We’d like to take a break today from our usual recipe posts to highlight a few restaurants around New York that we’ve had the chance to check out lately.  We’ve been safely venturing out and dining outdoors to support some of our city’s eateries, and so we want to show you two places we recently enjoyed.  These spots couldn’t be more different in terms of what they serve:  one offers up cuisine from Russia and its surrounding countries, while the other focuses on lesser-known Chinese dishes that you probably won’t find at your local Chinese counter.  But what they have in common is their neighborhood – the Lower East Side, where these two restaurants are just about half a mile from each other.  So we’ll show you some of the delicious things you can eat at each place, but just be warned that there is some meat featured here.

Our first visit was to Tzarevna, which opened just about a year ago.  Most of their menu is centered around Russian food, so we got ourselves two different types of dumplings.  These are the potato vareniki that Miriam ordered …

… and here are Cyril’s Siberian dumplings, stuffed with veal and pork.

We also split a side of potatoes and mushrooms, topped with garlic, scallions, and dill.

And of course we had to try the most impressive thing on the menu:  the khachapurri, a Georgian dish made from a cheese-filled piece of bread, with an egg cracked into the middle.

Now if you’re looking for something a little bit different, you can head a few blocks south to where the Lower East Side meets up with Chinatown and check out Wu’s Wonton King.  Everyone there seemed to be ordering giant feasts composed of many different dishes, so we thought we might as well do the same thing.  We ordered some dim sum in the form of these vegetable spring rolls …

… plus some crispy tofu.

Cyril also got a bowl of their famous wonton soup – this one is shrimp, pork, and watercress in a bone broth.

Then Miriam had the crispy pan-fried noodles with vegetables.

And Cyril had the golden fried rice, which is made with – well, we couldn’t figure out what specifically was in it, just a little bit of everything.

We liked that both these places gave us the chance to try some unique foods:  at Tzarevna, we got some classic Russian dumplings but also a cool and unusual Georgian bread, and at Wu’s Wonton King we had a few Chinese dishes that we’d never previously seen before.  But what we like even more is that these restaurants are a microcosm of what you can find in New York – after all, by walking just half a mile you can sample excellent foods from two very different places in the world.  If you happen to find yourself on the Lower East Side, and you want to check out some great local and independent restaurants, these two spots are a good place to start.

Where We Ate: Gargiulo’s & Piccola Cucina Estiatorio

We love trying out all different kinds of restaurants in New York, so much so that we’re not letting COVID stop us.  We’re continually seeking out places that are new to us and are offering outdoor dining so that we can safely sample all kinds of foods.  To that end, we recently went to two Italian places that we want to feature today – one very old-school place in Brooklyn and one much newer place in Manhattan.  We ate a lot of delicious things that we’re going to show you here, but be warned that there’s some images of meat here.

If you head all the way down to Coney Island, just a few blocks from the ocean, you’ll come upon Gargiulo’s, which has been open since 1907.  There’s a lot of classic Italian-American dishes to be had here, so we tried a bunch of things – first, this hot antipasto dish, made up of mozzarella-stuffed fried eggplant and zucchini, topped with artichoke strips and roasted red peppers.

We also shared the rice and spinach balls …

… and the soup of the day:  an onion broth topped with mozzarella garlic bread.

Then Miriam had their eggplant parmigiana.

Cyril tried the veal marsala …

… and a side of the fettuccine verdi, topped with a pink mushroom sauce.

And finally, we split a cannoli.

Of course we love classic red sauce joints, but we also decided to try something a little more modern, so we headed up to Piccola Cucina Estiatorio.  The restaurant is one of three Piccola Cucina locations in Manhattan (plus there’s a fourth in Ibiza), and this one focuses its menu on Sicilian food.  We got another eggplant parmigiana there, but this one was a little different than what we were used to:  each eggplant slice was folded in half, with ricotta cheese in the middle, and the whole thing was topped with a pink sauce and Parmesan cheese.

We also split some mozzarella en carrozza, which is mozarella sandwiched between two slices of bread and then fried.

Then Miriam had the bucatini cacio e pepe:

While Cyril tried the fusilloni, with lobster in a burrata cheese and tomato sauce.

And we finished off with some panna cotta topped with a passion fruit sauce.

You can see that we got a huge variety of delicious Italian foods:  at Gargiulo’s, we had a bunch of classic Italian-American staples, and at Piccola Cucina we sampled some updated versions of pastas and other dishes from Italy.  We got two different experiences, plus a very long subway trip almost to the beach, and both places were interesting because they encompass the wide variety of Italian food you can get in this city.  The two restaurants have outdoor dining going on right now, so if you want to get out of the house and try something new, we’d definitely recommend these two spots.

Where We Ate: Kokomo & Reunion

We are so, so thankful that restaurants are opening up and getting back into the swing of things right now, and even though only outdoor dining is allowed at the moment, the warm weather and sidewalk space around the city are allowing for restaurants to get creative and serve as many people as they possibly can.  That means we’ve been trying a bunch of places, and today we’re going to feature two restaurants in Williamsburg that we’ve checked out in the past few weeks.  These two spots are about half a mile from each other and serve very different cuisines, showcasing just some of the excellent foods from a variety of cultures that are on offer in Brooklyn.  Before we begin, we just want to note that there is one image of meat in this post.

The first place we went was Kokomo, a new restaurant near the waterfront that gets its name from the Beach Boys song about a fictional island in the Caribbean Sea.  Caribbean food can sometimes be meat-heavy, but thanks to the influence of Rastafarianism in the region – which encourages its followers not to eat animals – you can often find at least a few vegetarian menu items at restaurants.  So here’s what we started our meal off with:  a flatbread, cooked in a wood-fired oven, topped with the region’s famous Rasta Pasta.  Essentially, it’s a baked dough covered with pasta and peppers in a creamy sauce.

Then Miriam had lentil meatballs over a ginger and coconut curry sauce.

And Cyril went with the braised oxtails.

Now if you head a few blocks east you’ll get to Reunion, a local Israeli restaurant.  Like the Rastafarians, Jewish people also interpret parts of the Old Testament as a guide to how they should eat, and Kosher law requires that meat and milk products should never be a part of the same dish.  That rule has given rise to a wealth of vegetarian Israeli foods, so that those who keep Kosher can enjoy dairy without worrying about contaminating their food with meat.  We were able to eat a completely vegetarian meal at Reunion, starting with this crispy cauliflower marinated in a spicy harissa sauce.

Miriam tried the falafel burger, with a side salad …

… and Cyril had one of the specials of the day:  beet ravioli, stuffed with mozzarella and labneh (a type of Middle Eastern yogurt), in a creamy sauce.

We were so happy to see both of these places open for sidewalk dining, and we’re glad we got a chance to try them out.  Since both Caribbean and Israeli cultures look to the same part of the Bible for guidance on food, both these cuisines end up being a pretty good bet for vegetarians, and these two spots really showcased good meat-free dishes.  There’s a lot a restaurants you can visit in Williamsburg, but we chose Kokomo and Reunion because of their unique offerings, so we hope this helps you figure out some places in the neighborhood to support right now.

Where We Ate: Cardamom & Masti

New York is no stranger to Indian food:  the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens is sometimes called “Little India”, and the area of Manhattan on Lexington Avenue between 27th and 28th streets has been nicknamed “Curry Hill” for all the Indian restaurants located there.  There’s also tons of small takeout shops and food carts selling all manner of Indian dishes all over the city.  In other words, you’ve got tons of options here when it comes to Indian food, and so in that vein we’d like to highlight today two places we recently discovered.  One is in Brooklyn and the other is in Queens, but they’re both easy to get to on public transportation so you can check them out at your leisure, as we did.

The first place we’d like to show you is Cardamom, a small restaurant in Sunnyside.  They specialize in dishes from Goa, a wealthy Indian coastal city that spent centuries as a Portuguese colony.  We started our meal there with this lasuni gobi, which is fried cauliflower in a tomato-garlic sauce.

Then we decided to dive into their selection of Goan dishes, which blend traditional Indian and Portuguese flavors together into foods that are unique to that area of India.  Here is the xacutti that Miriam ordered, with vegetables in a spiced coconut curry:

And Cyril decided on the Goan fish curry, which is also made with coconut milk.

And speaking of curry … down in Williamsburg is a brand new Indian food restaurant called Masti, which has an entire section of its menu devoted to various curries.  Of course we each had to try one:  Miriam got the phall with vegetables, which is made with several different chiles and is one of the spiciest curries they serve.

And Cyril tried the Bricklane curry, with lamb in an onion and tomato base.

To accompany our meals, we also got an order of samosas …

… and the house papadum, which is a crispy flatbread made from lentils.

Yes, that was a lot of curry, but who doesn’t love this classic Indian dish?  It’s a great vehicle for vegetables or meat, and it’s warm, rich, and nicely spicy.  We enjoyed trying several different curries at these two restaurants, especially since all of these were new varieties that we’d never eaten before.  Masti was nice and close to where we live, and Cardamom allowed us to try things from a specific region of India whose food we hadn’t previously encountered.  We enjoyed both of these places and we’d specifically recommend that you try something new when you go to either of them.  And don’t forget to check back later to see other local restaurants that we’ve visited!

Where We Ate: Peri Peri Grill House & Ciao, Gloria

If you’re a follower of our blog, you know that while we love to post recipes, we also enjoy discovering all the different and unique food New York has to offer and then sharing it with you here.  That’s what we’re going to do today:  we’ll highlight two different restaurants we visited recently that are awesome quick lunch spots in Brooklyn.  These two places also aren’t very far from each other, but the cuisines they originate from are pretty diverse, so you can have your pick of good food from around the world.  We want to warn you, however, that we are going to show some meat in today’s post.

We first got to visit Peri Peri Grill House in Bed-Stuy, which serves a menu centered around the peri-peri chili.  This spicy pepper originated in Central Africa and was adopted by the Portuguese who colonized that area, and it’s now most famous as the chili used by the British quick-service chain Nando’s.  Here at Peri Peri Grill House they use the spiciness of the pepper in a variety of items, so we got ourselves a sampling of a few things.  Here we have a Beyond Burger (on the left) and a regular burger (on the right) topped with cheese and served with peri-peri-flavored sauce and mayo, plus some fries dusted with peri-peri spice and wings marinated in more peri-peri sauce.

If you’re not down for spicy food or burgers, wings, and fries, you can head one neighborhood over to the area just above Prospect Park and find Ciao, Gloria, an Italian-influenced cafe.  We went there for a quick brunch one morning, so we got a mix of different foods there.  Here, for example, is Miriam’s AVEC sandwich, made with avocado, cheddar, and a frittata on a brioche bun.

Cyril, meanwhile, had a Sicilian sandwich with prosciutto, salami, mortadella, capocolla, provolone, and an olive tapenade, all on focaccia bread.

And we also split one of Ciao, Gloria’s baked goods:  a oatmeal cream pie, made from two oatmeal raisin cookies with vanilla cream in the middle.

We think these two spots really represent well all the different foods you can get in Brooklyn – on the one hand, you have typical fast food fare that’s been upgraded with a unique pepper spice blend; and on the other hand, you’ve got some gourmet Italian sandwiches and desserts.  Both are great places to grab something quick and tasty, so if you’re ever in these two neighborhoods check them out.  And if you’re looking for some other recommendations, come back soon for our other picks of good restaurants around New York.