CAFE TAPEO

Cafe Tapeo has CLOSED... it's now, apparently, an Irish pub. Thank goodness! NYC was running out of those...

CAFE TAPEO
52 Fifth Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11217
(718) 638-1066‎

For the first time ever, Speeds suggested eating outside of her Chelsea neighborhood. Such a rare opportunity was not something that could be passed up and Park Slope was her destination of choice, a neighborhood I hadn't been to in quite some time.

I love Manhattan and miss living there. I love my neighborhood of Forest Hills and recommend it to everyone I know who's looking to move. But Park Slope is a great place. And there's a reason that it's one of the most popular neighborhoods in the city among people in my age bracket. Park Slope has managed to blend community with city in a way that few other places can claim to have been able to replicate. You may not know all of your neighbors, but this aura floats there that you probably could if you wanted to. Monuments, tree lined streets, and one of the best parks in the city draw swaths of the upper echelons of New Yorkers, while dozens of restaurants , bars, and quaint walk-up brownstones draw almost every college grad who doesn't have that Manhattan-or-bust mindset. If the upside of Park Slope is eating and drinking, it's downside is commuting and shopping. There aren't too many retail stores and the supermarkets are... weak. Plus, parking is truly awful.

Cafe Tapeo sits just near the the border of Boerum Hill right near the 2/3 subway stop and Flatbush Avenue. If Queens Boulevard is called the Boulevard of Death because of its volume of high speed traffic, than Flatbush must be the safest street of all time since the traffic can't move at all. I used to hate driving here and still do. It's nothing but double-parked delivery trucks and jerk-off gypsy cabs.

I arrived at Cafe Tapeo about a half hour before Speeds and Mr. Dogz showed up, so I grabbed a seat at the bar where I BSed with the cute bartender/waitress/hostess until they came. I had no idea that the Chimay beers I was ordering were $10 each. Keep that in mind y'all.

We started with an order of Mixed Marinated Olives and the Trio of Warm Grilled Pita Bread with Tzatziki, Skordalia, and Hummus, two great Mediterranean ways to filter the alcohol out of your system... or at least slow it down. The olives were slowly picked at over the course of the meal, but they were olives, nothing to write home about. Get 'em if you like 'em. Don't if you don't. As for the pita dish, the tzatziki dip was delicious, the hummus was quite good, and the skordalia (a lemony mashed potato) was okay. Note the descending order. Alongside these dishes came our orders of Patatas Bravas, a spicy fried potato dish served under a dollop of spicy aioli, and Turkish Cigars, a philo dough pastry filled with lamb, pine nuts and feta cheese. Both of these dishes were incredible, though Speeds felt that the patatas bravas was too spicy for her. Dogz and I didn't agree and ordered another round later on. My only complaint with the Turkish cigars was that we only got three of them. If I didn't have more food coming, I'd have ordered another of these as well.

We also ordered Grilled Baby Octopus in garlic and olive oil, which was good, but not great. The octopus itself was tender, but the sauce it was in derived the majority of its flavor from the peppers it was served with. In truth, if you didn't eat the octopus and the peppers at the same time, it was a rather bland dish. Dogz skipped the dish and Speeds agreed that it was tasty but nothing special. Since it was one of the most expensive tapas on the menu, we suggest getting something else that's better and cheaper. Dogz ordered the Paella de Verdura, a roasted vegetable paella that was heavy and spicy and full of huge chunks of roasted eggplant. I suppose that I would have loved for there to have been a great big hunk of lobster hiding in there, but this was great as it was. Lastly, Speeds ordered the Pumpkin Ravioli with Brown Butter, Mascarpone and Sage. While she and Dogz enjoyed the dish, they felt that the filling was so sweet that it could have doubled as a hot dessert. I was less enthusiastic. The filling was definitely a bit on the sweet side, but it was also dry instead of moist. But, since the ravioli were buried under so much sauce, I didn't even taste the filling the first time. I did however taste the sage, which was quite plentiful and powerful and bitter. I'd skip this plate.

Cafe Tapeo ran out of coffee by the time we ordered dessert, so Speeds ordered an Earl Grey tea and the Flan, which we were told was the secret recipe of the chef's grandmother. In that case, I can't possibly say anything bad about it. But actually, from the bite I stole, it was quite good. Speeds certainly thought so.

Two beers, three sangrias, six tapas, two small entrees, one dessert and one tea, plus tax and tip totalled $135.

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KAMBI

KAMBI
351 East 14th Street
New York, NY 10003
(212) 288-1366

I need to start limiting the time I spend on 14th Street. Maybe M can convince me to go to Brooklyn soon... I've been craving Arthur Avenue Italian... I found an amazing wine bar in Queens that I've been dying to write up...

In the meantime, strategizing exactly how to boycott this particular thoroughfare can get a guy hungry. Cold weather being soup weather, Kambi seemed like a natural destination to plot my next move. Plus, how many places in New York can you eat big bowls of noodles while French show tunes croon overhead? You can't argue with the surreal multicultural appeal of the whole experience.

Much like nearby Ramen Setagaya, Kambi is a ramen noodle house. Unlike Ramen Setagaya, it serves more than one type of ramen and the soups can be customized with sauces and your choice of noodles. Variety, according to William Cowper, is the spice of life.

But taste, I have found, is the spice of food (along with spice), and the taste of Kambi's ramen makes Ramen Setagaya's ramen taste like salty fish oil with noodles. I know that Ramen Setagaya is the preferred ramen noodle shop... according to people more important than I, but my ass will be finding its way to Kambi instead. The soup that I ordered, the Basic Pork Ramen, was far far far less salty and far far far less fishy.

The soup came with a few slabs of pork, a pile of scallions and mushrooms and half of an egg. Was it good? Yes. Was it amazing? No. The noodles were too al dente for my taste and could have used a few more minutes boiling in the pot. The pork was a little too fatty and the texture of the mushrooms were like sucking down shredded earthworm. Still, I enjoyed the soup enough to recommend it to those who want to give traditional Japanese soups a go. Midwesterners, this won't apply to you. My view falls somewhere in-between the two recent opinions of Eating In Translation ("not for me") and Sarah DiGregorio from the Village Voice ("I could drink a bowl of it every day").

I also ordered the Pork Gyoza. They had a seared crust on one side and were soft on the other, like a cross between fried and boiled. They were quite good and although given the length of time that passes between ordering and eating, I suggest that the hungry either get a round of gyoza or bring a Snickers bar.

Kambi sells big bowls of piping hot ramens for about $11.

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NICK'S PIZZA

NICK'S PIZZA
108-26 Ascan Avenue
Forest Hills, NY 11375
(718) 263-1126

I've neglected my domiciliary borough for quite some time. And what better way to get back to my blog's roots than by taking a quick little stop in at Nick's Pizza. especially since I was feeling mighty lazy this evening and didn't really want to travel more than a few blocks. Bro and I departed and, a few blocks later, lucked out by getting the last table open.

For the past who-knows-how-many years, Nick's Pizza has been considered the best pizza in Queens. Plenty of folks have argued that it could be considered the best in the city, if not for the fact that Queens is considered... uh... kinda lame. Even being named a New York Magazine Critics Pick hasn't drummed up too many reverse commutes. Unlucky them, more for us.

Nick's tall copper ceilings and photos circa the Great Depression hearken back to a time when Forest Hills began its tenure as the only swanky neighborhood outside of Manhattan with a subway line smack in the heart of it.

Bro ordered the plain pie and I went for one topped with fresh tomato and fresh garlic. Nick's also has a pretty good sized beer selection, so I grabbed a Brooklyn Lager while bro ordered a microbrew from California that I can't remember the name of.

Nick's isn't like most city pizza. It doesn't sell pizza by the slice, it doesn't crank out twenty plain pies that few toppings get tossed onto before being reheated. It doesn't deliver. Nick's is sort of haute pizza, if such a thing can exist. Pizza, salads, microbrews, and espressos. All of its thin-crusts come with a small touch of that brick oven burn people here love and a healthy dose of fresh basil. The sauce has a distinct bite to it that's instantly lets you know that this isn't something that they poured from a can. The mozzarella is a part of the pizza, rather than the only thing you taste. It's sparse and those who crave ooey-gooey pies where strings of cheese coat your chin can hit up a Papa Johns. But I suggest trying something new.

Nick's pies go for $16 for a large plain. Beers are roughly $4 each. You can leave home without your American Express. Nick's is cash only.

Note, this posting is both here and on my local blog, eateryROW: forestHILLS.

Update: 01/17/2009

My friend, Seth, and I went to Nick's yesterday. It was bitterly cold, as you might remember. Four staff members wandered around, taking orders, cleaning tables, bringing food. NOT ONE greeted us. No one told us how long we would have to wait. No one noticed us standing at the entrance, hovering over other guests. The pizza cooks did, but they didn't tell any of the folks in the black shirts. We stood for, without exaggeration, four or five minutes. Long enough for one table to finish their meal, pay and leave. We walked out when they did and ate elsewhere.

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GEMMA

GEMMA
335 Bowery
New York, NY 10003
(212) 505-9100

Lately, my interactions with Speeds have been brunch related and our conversations pretty much fall into the "Guys suck" and "Girls are crazy" variety. That's fun and all, but it's kind of limited. By which I mean, of course, we needed more than just brunch to vent about the opposite sex. Dinner was a necessity.

Two hours of wandering Borders helping Speeds look for books for her students can build up quite an appetite. But it wasn't enough to merely eat. We're New Yorkers. Merely eating is what animals in the woods and suburbanites at the mall do. In New York, half the meal is the atmosphere in which you eat. Speeds suggested Gemma and I'm glad that she did.

Gemma has the atmosphere that only a city restaurant, in a building older than the city it sits in, could pull off. It's dark, but not black. It straddles the line between romantic and old-boys club. Wood and brickwork and iron is everywhere. Instead of piddling little tea lights, massive pillar candles top each table. Candles are everywhere and candelabras with generations of wax creeping to the floor light the way to your table. Like dining in a steakhouse that used to be a monastery. I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me that the place was haunted.

If my dinner with Speeds was any indication, then there's no group that embodies the Gemma standard customer. We're in our late 20s, wearing jeans. The table next to us: mid-30s, tattoos and t-shirts. The table over there: twelve guys in their late 40s in suits. The table next to them: a romantic couple. Next to them: two elderly women. There were also a rather constant stream of short skirts and stiletto boots.

Initially, we were seated at a quaint little table that I wasn't too pleased with for the simple reason that it was impossible to take decent interior photos from its location. Luckily for me, it was right by an emergency exit door that was occasionally mistaken for being the entrance. This led to a few unexpected blasts of frigid air straight down Speeds' back. We were moved to a warmer table with better viewing angles.

Gemma has a good-sized drink menu. Its cocktail list is of the classical variety. Martinis, Manhattans, Gimlets, and so forth. Plus quite the wine list, of course, with lots of wine by the glass. We did not drink, however.

Dinner began with thick slabs of bread and a saucer each of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, followed by an order of Fritto Misto, a random collection of zucchini, asparagus, shrimp, scallops, and calamari. Speeds loves fried calamari. This is the perfect appetizer for people who want to be healthy but who know that they just can't pull it off. The omega-3 rich seafood and the dark green veggies imply one thing. The boiling oil and batter imply something entirely other.

Next, we went for an order of Chicken Liver Puree Crostini and Truffle Scented Mushroom Crostini. Speeds was not enamored by either, but I was by both. Crostini is toast with a topping and if you don't like that topping, you're probably ordering the wrong thing. For example, liver pates are an acquired taste... meaning that the first time you try it, you hate it, but you keep eating it because sophisticated people like it and you want to fit in. In this case, the liver was sweet with decidedly bitter aftertaste. It wasn't as dry as some pates are and there was a noticeable hint of garlic and pepper. Not that I have any idea what I'm talking about, but it wasn't bad. The mushroom crostini was excellent and I can't fathom why Speeds didn't like it. Delizioso.

For an entree, Speeds ordered the Artichoke, Parmigiano, Truffle Vinaigrette Salad. This isn't your typical salad. Speeds was expecting the artichoke to sit atop a bed of lettuce. Instead it was the lettuce. Never having been a salad guy ,I can't see ever myself ordering one for dinner if given the option and my sampling left me unimpressed. But she liked it and if this is your thing, then you'll probably like it too. For me, I opted for a pasta dish, the Papardelli with Oxtail Ragu. More tender than a Meg Ryan movie, you'd think that oxtail would pepper more menus. The sauce could have been more plentiful, and I can't give too many points for way it looked dumped onto the plate, but Italian restaurants aren't really known for their presentation. It was a delicious dish and I'm glad I didn't go the tried and true route of gnocchi... though there was a pork chop dish I was seriously considering. Next time.

Dessert time. Two coffees arrived, but that goes without saying. If I were a hiker, I'd probably fill my canteen with the stuff. Speeds ordered the Torta di Cioccolata, a warm chocolate cake with a vanilla gelato. I could set my watch to her dessert choices. If it's not chocolate, then it's tiramisu. If it's not tiramisu, then its chocolate. This cake was a variation of the lava cake, with a normal, brownie-like shell and a moist, gooey inside. I thought it was too dry for my liking, as dark, rich chocolate things usually are, but Speeds schooled me with a "what are you, crazy" look, and I proceeded to dig into my dessert, the Rice Pudding. Some rice puddings come in the soft variety, like a regular pudding. Some come like this one, like a cake. Gemma's rice pudding was served in a citrus glaze and walked the perfect line between sweet and sour. Speeds didn't like it. Whatever. She had her precious chocolate.

Our meal: three appetizers, two entrees, two desserts, two coffees, no drinks, tax and tip totalled $92.

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