Being Big Apple veterans, we decided that this time we want to explore a different side of the city – the outer boroughs. The idea was prompted by an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservation where Tony visited restaurants outside of Manhattan. It all looked very yummy, like a more sophisticated and less greasy episode of Diners Drive Ins and Dives. The decision was then solidified by the fact that being in Manhattan means that we never spend enough time with our friend Boaz who lives in Queens and by the fact that our friend Eitan just moved into an apartment in Brooklyn. And last but not least – the last nail in the Manhattan coffin (or the last planet to align, for those of you who want to go with the more positive metaphor) is that we weren’t able to stay with marc and Wolly in their apartment in Manhattan, and had to opt for cheaper accommodations.
We found those accommodations on a website called AirBnB.com. The site connects between people willing to rent out their apartments or rooms in their apartment for short term stays with those looking for such accommodation. All in all pretty cool – the place was very reminiscent of what you would picture an apartment in Florentine to look like. Though staying in a stranger’s room, without them really clearing it out for you is a bit bizarre. In hind sight, we might be getting a little old for that kind of stuff, but in the whole “one last hurrah” thing, this is certainly the last time I’ll be willing to take on an adventure like that in order to save a few bucks.
I chose an apartment that was 20 minutes walk from Eitan’s place, which he told us is in a very nice part of Brooklyn. But as in every big city, 20 minutes can make a big difference. Apparently, Williamsburg Brooklyn is divided between north (nice, rich newly renovated apartments, with a lot of artists hanging out in cafés) and south (a little dingy, older apartments with a lot of ultra-orthodox Jews walking the streets). After 2 nights staying in the apartment we were in, I think I found the perfect analogy: that picking the apartment we did was like randomly picking a place to stay in Neve Tzedek in Tel-Aviv, without knowing if you’ll get one of the new rich houses or a an old man’s dump.
Living in Brooklyn meant we had whole new subway experiences – one highlight was riding on the 7, which runs above ground from Brooklyn to Queens. During the ride we got a glimpse of an entire lot (I don’t know what it actually was, maybe warehouses) that was full of super cool graffiti. It was like being in the 80s.
As far as what we actually did – well, it wasn’t all in the boroughs, and most of it wasn’t very touristy:
We went to a taping of The Daily Show (you can see the episode here)
We walked around midtown to see the festival of lights in Rockefeller Plaza and the area. This is a bit touristy, but still very pretty. The only thing that took away from our enjoyment was the fact that it was FREEZING!!! Seriously – by the time we got back home I had frost bite on my legs and taking a warm shower actually hurt!
We also spent an entire day with Eitan & Racheli in New Jersey at the IKEA and at an awful outlet mall that had so many Israelis, it was scary. This included a young couple I spotted in the Tommy Hifiger store, that had an amusing conversation about the fact that since there were handbags on sale there for $10, they would buy 10, so as to resell them in Israel.
As always, the biggest part of our trip was the food – the list is long, so you might want to take a brake:
1. Momofuku – a cool novo-Asian place, headed by a Korean chef that now has about 3 restaurants across town. We ate lunch at Momofuku Ssam, the most casual of the bunch. It was delicious. Asian flavors, but with a lot of originality and some non-Asian ingredients. The pork buns there are very well know, but we also really enjoyed the apple kimchi salad and the rice cake entrée (the combination of the two was fantastic).
2. L’Ecole – a restaurant run by students of the French Culinary Institute. Our money would have probably been better spent elsewhere, despite Eitan’s 15% discount.
3. Sachis Arepas – This is a place I found on Yelp, and I was pretty excited since I had heard of arepas a few times in the past few months, but I had no idea what good arepas tasted like. They are corn-flour based bread that are stuffed with various things (sort of like pita bread). The corn flour used is very fine, so they don’t have the rough texture that’s usually associated with corn. The restaurant fulfilled every expectation I had. It was absolutely delicious – very simple, and not very expensive, but flavorful and just yummy.
4. Sea – This is a night-club like Thai restaurant that has an atmosphere that was way too cool for us, but food that was really good and fairly priced. The fairly priced part was especially nice, because we ordered a large variety of small dishes and could really enjoy all kinds of dishes without thinking too much about it.
5. Temple Canteen – this was the place we (well, I) chose to go to from Bourdain’s show. It’s an Indian Restaurant located in the basement floor of a Hindu temple. Of course the signs caused us to walk around the block once before finally asking someone were the place is. I thought it might be a screening process or a ritual that outsiders had to do (sort of like in Buddhism one must circle mountains to become more divine). This was a surreal experience, partly because the place was virtually empty. The food was good; though I think the dosa, which I was most looking forward to, wasn’t fresh (otherwise I don’t know how to explain that it wasn’t crispy). Everything was super spicy, but good enough to be worth the heartburn.
6. Jefferson Diner – Lucky thing Uri’s cell phone fell out of his coat pocket at the IKEA. And equally lucky that we were stuck for a whole hour in the 2 miles between Mott and the entrance to the Holland Tunnel driving back to IKEA to get the cell phone before heading back to Ithaca. If it weren’t for these two things, we would have been half way to Ithaca by diner time. But since both those things did happen, we were only about an hour away from Jersey, close enough to a diner that appeared on Diners Drive-ins and Dives to detour a bit from the highway to try another place. From the outside the place looks like a million other diners (so much so that Uri and I spent several hours arguing whether we had been there before or not – I was right, we weren't). Just like many other diners, Jefferson has a super long, all over the place menu that doesn't seem too promising. BUT (notice, it’s a big but) the food was really good: Uri had a hamburger that was very juicy, while I ordered the mousaka (see it being made here) that was good in itself, but was also served with fantastic salad (I ate the salad and took the mousaka home).
And that’s it – from there we were on our way home…
Tomorrow: This post will be updated with pictures. Now I'm going to sleep.
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