Eating In Translation

Hokkaido Food Fair at Mitsuwa

Butter with your ramen? Better arrive early.

Maxim Restaurant

This bakery-café's coconut-covered glutinous rice balls (four for $2.50) were heavy in the hand but light on the peanut filling.

Maxim Restaurant
135-32 40th Rd, Flushing, Queens
718-961-7500

66 Lu's Seafood

A clean, well-lighted place for food in "the Taiwanese style."

Myers of Keswick

The favourite grocery of many British expats wears its colors proudly but doesn't put on airs.

Sweet Heart

(This venue is closed.) La Brea tar pit for Oreo cookies? Sorry to say, my mega-cookie ($2.25) was simply too doughy. On an earlier visit to this Argentinean café-bakery, I tried an empanada ($2.75) whose filling, goat cheese flavored but not sweetened by pumpkin, rattled around inside.

Sweet Heart
69 Eighth Ave. (at Greenwich Ave.)
212-807-1125

Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden

The vast beer garden behind Bohemian Hall is a fine place to rest your elbows with a pitcher or two.

Sabry's Seafood Restaurant

The lemony sauce and herbal adornment of the tender grilled squid (appetizer, $8.95) are characteristic of many dishes at this Egyptian seafood café.

Mexican Independence Day Festival

The 116th St. Mexican Independence Day Festival can be thumpingly loud at both ends, but you can get your hands on some fine food in the middle.

Café Katja

Good pick.

The Grey Mouse Farm

This upstate family farm relies on the efforts of several generations of "mice," as they call themselves, to prepare preserves, garlics, and pickles.