Dill It Yourself: How to Make Gravlax

gravlax with fixins

Perfect breakfast: gravlax with fixins

Hello friends! Awhile back we told you about our favorite Ridgewood meals of 2012. Arbitrarily coming in at #6 was gravlax, aka gravad lax, aka “buried salmon.” In other words, it’s traditional Nordic salt-cured salmon that resembles lox or smoked salmon. Why is gravlax so great, you might ask?

  • It’s easy to make at home.
  • It’s economical.
  • Most importantly, you really can’t buy good-quality smoked salmon, like the kind you’d put on bagels, anywhere in Ridgewood. Sorry, Mr. Bagel! You just can’t.

With that in mind, here’s a quick tutorial on making and serving gravlax in your very own Ridgewood home:  Continue reading

Date Night in Ridgewood: Joe’s Restaurant

joes-restaurant-dark

A dark and chilly night at Joe’s Restaurant on Forest Ave

“Quick! What’s a good date-night dinner spot in #Ridgewood?” we recently inquired on Twitter. Armed with several excellent possibilities, we bundled up and headed over to Joe’s Restaurant, an old-timey Italian joint on Forest Ave. We’d wondered about this place for awhile, as it has a bit of history: the original Joe’s, a few blocks down the street at 66-53 Forest, opened in the 1960s, and they moved into the current fancier digs about 10 years ago, according to the nice young man who served us. Continue reading

A New Asian Market in (Almost-)Ridgewood?

jelly cups

Jelly cups at Sea Town: one of the few Chinatown-y products available there

UPDATE 2/20/13: Jose from Sea Town read our post and said he’ll be ordering some of the products we suggested! He’ll let us know when the new store is open so we can check out the Asian goods.

UPDATE 2/28/14: We give up! Sea Town still has not added any kind of significant Asian section to their store. If you continue down Myrtle, further into Bushwick, you’ll find another new Asian market (not sure of the name but we’ll find out). It’s one block from Sea Town, right next to Brooklyn Cooperative Federal Credit Union. We’ve found assorted Asian noodles, kimchi, potsticker wrappers, and frozen mock-meats there.

Two blocks over the Ridgewood-Bushwick border and steps from Myrtle Avenue, Sea Town Fish & Meat Market was deemed a founding part of a “tiny Bushwick ‘Chinatown'” when it opened in 2010. And though the store boasts an impressive variety of fresh (including live) seafood, the general grocery area lacks a significant Asian presence — even staples like tofu, seaweed, and rice vinegar are nowhere to be found (tofu didn’t sell, said the store’s manager, Jose).

But that could change: Across the street, construction is underway on a triangle-shaped annex, which Jose told Ridgefood will be like a “regular grocery store” with more vegetables and an expanded ethnic section. They plan to stock more Asian goods, and Jose welcomed Ridgefood to compile a list of products that would appeal to local shoppers.

Continue reading

Dynamite Sandwich and Other Egyptian Eats at Amun

Lamb kebab

Lamb kebabs at Amun

Update 7/29/14: Amun’s original location recently closed, and the restaurant is now run out of a bodega called “Seneca Falafel” on Seneca & Madison.

You may have heard about Ridgewood’s Little Nepal, but did you know we also have a growing Egyptian community? More specifically, we’re home to Egyptian Coptic Christians, or Copts — many of whom have fled to the U.S. following the Arab Spring revolution in their homeland. Two visible centers of the Coptic community can be found in Ridgewood: St. Mary & St. Antonios Coptic Orthodox Church and Amun Restaurant.

Continue reading

The Early Word on Ridgewood’s Nepalese Indian Restaurant

Let’s be honest: in the world of Ridgewood’s meager sit-down dining options, the fact that we now have Indian and Nepalese food, in a comfy space with cute moon lamps, is monumental. We’re thrilled. The Nepalese Indian Restaurant on Seneca has been open for just over a week, so we thought we’d share some of the highlights thus far.

Vegetable momos

 

Momos! Everyone seems to be super-psyched about these traditional Nepalese dumplings, which so far are the only Nepalese menu items that are available. The vegetable momos are filled with finely chopped cabbage, flecks of carrot, and lots of ginger, and they’re served with a spicy, lightly curried dipping sauce. Very, very tasty. Our momos were fried, but we’re eager try the steamed version next time; they seem to be the more popular option among Nepalese folks (totally unscientific observation).  Continue reading

Our Favorite Ridgewood Meals of 2012

Fried fish dinner at Johnny's Cafe

Fried fish dinner at Johnny’s Cafe

It’s been a quiet December here at Ridgefood. Seasonal malaise has us hermitting and lazing and eating the same comfort foods on repeat (though, to quickly boast, we’ve squeezed in some amazing exo-Ridgewood meals:  Malaysian curry laksa, noodles, and stuffed tofu at Taste Good; pizza at DiFara; an ode to bibimbap at M. Wells Dinette; and dim sum at East Harbor Seafood Palace).

Ridgefood’s just a few months old, but we’d like to wrap up the year with a roundup of the best foods that we can recall eating in Ridgewood in 2012. In no order, really, here are seven of our favorite meals that come to mind:

Continue reading

Himalayan Explosion Continues: Nepalese Restaurant to Open on Seneca Ave

Golden Star Chinese restaurant

Editor’s note: We originally reported that the new Nepalese Indian restaurant would be called “Mt. Everest.” It has since been changed to “Nepalese Indian Restaurant.” We have updated this post to reflect the new name. For a more detailed explanation … Continue reading 

Om My! Tibetan Cuisine Coming to Venditti Square

 

Happy Tibetan New Year

 

Update: The Tibetan restaurant never opened, and you can now find a men’s clothing store, Big Poppa Styles, in its place. -The Mgmt.

Yesterday while strolling through Venditti Square, a cheerful sign in the window of No. 1 Fusion caught our eye. It read “Happy Tibetan New Year.” The heartfelt yet untimely sentiment — Tibetans celebrate the new year (losar) in February and March — suddenly endeared us to this Chinese restaurant that we assume is shitty, so we ventured inside.  Continue reading

The Gates Burger Mystery: Solved!

 

gates burger

 

BREAKING NEWS: The Gates Burger Mystery — we’re just going to go ahead and call it “Burgergate” — has been solved.

A quick summary for those of you who haven’t been following along: a few weeks ago, we noticed that a place called Gates Burger purports to exist in Ridgewood, but the only establishment at their address (17-01 Gates Avenue) is a bodega called Gates Deli. Naturally, we figured it was one big scandalous cover-up: Gates Burger was fake, the reviews were fake, and Gates Deli was delivering crappy food to non-discerning Ridgewoodites. It didn’t really make sense, and we weren’t sure that was the exact explanation, but we didn’t feel like dealing with it anymore and we let the mystery linger — Ridgewood would have to draw its own conclusions.  Continue reading

Get Drunk and Meet People at the First-Ever Ridgewood Bar Crawl


View Ridgewood Meetup Bar Crawl in a larger map

This Saturday, neighborhood social event coordinators Ridgewood Meetup will host the first-ever Ridgewood Bar Crawl. The event kicks off at Cozy Corner Tavern, a dive bar that touts its outstanding cheesesteak ($5.95). The full 10-bar lineup is below, and you can RSVP on Facebook. We’re not terribly familiar with bars in the ‘wood, so we chatted with Sarah Feldman, Ridgewood Meetup’s founder, about the crawl. She plans on trying the famed cheeseteak, so we’re eager to see if its deliciousness holds up even at the first stop of the night, pre–extreme drunkenness.  Continue reading