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Despite chili, cheese, bacon, and onions, the Sparky Dog ($4) came off like a lightweight, with little bite. I believe them when they say "family-farmed, organically raised," but it didn't hit me like "chow."
Sparky's All-American Food
333 Lafayette St. (Bleecker-Houston Sts.)
212-334-3035
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(This venue is closed.) Pla muk yank ($7.50), BBQ squid served here with tamarind sauce topped by crushed peanuts, has always been a favorite of mine. Thailand Restaurant (as this jury-duty standby is also known) used to grill what I thought of as a squid steak, a flattened tube and tail sliced into strips. The current serving is certainly smaller but just as tender.
As for sliced steak, I found it in more typical form in yum nurr ($8.50), a salad seasoned with shallots, cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatos, lime juice, and chili — perhaps a new favorite. Disappointments: kai yud saie ($7.95), a bright yellow omelette stuffed with minced shrimp, chicken, tomato, onion, and bell pepper, was runny and bland; mee grob ($5.50), fried crispy rice noodles in sweet and sour sauce, and pad thai ($6) were nothing special. Decent Thai iced tea ($2).
Pongsri Thai Restaurant
106 Bayard St. (at Baxter St.)
(one of several locations)
212-766-0939
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The sushi counter up front isn't for me, and perhaps the selection of Japanese goods is sparing, but they co-exist comfortably with larger offerings of Chinese and Thai. Among them: haw offered in slices, rolls, "globus," and "hamburger."
Por Kwan sour soup base mix (16 oz.; $1.75) also promises that you can make yourself a tamarind soft drink. One teaspoon of syrupy mix, three teaspoons sugar, and a glass of water, and you might think you were knocking back an instant iced tea. I'll keep playing with the proportions.
Tongin Mart
91 Mulberry St. (Canal-Baxter Sts.)
212-962-6622
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Perhaps the hand-pulled noodles with beef in hot and spicy soup would have been a better choice, but I had mutton on my mind ($4). Noodles were nice; the pounded-flat slices of meat might well have been mutton, but they had too little flavor for me to be sure.
Super Taste
26N. Eldridge St. (Canal-Division Sts.)
212-625-1198
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The upstairs room of this tiny restaurant brought "Being John Malkovich" to mind; after climbing a steep, cramped stairway, Jim and I found we couldn't stand upright. With Sue, Kathi, and Gil, we did manage to settle in around a table for five; complementary drinks managed to keep us comfortable during the hour our food took to arrive. (Perhaps delivery orders take precedence in this barren zone near the Brooklyn Museum.) Good curried goat platter (small; $8), including especially tender cabbage; the very sweet homemade lemonade ($2) had ginger overtones.
Elsewhere at the table, stew chicken, jerk chicken, and oxtail platters were good; "calypso shrimp" was a little too coconutty for me; mac and cheese, perhaps steamed, was insubstantial; roti was doughy.
The Islands
803 Washington Ave., Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
718-398-3575
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(This venue is closed.) This Georgian takeout joint also has four seats at the window, if you're just passing through. That's where I had at my harcho ($3.99), a spicy and oily soup with tomato, onion, lots of cilantro, and two fatty hunks of lamb. A quarter-slab of lavash was indifferent; even when it came to soaking up soup; the harcho itself was appetizing but not filling. Judging by the continued flow of what seemed like regular customers, however, this might be a good place to provision a picnic on the beach.
Mimino
1111 Brighton Beach Ave., Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
718-934-2600
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Few meats, many sweets, vast number of offerings in open bins. Dogonay brand salgam acisiz (sweet fermented carrot juice; 500 ml.; 99 cents), from Turkey, is prepared from purple carrots blended with turnips; it tasted like salty beet juice. This was the "sweet" variety; I'll leave it to someone else to sample the "hot" version.
Vintage Gourmet Specialty Foods
287 Brighton Beach Ave., Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
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(This venue is closed.) Relatively small, hubbub-free store whose owners, judging by the name, hail from Turkey (like Ukraine, Russia, and Georgia, it borders the Black Sea). Not a huge selection, but a good place to pour yourself a cup of coffee and, perhaps, pick up a bargain, like these very lemony wafers (100 g.; 35 cents) from Belarus.
Efe
243 Brighton Beach Ave., Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
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(This venue is closed.) Good meat and prepared-food counters, as well as a large sweets section plus a bakery counter upstairs; although you can sit down at one of two tables with your coffee and pastry, Southern Deli is more for takeout. I took a taste of "tarchun" (330 ml.; 99 cents), but sadly this Russian soft drink had little hint of the namesake tarragon.
Southern Deli
239 Brighton Beach Ave., Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
718-891-6569
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(This venue is closed.) For a pre-movie lunch with friends, I ordered the lamb souvlaki ($10.50) in pita with lettuce, tomato, onion, and tsatsiki, that garlicky yogurt sauce. The meat was very lemony and didn't taste enough of lamb; the included shoestring fries, split 50/50 between regular and sweet potato, were OK. So was sakoulas ($5.25), a dessert of dense, tart yogurt topped with walnuts and a little honey.
Niko's Mediterranean Grill & Bistro
2161 Broadway (at 76th St.)
212-873-7000
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Thank you!
