Eating In Translation

Rudy's Bakery and Café: Baked-In German

"If we could wind the clock back to 1934, to listen in as Rudy's Bakery rolled its first strudel, German is the language we would have heard at the baker's bench, and beside the glass-fronted display cases, and, more likely than not, on the sidewalk outside, along Seneca Ave."

The bakers from the old country have long since retired, but in Ridgewood, Queens, Rudy's still follows the traditional recipes for its German confections. Everything is prepared from scratch — we can attest to the supple crust of the apple crumb cake. Read more on Culinary Backstreets.

Nepali Bhanchha Ghar: Momo Champ

True, this autumn Nepali Bhanchha Ghar (Bahn-sah Gar) celebrated another victory in New York City's annual Momo Crawl. Without fanfare, however, on a typical morning you're more likely to find owner Yamuna Shrestha preparing sukhi roti, a flatbread that she herself rolls out, griddles, and then briefly touches, top and bottom, to an open flame. Read more about this "home kitchen" for the food of Nepal on Culinary Backstreets.

Mangal Kebab: Turkish Delight

"Mangal Kebab is a come-as-you-are neighborhood restaurant that seems easy to get to know, even though we don't know the language." Many patrons come for the specials prepared by Ankara-born Nazli Yilmaz, "including one homey dish that the chef prepared during our visit (and to which Engin treated us): ground lamb, seasoned with tomato, black pepper, garlic, parsley and onion, overloading what is described, all too humbly, as 'stuffed eggplant.' " Read more on Culinary Backstreets.

Beyond the Courts: CB's U.S. Open Eating Guide

"Each year in late summer, some of the best athletes on the planet converge on Flushing Meadows Corona Park to compete in the United States Open Tennis Championships. ... The tournament site does provide hungry fans with several cafés and casual bar-restaurants as well as a pair of 'food villages.' But when in Queens — where some of the best food in the city is so close at hand — why would we confine ourselves to the boundaries of the tennis center?" Read more on Culinary Backstreets.

D'Angelos: Drive-In Sausage

"New York's street food vendors usually ply their trade where potential customers congregate. On side streets in midtown Manhattan, they set up four and five abreast for the weekday lunch rush. During warm-weather weekends, they feed footballers and their fans outside ball fields in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Red Hook and East New York. In Queens, they do business beside a miles-long stretch of Roosevelt Avenue where it passes through Woodside, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, and Corona; they cluster thickly near station stops of the elevated 7 train."

"The setting of the D'Angelos Italian Sausage truck presents a dramatic contrast." Read more on Culinary Backstreets.

Noisette: An Iftar Grows in Astoria

"We'd passed Noisette many times in the (not quite) year that it had been open. But whenever we'd walked down those sometimes clamorous blocks of 30th Avenue in Astoria, Queens — not far from a bagel shop, a pizzeria, a comfort-food hotspot and a New Orleans-themed bar-restaurant, whose windows open wide toward the street during happy hour — we'd given little notice to the quiet bakery-café with the French name."

"That changed during one recent stroll, not long before dark, when a hand-drawn signboard beside the door wished us 'Ramadan Kareem' and beckoned us to come inside." Read more on Culinary Backstreets.

Ben's Best: Keeping the Faith

(This venue is closed.) "Jay Parker, the owner of Ben's Best in Rego Park, is a third-generation deli man. Born in 1951 and raised in the nearby Queens neighborhood of Fresh Meadows, he first worked at the family business in the early 1960s. Since 1984, when he took the reins, he's clocked 60 to 70 hours a week. Yet 'this is my dad's store,' Jay tells us. 'His name is still on it.' Not far from where we sit in the dining room, a portrait of Ben Parker looks on, as if in agreement." Have yourself a sandwich — pastrami, anyone? — and read more on Culinary Backstreets.

Shelly's Cafe: Pluck of the Irish

"We know we shouldn't marvel over something as simple as mashed potatoes, but against the sea of indifferent diner spuds that we've encountered over the years, Shelly's reminds us that these are incomparably better when made from scratch. ...The texture is terrific. We could make a meal of them."

"Of course, we do no such thing. [Lately] we've enjoyed those mashed potatoes ... with chicken curry, invigorated by one of several imported spice blends that decorate the grocery shelves" at one end of the dining room. Read more about Michelle Boyce, and her continuing "passion to recreate my mom’s home cooking," on Culinary Backstreets.

Vapor Trail: Steam Table Hopping in Queens

The steam table is an often misunderstood — even maligned — concept. For those unfortunate souls who know only a lackluster corner deli, it's a repository of "food that's been sitting around all day." A restaurant inspector might insist on stricter criteria — something to the effect, perhaps, of maintaining already-cooked foods at safe holding temperatures by displaying them in pans above a bath of hot water. For us, particularly in the case of a praiseworthy steam table, it's "a picture menu in three dimensions." A poetic definition, perhaps, but to us it rings true. Read more on Culinary Backstreets.

Weekender Billiard: Bhutanese Break

The view from Weekender’s doorway is promising only for those comfortable with snooker: The room is dominated by three intimidatingly broad tables devoted to that challenging cue sport. Compared with New York’s typical coin-op bar-pool tables, a snooker table’s balls are smaller, its pockets tighter and successful shots consequently rarer. They certainly were for us.

Crossing to the far side of the counter, we found more action, of a different sort, in a screened-off dining area provisioned by a Bhutanese kitchen. Read more on Culinary Backstreets.