms.

Eel with black bean sauce: (s.p) Good luck.

The final dish to crowd our not very appetizing table was the “seasonal” eel. After clearing a few dishes, the waitress found a space for the platter in the middle of table positioned so the eel’s head and cold, dark beady eyes were staring menacingly at Eugene. A few bites of the tough, bone-riddled eel in black bean sauce were more than enough for me…and everyone else including Gerry. This particular “S.P” delicacy was definitely wasted on us. Thankfully, we filled up on what on the menu were described as oyster pancakes, but more like a slightly salty Chinese version of the deep fried Mexican churro.

“We’re not having dessert are we?” Eugene muttered once the plates were cleared from our table. Maybe Zio, if he was in attendance, would have insisted on trying the Fuzhou style eight treasure rice offered for dessert. For those of us who did attend, however, even eight treasures were not enough to entice us to try anything else Fuzhou style.

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The Many Pizzas of Sal’s

11 Nov

Here in New York there was an overblown controversy about who retained the rights to be known as Ray’s Pizza. The original Ray’s, at least I think it was original, was in Greenwich Village on 11th Street and wildly popular for the excessive amounts of cheese piled onto each slice rather than for its overall quality. So says I, the pizza snob.

Ray’s popularity spurred a flurry of Ray’s imitators, or so “Original Ray” claimed. Lawsuits were threatened and to avoid them, the numerous Ray’s throughout the city slightly tweaked their names.  “Famous Ray’s,” “World Famous Ray’s,” “Original Ray’s” “Ray Bari” were some of them. There was even one called “Not Ray’s Pizza.” Soon the controversy fizzled and recently the Original Ray’s closed ending “Ray’s” pizza(name) dominance in the city.

You know it’s over for Ray’s when the name is blocked out and no longer “of Greenwich Village.”

On a smaller scale, but higher in the pizza royalty chain, was the battle over the use of Patsy’s in connection to pizza. There was the original Patsy’s on First Avenue in East Harlem that still remains. And then there was Patsy Grimaldi’s in Brooklyn, just over the Brooklyn Bridge who was legally forced to drop the “Patsy’s” part of his actual name and became known as Grimaldi’s.  Patsy’s revival and the ensuing controversy led to a chain of Patsy’s designed to emulate the original, but none had that pizzeria’s magical ancient coal oven and, as a result, the pizza just wasn’t of the same quality.

The original Patsy’s.

It is now my pleasure to report that probably the most prolific pizza name of all has not sparked any controversy or legal action that I know of. That name is Sal’s.

Still, though, many Sal’s have found it necessary to inject something else to their name to differentiate themselves from the other Sal’s out there instead of just relying on their location and the distinction of their pizza.

There are many Sal’s in New York, but obviously only one New York Sal’s.

If Sal were to have a pizza making partner, Carmine is a natural.

Sal’s of Little Italy is no ordinary pizzeria, it’s a cafe.

Now why did they have to go and make Sal fat?

I’ve often wondered why a man named Sal would allow himself to be known as Sally.

Sal’s even made it into the movies.

But why no BROTHERS ON THE WALL??

I make no judgement on any of the other Sal’s pizzerias, but for me, there is only one Sal’s Pizzeria.

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