Official Ridgefood Grocery Shopping Guide!

Ridgefood Grocery Shopping Tour

Last summer we hosted the legendary, once-in-a-lifetime Ridgefood Grocery Shopping Tour. Here, finally, is our long-awaited roundup of all the places we visited. The good news is: since we waited almost a year to write this post, it’s summer again, which means it’s the perfect time spend a leisurely, sunny Saturday afternoon checking out all these amazing places!

(See below for the Ridgefood Grocery Shopping Tour Map)

1. Ridgewood Youthmarket

What it is: Farmer’s market
Location: Ridgewood Remembrance Triangle (Myrtle & Cypress)

Ridgewood Youthmarket

Ridgewood Youthmarket

The tour group—including me (Mollie), occasional Ridgefood contributor Ari, guest Instagrammer Alaina, and special guests Anne and Stephen—met at the Ridgewood Youthmarket, a seasonal farmer’s market that sets up shop in the Ridgewood Veterans Triangle every Saturday. Last year at the market, we scored kohlrabi, orange & yellow carrots, and kale. The market is open from 9am–3pm, now through November 22nd.

2. Mt. Everest Grocery & Deli

What it is: Indian & Nepalese market
Location: 5609 Myrtle Avenue (between Cornelia & Cypress)

Mt. Everest Deli

Inside the freezer at Mt. Everest Deli

Next, we headed to Mt. Everest—a quintessential Ridgewood establishment in that it looks pretty mediocre/shady from the outside, but then once you get inside you’re pleasantly surprised by what it has to offer. Ignore the cat-pee smell and explore the aisles; the Indian food is in the back. And be sure to check out the freezer, where you’ll find homemade momos, paneer, and other Indian & Nepali delights.

Stuff we bought: frozen roti (Stephen), cilantro chutney (Ari)

3. Fancy Fruit

What it is: Fruit & vegetable market featuring Italian and other European products
Location: 56-11 Catalpa Avenue (near Myrtle)

The group quickly cruised through Fancy Fruit, an indispensable and uber-cheap greengrocer just off Myrtle Ave. I stock up on produce here once or twice a week and rarely spend more than $15. Also, check out their impressive dried pasta selection (and their simple and excellent Mamma Lombardi’s tomato sauce is a staple in our house).

Fancy Fruit

Fancy Fruit

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Announcing the Ridgefood Grocery Shopping Tour! 8/31/2013

Ridgefood Grocery Shopping Tour

Hello, loyal reader! We here at Ridgefood have been digitally leading you around Queens’s most accessible polslavomexidoreanese neighborhood for a while, but now it’s time for us to give you the opportunity to follow us around in person!

That’s right: We’re giving a tour.

And not just any tour, but a RIDGEFOOD GROCERY SHOPPING TOUR. Have you always wanted to go into that Arab bodega and buy the groceries in the back, but you’re not sure how to use them? Do you need a step-by-step introduction to the glorious wonder that is Parrot Coffee? Do you know which fruit stand sells pristine Halal meat in the back? Are you confused about which Polish drink syrup to buy? Do you want to walk around the ‘hood, talk history and recipes, and eat sausage sticks from Morscher’s with the ladies of your neighborhood food blog on a sunny summer day?

THEN THIS TOUR IS FOR YOU. Continue reading

Ask Ridgefood: Farmer’s Markets

 

Dear Ridgefood,

I’m a Queens native that just moved to Ridgewood after a few years in Bushwick and I was wondering if you knew of any Farmer’s Markets in the area this season? I know the one by Maria Hernandez is pretty close, but anything any more local?

Thanks! Keep up the good work!

–Beth

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Mucenici, a Soup for Martyrs

MuceniciEvery year on March 9, Romanian and Moldovan Christians celebrate the Forty Martyrs of Sevastia, a traditional holiday that includes a feast. Figure-8shaped 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

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

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:

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The Mitt Rumney: A Winning Beverage Named for a Loser

The Mitt Rumney

“We christened the drink the Mitt Rumney, in honor of the most bitter person we could think of.”

While recently in Zürich, Switzerland, my boyfriend and I spent a lot of time in our hotel room watching Al Jazeera. We have neither cable nor even a proper television connection at home, so when we holiday we tend to enjoy the slovenliness of eating in bed while watching the telly. (Don’t even ask about how this looks when we are in places with lots of deep-fried availability.) We enjoyed Al Jazeera’s alternate take on America’s election circus. They always find the craziest rednecks to interview, and the extremity of their views makes Romney appear to be the snake he actually is. We even got to watch the third-party candidate debate, in which the third-party candidates spent a lot of time talking about legalizing weed, even when the questions were about the deficit.  Continue reading

Stuff We Like from Parrot Coffee

 

 

Hello again! Welcome to our new regular feature called “Stuff We Like from Parrot Coffee” (working on catchier name). We will periodically share several can’t-miss items from our favorite neighborhood grocery, Parrot Coffee — a modest little storefront on a sleepy stretch of Myrtle that features a dazzling array of homemade and imported goods from Europe, the Middle East, and the Balkans. Half the stuff we eat comes from here!

Our top picks from Parrot: Continue reading