Catania Cafe - Brooklyn

Sicilian Breakfast is an Eye Opener!
Back in Brooklyn!!!  Man it feels strange - I've been away since July.  As usual, things have changed here and there.  A Sicilian cafe named Catania has opened up around the corner, in a bad luck spot that's housed many failed pizza shops.  Based on my breakfast, the luck has changed.  Permanently.  I arrived at 8am on the dot, right when they were pulling hot things out of the oven.  It was so good that I ate the equivalent of three breakfasts in one sitting!

Dough - Brooklyn

Bus Worthy in Bed-Stuy
As the B38 bus rumbled over potholes, I had a good feeling.  I suspected I'd be adding Dough to the "bus-worthy" list.  To be bus-worthy means I'm willing to ride a bus to eat at a place.  If you've never lived in NYC, the worst way to travel is by bus; they're crowded, slow and attract a high percentage of nutjobs.  To be bus-worthy is the highest compliment I can give.  Only Baked in Red Hook was on the list, but now they've got company.  Dough's donuts are so good I didn't even mind taking the bus back home.  They offer interesting flavors like hibiscus, passionfruit, chocolate earl grey and lemon poppy but being a coffee guy I picked one called "cafe au lait."  It was so big and puffy I could've used it for a pillow.

Blue Bottle Coffee - Brooklyn

Sometimes Less is Smore
It's all fun and games until it backfires.  I'm talking about the trend where you take an old favorite, break it down and build it back up with fancy-schmancy ingredients.  Case in point: the uptown smore I got at Blue Bottle Coffee.  It sported a name card explaining how the graham cracker was made from scratch, all the better to house the hand-crafted marshmallow and single-source cocoa bean chocolate sauce (I'm exaggerating.)  Sorry, but when I think of smores, I think of this.....

B&B Empire - Brooklyn

Two Makes a Trend: Montreal-Style Bagels
I worked in Montreal some years back but it wasn't until Mile End opened that I tried a Montreal-style bagel.  Where my doctor's office once stood, there's now a new place called B&B Empire.  They hand-roll and bake theirs on site, exactly where a female doctor once cupped my sac and asked me to cough.  Come to think of it, I haven't been to a doctor since.  As pervy as this sounds - a bagel with Montreal style is usually skinnier, sweeter and has a bigger hole.

Zuzu Ramen - Brooklyn

Traveling Changes You, Sometimes for the Worse
From a very young age I wanted to travel.  As soon as I graduated college I got a Eurail pass and bounced around Europe for a summer.  I even did a 41 day stretch on the trains, sleeping upright in the seats and pulling into a new town every day.  Now I split my time amongst three continents and am constantly amazed by it.  I've learned more from travel than from any classroom.  Unfortunately, it's spoiled me.  I cannot eat Mexican in Paris (sorry Candelaria) or croissants in New York.  I'm stubborn about ramen, even though I've slurped it many times in Tokyo and should know better.  My latest disappointment was at Zuzu, where they plied me with gyoza with skin as tough as a rawhide football....

Van Horn Sandwich Shop - Brooklyn

Love is Four Letter Word: P-O-R-K
I've been away from Brooklyn for three long months. Enough time for someone talented to plop down an excellent southern-style sandwich shop near my apartment.  They call themselves Van Horn and they must have sold their souls to the devil.  They made me a pulled pork sandwich for lunch that singlehandedly removed both my jetlag and the bonechill I'd acquired on the walk over.

Slavyanskiy Bazar - Brooklyn

Attenuating the Jetlag Recovery Formula
It's only a slight exaggeration to describe my life as being composed of two halves: jetlag and recovering from jetlag. I have different formulas depending upon the direction.  From Paris to Brooklyn: no sleep on the flight, stay up late, up early the next day, get out of the apartment and stay away until nightfall.  Today was that "next day" so I went deep into Brooklyn to a neighborhood called Gravesend and had some Ukranian food at Slavyanskiy Bazar.  It's a food that I want to like but it never cooperates.

Fast & Fresh Burrito Deli - Brooklyn

Diamond in the Rough
I should have my food blogging license revoked since I've walked by this place for years and didn't once poke my head in.  In my defense, all outward appearances suggest it's your typical NYC deli/bodega - the kind that you find on almost every block.  Little did I know that Fast & Fresh Burrito slings some of the tastiest tacos outside of Sunset Park.

Baked and Mile End - Brooklyn

Revisiting Some Old Favorites
It's a struggle when I come back to NYC - do I hit all the new spots or mix in some old favorites?  In the end I do a bit of both.  I've already gone to Iris just about every morning - Tyra Banks keeps sitting next to me but I don't read anything into it (no, I didn't take a photo of her, this in NY not LA.)  Another of my favorites is Baked in Red Hook.  I measure all cupcakes against theirs and none has taken their crown and probably never will.  Some of you will mock me: "the cupcake craze is over!"  I know what you mean, but really, some things never completely go out of style.  It would be like saying "geez, I sure am tired of pussy."

Kappa Sake House - Brooklyn

It Really is a Sake Bar...
....but we didn't realize, we saw the phrase "home-cooked Japanese" and thought Hibino.  We'd just spent an hour at Four and Twenty Blackbirds eating pie and now we wanted some lunch.  Yep, we tend to put dessert first, you never know when you'll absentmindedly step into traffic.

Cafe Luluc - Brooklyn

Best Pancakes in Brooklyn?
No, I wouldn't go that far - but best pancakes on Smith Street, for sure.  The Puffin just arrived from a 20hr Singapore to NY flight and a pancake breakfast at Cafe Luluc was near the top of her list.  The conversation went like this: "Babe, I just flew half-way around the world, are you gonna make me pancakes?"  Me (eyes rolling): "Yeah, I have to go buy ingredients, if you don't mind waiting."  Her: "Never mind, we can go to Luluc."  She brought me a present - a new camera.  The kind that's not dummy-proof, so forgive me as I try to learn the right combination of aperture, focal length and ISO (and I'm not even sure those are the correct terms...)

Pies 'n' Thighs - Brooklyn

The Good, the Bad and the Stupid
Back when I had a great life in Brooklyn, I lived close to my boys Geppie, Hatebean, Clinks and Froggy.  We hung out, played sports, joked each other and laughed non-stop.  One by one, they grew up and moved away and Brooklyn's never really been the same.  I'm still here and still immature, which can be a lonely feeling.  This weekend we had a rare "Brooklyn flashback" and everyone except Geppie made the trip.  As usual, they had no eating ideas so I talked them into a breakfast at Pies 'n' Thighs.

Four and Twenty Blackbirds - Brooklyn

They'll Shut Your Pie-Hole
After reading about Four and Twenty Blackbirds over and over on Blondie and Brownie, I jumped the R train to check it out.  Just a few posts ago I wondered if anyone could make a pie in this city, now I have my answer.  I'm a sucker for any salty-sweet combo and their salted caramel apple pie hits all the right notes - flaky homemade crust, tender apples that aren't overly sweet and a salty aftertaste.  I knew this was my kind of place when they confirmed that they make their own whipped cream.

Karloff - Brooklyn

Swiss-Knife Cafe
Everyone who walked in did what I did - looked around, a bit confused, trying to figure out the newly opened cafe that took over the old Tea Lounge space.  They want to cover all the bases, serving a strange mix of Eastern European comfort food, ice cream, baked goods, coffee and even smoothies.  I didn't stay befuddled too long, I was coming off an eight-hour conference call and was starving.  I glanced at the menu and chose the first thing I saw - chicken meatloaf with mashed potatoes.

Naruto Ramen - Brooklyn

Memorable, for the Wrong Reason
I'm no food expert, and I definitely don't know much about ramen. But as it turns out, it wasn't necessary at Naruto. Four hours later I still have a stomach ache, just like I did at Minca in the East Village. It's as if the ramen got to my stomach and wove itself into a tight ball and refused to move any further.

Iris Cafe - Brooklyn

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Paris Posts...
...to go to the best place on Earth - Iris Cafe. I dreamt about their breakfast all night, about the sticky buns, the coffee and the bacon. This little place has captured my attention like no other. They make food that's the culinary version of a sharp head-butt to the face or a punch in the stomach that knocks the wind out of you. The flavors are strong and memorable - there is no "suggestion" of this or "hint" of that.

Brooklyn Farmacy - Brooklyn

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River Deli - Brooklyn

Don't Be Thrown by the Name
River Deli is not a deli and it's not on a river. It's a newly-opened restaurant that specializes in Sardinian cuisine. Yes, Sardinia - that island in the Mediterranean just to the left of Italy's kneecap. The Pingles has been hankering for pasta so this place was a godsend - they got pasta in spades, some familiar and some less so. An example of the former was this perfectly portioned tagliatelle with meat sauce.

Goods - Brooklyn

Big Yawn
Willyburg, restored trailer, american basics: biscuits, hash browns, coffee. Totally underwhelming - not even worth writing a full review. I'll summarize it like this - you spent too much time on your shiny trailer and your nice (yet not open for some reason) yard but you shoulda spent more time on the food. Next!

Photo Credit: Michael S. from Yelp

Lorimer & Metropolitan
Williamsburgh, Brooklyn

Bark - Brooklyn

Thanks for Wasting My Time!
Oh, and you owe me $4.25 as well, but I won't hold my breath! Dodomode, I don't know where my anger comes from - I wanted to bash in all the windows of this place. I was so damned hungry and their menu made me salivate - bacon, egg and cheese on a roll, side of hash browns! They were supposed to open at 9am, but nope, not open - still dark. I even waited for 15 minutes, nothing. Hello, guys - this is New York Fucking City, there are 700 other places I can get breakfast, ones that pay attention to the small details like opening on time!! A round-trip subway ride for this bullshit? I went right back to the Heights, back to my local deli, which is open 24 hrs a day and got a bacon, egg and cheese whipped up in 30 seconds. Locavore that!