Rao

East River's seeded and sesame bagels

These bagels appear just once a week at the East River Bread booth in Smorgasburg, but they're worth the wait. The lovely, chewy seeded ones ($2) are covered in a salty glitter of sesame, poppy, caraway, and fennel seeds, and they're best loaded with as much of East River's plain cream cheese as they'll hold. (Made from a mix of milk and heavy cream from Battenkill Valley Creamery, the spread is creamy without the tacky texture of commercial cream cheese, and so delicious you can eat it with a spoon.)

More »

Taqueria Cancun's burrito mojado is a gigantic carne asado burrito drowning in sauces.

In San Francisco's Mission District, where the burrito as we know it was invented, the ultimate form is known as the burrito mojado ("wet burrito"). An overstuffed flour-tortilla burrito is smothered in all the sauces at hand, which may run to guacamole, red and green salsas, pico de gallo, and crema, rendering it richer and more assertively flavored, thereby flinging it deeper into gutbomb territory. This treatment also forces you to eat the thing with a knife and fork. Finally, the East Village has its own rendition, not quite so inundated as that found at Taqueria Cancun on Mission Street, but formidable nonetheless.

More »

Jess Goodman

Cheese fries FTW?

There's nothing better than a perfect French fry. They come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and the best ones don't even need a burger or rotisserie chicken to make a meal.

More »

Click on any image to enlarge

Miraculously, lunch counter B & H Dairy remains, from the era when its stretch of Second Avenue was known as the Yiddish Broadway.

As a tribute to E.V. Grieve, the East Village's chronicler of closure and demolition, we present this collection of foodie landmarks that have remarkably remained open, despite the neighborhood's influx of soaring glass towers. Take a moment to savor a bite in these six gems. They may soon be gone.

More »

Click on any image to enlarge

Keeping your noodles cold and refreshing

The night before last I had the pleasure of dining with Matt Rodbard, one of the critics who participated in the new Korean Restaurant Guide: New York. This publication of the Korean Food Foundation, an arm of the Korean government, is available as a free paperback (find it at the Asia Society, and other locations), or as a free phone app. In preparing the volume, three critics made anonymous visits to 80 Korean restaurants in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, and then selected 40 for this pink, lavishly-illustrated volume. When Rodbard offered to take me on an adventure to a couple of restaurants in Queens to show me some stuff I'd never eaten before, I jumped at the chance.

More »

Crisp and spicy pav bhaji at Malai Marke

I love making a quick lunch of hot masala chai and pav bhaji, one of India's finest junk foods. The bread rolls should be generously buttered and deeply browned, ideally served with a super-spicy curried mash that's full of flavor and devoid of nutritional value.

Shiva Natarajan's sparse and shiny Malai Marke already stands out on East 6th Street's stretch of Indian restaurants, with a glass-encased kitchen and a menu that dips into more esoteric regional dishes than its Northern neighbors. The crisp pav bhaji is lovely ($7 for 2), especially when squeezed with a bit of lemon, and the methi chicken is a good find as well, the fresh fenugreek leaves softened in garlic and green chiles. The kitchen works some of the brighter flavors from the coast, too, as in the Mangalorean dish of shrimp Ajadina.

I was delighted to see that Natarajan is now dedicating a new kitchen within Malai Marke to Indian snacks.

More »

A cool frothy glass of Sheiss Weiss Dunkel

Brooklyn breweries pumping out craft beers are now common enough, so it takes a new approach to cause a splash, and that is just what Sanford O'Sheiss, founder of fledgling Olde Gowanus Brewery, has done. This Stevens Institute graduate began his project (How else?) with a Kickstarter campaign early last year that eventually netted him $75,000. He plowed that money - quite literally - into a property on Brooklyn's Second Avenue, in the shadow of the F tracks on the lip of one of the Gowanus Canal's tentacle-like arms. Sheiss partly bulldozed, partly rehabbed the three- story brick structure dating from the 1880s that was there already. It had been a chemical factory for most of its life, then was converted to a day-care facility during the '90s. FiTR caught up with O'Sheiss in the brewery office, which is in the newer half of the building - a soaring, international-style atrium that's all glass and reflective surfaces.

More »

Victoria Wasik

Spaghetti and meatballs at Red Gravy

Sunday gravy only sounds like one of those fast, unfussy, one-pot dishes. There's the stuffing of the braciole, the mixing and shaping of the meatballs, the browning of the sausages. There's the layering of the stock, amplified with bones and meat, simmered for hours. It's no wonder that many Italian-American families have abandoned the tradition of weekly meals around this rich, time-consuming sauce. It's a shame, too -- gravy is glorious.

More »

Tara McPherson

Heading to Choice Eats tonight? In between snacks and beers, keep an eye out for New York-based artist Tara McPherson's three-color silk screens of a noodle-slurper, seen above.

McPherson has worked on gig posters for Beck, Modest Mouse, and Melvins, and collaborated on toys with Kidrobot, Dark Horse, and Toy2R, to name a few. For Choice Eats, the artist has produced 150 of these 18-by-24-inch beauties and they'll be on sale at the event -- rolled up in easy-to-carry tubes so you don't stain them with chile oil! -- for $15 a piece.

Wikimedia

This week's review is of Cocina Economica Mexico on the Upper West Side, where Pedro Hernandez Perez was put in charge of a Mexican kitchen after winning over David Bank and the Land Thai team with the family meals he prepared, inspired by his hometown of Puebla. To celebrate good family meals (the ones that sustain cooks in between the mediocre ones), Fork asked a few chefs and restaurateurs about their favorites. Here's what they said:

Alex Raij, Txikito
Txikito's family meals are better than La Vara's, in all honesty. The two best dishes are a pozole made with suckling-pig heads, and pork ribs (or chops) in salsa verde. We always make salad and rice too.

Bill Telepan, Telepan
Every Saturday, the Ecuadorian butchers at Telepan prepare a great marinated chicken meal using a traditional spice blend of chile powder, oregano, orange juice, onion, paprika, lime juice, and cilantro. My sous chef, Kenny, grew up in Chinatown and makes a great sweet and sour pork whenever he's in charge of the meal. When it's my turn, my go-to dish is Italian beef sandwiches -- Chicago-style.

Dale Talde

Dale Talde, Talde
When I was just a line cook at Vong, the chef was Geoff Felsenthal, one of my mentors. The day before Thanksgiving, he commissioned all the sous chefs to make a perfect family meal. Growing up Filipino, I never had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner -- just shitty turkey and lumpy mashed potatoes. But the turkey was bomb, the gravy was bangin', the stuffing was amazing (it was this cornbread stuffing with jalapeño and cheddar), and there was perfect creamed spinach. The pastry chef made pumpkin pie and pecan pie and it meant a lot to everyone -- a lot of the cooks at Vong weren't from Chicago, so this was the only meal they'd be having that Thanksgiving.

More »