Red Hook Recommendations

Time Out New York's Recommendations on Van Brunt Street here.

Places like Saipua, a floral shop that makes its own soaps, are mentioned.

New Rooftop bar in Park Slope

The Rock Shop: Park Slope's new bar with rooftop area.  It also has a pool table and flat screen TVs.  But they don't want to call themselves a sports bar.

Pickle & Stick

{brooklyn flea & ny mag}

Black Swan

{bed-stuy blog & ny mag}

Black Swan, 1048 Bedford Ave., nr. Lafayette Ave.; Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn; 718-783-4744

Bed-Stuy Fish Fry

{bed-stuy blog}

Bed-Stuy Fish Fry (801 Halsey Street, between Ralph and Howard Avenues)

Mile End Delicatessen

Bagels from Montreal in Brooklyn (on Hoyt and Pacific)

{looks good to me and mile end delicatessen}

Choice Market

just opened in DUMBO.

{brownstoner}

Balkan Food

I enjoyed reading Jane Kramer's various thanksgiving adventures abroad in the New Yorker (rather belatedly...just read it this past weekend).  She recounted some of the worst Thanksgiving dinners and named the Sodertalje dinner the absolute worst.  Her dinner guests that year were from Yugoslavia, working in a local factory in Sweden.  She figured a dinner with all its heartfelt intentions and loving physical labor could set aside ethnic conflicts between the Serbs, Slovenes and Croats.  It turned out to be very awkward and the turning point for this was when a Slovenian woman boasted that her people made the best cake.  Such a innocuous comment, but it goes to show how food is so important to our culture and identity.

Anyway, I had Yugoslavian food in Croatia and then again at Kafana in the East Village.  It's rich and I definitely want to try the other ones listed in a NY Times review of the Balkan Burgers:

[...nytimes]

BOSNA EXPRESS 791 Fairview Avenue (Forest Avenue), Ridgewood, Queens, (718) 497-7577.
BROTHERS PIZZERIA 30-50 14th Street (30th Drive), Astoria, Queens, (718) 777-1111.
CEVABDZINICA SARAJEVO 37-18 34th Avenue (38th Street), Astoria, (718) 752-9528.
KAFANA 116 Avenue C (Seventh Street), East Village, (212) 353-8000, kafananyc.com.
PASHA 31-01 31st Street (31st Avenue), Astoria, (718) 726-0230.
STARI MOST (OLD BRIDGE) 28-51 42nd Street (28th Avenue), Astoria, (718) 932-7683, oldbridgeny.com.
EMPLOYEES ONLY 510 Hudson Street (Christopher Street), West Village, (212) 242-3021, employeesonlynyc.com. The restaurant has an untraditional (but delicious) “Balkan burger” on the late-night menu.

The List: Cheap Eats in NY

There are so many places I want to try from this collection of affordable restaurants in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens.  Like Crown Heights' Trini-Gul's bake and shark, a roti (fried bread) packed with seasoned fried shark bits.

[...NYTimes]

Trini-Gul: 543 Nostrand Avenue (Herkimer Street), Crown Heights, Brooklyn; (718) 484-4500.

Re-Brooklyn

Re-Brooklyn has gorgeous photos of past and present Brooklyn

Here's Adam and York in 1927:



And the same site in 2009:

To Do

Sunny's Bar (in Red Hook)

Ayn Rand's New York (walking tour)

Wire (new album)