Eating In Translation

Belarussian Xata

(This venue is closed.) Ask a New Yorker where to find a good babka, and odds are they'll point you toward a cake. Perhaps it will be molded into a tall cylinder, after the fashion of Poland. Perhaps, following a style associated with Eastern European Jewish tradition, it will be braided. Almost certainly it will be sweet.

To instead sample a good savory babka, call on what might be New York's only restaurant (since the closing of Syabri) devoted to the cuisine of Belarus. In that landlocked country, bordered by Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine, babka is not a dessert but a savory potato pie, baked and served in a crock. Its closest relation seems to be the Lithuanian kugelis — both sport bits of pork — but the grated potatoes of this Brooklyn babka have a lighter, almost fluffy texture.

At our waitress's urging, we requested our babka straight away, before finalizing the rest of our order; it requires some 40 minutes. For a look at how we bided our time till the babka was served, see the EIT page on Facebook.

H/T Andrew Coe and Jared Cohee

Belarussian Xata
1655 Sheepshead Bay Rd. (Jerome-Voorhies Aves.), Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
718-332-4292
www.Bel-Xata.com

Safir Bakery

Green is the most familiar color for a Turkish sarma. Savory versions of these "wrapped things" or "rolled things" are commonly filled with minced meat extended with rice, then sheathed in richly hued grape leaves or, perhaps, paler cabbage leaves. For a fistik sarma, however, the wrapper is fashioned from sheerest filo, and the green of crushed pistachio, bound by syrup, glows from within.

Safir Bakery
2724 Ave. U (at East 28th St.), Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
718-934-3888
www.SafirBakeryNY.com

[D]entist

Take care of your teeth today or regret it tomorrow: current, weathered sign for a [d]entist atop surviving sign for custom-made chocolates, Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn

Stolovaya

The first was nearly bare; the second was dressed in layers. You can think of pelmeni as Russian-style ravioli, a name sometimes applied to this restaurant by English speakers, since "Stolovaya" — "canteen" or "dining room" — is printed only in Cyrillic characters. These bite-sized dumplings, for this batch filled with minced veal (25 for $4.95), were boiled and adorned with just a little butter; sour cream and clear vinegar were also at hand.

Arriving at our table moments later was a herring salad ($6.95) of boned skinned fish bedecked in beet, onion, mayonnaise, and egg, a presentation called "selyodka pod shuboy." A poetic translation would be "herring in a fur coat," or, perhaps by a poet of lower aspirations, "an overcoat." It's a heavy dish, and photographed to a smaller scale than the pelmeni; you can guess which one provided the leftovers.

Stolovaya (a.k.a. Russian Style Ravioli)
813 Ave. U (East 8th-East 9th Sts.), Homecrest, Brooklyn
718-787-0120

Honey Garden Farm

Honey straws: clover, sour apple, habanero (50 cents each).

Honey Garden Farm
2115 East 15th St. (Aves. U-V), Homecrest, Brooklyn
718-676-6560

Foteh's Tandoori

My other samsa is fatty lamb. Fresh and hot from the tandoor of this Uzbek cafe and chayhana, or teahouse, a healthful change of pace: the samsa with greens ($2).

Foteh's Tandoori
2650 Coney Island Ave. (Crawford Ave.-Ave X), Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
718-975-8787

Holon Middle East Groceries

Look past the visual clutter outside this Israeli-American kosher market. Beside one doorway, the cellotape residue of previous flyers throws shade, literally, on a current special.

My dining buddy and I took note, and made haste; a few minutes later we pulled over to a quiet patch of sidewalk a half-block from Holon. Our plastic spoons were next to worthless for photo styling, so there's little to see here, apart from a pistachio garnish, of the orange blossom and mastika ice cream by Joy Betesh (pint, $4, unlabeled and very possibly underpriced by the cashier). So take my word: The orange is wonderful. We made a good dent in this pint before packing it up; my buddy doubled back for another, to hold in reserve.

Holon Middle East Groceries
527 Kings Hwy. (East 3rd-East 4th Sts.), Gravesend, Brooklyn
718-336-7758
Also at 809 Ave. U (East 8th-East 9th Sts.), Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
718-627-5878
Closed Saturday
www.HolonFoods.com

Chinese Herbal Therapy Center, J&M Pizza II

Shown primarily for the dense juxtaposition of varied signage: Chinese, Roman, and Cyrillic scripts on the awning of the herbal shop, U.S. and Italian flags out front of the pizzeria. (Click for a closer look.) Note, too, three rides, each sweeter than the next: one bicycle, one motor scooter, one coin-op giraffe.

Chinese Herbal Therapy Center
1323 Ave. U (East 13th-East 14th Sts.), Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
718-376-1988
J&M Pizza II
1323 Ave. U (at East 14th Sts.), Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
718-645-6010

Azerbaijan House

(This venue is closed.) What does whimsical decor tell us about a restaurant? In decades past, at American Chinese restaurants that called themselves "Polynesian," dragon-inlay woodwork and paper-placemat cocktail menus helped to frame an exotic dining experience for customers who (in my memory) seldom shared the heritage of management and staff. The decor was part of a marketing pitch from one demographic to others, openly offered and accepted. Today, few Polynesian restaurants survive in their original form; one made-over tiki pole now bears the countenance of a contented New England fisherman.

This matter came to mind again on a visit to the small, excellent Vietnamese restaurant Thanh Da, in Sunset Park. My only published photo of the decor depicts a flag, one that's no longer publicly displayed in its home country, but I also noted laquered-wood artwork, mounted crockery, a painted bamboo scroll, and at least one nón lá, the iconic conical hat. These items would be kitschy if they were intended to appeal to eyes like mine, but in a full house, I was the only customer clearly not of Asian descent. True, several young parents addressed their very young, finicky children in English, but on a weekend afternoon, as on my previous visits, almost all the chatter was in Vietnamese. In such context, the nón lá, the scroll, the crockery, and the other artwork seemed to distill into Thanh Da a feeling of "home."

Azerbaijan House, though it entertained fewer customers during a recent weekday lunch, gave off a similar vibe. Though the decor will never resonate for me as for the owners and their regular customers, it does signal that the menu deserves a further look. Shown: kükü ($5.95), a hash of egg, potato, and onion that's seared top and bottom before being portioned into wedges; ciz-biz ($16.95), a juicy fry-up of sheep liver, kidney, and heart. (Kükü, it turns out, takes very well to spoonfuls of liquefied sheep fat.) The final photo, of the glistening ciz-biz leavings, reflects a pair of vibrant lighting strips but not the gently arched ceiling. It's painted in azure and fluffy white, as if the dining room were open to the sky — the sky over Baku, you'd imagine.

Azerbaijan House
2612 East 14th St. (at Sheepshead Bay Rd.), Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
718-648-2345

Bassett Caterers

(This venue is closed.) To walk-in customers like me, Bassett is also a deli, a pizzeria, and the ostensible source of a sandwich I learned of first on Chowhound: Chinese roast pork, on garlic bread, with duck sauce. In Arthur Schwartz's book on Jewish home cooking — it's both illuminating and amusing, especially if you've never had to give pork a second thought — he described it as "an exquisite example of Jewish crossover food."

It's an example on the verge of disappearing, alas. Adelman's, a Kings Highway kosher delicatessen where a "particularly well done" version substituted "roasted veal for the trayf meat," according to Schwartz, closed in 2013. (See also comments below.) Several Chowhounds, after casting their gaze hither and yon, suggested that home kitchens might be the best hope. For its part, Bassett's does list Asian pork loin on the menu board; the red-rimmed meat, sliced thin, can be heated at your discretion. But my counterman didn't know from garlic bread — prosaic "Italian bread" was the only choice for a hero ($7.25). No duck sauce, either; I made do with lettuce, tomato, and spicy brown mustard.

Also shown, from a vast array of Drake's and Hostess snack cakes: Devil Dogs (99 cents). For what it's worth, these were the same as ever.

Bassett Caterers
1404 Ave. X (East 14th-East 15th Sts.), Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
718-332-9000
www.BassettCaterers.com