Eating In Translation

R&L Golden Apple Restaurant

(This venue is closed. This informal restaurant serves "Oriental American and West Indian dishes" but also keeps a few cheap eats at the ready.

Little Guyana Bake Shop

Routine, almost commercial atmosphere, albeit with a good-sized selection.

Greenwood Quality Bakery

You'd want to discard a fresh clam that couldn't keep its shell shut.

Oxford Bake Shop

(This venue is closed.) Every time I visit, something always distracts me from those fine-looking crumb-cake squares.

Madaleine Mae

(This venue is closed.) Simply disappointing.

L'Exquisitus

(This venue is closed.) Most of the menu belies the name. So does the setting; there's an ATM tucked in the corner of the seating area, just below a flatscreen silently piping news, trivia, and ads.

Wafels and Dinges truck

Perhaps I deserved some dinges.

Garlic Bob's Restaurant & Pizzeria

(This venue is closed.) Sure, it's easy enough to see now, when we're both sitting down. But the other day, when I walked up on this restaurant from the right, the word that came to mind was something I saw not long ago in a Chinatown market, among the specialty meats: a package labeled "ox pizzle." I never ate at Garlic Bob's, so no, I can't tell you if they served slices.

Garlic Bob's Restaurant & Pizzeria
508 Columbus Ave. (84th-85th Sts.)
212-769-2627

Café La Fortuna

(This venue is closed.) That's the view that John and Yoko might have seen 30 years ago, when they walked over from The Dakota. Café La Fortuna, which opened in 1976, will close its doors by the end of February due to an increase in rent, according to a staffer I spoke to on Tuesday. (Thanks to the reader whose comment, which you can read by clicking on the link below, broke the sad news. Another reader, and several news reports, stress that the final day is February 24.)

Stop by once more, if you have the chance; you can't say "nobody told me."

Café La Fortuna
69 West 71st St. (Columbus Ave.-Central Park West)
212-724-5846
www.cafelafortuna.net

Just Rugelach

(This venue is closed.) Come to think of it, rugelach is one thing of theirs I haven't had.