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(This venue is closed.) Wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, plus many prepackaged deli items for Upper East Siders on the go. The housemade fig yogurt (8 oz.; $2.99) isn't the thin, creamy commercial product you'll find at the supermarket; it's thick, even pasty, and loaded with fruit flavor. Take yours with or without granola, in flavors including mango, papaya, plum, and orange.
Likitsakos Market
1174 Lexington Ave. (80th-81st Sts.)
212-535-4300
A melange of orzo salad, beet salad, and field greens (60 cents per ounce) and a plastic cup of recently squeezed carrot juice (about 16 fl. oz.; $3.50) were fine, but certainly not fine art.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Cafeteria
1000 Fifth Ave. (at 82nd St.), ground floor
(museum admission required)
Closed Monday
The olives, cheeses, sausages, and other deli items are predominantly Greek, but Mediterranean Foods also offers savories and sweets from the Middle East and Near East as well as Southern and Eastern Europe. A little expensive, but well-kept and freshly stocked, even to the open tins of fish on the counter, and worthy of repeated exploration.
Soutzioukkos (shown; 500 g.; $5.99) — a traditional sweet from Cyprus that also appears in various forms from the Levant to the Black Sea — congeals sweetened grape juice around a string (literally) of almonds. Even a single six-inch "log" might prove tedious for any one person: the flavor, though pleasant, tastes far more of grape than almond, and the rubbery texture is very resilient.
On a previous visit: The chimneysweep and other illustrations on my bag of Pionir brand Negro Odzacar Gala (100 g.; 99 cents) suggested filled, licorice-flavored hard candies; they proved copper-sulfate blue, with more of a menthol taste.
Mediterranean Foods
30-12 34th St. (30th-31st Aves.), Queens
(one of two locations)
718-728-6166
Girdled by a thick, gnarled crust, this "homestyle" spinach pie (slice; $3.50) delivered a satisfying supply of feta, but onion was disappointingly absent.
Astoria Bakers
33-14 30th Ave., Astoria, Queeens
718-267-0416
Look past the pretense, such as a blackboard list of "provisioners," and credit Brgr for a milkshake so dense that only a professional horn player could hurry it along. From a base of Ronnybrook Dairy vanilla ice cream and milk, some shakes stay in the neighborhood of vanilla, strawberry, or black and white; others venture off toward orange, mango, or blueberry-pomegranate (shown; $5.50).
Brgr
287 Seventh Ave. (26th-27th Sts.)
212-488-7500
(This venue is closed.) Often 86'ed by early evening, the burnt end dinner is a crispy, juicy jumble of twice-cooked pork brisket.
Free Wi-Fi plus the beverage of your choice (caffeinated, alcoholic) near the Northwest Passage out of Central Park. Late-evening desserts were limited to cookies from an apothecary jar, such as this chocolate-chip peanut butter number (about $2).
Café Amrita (formerly Saurin Park Café)
301 West 110th St. (near Frederick Douglass Blvd.)
212-222-0683
This container was packed tight, but the store is roomier and better-stocked than many other Middle Eastern groceries in the borough.
Linger a few moments before the display case and its amazing array of Middle Eastern mezze, and you may wonder how you'll ever narrow down your order. (Your server will happily provide all the guidance you could want, but perhaps it's easier simply to bring along a few more friends.) The basics — housemade za'atar bread, smooth lemon-and garlic-scented hummus, and lightly smoky babaghanouj — are exemplary; you'll also find the babaghanouj layered on the crispy eggplant napoleon (top photo; $6.50) and topped with chopped tomato and basil salad.
A deceptively humble "salad" of browned cauliflower buds (middle photo; $5.50), topped with tahini sauce, pomegranate syrup, and parsley, is easily shared but best positioned within arm's reach. Also highly recommended: musakhan ($6), to all appearances a personal pizza topped with chicken, caramelized onion, sumac, spices, roasted nuts, and olive oil.
Leave adequate room (and give the kitchen 20 minutes' notice) for the knafeh (bottom photo; $12), a dessert of shredded phyllo stuffed with sweet cheese, baked, and topped with syrup and pistachios. Sharable by six, though at my table I'd insist on fewer, fatter slices.
Tanoreen
7704 Third Ave. (77th-78th Sts.), Brooklyn
718-748-5600
Closed Monday
(This venue is closed.) One of the few places in Bay Ridge — formerly home to a sizable Scandinavian community — where you can still find lingonberries, lutefisk, and several varieties of the soft-bodied, sweet, caramelized cheese product called gjetost (Yet-oast). From Norway, the Ski Queen brand (250 g., $4.99) quickly became tiring, even when sliced thin and paired with the traditional ryecrisp. It needs a saltier soulmate, but I haven't found the right one gjet.
Nordic Delicacies
6909 Third Ave. (Bay Ridge-Ovington Aves.), Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
718-478-1874
www.Facebook.com/NordicDeli
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