L’Algéroise French Pastries

ALGERIA 🇩🇿

COVID-19 UPDATE: The bakery is primarily takeout, with limited seating in a sheltered area on the front sidewalk.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Written by Joseph Gessert, photographed by Liv Dillon.

Bath Avenue is home to a handful of good Pakistani restaurants, a string of Mexican bodega taquerias, Guatemalan loncherías, a long-standing Peruvian restaurant, two Uzbek places, a new Georgian spot, great Shanghai soup dumplings, and more. Since last year they have been joined by L’Algeroise, an Algerian bakery producing fantastic French pastries headlined by a Napoleon that is literally causing traffic jams at the corner of Bay Parkway.

 

To many of us a Napoleon ($3.50, above) is that stale thing from the Italian bakery that is too high to fit in your mouth properly. Here it is light, crunches under your fork, and is just simply delicious. L’Algeroise is selling over 300 of them on an average day. If you should happen in when they have run out (which is often), fear not—a tray comes out about every thirty minutes. Most customers are ordering it to go, but others match it with a cappuccino or cup of mint tea and pull up a chair at an outdoor table. Regardless of how you eat it, you will be back for more—it is really good.

Macarons ($1.50) are light and precisely baked, with lemon, pistachio, and cassis (black currant) especially popular. Cassis and pistachio are also on offer as eclairs ($3.50), and cassis makes another appearance in the cake case. The cake slices are abundant, most are $4, and you would be best served by just trying a couple and seeing what you like.

Savories are frowned on here, but occasionally there are plastic-wrapped mhadjeb ($4, below) available atop the bakery case. Mhadjeb are a semolina-based flatbread filled with tomato and onion, bringing to mind a scallion pancake, almost, with a similar feeling of universal comfort food.

L’Algeroise has the looks of a place that will be here for years to come. With all the horrific heritage of colonialism, there is something pleasing about Algerian immigrants to Brooklyn forging a new neighborhood institution from a pastry named after a French general, and making it their own.

📍 2169 Bath Avenue, Bath Beach, Brooklyn

 

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I COULD USE YOUR HELP

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Merguez and Frites

ALGERIA 🇩🇿

[COVID-19 UPDATE: The northern African sausages are still grilling and there are a few tables set up out front for diners. An new enclosed attachment also offers some quick standing space.]

Some addresses in New York City just seem to be cursed and never hold a tenant for very long. The previous business here was a not dissimilar Moroccan sandwich shop that only called it home for a short time. The newer owners hail from the neighbors to the east: Algeria, a country without a ton of representation in the city (One Algerian-ish place in the East Village and now-closed Bar Omar in Williamsburg precede this).

Like their predecessors, the space seems often busy and a meeting point for some of the neighborhood's northern African people to share stories and get together. They have built out a temporary structure like you often see in winter to provide more space to stand and eat. With current conditions, it likely will just be a place to spread out and avoid the hot sun while waiting for takeout orders, at least in the near future.

Merguez frites, kofta frites, and Algerian pizza.

The main offerings here are again sandwiches, those wildly popular on the streets of the capital Algiers and other cities. There you will find a diet high in meat intake, often with lamb being the most popular and readily available. The foods of France are of course no stranger to the once-colonized land, and baguettes circulate along with other Algerian breads.

The combination of lamb, the French baguette, and fries which seem to find their way onto and into many other foods, give the place its name and a sense of what you will find. Looking to the top of the menu, the merguez frites ($7, above and close-up bottom of page) seems like the obvious place to start here. The baguette is of very good quality, as are the sausages, especially for such a low price for a sandwich longer than a foot.

A list of sauces will be offered, ranging from hot sauce and ketchup to their "special sauce" which is a spicy mayo of some sort. A combination of the hot and special ended up being a very good choice to complement both sandwiches, but dijon mustard is never a bad idea either for merguez.

Ask for a quick reheat on the tasty pizza.

If you have ever traveled in the south of France, and specifically Marseille, the sandwich may even be claimed by the French, but be sure this is the product of the other side of the Mediterranean, quintessential food from the streets of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.

These three countries make up the heart of the Maghreb, the cuisine offered proudly by the menu here. Any travelers to this region of the world will also be offered a direct route to their memories with the tray of pizza ($2/slice, above) that is always displayed and ready to eat. Like in Algeria, each slice is adorned with one black olive. Algerians are mad for pizza of all slices (pun intended), but the olive seems to be the constant. It is hard to go a few city blocks without seeing a pizzeria there just as it is in New York City. Stay here at Merguez and Frites long enough and you are bound to see someone ask for the squeeze bottle of mayonnaise to drizzle on their slice just like back home.

Even in the midst of a pandemic, Steinway Street is ready for anyone who wants to come out and eat and enjoy hookah. Most restaurants have built dining areas in the parking spots directly in front of them, and the mood is still convivial for those comfortable with being around others.

Some options are not always available here, like the keskrout lablabi, a sandwich of tuna, chickpeas and cumin. So make it a plan to come multiple times and at least once at night when the weather cools and you can enjoy some Algerian tea made with pennyroyal.

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ASTORIA Queens
40-06 25th Avenue

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Eat the World NYC is and always has been free. No advertisements block the content or pop over what you read. If this website has helped you explore your city and its wonderful cultures a little better and you have the means to contribute, please consider doing so. Eat the World NYC is a labor of love, but also takes a lot of money and time everyday to keep running.

You can Venmo me @JAREDCOHEE or click here to send PayPal donation, no account is necessary. Thank you!

United Nations African Mothers Association Annual African Buffet Luncheon

PAN-AFRICA 🌍

With only one stomach at my disposal, and one short meal to eat, the only trouble at this year's United Nations African Mothers Association annual luncheon was that I constantly had to decide what not to each much of. Everything was so delicious, as always, and a few new countries were on the menu. I could not have asked for much more.

This year's event took place on the 21st floor of the Consulate of Nigeria near the UN. Sun was pouring in the windows and the atmosphere was generally festive especially once the music was on. I arrived on the early side and took a seat at an empty table waiting for some other folks I knew that might want to join me, but was quickly joined instead by two Egyptians, a lady from Cape Verde, a South African, and a Libyan. No need to reserve seats when new friends could be made!

A modest $40 donation to the association was all it took to be a part of the meal.

In the program it is said that the foods are prepared by the wives of diplomats. I counted thirteen nations amongst the available cuisines this year, with two more items going unidentified despite trying.

Here are some photos of the buffet feast. I think this is everything except the ndole from 🇨🇲 Cameroon, the seswaa from 🇧🇼 Botswana, and the koshary from 🇪🇬 Egypt. Things got a little frantic as the attendees got hungry and started attacking the buffet line:

🇳🇬 NIGERIA - Puff puffs and meat pies

🇧🇫 BURKINA FASO - Bean Cake

🇧🇫 BURKINA FASO - Chicken

🇨🇮 CÔTE D'IVOIRE - Chicken (on right)

🇨🇻 CABO VERDE - Grilled Salmon

🇷🇼 RWANDA - Boiled orange sweet potatoes

🇹🇿 TANZANIA - Pilau

🇱🇾 LIBYA - Couscous with lamb

Unidentified chicken

🇧🇯 BENIN - Bitter green stew with fufu

🇰🇪 KENYA - Baked potatoes and boneless chicken

🇩🇿 ALGERIA - Dates

🇩🇿 ALGERIA - Baklawa

🇨🇻 CABO VERDE - Sweet rice

🇩🇿 ALGERIA - Griouech

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UNAMA Luncheon

The Consulate of Nigeria

Map of Eat the World NYC:

[CLOSED] Bar Omar

ALGERIA 🇩🇿

[UPDATE: CLOSED]

It seems like Williamsburg's Grand Street of all places is becoming the go to place for foods from the Maghreb, Islamic lands west of Egypt in Africa. Over a year ago the very nice La Goulette opened a block further west offering Tunisian cuisine, and now arrives Bar Omar, baby brother of Chez Omar straight from Paris.

The original opened in the 1970's and claims to have been among the first to introduce North African flavors to Parisians. Now in 2016, the good looking bistro comes to Williamsburg. They both advertise Algerian French soul food, but it is not a mashup, you can either order North African couscous and tagines or grab steak au poivre.

I showed up on a Friday right after opening to try the couscous and merguez, but seemed to have immediately ruined the day of what I took to be the manager. "The door's unlocked, so I guess we're open" was my greeting as I sat down at the bar. Luckily the rest of the staff, dressed in their bistro black and white, was much friendlier than this flanneled man.

As I watched him become frustrated with deliveries and coworkers and life in general, I had a couple beers and waited for the kitchen to open. A promised thirty minutes became almost two hours, and my hunger was life threatening. Luckily my meal was not just satisfying, but really good.

[UPDATE: Very kind response from management in comments below. Also should just clarify that my pricing opinions are relative to other places reviewed on this site, not at the restaurant scene as a whole. For the location and food quality, the prices at Bar Omar are by no means unwarranted.]

You can order from the couscous side of the menu or just plain plates. When I asked how the merguez was served, a simple "On a plate" was the answer. The couscous portion, however, comes with a bowl of nice broth with vegetables, or what in Paris would be called bouillon. The couscous with homemade merguez ($18, above) is plenty of food already, but the bouillon and couscous are bottomless apparently. For someone with a larger stomach, this could be a real find, as the couscous is outrageously good, the best I have had in New York.

The sausage itself is tasty as well, but I might ask them to cook it a little less if I were to order it again. It may have been on the grill just a couple minutes too long for my taste, but the spices and herbs made for bites that needed nothing else added.

This of course did not stop me from completely devouring the small bowl of harissa that was also brought to me.

The rest of the menu is no cheaper, so this restaurant is somewhat of a special occasion sort of world cuisine meal. The cheapest draft beer is $8 and the chalk board advertises wines from $63 to $112. That being said, I was pleased with my small solo dinner, once it finally came.

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WILLIAMSBURG Brooklyn

188 Grand Street