Author Archives: Mollie

The Evening Nut Lady By Gem

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coconut

Roasted coconut

In case you missed it, awhile back we quietly tweeted that May is FOOD CART MONTH here at Ridgefood. We will attempt, weather and energy permitting, to visit every food cart in Ridgewood. There aren’t very many, so this isn’t really very impressive, but hey!

Previously we’ve told you about several borderland carts: Tacos La Carcachita, where the cemitas are big and meaty, and an eponymous Sundays-only Ecuadorian cart that serves salchipapas (french fries and hotdogs, basically) and whole fried fish to voleibol players in Evergreen Park.  Continue reading →

Crepes and Waffles and Another Ridgewood Bar Crawl

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Don’t forget! The second Ridgewood Bar Crawl, brought to you by the Ridgewood Social (née Ridgewood Meetup) folks, takes place this Saturday night. New stops on the crawl include Eros Cafe and Polish German Club House, as well as Parlay (aka the former Hi-5, so it’s not NEW new). We seldom make it out to bars in the ‘wood, so the crawl is a good excuse to go totally wild. Just kidding (?).

RSVP here, or just show up! Scroll down for a map of the crawl route.

Naleśniki Gofry

The crepe & wafflerie is adjacent to a bustling stop on the Q58 bus

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Everything We Ate at the Taste of Ridgewood

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Last week we attended the Taste of Ridgewood, the first-ever food fest benefiting the Ridgewood YMCA‘s Strong Kids Campaign. We ate, we drank, we chatted with local Ridgefolk. Here’s our photo recap:

Taste of RidgewoodClockwise from top left: Vietnamese iced coffee over crushed ice, coconut tapioca pudding, and a summer roll from Bunker (we forgot peanut sauce – oops); vegetable samosa and cilantro dipping sauce from Nepalese Indian; and foufou & okra (foufou are like dumplings) and grilled fish & attieke (fermented cassava that resembles couscous) from Bed-Stuy’s Abidjan. Continue reading →

Aneta Deli: Cheap Eats on ‘Whimsical Window Row’

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Aneta Deli

Stuffed bass and fixins from Aneta Deli. Also pictured: potato pancakes ($1 each when they have ’em).

A typical low-key sunny day for us involves a trip to Rosemary’s Playground and a food stop somewhere nearby. Aneta Deli, situated a block from the playground on Woodward and Palmetto, stands out among Ridgewood’s Polish steam-table joints for a few reasons.

The first thing you’ll notice as you approach the deli is the amazing window art, like the singing, dancing lipstick- and heels-wearing trio of ham, turkey, and cheese — it’s part of a zone we’ve dubbed “Whimsical Window Row” (see below for more photos of WWR). Inside, Aneta is a standard Polish deli, selling staples like jars of pickled beets and celery root, berry syrups, interesting pretzels and cookies and puffs, and frozen pierogies. Near the back of the long deli counter you’ll see the steam table where they keep the hot food. Go here.  Continue reading →

100-Day Check-In at Ridgewood’s Nepalese Indian Restaurant

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shrimp biriyani

Vibrant shrimp biriyani at Nepalese Indian

Nepalese Indian, the matter-of-factly named restaurant on Seneca just off the Myrtle Ave strip, has been open for 100 days. Congrats on this milestone, neighbors! We stopped by for an early-bird dinner to see how they’re doing — and, naturally, to check up on the issues (good and bad) that we originally reported.

Issue #1: Availability of Menu Items

We said: “Our first choice, lobster tikka masala, wasn’t available”
After 100 days: The lobster tikka masala still wasn’t available during our recent visit — sad, because it sounds delicious.

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Taste of Ridgewood: Your Unofficial Guide

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Taste of Ridgewood

Happy Spring! The Ridgewood YMCA gave us the final list of 20 restaurants participating in the Taste of Ridgewood on April 11th. Cuisines represented include West African, Indian, American, Bosnian, Vietnamese, American, Fitness, Tex-Mex, Nepalese, Pastries, Japanese, and German! We think … Continue reading →

Prosciutto Two Ways at Morscher’s Pork Store

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Prosciutto from Morscher's Pork Store

We recently stopped by Morscher’s Pork Store on Catalpa to procure some ground pork for Vietnamese BBQ pork meatballs (details in a future post entitled “Turning Vietnamese: How We Suddenly Started Eating Vietnamese Food Pretty Much All the Time”). Feeling especially piggy, we also picked up two different types of prosciutto, both of which were excellent. Prosciutto is sort of an entry-level charcuterie in that you might find it on a panini in your local coffeeshop, but it gets way better than that*. Enter Morscher’s prosciutto. Continue reading →

Mucenici, a Soup for Martyrs

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MuceniciEvery year on March 9, Romanian and Moldovan Christians celebrate the Forty Martyrs of Sevastia, a traditional holiday that includes a feast. Figure-8–shaped dough representing the human figure (i.e. the martyrs) is either baked and smeared with honey and walnuts or made as a sort of cinnamon-topped “snickerdoodle soup” called mucenici muntenesti (recipe below). Today you can pick up the latter type of mucenici dough at our beloved Parrot Coffee. The nice woman behind the counter explained the recipe: boil, add honey, nuts, cinnamon if you like. “What kind of nuts? Pistachio?” I guessed. She motioned toward an unmarked bag of nuts. “These. Wol-nut.”   Continue reading →

Muy Meaty Cemitas at Tacos La Carcachita

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Milanesa de pollo cemita

Milanesa de pollo cemita from Tacos La Carcachita

We just got back from Monterrey, a strikingly beautiful yet largely non-touristy desert-mountain town in northern Mexico. (Fun fact: in Monterrey, they serve tacos on diminutive soft flour tortillas in addition to the traditional corn ones. It’s a cool culinary nod to neighboring Texas that we’ve never seen anywhere else in Mexico, where corn rules the tortilla scene.) Anyway, our trip was short, which meant we returned to Ridgewood craving more Mexican food.

Since we happen to love cemitas — the chipotle’d, sesame seed–topped sister-sandwich to the more common torta — we stopped by Tacos La Carcachita, the Mexican food truck we’ve been meaning to check out forever. The results were pleasing!

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