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Showing results for tags 'Brighton Beach'.
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Recently, I had the wonderful experience of going to Belarusian Xata. It’s a very, very new spot so it’s really hot off the press in terms of discovery value: only three months old. I can understand why it has laid low because it’s all the way out in Brighton Beach, a food kingdom few venture to, a foreboding unknown!!! I was especially excited to try this one because I have been to Belarus, and I was hoping it would be a kind of Belarusian-rural-kitsch restaurant that you find in the countryside. Amazingly they got the genre down to a tee. I mean, this is maybe the single most “authentic” restaurant I’ve ever been to in terms of the experience. They even had the fake wood tables and chairs AND the flavored vodka. Belarusian food, as well as most food of the former Soviet Union can be considered an acquired taste to come. Lots of fried, fatty, and salted components would be a great way to describe the core of the cuisine. This restaurant does that, and does it well. It’s a great place to sample Belarusian delicacies like Draniki, which feels like the Potato Latkes ancestor, being thicker, more uniform in shape, and often stuffed. I ordered my go-to appetizer at any former Soviet resto: herring with onions/potatos. I’d dare say I like a bit more saltiness to herring, but that’s me being a bit nitpicky. A solid herring plate it is. Any semblance of a diet went off the rails with the Draniki, fried pork, and cheese sauce (pictured below). I promise it really wasn’t bad. I am a really uptight eater, meaning I judge the shit out of restos, but this actually played very well in a way that only a former Soviet resto could. I may like Draniki better than Latke’s because there is just so much more you can do to them. Meat filled, veggie filled. I BET YOU COULD EVEN MAKE VEGAN ONES :-O!!!! Anywho, it was solid, but if that’s too much of a “fuck no” end of dishes for you, then they have a huge selection of other items to choose from. Fish, Shashlik, etc., you name it!
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HeyyyYYYYyyyy peeps, SOOOOOO I don't live in NYC on the reg BUT soon to be doing so again!! TO start the summer off right I wanna rep one of my fave Uzbek spots that gets not nearly enough love Nargis Cafe. It's a bit outside the bend from the boardwalk and the subway so it doesn't get the traffic of like Cafe Kashkar and unlike those restos hasn't been written about so I consider this my secret lil gem. My Belarusian friend told me about this place and I went one summer a bit ago now. Full Disclosure this was like a year ago so it may have changed but at least when I went the Plov was really really good. In a sea of plov that is NYC this one ranks high. Dunno if you guys agree. Wanted to get the Manti as well but getting like 7 dumps for ones lone self always seems excessive. They even give you sour cream!! The small things count lemme tell ya!!!
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One of the great things about NYC is that, on any given day, you can sort of pretend that you live somewhere else. With upwards of 150 different nationalities sharing our 5 boroughs, a trip somewhere distant may be as quick as a subway ride away. Take Russia. A few weekends ago, we gathered up the clan and headed out to Brighton Beach, which sits way out at the ass end of Brooklyn, right smack in between Coney Island and Manhattan Beach. Brighton Beach is home to a large population of Russian speakers, many of whom come from Odessa (giving Brighton its nickname, Little Odessa), and the main drag, Brighton Beach Avenue, looks and feels like its right out of central casting (well, other than the el train, I suppose). Do yourself a favor and start out with a stroll along the boardwalk. On this sunny Saturday we were lucky enough to witness a chorale group of over 20 people singing Jewish New Year songs while facing the sea; Rosh Hashanah was only a day or two away. At the venerable Volna and Tatiana Restaurants, with their big, round tables on the boardwalk, groups of middle-aged men (at one table) and women (at another) were merrily downing shots of vodka at 2 in the afternoon. If you think that bottle of cold water you’re grabbing out of the cooler is water, take a second look – Tatiana’s cooler is full of cold, half-bottles of Stoli, which won’t quench your thirst as much as water, but might make you decide to take your shirt off – as a number of men at that table we were watching had done – and lemme tell you, the shirtless, suspenders over bulging gut look is all the rage in Little Odessa these days... After our walk, it was time for a late lunch/early dinner and we headed over to Café Glechik, which bills itself as a Ukranian Fusion Kitchen in New York. Whatever; it’s Ukranian at its core, and a glechik is “a clay jar, jug or crock with something delicious inside.” Our first glechik came loaded with a huge order of “Siberian” pelmeni, filled with veal, beef, pork and who knows what else, all funk and juice inside… Vareniki always make a nice accompaniment to pelmeni, especially this order of farmer cheese stuffed ones, served with sour cream for dipping, just in case your cholesterol hasn’t ascended into the stratosphere yet… And who can go to a Ukranian restaurant and not order stuffed cabbage? Not me. As one of the ladies at our table commented, probably the best stuffed cabbage she’d ever tasted; this stuffed cabbage was far from the often too-sweet versions that showed up when I was a kid… Making quick work of those appetizers wasn’t really a problem for our group - I mean, Significant Eater and SMcPickles can put that stuff away. So it was on to our main courses. Kebab doesn’t quite describe what you’re served when you order from that section of the menu. Our lamb ribs “kebab” was actually a platter weighted down with luscious and salty grilled lamb ribs, buckwheat kasha better than my grandma ever made, cabbage slaw and plenty of onions… The “Glechik” stew knocked it out of the park. A big hunk of beef shoulder, braised into fork tenderness, served in its juices with a dozen or more fried potato vareniki, all of it strewn with handfuls of fresh dill. Wow… And all of this food, along with 3 glasses of beer and a compote (which tastes more like Hawaiian punch than you can imagine) for the driver, came to under $80. There might be some Russian oligarchs floating around Brighton Beach, who probably spend a lot of money on fancy women, fancy minks, fancy diamonds, fancy cars…and lousy basketball teams – meaning the restaurants had better be a good value. No trip to Brighton is complete without some shopping. Food shopping, in our case. Even though this is where your lack of language skills might show up, have no fear. Everyone’s friendly at Net Cost supermarket (though they might not look it – you know, like my grandfather from Minsk, they’ve got those Soviet genes) and I managed to buy breads, pickles, olives, cheese, sausages and even a tea specifically for my uterus, without a problem. The range of products at Net Cost is fairly amazing; just wandering the aisles is a mini-vacation in itself. So listen up…the next time you’re thinking about flying Aeroflot to Moscow, do as they say in Brooklyn and fuggetaboutit. Brighton Beach is so much closer.
