It's the restaurant meme, yay!
Add a direct link to the post below the person who tagged you. Include the city/state and country you're in.
Jacob Da Jew
Lakewood, New Jersey, USA
List the top five favorite places to eat at your location.
(Which doesn't parse very well. Maybe "the top five favorite places in your locale." Or perhaps "your five favorite local eateries". See? It's awkward.)
Anyway, Lakewood (Ir Hakodesh) doesn't exactly overflow with restaurants, which is incredibly odd to a person coming from Flatbush, as I am. Nevertheless, I was able to assemble six good places.
In no particular order:
J II Pizza:
This is one of the few places in Lakewood that could survive on its own merits in a more cutthroat restaurant environment, like Brooklyn for example. The pizza is good, New York style pizza- thick, chewy crust, thin dough that gives a satisfying snap! when you fold the slice in half, plenty of cheese, and good sauce. They have an adequate selection of pizza toppings, like green pepper, red pepper, onion, chewy canned tin flavored mushroom-like food product, and onion. You can also get calzones, cheese pretzels, and what is in my opinion the best falafel in Lakewood. The new location is huuuuge (by Lakewood standards) and looks nice. Seven out of ten.
Glatt Bite:
Good old fashioned fast food. Wants to be Kosher Delight when they grow up. They never will be, but it isn't bad. The lunch specials are incredible- a huge amount of food for a reasonable price. Get the Double Delight with Fries and a Small Drink for something like six or seven bucks. Also, try the sesame chicken, the pastrami schnitzel, the hot wings, and the chicken ceasar salad. Stay the hell away from the fung wong guy and the beef ceasar salad. Six point five out of ten.
SubStation:
The first kosher sandwich place located in a gas station in America, to my knowledge. A foot long sub (deli, schnitzel, steak, or grilled chicken) is like eight bucks, and comes with unlimited
toppings. The bread is delicious, not the flavorless meat-and-vegetable container most sandwich places give you. The cholent is flavorless. Never ever order the egg roll. Six point five out of ten.
Circa-NY:
The morons who run this place looked at Lakewood and saw a town full of hungry snobby Jews desperate for a restaurant where they could see and be seen, and responded with a beautiful, soulless place which is like the Soviet Union's version of Orchidea- whatever you want, they're out of, but LOOK AT THAT DECOR, WILL YOU, I BET IT COSTS A FAWTUNE, IT'S GAWGOUS, GEVALT I FEEL MAMESH LIKE A ROCKEFELLAH!
Then why is Circa on this list? Simple: Their world class sushi bar. Better than Tea for Two. I recommend the Lakewood roll. Eight out of ten.
Pittaleh:
From it's top secret, highly classified location (in the parking lot behind the jewelery store across from the post office between the refrigerator and the wall), Pittaleh makes the best schwarma in New Jersey, possibly the country. That's right, I said it: it's better than Famous Pita. All pita and lafa is made on -site, and they keep it in a Styrofoam thingy so its warm. Mrs. Chainik is partial to the schnitzel. Nine point two five out of ten (they lose points for not having falafel... in a freaking Yemenite/Israeli restaurant).
Tasty Bite:
Pretentious and annoying women living off their Tatty's money while their husbands drink coffee in the BMG and smoke and shmooze love Tasty Bite. Since firing all the nasty waitresses and hiring all of Uncle Mike's old staff, service has done a 180, going from "worse than a Ben Yehuda coffee shop" all the way to "deserves a higher-than-usual tip". A tip, btw, is added to your bill, because these nasty JAPs do not have the requisite empathy and/or brainpower to understand the concept of tipping. Go on Wednesdays; they have a Couples' Special: two salads, two entrees, two drinks, and two deserts for thirty bucks. For bonus funny points, watch the yeshiva boys come in and try and get the couples special.
Tasty Bite allegedly has sushi but they are always out of sushi whenever we go there. Try the nachos. The teriyaki salmon and the greek salad are both excellent. The cheesecake is less so. Seven out of ten.
Yes, that's actually six restaurants. So sue me. I'm a nonconformist, baby.
Dishonorable mentions:
Falafel and Chips
Effin' Chips is actually not that bad, but the place is unbelievably filthy. To walk in there is to contract a minor but annoying GI infection. Try the cholent, but not during summertime.
Summertime is when the bacteria come out to play.
Negative three out of ten.
Kol Tuv Pizza at the Capital Hotel
The Crapital is the worst food vendor to ever exist in Lakewood, and if you've ever eaten at the now-defunct Madison Pizza you'd know that that is one heck of a contest. If you have to choose between eating a falafel from The Crapital or starving to death, go with The Crapital... but think long and hard if its worth it. Negative seventeen out of ten.
Now, I'm supposed to tag five lucky bloggers, but I doubt I have that bug a readership. Five? What am I, Instapundit?
Here goes:
Brooklyn Wolf
Ahistoricality
Dofun Akuma
Da Litvak
And... oh... I don't know
Rubin.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Restaurant Meme (in which I cheat).
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Shock Report: Goyim may actually be human beings, new study suggests. Satmer not convinced.
A Conservative Rabbi from Minnesota has come up with what he calls a "hechsher tzedek", a certification testifying to the company's commitment to social justice issues.
Now, I've said it before and I'll say it again- hearing "justice" from a liberal is like hearing "freedom" from a conservative, a code word meaning you aren't going to get any. And The Forward is the one hyping this, and their beef (ha!) with Rubashkin is well known, as is PETA's.
Now, as an evil neocon, I support the abuse of workers and the torture of animals and burning orphanages and so forth. Also, most if not all of the meat in my freezer is from Rubashkin- they are, after all, the largest kosher meat company in the US. But, as much as I hate hippies (and Rabbi Morris Allen seems like a prime example of the type), he might have a point.
I am an alarm installer, and I do a lot of installations and maintenance work for a lot of Jewish owned businesses in New Jersey and New York. Many if not most employ illegal immigrants, and treat them like dirt. I know they get paid peanuts and get abused constantly.
How do I know this?
I never quite learned the trick of treating certain people differently, I guess. I know you are supposed to treat your social inferiors a certain way, your peers another way, and your social betters yet another way, but I've never been able to pull this off.
That's right. I talk to Mexicans like they're human beings, not like they're horses who have unaccountably learned to talk and wear clothes but are still fit for nothing but drudgery.
I get told things most employers never hear.
This hechsher tzedek may not be a bad idea after all. Maybe a movement in the heimishe velt to learn how to treat other people like human beings btzelem Elokim (see this post) is something that is sorely needed.
H/T Y-Love
Friday, May 25, 2007
The stuffing is the ikur.
There is no such thing as a potato blintz.
There. I said it. I have stated this as a hard, unequivocal fact.
The only real blintzes are cheese blintzes. Cherry, cherry and cheese, strawberry, blueberry, apple-cinnamon (my personal favorite)- all these are pale imitations of the One True Blintz Stuffing, which is cheese.
Grated or mashed potato stuffed in dough is called a knish. So let it be written.
What is the difference, you may ask?
The accompaniments, of course. Blintzes are served with sour cream. Knishes are served with deli style mustard. It doesn't matter if anyone actually eats the sour cream or the mustard- I've happily eaten knishes with no mustard, just like I've eaten falafel with no techina- but it mamesh does not pas to serve blintzes with no sour cream, just like serving latkes with no apple sauce is a booshe despite the fact that it tastes just fine stam.
Ai, you can say that knishes are fried and blintzes are baked, but I can show you Gabilla's knishes (no website), which are both fried and baked and are delicious.
You can tell me that blintzes are rectangular and flat, whereas knishes are either round (pizza shop style) or square (Mom's Knishes)- but I tell you that this is no reiya, because a food is a food even when you change its shape. We learn this out from Italian slices, which everyone holds is still pizza even though it is puffed up and square and not flat and triangular.
And bourekas are no reiya, either, because I hold the same thing by bourekas- stuffing potato into dough makes it a knish whether it is square, round, or in the case of bourekas, triangular.
You can ask me what makes a boureka different from a blintz, and I can answer: you serve a boureka with schug, tomato salad, and a hard boiled egg.
Calzones are clearly the work of the Satan to confuse people, and I have serious doubts on what bracha is appropriate- and in any case, it is part of the pizza family.
If you ever wondered what your husband/ brother/ son does all night in the BM on Shavous night, now you know.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Falafel Chicken
Last night we had falafel chicken, which recipe I got from Kosher by Design: Short on Time by Susie Fishbein. And behold, for it was goooooood.
I was pretty simple to make, and it was delicious.
You need:
One and a half chicken breasts, split and cut into strips.
One box of dry falafel mix.
Extra Virgin olive oil.
One tomato.
One cucumber.
Tehina (I prefer the new Salatim brand. They don't seem to have a website, but I first saw the brand in Lakewood supermarkets around Chanukah time.)
Pita.
A deep skillet.
Two bowls.
A wooden spatula.
Metal tongs.
A fork.
Directions:
Pour one third of your dry falafel mix into one bowl and the other two thirds in the other one. Split your chicken breasts and cut into strips. Roll the chicken pieces in the bowl with less falafel mix. Pour some warm water into the bowl with more falafel mix and stir until you have a spreadable paste. Mix well and set aside. Make sure it stands for about ten minutes. Pour olive oil into the skillet until it is filled up about half way and heat it to medium. While it is heating up, finely dice the tomato and the cucumber.
When the oil is hot, dip the chicken pieces into the wet falafel mixture so that it is evenly coated on both sides. Place the chicken into the skillet carefully, not touching any other piece. Let it cook evenly on both sides, turning them over with the spatula. When a piece is stiff enough not to bend when you squeeze it with the tongs, take it out of the pan and put it on a plate covered in paper towel.
Serve in a pita with tehina and diced vegetables. Serves 2.
Status: Meat
Time: 40 minutes (taking the ingredients out of the fridge to serving)
Difficulty: Beginner
Cleanup: not bad. Only used a few utensils, though washing a skillet with an inch of oil in it is a bit of a challenge. Keep the heat on medium and the serving dish close to the pan so oil does't splatter everywhere.
Overall: a keeper. Serve informal guests on a Sunday night when barbecue is not an option and you have enough advance warning to air out the apartment after cooking but not enough warning to go shopping. Frying falafel mix makes your apartment smelling like the 415 bus to Yerushalayim. Then again, your guests might not mind that.
