e a t e r y R O W

STEVE'S AUTHENTIC KEY LIME PIES
204 Van Dyke Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231
(718) 858-5333

An unseasonably hot day last week found me in Red Hook wandering aimlessly from renovated warehouses to dilapidated shanties on the verge of collapse. Red Hook has been on the way up in the last few years and those shanties are getting harder and harder to come by. In fact, Red Hook's own Fort Defiance was named my restaurant of the year for 2010. This particular lay afternoon found me on the far end of Van Dyke Street. If you go as far as you possibly can, until your very next step would land you in the briny seas, then you have reached Steve's Authentic Key Lime Pies.

Nestled in this red brick building are several small art businesses (florists, sculptors, etc.) and Steve, or his bakery anyway, is among them inside the door marked "Pies Here". Walk in and up to the counter filled to capacity with toys and assorted brightly-colored cutesies. Today, Steve's was deserted. There was no one to be seen, no one to even be heard. A sign instructs you to ring a bell and, if no one hears that one, to ring an even bigger one. I rang. A smiling little girl emerged, took my order, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

If variety is the spice of any life you might lead, you won't find it here. Steve's makes key lime pie. Not key lime pie with Oreos, not key lime smoothies, not key lime tea, not lime cake decorated with edible keys. Key lime pie, in various sizes ($25 for a ten-incher) with one exception. I ordered a small four inch Tart and I ordered the exception, a Swingle, where they take one of those said tarts and dunk it in dark chocolate.

There's no place inside to sit, but there are a couple of picnic benches outside, as well as a rickety bistro table long-since harvested from a brasserie's yard sale. The sea wind, coupled with the complete isolated silence of the area - literally, there wasn't even the sound of traffic - made me crave a coffee to drink along with my pies. Give me a coffee and a book and I could have sat there for an hour. Meditative would be a good word.

Oh right, the pies. I liked them. Smooth and sharply tangy. Steve's has been the recipients of a hundred write ups by now and I'd certainly return, but they're no replacement for the ones I had in college on spring break in the real Key West. The ones there were more mellow. I preferred their regular pie to the swingle, even though I really liked the idea of dunking a key lime tart in more sugar, but the dark chocolate overwhelmed the pie. Tarts were $4, swingles were $5. I imagine that in the summer, this place must be a mob scene and the line must be out the door. I guess I'll have to find out.

[ © Copyright eateryROW 2011 ]

MAGASIN WELLS DINER
21-17 49th Avenue
Long Island City, NY 11101
(718) 435-6917

For a long time, an abandoned and derelict diner stood by the entrance of the Hunter's Point 7 Train on the edge of Long Island City. It was the kind of diner that Southerners buy up and truck off to one of those "take me back to the good old days of the Fonz because the best years of America are behind us and now all we have are sin and foreigners" theme parks in Florida. In fact, even though multi-million dollar condos are sprouting like weeds within a ten minute walk in just about any direction, the rest of the block is still derelict. But now there's M. Wells, a "Quebeco-American 'Diner'" renovating the culinary landscape.

Okay, so M. Wells calls itself a diner. Uhhh... no. Let's get past the exterior, the stool seating and the handful of booths and really ask ourselves "how many diners serve escargot with a bone marrow glaze?" Sure, there's fish and chips and eggs, but I didn't see any line cooks, I didn't smell any bacon, and I didn't taste any diner coffee. I got the impression that the chrome shell really housed an experiment by a crew of post-culinary school hipsters in which they raise a collective middle finger to the establishment of mainstream brasseries. No big kitchens, no host, no master chef throwing stale rolls at underlings in fits of rage. It seemed - though I could be totally wrong here since I'm no reporter and didn't talk to to anyone but my waiter - like a collective of people doing what they loved to do (cooking), their way, at their pace. Oh, and doing it by 4pm because that's when they close and head home.

Yep, Magasin Wells is strictly a lunch joint. 11AM to 4pm every day but Monday, when they aren't open at all. So I scheduled myself for two days around a 7 Train jaunt to LIC and plopped myself on a stool at the counter. Get there early. Both days that I ate here, a sizeable chunk of the menu had already been wiped out.

I started one meal with the Parsnip Soup (sans optional fois gras). Distinctly parsnippy, with a hint of fresh pepper and parsley, this soup was smoother than cream. I've never had a soup, in my life mind you, as smooth as this. It was thick, but light. It tasted fabulous and I can imagine that it tastes even better in the fall when the palate for root vegetables is more in vogue. My other meal was begun with the Escargot and Bone Marrow. The escargot is literally served in the trough of a split cow bone under a dusting of pesto and garlic and under a drizzle of a red wine sauce. If you're like me and come to expect your escargots floating in a sea of butter, then you're in for a new experience. This is not that. This is actually better and I never thought I'd say that. The downside is that you don't really get much. A few bites at best, even when you smear the combination of snail, marrow and fat onto toast.

The M. Wells Hamburger is a mixture of beef and lamb grilled and served on a brioche roll with a tangy chili mayo, arugula and onions. The beef/lamb burger has a little extra nuance than a standard beef burger does, but it's a bit gamier than I was expecting and doesn't have quite the richness of flavor. This was unfortunately over-compensated for with too much sea-salt, which I noticed right away. I ordered a side of French Fries, which cost a few extra loonies. They're Belgian-style thin-cut fries and were fine. Nothing amazing. I nibbled on them while I read a book. The Seafood Cobbler, my other main course was far heavier than a hamburger and fries could ever hope to be. M. Wells takes haddock or cod or some such white fish, places it over a bed of Brussels sprouts, then buries it in bechamel sauce, tops it with biscuits and Gruyere cheese and then bakes it. Yes, this was heaven incarnate, but it was hard to walk to the subway afterward.

M. Wells can call itself a diner all it wants, but it's not cheap like one. If it was open for dinner, then I'd drop it down to only three dollar signs, but for lunch, it gets four. Lunch, with a drink and tax and tip can be expected to range between $20 and $40.

PING'S
83-02 Queens Boulevard
Elmhurst, NY 11373
(718) 396-1238

The year of the rabbit has emerged. My family's Judeo-Christian tradition dictates that on Chinese New Year we eat whatever animal the year has transferred over to. When it was the year of the dragon, we broke into the Bronx Zoo to liberate komodos... into our crock pot. 2010 proved to be far easier thanks to Ping's on Queens Boulevard, who've provided some new years specials to feed our world-weary souls.

There are three Ping's locations: Chinatown, Flushing, and Elmhurst. Dudeman and Shrink found me at a corner table of the Elmhurst one, drinking boiling hot jasmine tea and snapping interior photos. I was lucky enough to land us one of the more small tables on the edge. Most of Ping's has tables seating 10. And most of those were filled when I got there. It was a madhouse. There was no music but it was loud. People screaming across tables, screaming orders at waiters... lots of yelling. The lights were bright and the flat-screen TVs alternated between Chinese cooking programs and Chinese cartoons.

Like just about every Chinese restaurant of comparable size and reputation, Ping's has tanks of live fish, which, alongside their duck, will be served whole. The 'Rents and I weren't hankering to decapitate anything this particular evening though, and so we stuck to scanning the menu, like we would anywhere else. Passing over the $75 shark fin soup and whole plates of sauteed duck tongues, we ordered a range of dumplings to split.

First to arrive were the Mixed Seafood Dumplings, which the 'Rents enjoyed far more than I did. Indeed, they liked them a lot. I found them too fishy. Perhaps, in retrospect, this should have been obvious. They were followed by the Steamed Vegetable Dumplings, which I thought were fine, but the 'Rents didn't like at all. Too bland, they said. Again, perhaps, we should have seen this coming. In my opinion, they tasted like what you'd get if you turned minestrone soup into a dumping. Next to arrive, the Pan Fried Pork and Shrimp Dumplings alongside the Pan Fried Chives and Shrimp Dumplings. Both were delicious, though my parents enjoyed the pork-shrimp ones more. I was more partial to the chives-shrimp.

Hot on the dumpling tails came our final starter, the Barbecued Honey Quail. We ordered three of them, since there's really no way to split a bird the size of a golf ball between three people. And at $3 each, we weren't breaking the bank here. Imagine eating a very small duck and that's the gist of eating quail. And don't feel bad using your fingers. You'll need them to eat this and they supply wet-naps for a reason.

The food started coming fast and hot after the quail arrived. We were barely able to finish when the main course Dudeman picked, the Sliced Abalone Braised with E-Fu Noodle arrived with its three sharing bowls found its way to our table (all of the dishes are intended to be shared). Abalone is a cough-cough shaped fist-sized sea snail with an extremely light flavor and the texture of a wet sauteed mushroom. This particular noodle dish was very tasty, but somewhat light on abalone. I'd definitely get it again, but I'd really like there to be more meat in it, so to speak. A solid 85% of the dish was noodle and we ended up leaving a vast majority of the dish untouched once we ran out of abalone and sauce. My pick was the Sauteed Fresh Frog in Two Kinds of Flavor. For the record, I don't know what those two flavors were, since they don't say, but if my dining out history has taught me anything, it's that one of the flavors was garlic sauce and the other was funnel cake. Seriously, I was thinking about powdered sugar the entire time. Frog, as I've said many a time to many a person, tastes like a cross between chicken and fish. It's not really an acquired taste since you can almost think you've already eaten it. Frog's main problem is that it's extremely bony.

This being the year of the rabbit, Pings had two rabbit specials on the menu, one of which Shrink ordered, the Sauteed Fresh Shredded Rabbit Meat and Asian Mushrooms in Ping's Special Sauce. I always get a laugh at the mystery sauces that Chinese restaurants add to their food and Ping's was no different. Whatever Ping's mystery special sauce was, it was basically the same sauce that you get when you order beef with scallions. But that's because this rabbit dish was the beef with scallions dish, just with mushrooms as well, and served in a cute edible basket. It was also the best dish of the night. Simply fantastic. It was the kind of food you could find yourself addicted to.

We weren't offered a dessert menu, but neither did we ask for one. The check came with fortune cookies and orange slices.

Four orders of dumplings, three quail, and three entrees, plus tax and tip came to $127.

If you're thinking it's a somewhat inconvenient location, Ping's right by the Grand Avenue R/M Train and the restaurant also has a parking lot.

HIMALAYAN YAK
72-20 Roosevelt Avenue
Jackson Heights, NY 11372
(718) 779-1119

Of all of the great things about living in a global city, access to cuisines from every corner of said globe has to be one of them. Nepali food is probably not the first thing you'd think of when your friends call hankering for dinner. In fact, if they're like some of the people that I know, the only thing they're ever in the mood for is either Italian or Mexican. I call these people boring. Therefore, I was very pleased when Seth displayed an unexpected eagerness when I suggested grabbing the F train to Jackson Heights to try out Himalayan Yak.

This particular night it was frigid out. Ten degrees if we were lucky and easily arctic-esque with the wind. Thank goodness that Himalayan Yak's front door is only about two blocks from the Roosevelt Avenue subway hub. The interior of Himalayan Yak is a simple one. No frills chairs and tables. Some Nepali art. A television running a documentary on life in the Himalayas plays silently by the door (nothing about Yetis). Traditional might be a good way to think about the interior design. There was nothing crazy or artsy about its decor, in contrast to KyoChon, and there was nothing artsy about the way that the food was displayed on the plate, in contrast to Aja. Himalayan Yak isn't the cool trendy place you're going to go to if you're trying to impress that FIT girl you've been flirting with. Himalayan Yak is where you'd go when you want to try something different. Oddly, "different" didn't include yak, which we looked for on the menu, but couldn't find. We'd have to make do.

My meal started with Chasa Kho-wa, a chicken corn soup. I needed soup. It was too cold outside not to be ingesting hot liquid to thaw me out. The soup was pretty good. I was initially disappointed because it felt thin. But a few spoonfuls in, I learned that there was a lot of flavor packed into that bowl. If Himalayan Yak had a flaw, it was their timing. Virtually everything came at once, except for Seth's main course, which arrived very late in the game. We were sharing everything, so no big deal, but we had started to wonder if it was forgotten.

Seth's appetizer was the Sandeko Bandel, strips of wild boar (looking like thick bacon) with a lemon dressing. Neither of us cared for this very much. The boar was far too fatty and there was a strip of skin on the outer side which was about as tough as a leather belt. It was impossible to bite through and none-too-appetizing once you did. We don't recommend this. My appetizer was, interestingly, the exact opposite. While we both thought we'd like the boar, but did not, we both expected to hate what I ordered, only to find ourselves pleasantly surprised. I ordered the Bhutan, goat intestines and livers and other random organs ground up and stir fried with spices. It was actually pretty damn good. Especially with the green tomato sauce they have handy. I never thought I'd be wiping clean a plate of goat entrails, but hey, goes to show. Never say never.

Sticking with the things I couldn't normally find elsewhere, I ordered the Gyuma. Gyuma is a Nepali blood sausage made with ground beef and spices and, well, a hearty filling of blood. It's pictured above and, as you can see, if it sounds gross, it's even less appetizing to look at. But again, looks aren't everything. Sometimes personality counts, too. And this was surprisingly tasty as well. Not fantastic, but pretty good, especially, again, with the green apple sauce or their hot sauce. But the Gyuma is very heavy. I put away about four or five of the slices before I just about exploded. Seth had two or three. Seth chose a safer route, ordering the Shagok Ngopa with Beef. It's a beef and vegetable stir-fry in a sweet garlic-ginger sauce, served with a Nepali style steamed bun. We concurred about the taste. It was not bad, but it was generic. It was the kind of dish you might see being ordered as takeout somewhere. The steamed bun had a white rice blandness to it. It's a vehicle for mopping up sauce, not something to be eaten on its own.

Nepali food is like a cross between Chinese and Indian (in fact, Himalayan Yak has an Indian menu), so if you or your friends want to try something different, but somewhere that you know has a few safe dishes, that has a menu with prices that are easy on the wallet, Himalayan Yak should be on your short list.

1 soup, 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, and 2 beers came to about $43 plus tax, plus tip.

[ © Copyright eateryROW 2011 ]