5 Boroughs Ice Cream has discontinued its Astoria-inspired Bakla-Wha?! flavor. I wasn’t crazy about it (too fluffy), but still, the hood should be represented in all fields, from bad architecture to cold desserts.
Instead, I see that Jackson Heights gets a mango flavor, and the “Rich White” vanilla represents the Upper East Side. That is a stroke of genius.
You heard it here first (maybe–I’m too lazy to check other blogs):
1) Philoxenia, the brief but beloved place on 23rd Ave, appears to be reopening on 34th Avenue, in the space that, geez, four years ago was a great Peruvian bar, Gustavo’s, and hasn’t been anything since. Philoxenia was a little Greek place that was super-home-style and felt like eating in someone’s living room. And, it turned out, you kind of were–apparently the space was not at all zoned for resto use. I hope they make it in the new space–it’s surprisingly large, with a big bar up front, and quite a lot of seating in the back.
2) New patisserie, called La Brioche d’Or, about to open on Steinway right next to the Little Morocco sandwich joint, immediately north of the little T-intersection with 24th Avenue. You know in my fantasy this is just the guys from Le Petit Prince reopening under a new name. Damn, that would be sweet. But it would also rock if there was a Franco-Maghrebi pastry joint in the neighborhood.
Which reminds me–it’s Ramadan. So don’t go to Steinway during daylight hours and expect service with a smile, or even service at all. Just wait till the sun sets, and then the party gets started. (Ramadan will be done in the second week of October.)
And, totally unrelated, my alpine strawberry plants had four little fruits on them! They taste just like fake strawberry flavor, just like I remember when I went berry-picking in Norway. So delicious, in a confusing, maybe-I-shouldn’t-really-like-this way.
Hey! This story I wrote this spring, after being totally inspired by my short trip to NOLA, is out in the new issue of Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel.
A little shorter than planned, but that’s always the way with magazine stuff. If you want more colorful adjectives, drop me a line. Or just go to New Orleans yourself. Really, a fantastic place to ride a bike!
Peter came home all teary-eyed yesterday, having sat in a bar and read the new issue of Saveur, which is all about Chicago. He was maybe sad and homesick, but maybe also crying with laughter over Moo & Oink, an iconic Chicagoland grocery store.
Check it:
Best. Suicide. Food. Ever.
I’m a lazy blogger. I rarely have time or inclination to seek out other food and travel bloggers. The ones I know and like have all come to me (The Homesick Texan, A Thinking Stomach, Daily Gluttony, etc) via comments, which I greatly appreciate.
And now, thanks to a comment on a Flickr photo, I’ve encountered another one, which is gorgeous eye candy and a topic after my own heart: Water Boils. It’s dedicated to boxed lunches.
When I was little, I was entirely responsible for my school lunches. This meant I bought a Peanuts-branded sandwich cookbook from that Scholastic catalog in third grade, and learned to make a million variations on peanut butter sandwich. This meant I would take things like canned sardines and Saltine crackers to the cafeteria, in my purple ‘Disco’ lunchbox. I was not exactly popular. But I really liked my lunches.
And now, as an occasional freelancer in the wastelands of Midtown, I still take great satisfaction in packing my lunch. No $7 sandwich for me, thanks. No heaping mound of halal-whatever-with-MSG. Occasionally I get a fussy officemate who laments the presence of garlic, but occasionally too I get a neighbor who says, “Ooooh, that smells great! What’d you bring?”
Anyhoo, I’m happy to see someone else in the world is just as obsessed–OK, who am I kidding, a hell of a lot more obsessed–with boxed lunches. Must get me a tiffin.
(Thanks so much to all the interesting people who stop by here. I need to get out more.)
I’m sure it’s just for legal reasons, but it warms my heart that this Mexican joint on 30th Avenue still has the word ‘Athens’ in its name. It’s been a Mexican place for a couple of years, but it came out of the closet this spring with signs in the window advertising tortas, tacos and more, and switching the open window-service zone to a display of salsas and tasty-looking spiced meats.
Inside, there’s still the bad mirror-mural of the Greek countryside, and even a poster on fluorescent paper saying, “Bienvenidos a Athens Grill!”
The torta rocks, and they have Mexican Coca-Cola. Welcome to the neighborhood, mis amigos.
Check it: I talk (and talk and talk) about New Mexico on this fun podcast, the Amateur Traveler–all in preparation for the forthcoming Moon New Mexico guide (due out September 28). As you might imagine, there’s a lot of discussion of New Mexican food, and a very rambling outline of all the various places you can visit in the state, including Pie Town and Truth or Consequences.
You can download the podcast at the Amateur Traveler website, or go via iTunes–I definitely recommend the iTunes-enhanced version, which includes some great photos.
Many of those photos happen to be mine–I just uploaded a bunch of the pics I used for the book to my Flickr stream. Easiest to see them in the New Mexico set.
I just unloaded all the photos from my phone. Not surprising, they’re mostly pictures of food. Plus a token one of Tamara’s cleavage. And if anyone has any insight into those weird ‘features’ in our hotel room in Turkey, please weigh in.
Someone just emailed me this link for a travel-writing class. Hilarious. I know I’m not doing the ridiculous all-expenses magazine jobs, but people, being a travel writer is just not like this!
I turned in my Egypt travel-guide work at 11:54pm on Friday night–on time by the letter of the law, if not the spirit.
That may seem a little desperate to you, but it felt wildly professional to me.
In fact, I feel like I’ve turned a corner toward a new and responsible me. Not that I was ever really flaky about my work before, exactly, but this was the first time in a long time I actually didn’t mind doing it, and in fact came out at the end not feeling both murderous and suicidal.
But I have such a cool job, I can hear you saying. How can being a globally published author of internationally recognized name-brand travel guides, who gets to galavant all over the planet, make you feel like ripping yourself and other people limb from limb?
Look, have you ever tried to keep track of 8,137 pieces of paper at once, plus try to deconstruct your own handwriting from two months ago, plus wonder where you might’ve written the price of a shwarma sandwich at the most important shwarma-sandwich place in town? Because you wouldn’t have not written it down, right? Uh, right…? And you have to think of yet another way to say ‘pleasant and clean’.
Also, have you ever tried to appear at all times as though you don’t actually have any work to do? Being a freelancer, as I’ve done for seven years, means you carry the weight of the cubicle-dwelling world on your shoulders. Everyone looks at you as a paragon of freedom and happy-go-luckiness.
Back when I first started freelancing, it was easy to live up to the ideal–I didn’t actually have any work to do. I occasionally locked myself in my room and sewed clothes or made collage art, and took pleasure in telling the college kid calling for alumni giving that I, an Ivy League grad, was unemployed. But I could be lured out for a drink pretty much any time anyone asked, provided I could scrape together some quarters.
But over the years, I’ve acquired some occasional responsibilities. But my public persona–which I modeled after the newspaper editor in The Sun Also Rises, who takes it as a point of pride to never appear to be working–was not dealing well with the strain.
Part of this was also a space-management issue–at least for the past couple of years, ever since I got a love interest but lost a room of my own.
See, travel-guide writing isn’t writing. It’s data management, and even though I’m pretty good at that, I still get hysterical when I sit down to work and discover that one of my carefully sorted piles of business cards got mixed in with the morning paper. I also get hysterical when I want to stop working for the day, but everywhere I look, there are freakin’ business cards, notes and maps…and is that a little slip of paper about to slide into the couch cushion and be lost for good?!
But two weeks ago, Peter and I reshuffled the house, and I got a room of my own again! With a door that shuts! I know I shouldn’t gloat (especially since, as I’ve mentioned, I have a pantry as well), but wow, my life has changed in ways I didn’t even expect. I no longer drift, like the Flying Dutchman, across the howling seas of the living room, dining room and sort of half-assed dressing room. I am not a feral worker.
I am a real worker! For two weeks, I woke up at 9:30, sat down to work by 11am, and worked for eight hours straight. (Oh, and then, like 13 hours straight on the last day, but whatever.)
Even though it’s the thing I’ve been avoiding for seven years, I kinda liked it.
I wonder how long this feeling will last?