Eating In Translation

Burmese Food Bazaar

It's not often that the tofu brightens up the salad.

Pecas y Más

Somewhere between fruit salad and frappe.

Arsi's Pateseria

Sunnyside offers some scenic views to the west, but don't overlook what's right under your nose. A supremely flaky cheese pastry was just a small sample of the homemade goods at this Romanian-Armenian bakery and café. Soups, salads, and sandwiches are available, too, but be sure you get a good look at what's fresh from the oven.

In the photo above, Arsi's is the maroon awning, all the way to the right. As with most photos on Eating In Translation, click to visit its Flickr page, where you can see "all sizes" and get a much better view of the streetscape.

Arsi's Pateseria
39-39 47th Ave. (39-40th Sts.), Sunnyside, Queens
718-786-3276

Euro Shop

"Hungarian smokehouse specials...everything is homemade!" proclaimed the handwritten sign out front of this little market. My first visit was too close to closing time, but I managed to snag four of these little rolled pastries ($1.60 total), one each of apricot, plum, raspberry, and (shown here) walnut. Good, and likely much better earlier in the day.

Baruir

Some Armenian preserves are spreadable, but more often than not the fruit floats freely in syrup.

Crete Restaurant

(This venue is closed.) Crete must be ancient history, I imagined, but that's what a southern exposure on wide-open Queens Blvd. will do. Even though the food seemed uninspiring — "Steaks" and "Chops" suggest Cretan owners, perhaps, but not Cretan cuisine — I hoped that a web search might just possibly unearth a menu. On that front I had no luck, but I was surprised to discover that the restaurant had shut its doors relatively recently, in September 2006.

Less surprising: Of the first ten search results for crete restaurant 4311, only Urbanspoon indicated that Crete was no longer a going concern, and then only through a reader comment. The other nine were oblivious to its fate; on several, you could still "be the first to submit a review." Even after its sign has crumbled away completely, it's likely that Crete Restaurant will linger in web limbo.

Surviving signage from Crete Restaurant
43-11 Queens Blvd. (43rd-44th Sts.), rooftop level, Sunnyside, Queens

Nita's European Bakery

Largely a Romanian bakery, by the looks of the newspapers behind the counter, though one was in Hungarian and another two or three eluded quick identification. One my first visit, this poppyseed square ($1.25) packed loads of moist filling between two dense, buttery layers. A curious savory item — a corrugated sheet (about $6.50 per pound) that had a buttery sheen, a sprinkle of cumin, and the texture of a pretzel left to fend for itself in humid weather — suggested that next time I might be happier with the sweets.

Point taken: Nita's Linzer torte cookies ($1.10) are right on target. Named after the Austrian latticed pastry, the twinned cookies are often flavored with hazelnut or almond; raspberry jam is the customary filling, though I've heard that red currant sometimes makes an appearance.

Nita's European Bakery
40-10 Greenpoint Ave., Sunnyside, Queens
718-784-4047

Superior Market

Primarily a purveyor of Russian packaged goods, plus meats, cheeses, and breads; today, the baked Easter specialty called kulich was still showing its head. Also: good variety of Eastern European beers; guava paste and other such incongruous products from Latin America; dozens of seedless watermelons that found floor space where they could; Russian pop radio as a backing track.

I can't read Cyrillic characters, but in context with the packaging, "kakao" ($1.49) is straighforward enough. Not bad, but only when mixed with an equal amount of sugar.

Superior Market
40-08 Queens Boulevard, Sunnyside, Queens

El Triangulo

Colombian restaurant and bakery — spacious for the neighborhood, which suited our large group today — though my slice of cake with breva (early fig; $2) had spent too much of its brief existence in the refrigerator case. Coffee ($1) was good.

El Triangulo
44-08 Greenpoint Ave., Sunnyside, Queens
718-786-5919

Tulcingo Bakery

Nice spread of fresh-baked breads and pastries, plus a small selection of some of the deepest-green vegetables you'll ever see. Delicia brand horchata concentrate (32 fl. oz., enough for 2 gal.; $4), from Mexico, offers rice, vanilla, and especially almond and cinnamon flavors. Too sugary on its own, but might play off well against salty summertime cooking.

Tulcingo Bakery
43-16 Greenpoint Ave., Sunnyside, Queens
718-786-5534

Carniceria "El Paisa"

Castipan brand rollitos de guayaba con arequipe (one dozen guava and milk caramel rolls; 12 oz.; $2.99), from Colombia, offer two great tastes that taste great together. Take that, peanut butter and chocolate!

Carniceria "El Paisa"
45-10 Greenpoint Ave., Sunnyside, Queens
718-784-0430

Guagua Pichincha

(This venue is closed.) Until I saw the big red capital letters that spelled out "FANESCA," I hadn't given thought to this Easter-season specialty since I read Calvin Trillin's homage in the New Yorker. After all, I had no plans to visit Cuenca, or anywhere else in Ecuador, anytime soon.

Turns out that fanesca — a hearty vegetable stew that here includes hard-boiled egg and salt cod, with a side of white rice and a tangy hot sauce — is widely available in Queens, from Corona to the eastern fringes of Sunnyside, though only for the final two or three days of Holy Week. And where would Calvin eat? On a drizzly Good Friday afternoon, I couldn't imagine a more restorative bowl than the fanesca at Guagua Pichincha. Make a note for next year.

Guagua Pichincha
43-07 48th St., Sunnyside, Queens
718-565-9470

Han Yang Supermarket

(This venue is closed.) Fair-sized albeit routine Korean market, with decent selections of meat, fish, produce, and packaged goods. Haitai brand ume plum juice (8.05 fl. oz.; 99 cents), from Korea — actually just 10 percent plum juice, from concentrate — has an appearance and flavor closer to apple juice.

Han Yang Supermarket
49-05 Roosevelt Ave., Sunnyside, Queens
718-458-8052

Turkiyem Market

Nice mix of goods for a relatively small grocery, including a wide variety of pale Turkish cheeses. Uludag Gazoz (11 fl. oz.; $1), from Turkey, looked like lemon-lime; later, I read on the Uludag website, the company describes Gazoz as "clear lemonade." Carbonated, with a bananalike overripeness about it, too.

Turkiyem Market
46-31 Skillman Ave., Sunnyside, Queens
718-937-3456

Romanian Garden

Since the fireplace in the large back room was unlit this evening, I sat up front, where a couple of regulars added their own commentary to the day's soccer highlights. I started off with mamaliga cu brinza si smintina ($3.99), a soft, slightly grainy yellow polenta smothered with very salty grated cheese and dressed with chilled dollops of sour cream. It's a very heavy appetizer, best split four ways, or more.

I wasn't expecting a platter, let alone such a pretty spread, when I ordered ostropel de pui ($8.99), chicken stew with red garlic sauce. The chicken is very tender; the sauce, mild, though I expect the kitchen would accommodate special requests from garlic lovers. For a side, my friendly server suggested mashed potatoes to sop up the sauce; as for the sliced white bread on the table, I gave it a pass.

For a group lunch on another occasion, we ordered an appetizer platter of drob, an Eastertime meat loaf dotted with greens, lamb liver and heart (bland, to my taste); fasole batuta, a bean spread enlivened with fried onions; salata de vinete, an eggplant salad with raw, chopped onions; and cirnaciori oltenesti, crisp pork sausages also offered as a (surely popular) entrée.

My entrée that day was another Easter specialty, a hefty hunk of lamb ($12) braised in a savory sauce, perhaps with red wine. Typically for Romanian Garden, it was straightforward, even workmanlike, but also very gratifying.

Romanian Garden
46-04 Skillman Ave., Sunnyside, Queens
718-786-7894

Sunny Grocery

This "European-American-Turkish" grocery is mainly Turkish, even to the selection of videotapes near the cashier. Dilek brand black mulberry confiture (380 g.; $2.49) has a flavor not unlike a less-tart blackberry; the berries themselves are generally intact, often large.

Sunny Grocery
45-20 Skillman Ave., Sunnyside, Queens
718-937-6256