Uncle Nick's

small vs. large 4 dips
At my current job we order lunch for delivery every day. For six months it was a blessing, now it’s a curse. We’re all sick of the selection at this point, but there’s one place that I never tire. Uncle Nick’s (747 9th Ave. 212. 245. 7992) has some of the best tasting and most reasonably priced Greek food around.

The first time I ate Uncle Nick’s food was about 5 years ago when I worked at Esquire. My favorite dish is the basic Chicken Kabob ($8.95), also known as Kotopoulo kebob. It’s just chicken, but the chunks are big and juicy. They’re grilled with tomato, peppers and onion then placed on a bed or rice. You substitute the briam, which is just potatoes, tomatoes and zucchini. They also have swordfish kebob, but those are $12.95 and over our ten dollar limit and delivery can sometimes make the fish dry.

I’ve also eaten at the actual Uncle Nick’s restaurant. They have a nice garden out back and the seafood is really good. I loved the grilled baby octopus ($9.95), but if you’re squeamish, don’t order it. The tentacles are complete with suckers and a satisfying red purple color. I also love their 4 dips ($8.95). Theirs was the first taramasalata I’d ever had and it’s wonderful. Fluffy, creamy with a hint of fish roeness. Yum, it’s dare I say, better than buttah!! They also include Tzatziki, the yogurt, garlic and cucumber dip, Melitzanosalata, which tastes like babaganoush eggplant dip, and skordalia, a cold mash potato garlic dip.

This delivery photo doesn’t do justice to the food, but it will have to suffice for now. My camera is broken. If you ever do order the Greek salad (Horitiki) get the small size. The small is $5.95 and it’s huge! The photo is a comparison of the large and small size.

I love how the Greek language adds about 3 more syllables and 6 vowels to each of their words. Here’s a cheat sheet:

Arnisio-lamb
Mosharisio-beef
Hirino-pork
Kotopoulo-chicken
Solomos-salmon
Saganaki-cheese

Azuri

It's been almost 2 years since I've spoken to my friend, Marsha Cottrell. No bad blood, just preoccupied. Marsha is a kick ass artist and foodie. We met up one time at a place that is now one of my favorite places to eat in town.  Marsha described Azuri Café (465 W. 51st St. bw 10th & 11th) as a hole in the wall run by a real NYC character named Ezra Cohen not unlike the soup Nazi in that Seinfeld episode. Apparently he can be a real grump, but you know he must be a good man-how else could his food taste so great?
 
The falafel is always freshly fried and the side salads served on a platter or stuffed in a pita are fresh and delicious. No brown iceberg lettuce in sight! Each mound of salad has its own distinct flavor: red cabbage slaw, tabbouleh, eggplant, pickles, tomato cucumber. My favorite is the eggplant.  I'm not sure how it's prepared, either roasted or braised, but it has a meaty texture with a delicious sweet flavor. Azuri's sandwiches go beyond anyone else's because of the array of salads they stuff into a pita. 
 
Azuri's pita bread is also excellent. This is no thin Damascus Bakery pita. It's a thick, wheat-flecked round that has to be cut with a knife to make a pocket. The thickness ensures that the juices from the salad and/or meat don't sog the bread. If you get a platter, you'll use that bread to clean every last morsel off the plate. It's just that good. 
Everthing at Azuri is great. It's kosher, so it's not open on Saturday, but it is open on Sundays. The food is not only delicious, it's also healthy. Well, maybe not the fried cauliflower, but at least that's cheap! Sandwiches are $4-7 bucks and large platters which are perfect to share are $9-13. Just thinking about the Azuri flavors makes me hungry. I think I'll call Marsha up to meet at Azuri Café. 

My favorite pasta isn't Italian

Chinese restaurants that are owned by Koreans often have a noodle dish called Cha Chjun Myun. I grew up eating an instant version of these noodles, which are sort of a thicker version of ramen. They come fried, dried and packaged, with a separate sauce packet and an optional palm oil packet. My mom would add green onions and maybe some leftover ham from breakfast. She called them black noodles because the sauce is black. Once on the noodles the sauce is actually brown so my sisters and I called them brown noodles.

When I was five, we went to Korea and that’s when I first had authentic, freshly made brown noodles. There’s nothing like the real thing. The instant variety doesn’t have the chew of the fresh noodles against the teeth or the silky dark sauce that splashes everywhere because the noodles are so long. Chunks of onion, some vegetables and meat add an extra dimension. The combination is unforgettable and so much better when fresh.

The noodles are sort of a Chinese Korean version of spaghetti, but they are always served with a dish of bright yellow sweet radish pickles and of course, kimchi. In some restaurants, they will serve the black sauce with raw onions as an accompaniment. I don’t know how to describe the sauce, but let me tell you how I think it’s made (based on what I’ve gleaned from my mom):

Of course, the amazing soybean is responsible for Cha Chjun Myun sauce. Mica and I will do a show on soy. It’s really underrated and undervalued by the average American. We must change this. I heard somewhere that the US is the biggest producer of soy. It's not just for hippies or cattlefeed! But I digress…

My mom remembers watching her grandmother make homemade tofu, soy sauce, miso and cha chjun. It’s basically a process of fermentation. After soybeans are ground and pressed, they become a block of tofu. Age that block with water and other stuff and it becomes soy sauce. That block of beans eventually becomes miso. Ferment it further and the liquid becomes soy sauce and when the block has become black, it’s cha chjun.

How to describe the taste for those of you that haven’t had it? It’s difficult. It’s salty before cooked, but once onions are added the taste is mellow and rich. I can’t do the sauce justice. Just go to Kum Ryong at 30 W. 32nd (bw 5th & Broadway) and order the Noodles with brown sauce ($6.50 for a big bowl). If you’re in a seafood mood, get the seafood version ($7.95). Kum Ryong’s American name is Golden Dragon.

I always wonder if the Caucasians wonder what everyone else is eating in those big white bowls. I want to tell them to try the noodles instead of the beef with broccoli. I think white folks would be pleasantly surprised if they try the Sweet and Sour meats. The Korean version isn’t bright red or have the ketchup or pineapple chunks that Americanized Chinese restaurants serve.

Kum Ryong was renovated a couple of years ago. It used to be rather dreary with its odd fake tree limb decoration and gross splatter of past cha chjun myun on the walls. It’s now slick and clean with a big window that displays ladies making dumplings (mandoo) and handmade noodles. The process of noodle making is absolutely hypnotic. I have tons of video of this. I also couldn’t help but photograph this funny sign in the bathroom.

Here's a great link that defines the dish better than I do, it also spells it differently. I can only spell Korean food phonetically.
Rober Sietsema from the Village Voice's review of Sam Won Gahk diner in Flushing is good. I couldn't get the link to work, I think it's because it's an archive article. I dunno. Cut and past this link to read the review. www.villagevoice.com/nyclife/0407,sietsema,51070,16.html.
This is a blog from a girl in LA that I thought was good.

Enjoy and if you want to eat some noodles with me, email me and I'll take you!

Fish Tales

I’ve been riding my bike along the East River every chance I get, and I’m fascinated by the people that fish along the park. As a kid, we went fishing whenever my grandfather visited. The best trip was when he caught an ancient snapping turtle when we camped in Canada. I think the most anticlimactic fishing experience was at a fish farm in Virginia. Catching those fish did them a favor by putting them out of their misery. Even though the fish were swarming in that pond, they still tasted really good. Of course, that’s the best part about fishing. Eating them. Recently I spoke to my friend Derrick about why he hates fish, but I still don’t get it. I have tons of yummy fish memories. I vividly remember when my childhood neighbors, the Stenhams, brought home a huge catch of smelts and fried them up. I’ve never had smelts that good in any of the New York city restaurants. When we lived in Atlanta, my family went to this one Chinese restaurant where we’d always get the Hunan style fish. The dish is an entire fish head deep fried with a delicious brown sauce. My dad would always gross us out because he’d eat the eyeballs and say it was good for his sight.

I’ve been shy about approaching the fishermen along the East River, but yesterday I had to stop when I saw a man’s pole bent from the weight of some catch. Riding closer, I realized he had only caught some seaweed, but I felt comfortable about asking him and his friend about fishing in the city. The friend said that the water in the East River is clean now, but it’s up for debate about the silt at the bottom of the river. He said that some people believe that if fish were born in that silt, they might be contaminated, but if the fish were born upstate in the Hudson, they were fine. I’m not sure how you can tell the difference, but it didn’t seem like they cared. The other fisherman told me that he had been fishing last Saturday around 7 am and he was home eating his 36 inch fish by 10am. He then went on to tell me that the next day he went to Battery Park and caught a 42 incher and sold it to an Egyptian restaurant for $35 in his neighborhood. Exciting but a little scary, no?