STEPHEN LYLE

Bites of Brooklyn

Brooklyn is frickin huge and there is an awful lot to get your arms around food-wise. I am always attracted to anything that harks back in a direct line to before food got cute, and happily there is plenty that isn’t cute in Brooklyn.

Among my favorite Brooklyn food memories was last summer’s bike ride down Ocean Parkway to Coney Island, with a good friend. We ate outside at Tatiana, the biggest Russian place on the neighboring Brighton Beach boardwalk. I highly recommend the explosive house specialty salad, a kind of Greek salad affair but with xtra spicy peppers, lots of onions, diced salami, feta and olives - all washed down with pale Russian draft beer. Heaven. I like a dish that bills itself as a salad but actually has tons of cured meat in it. For balance, we added a very generous platter of smoked fish, but beyond the salt, their fishy flavor was a little washed out. We were served by a delightful lass with a heavy accent that was very likely Russian. For a long time, the United States had an agreement with the Soviet Union whereby they would send us their less desireables (our waitress not included) in exchange for letting us win at chess every 47 years. Many of them settled in this neighborhood and let me tell you, these folks don’t tolerate any pablum on their menu. At Tatiana, you’re only  45 minutes away, but a in world apart from Midtown Manhattan.

http://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/tatiana-restaurant-and-nightclub/

Another joy of Brooklyn is the Polish sausage stores. While somewhat one-dimensional style-wise, their sausages are masterfully textured, seasoned and smoked. They always seem to have just the right (large) amount of garlic and pepper.  Ask for the thin little smoky “hunter” ones. Buy a jar of Polish mustard and dip. Now try to stop eating. Not possible. Jubilat, out in Windsor Terrace, is among the best, and other very fine ones can be had in the older neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

http://209.85.215.104/search?q=cache:ryXXzRy9tHMJ:www.ediblebrooklyn.net/content/pages/issues/fall2006/homeCooking.pdf+jubilat+sausage+brooklyn&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us

A couple of years back we had a nifty dinner in celebration of my eldest daughter’s high school graduation at Bamonte, a hundred year old Italian throwback in Williamsburg. This is the sort of place that is so comfortable in its traditions, that you can let yourself relax into them like an old armchair. Their idea of antipasto is two inch chunks of provolone and salami doused with a little cheap olive oil. Then it’s on to huge platters of calamari, fried by someone with an advanced degree in that demanding subject. The key with fried calamari is to use fresh, not frozen.  You need to get a light breading to stick to it, (milk then fine corn meal works well),  and you fry it for about 15 seconds in screamingly hot oil. OK now you know. Have the mussels in red sauce. You can order from eight kinds of scaloppini. Friendly advice: you might want to be nice to all the old men you go by at the bar, on your way back to the dining room. 

http://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/bamontes/

More recently, on another bike ride, I was introduced to the fabled Spumoni Gardens, on Avenue U since 1937. I know you are picturing frothing ice cream fountains, leaping under a grape-laden arbor, attended by bacchanalian statuary. Well my friend shut your eyes to keep that vision firmly in your mind, because not much that is terribly green grows in this part of Brooklyn.  A low brick building with picnic tables out under a large awning are all the garden you are going to get. But order some of the vanilla almond cremolata spumoni (spumoni is an egg white lightened version of ice cream) and it will become clear why they have been there since 1937. And if you can get a better, larger seafood salad at your local ice cream place, let me know. All the ingredients were perfectly, tenderly cooked and impeccably fresh. Handfuls of fresh basil and parsley with just a touch of vinegar signaled that preternatural understanding I always treasure most. It’s then assured touch that’s beyond words, whereby the cook, and his ancestors through him, make it the way they always have and always will, beyond the capture of even the concept of a recipe.

http://www.spumonigardens.com/