Detail of signage at the former, Ninth Ave., storefront, which I know only in passing. (B&H, the photo, video, and audio store, is directly across the avenue.) The restaurant relocated nearby but left this beautiful dragon behind.
Ming's Restaurant
393 Eighth Ave. (29th-30th Sts.), Manhattan
212-868-1378
Hand-drawn artwork outside Yony P. Deli Grocery
554 Dekalb Ave. (at Spencer St.), Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
718-484-9649
Purely for the name — even on Super Bowl Sunday, I'll be rooting for the diners.
Buccaneer Diner
9301 Astoria Blvd. (93rd-94th Sts.),
East Elmhurst, Queens
718-429-5188
www.BuccaneerDiner.com
Also note, outside this kosher butcher shop, the old ULster 1 telephone exchange — still valid, provided that it's prefaced by 718.
Holtzman & Paris Meats & Poultry
5313 13th Ave. (53rd-54th Sts.), Borough Park, Brooklyn
718-851-9270
Mom Grocery Store, under new management.
From the owners of Com Tam Ninh Kieu, in the Bronx, this new restaurant brings many lesser-seen Vietnamese dishes to Manhattan's West Side. Shown: bánh chưng chiên, crispy sticky rice cakes; bún chả, featuring pork skewers, fried spring rolls, and betel-leaf-wrapped patties; bánh cuốn Hà Nội, steamed rice rolls with a side of housemade meatloaf; and phá láu, braised offal with French bread. More bread — an extra supply of odds and ends — helped me swab out my bowl.
Bánh Vietnamese Shop House
942 Amsterdam Ave. (106th-107th Sts.), Manhattan
917-639-3151
www.Instagram.com/BanhNYC
For the time being, soft-open on weekends only; see current hours online
"Slow," signs posted this summer to the attention of bicyclists who passed between the restaurant and its in-street dining enclosure. Wrong-way bikers continued unabated.
Rancho Tequileria
718 Amsterdam Ave. (at 95th St.), Manhattan
212-247-4505
www.RanchoTequileria.com
The postal code "Brooklyn 21," on the maker's mark of (L&M) Ellanam Adjustable Forms, dates this "stand-in hostess" to sometime between the early 1940s and the early 1960s. Still serving.
Elysian Fields Cafe
1207 Amsterdam Ave. (119th-120th Sts.), Manhattan
917-388-2191
www.ElysianFields Cafe.com
Looking forward to summer: an off-duty cart with an even more colorful paint job this year than last.
Shaved-ice cart
At ease, just where I saw it twelve months earlier, on Amsterdam Ave. near the southeast corner with 160th St., Manhattan
We have 95% grain alcohol, a sign seemingly directed toward the production of homemade sanitizer. The brand name, unfortunately, is an ill fit.
Broadway Cellar
2746 Broadway (105th-106th Sts.), Manhattan
212-932-7772
www.BroadwayCellar.com
Thank you!
