Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Guerrero Food Center

On Location - Sunset Park, Bklyn

Guerrero Food Center beckoned me as a potential chowhounder’s find on Brooklyn’s 5th Avenue. It’s a small Latino grocery store with a tiny kitchen tucked into the corner, a few plain tables set out next to the grocery shelves, hand written menus under the festive garlands which may or may not be leftover from Christmas, all under the watch of the Virgin Mary in a shrine perched on high.

I like to judge a place by its tacos and I’m just looking for a cheap snack. My lengua taco has long fried strips of tongue, not the hacked thicker bits I’m used to from TECC, and there’s not much taste to the meat. The cilantro and salty salsa verde are the dominant tastes. When I find myself walking by a few days later I enjoy my lamb taco a bit more. The meat is heaped on the two tortilla shells on my plate—more than enough for me to separate the serving into two tacos. The lamb is greasy and gristly, but tasty and well cooked, all I’m looking for from a $2 snack.

While the tacos are okay and cheap, there’s added value to my trips to Guerrero. There’s a jar of free NYC issued condoms on the kitchen counter to help myself to. The ones with Subway line lettering I’ve only heard about but not seen myself. There’s enough to go around, so I help myself to several handfuls under Mary’s watchful eye. Mother of Christ, avert your modest eyes! Warning, condoms are not 100% effective. They cannot protect against immaculate concepciones.
Guerrero Food Center
722 5th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

Dumpling House - NY Chinatown


On Location – NYC Chinatown


I barely recognized The Dumpling House I was seeking when I first walked by. In fact, I almost walked by the place. It looked too nice. There’s no signage. But with Eldridge Street otherwise dead on a freezing Sunday night, I stepped inside the cozy looking eatery to check out the space. Lo and behold, the menu let me know that this was the very kitchen I was seeking.

More on the dumplings later, because the best reason to come is the Sesame Pancake Sandwiches. Huge circles of the sesame loaf sit behind the counter waiting to be carved and stuff. Less than $2 nets a triangle the size of a slice of pizza, split horizontally, and stuffed with your choice of vegetables, roast beef, pork, tuna, or Peking duck! Peking duck sandwich, $1.75! But it’s the pancake itself, freshly baked over an inch thick, intensely flavored by the smoked sesame seeds that make the pancake one of the best and most unique snack finds in Chinatown.




The hand-made dumplings are dirt cheap and what the budget minded crowds come for. One dollar gets you four fried pork ones (with chive or cabbage). Much like the effect that 10 cent buffalo wing nights have on me, I now feel I can never order dumplings anywhere else knowing they’re only 25 cents a piece here. Though while the cheap wing nights often mean a drop in quality, this mecca (see restaurant name) follows the opposite path.

The pouch is large, the dough with just the right amount of chew and not too thick. Though not soup dumplings per se, the dumplings ooze a little liquid. The morsels of pork are spiced well but you’ll want to apply the soy and Sriracha on the tables around you for some added kick. You can get your dumplings boiled instead, and it’s the same price per piece, though the minimum order there is 8. For non-pork eaters, vegetable, chicken, and shrimp versions are available for a few more quarters. Those who want to recreate the dumpling house experience at home can take home a frozen bag of 50 for $8-$12.


But now eating in, or at least ordering, is a much more pleasant experience. The successful business (as featured in all prominent NY papers and magazines, so points out the menu) has consumed its neighboring space, knocked down a wall and completely refurbished its interior. Formica has been replaced with smart mahogany paneled counter, wooden tables and several chairs to linger over. Luckily, the row of industrial, well used steamers and fryers in the open kitchen haven’t changed a bit.

Dumpling House
118A Eldridge Street

Monday, January 14, 2008

Restaraunt Week at TenPenh

The Passion Food restaurants are among DC's best to visit for Restaurant Week. They do it right, offering practically their entire menu with few upcharges. TenPenh is certainly the best RW week participant close to my Federal Triangle office (I'm not a fan at all of Chef Geoff's). So when my party of 4 other co-workers all bailed on me at the last minute, I cancelled my reservation, but headed over for lunch anyway.

Appetizers were abbreviated from their menu; basically all the selections that cost less than $10 were fair game. I couldn't pass up the lobster bisque "with lobster salad garnish." The bisque, satisfying and not overly thick or rich, was well balanced and nicely complemented by the lobster meat on top. That meat sat on top of a crispy fried wonton wrapper which sat on the soup. And that was the salad (I was envisioning something on a plate). The spring rolls next to me have three fun looking dipping sauces but are amongst the more oily food items I've seen. But that doesn't mean they don't look good! Mmm, high-quality grease!


The Hong Kong Style Crispy Whole Catfish is what I came for. They'll remove the head and tail if you want, but half the fun is having the whole 1 foot+ long creature set before you, battered, fried, and ready to be chopsticked apart. The skin is perfectly seasoned and ready to eat as is. The flesh is cooked well, but needs a dip in the chili tamarind garlic sauce it's served with. Catfish is no cod, but it's just pretty bland if not dressed up. A cucumber salad that comes with the dish features the cuke peeled into long ribbony slivers. The dressing doesn't inspire; its pretty much an Italian vinaigrette and you wish that a place known for it's pan-Asian ingredients would go somewhere more creative. Most of the dressing runs from the salad to the underbelly of the catfish, but the unintended bath tastes good on the fish.
The eatery does a pretty brisk takeout business, apparently and are happy to give me my Yuzu and Citrus tart with strawberries and Chantilly cream to go. It's waiting for me in the fridge!

The catfish is regularly $17. So I basically got soup and a dessert for $1.54 each. And the fish at lunch is a steal, with no upcharge. The only two RW upcharges are $12 for Chinese Style Smoked Lobster and $9 for whole crispy fish on the dinner menu (both are listed as market price on the regular menu). With the upcharge, I'd presume they're serving a more prestigious fish in the evening. Other dinner entrees start as low as $15 for a vegetarian hotpot, but average $26.

It's the first time I've thought to dine alone at a restaraunt bar. With the practice often extolled by WaPo's Tom Sietsema and others, I decided not to let my co-workers' cancellations ruin my reservation. The bartender was charming, efficient, and we even got to trade stories about our multiple Obama sightings at the restaurant.

TenPenh
1001 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Café Berlin: Not Entertained

I’ve wanted to check out Café Berlin for a while. Don’t think it’s ever made any sort Best of DC lists ever, but it gets marks from some bloggers as a decent option for German cuisine in DC. And it’s one of the more intriguing and local options in the Entertainment Book that I keep getting every year. Buy one meal, get one free.

The meal confirmed a lesson I should know by know; if you’re giving out buy-one-get-ones in the Entertainment Book, you’re probably a terrible restaurant. This is especially true in the District. Out of the way places need help getting the word out. In the big city, if you’re good, people will come. The good, the bad, and the embarrassed feeling you get whipping out a discount card to get a free meal are worthy of a separate post or three. So I’ll devote the rest of this entry to panning a lousy restaurant.

Bread was a bastard cousin of a loaf of French bread—the kind that’s rubbery, dry, and characteristic of a cheap deli or a lousy German restaurant. You couldn’t see any meat on my plate of sauerbraten; four razor thin strips of tasteless beef drowned in the sweet, red sauce. Served luke-warm, parts of the sauce became gelatinous before the meal ended. Topped off with a gloppy, discolored, reheated potato dumpling was the cherry on top of a failed rendition of this German classic. Nothing like the version or pictures described here. Where's my parsley and carrot stick garnish?! The from-a-can red cabbage served on the side was not at all surprising.

Mom fared a bit better with her jagerschnitzel. The moist cutlet of pork was generous, though not particularly flavorful. The spaetzle and side salad the dish was served with were worthy of Deutschland’s most lackluster cafeteria.

The waiter was well versed in serving up diner pet peeves. The fact that I was hungry certainly didn’t indicate I enjoyed what I was eating, but I cleared my plate. “It looks like we had fun,” he bussed our dishes. It was a slap in the face, considering I thought it was one of the worst meals out I’ve had in some time. No way I was going to order another bite there, but with my Mom’s blessing, he brought over the dessert tray. A flat blueberry tart, a gooey marshmallow fluff cake. Gross! Nothing looked at all appealing and when I said I didn’t want anything, what was his reply? “Oh, that’s too bad.” Are you kidding me? You’re gonna judge what I do and don’t choose to order? If I need another bite of cafeteria food, I’ll grab a scoop of Jell-O at the salad bar at lunch tomorrow.

Cafe Berlin
322 Massachussettes Avenue, NE
Washington, DC

http://www.cafeberlindc.com/