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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The Grill House

PALESTINE 🇵🇸

COVID-19 UPDATE: Mostly takeout in the best of times, Grill House has a few modest tables set up now that indoor dining has resumed in NYC.

 

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

On a quiet residential Bronx block sits Grill House, which on first glance looks like a run-of-the-mill shawarma shop. Behind the unassuming facade and alongside the shawarma spit is a full menu of Middle Eastern mezzeh at very reasonable prices, including Palestinian desserts that remain hard to come by in most New York neighborhoods.

First things first: the chicken shawarma ($5, below) is very good. It has pickles, garlic sauce, and is carved fresh from the spit. The spit’s seasoning is milder than at Bay Ridge favorite Al-Aqsa Bakery, but the flavor is bolstered with a vibrant green spicy schug that is heavy on fresh peppers and herbs. Be a little gentle in its application—it packs a punch.

A side of baba ganoush is never a bad idea for dipping, and here you might order it in the Middle Eastern platter ($7.99, below), which combines scoops of hummus and baba with falafel balls, salad, and pita. The dips are both garnished with green chili-infused olive oil, and the falafel balls are small, maximizing the crunch ratio as you make your own falafel sandwiches.

Other mezzeh options dot the menu, and most come in $3 or $6 sizes. Cauliflower salad is surprisingly acidic in a good way, and cucumber with yogurt is seasoned with abundant dried mint and fresh parsley.

Room should be saved for dessert, including a respectable kunafeh ($1.50), the amazing shredded filo and baked cheese dessert that is becoming more readily-available in NYC restaurants. Also good is the standard walnut and pistachio baklava ($1).

Grill House’s version is less sweet than many others, letting the nut flavors come through clearly. Most popular, however, with both walk-in traffic and during a recent afternoon lunch, is the cheese baklava ($1), which replaces nuts with soft cheese. If you take it home, be sure to stick it in the oven briefly to reheat the cheese.

Both the sweets and savories pull from the proprietors’ upbringing in Jordan by Palestinian parents. As with so many in the Palestinian diaspora, they have not been able to visit their home country, but their parents brought their culinary traditions with them to Jordan, and now the children cook the same food on this quiet street in The Bronx.

Grill House is a fifteen minute walk from the Bromx Zoo’s Bronx River Parkway entrance (and not too far from the 2 and 5 trains), making for a great post-zoo dining option. Assuming that it has stopped snowing, which as of this writing is not the case.

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VAN NEST Bronx

1991 Bronxdale Avenue

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Lebanese Eatery

LEBANON 🇱🇧

COVID-19 UPDATE: Takeout only, which isn’t much of a change from their usual business model. Online ordering is available at lebaneseeatery.com, and will reduce wait times.

 

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

 

Until last year Lebanese Eatery was a lunch counter tucked in the back of a bustling supermarket. The market is now gone, but thankfully the eatery remains, serving some of Staten Island’s most well-executed Middle Eastern food.

 

All of the usual Lebanese mezzeh are on offer, and everything is excellent, but extra love is put into the baked goods. Mini lamb pies ($1.50) are seasoned with red pepper and yoghurt, while chicken pies (also $1.50) are flavored more mildly. Large meat pies (beef, $3.50) are a meal in themselves. All are best supplemented with a side of toum for dipping ($4.50 large). Toum is the Lebanese cousin to aioli, an emulsion of garlic, oil, and lemon juice. The emphasis is on the garlic, and on Lebanese Eatery’s menu as on many US menus, it is sold as “garlic sauce.”

 

 

Also great with toum is stuffed squash ($2.99). The skill of Lebanese Eatery’s kitchen is evident in the barely-there thinness of the squash, which has been meticulously hollowed out and filled with a blend of rice and spices, then cooked in a tomato broth. As with other Lebanese restaurants, vegetarians and vegans can eat well here. However, the main business at Lebanese Eatery is in meat, and their meat shawarma ($9.99 for a wrap) combines beef and lamb off the spit with perfect proportions of pickle, veggie, and bread.

 

Nearby Todt Hill is home to a well-established Palestinian community, and Lebanese Eatery branches out into some Palestinian dishes as well as their Lebanese mainstays. Chicken maqluba (“upside-down,” the one-pot rice dish that is Palestine’s national dish) is an occasional special, but was not on offer during a recent weekday visit. Also available is kunafa ($4.50), the baked filo-and-cheese dessert that is omnipresent in the West Bank and served in volume at Bay Ridge’s Nablus Sweets. Other Palestinian dishes are available on Lebanese Eatery’s catering menu and as occasional specials.

 

There is nothing revolutionary happening here menu-wise, but it is all done really well, and served with obvious pride by a familial staff. As the menu states, “all food homemade by chef (mom),” and her cooking is definitely worth a trip out of your way. And then again, perhaps in a borough that’s been so hostile at times to immigrants, proudly serving authentic food from far away is revolutionary in itself. Regardless, the cooking is fantastic, and worth a trip from anywhere.

 

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ELM PARK Staten Island

1686 Forest Avenue

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Kamil's Lebanese Cuisine

LEBANON 🇱🇧

[COVID-19 UPDATE: Kamil's is open for takeout and delivery. Their large, well-designed back garden is now open for outdoor dining.]

Kamil's, which has always had a great following for indoor and outdoor dining and hookah, has adapted to 2020 fairly well by the look of things. Opening up the front door, you may not believe this, as the interior dining room is now a ghost town. But come in the evening and their large back garden is full of people enjoying their meals outdoors in Clifton.

For those still not comfortable with that, or preferring to eat at home, the takeout operation is going strong and works quite efficiently. Call in your order and it will be ready in 15 to 20 minutes, grabbed at the cashier and getting you on your way.

This was the strategy for a recent takeout order that picked up an array of dishes that made for three or four meals over the course of the next few days.

As seen above, the meal centered around an order of Kamil's mixed grill ($21.95), a platter of grilled lamb chops as well as lamb, beef, and chicken kebabs all served with rice, pickles, and side of toum to slather across everything. The rice is full of more garlic, and a lot of butter, and could not be more decadent. Each piece of meat is marinaded and grilled quite well.

As with any respectable Lebanese meal, there were cold meze for dipping. The sour yogurt lebneh with garlic ($5.95, above, bottom left), sweet roasted Aleppo pepper muhammara ($5.95, above, top center), and chickpea-overload mousabaha ($4.95, above, middle-right) made a formidable combination, covering all the bases.

An order of arayes with sujok & cheese ($6.95, above, bottom right) rounded out the meal and was delicious, although for next time it is recommended to pull this out of the order and eat immediately.

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CLIFTON New Jersey
1489 Main Avenue

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Santorini Restaurant & Café

EGYPT 🇪🇬

[COVID-19 UPDATE: With outdoor dining now legal, Santorini has set up quite a few tables. In addition, takeout and delivery are available as always.]

While the website of Santorini proclaims they have been "making delicious Mediterranean food since 1990" and is directly followed by some Lorem Ipsum text, it was only sometime after the summer of 2019 that they took over the space from a nondescript bakery named Mon Gateau. Hardly any work took place outside besides swapping out the name, and a new casual Egyptian café was born.

The casual passerby might be led to believe this is a new Greek restaurant given its reference to one of the most famous islands on the planet, but a closer look reveals an Egyptian fascination with that island rather than the island itself. In Egypt you can actually find a beach on the coast west of Alexandria named "Santorini Greek Beach," outfitted with blue umbrellas to simulate the tops of houses.

Regardless of any confusions that delayed trying the food here for over a year, it is nice to have a place in Bay Ridge specializing in feteer since the closing of King Tut back in early 2018. As with Hemo's Spot Juice Bar a bit further north on 5th Avenue, they also add different kinds of coffee, western breakfasts, and fast foods to cater to a younger generation of kids that have mostly grown up here and want the mixture.

Middle Eastern and North African couples will be seen here ordering the feteer, often times getting one of the massive pies per person. This phyllo dough layered Egyptian pastry is enjoyed in both savory and sweet versions, the medium version of which comes out around 12 inches in diameter.

The sujuk feteer ($13, above) is stuffed with stringy melted mozzarella, onions, green peppers, olives, and tomatoes. While the skill is not quite that of what King Tut possessed, you can never go wrong with this type of dish. They can also make different types of feteer with a variety of cheeses, different meats, tuna, and shrimp, or a mix of most everything.

Santorini is set up like a fast casual restaurant, and you can walk to the counter and order, but if you plan to dine in, take a seat and the friendly staff will come to you with menus and everything you need.

Another great order here is the mix mahashi ($18, above), an assortment of vegetables and grape leaves stuffed with rice and spices. The chef must have thought meat was fine given the feteer order, and threw on some mombar as well, the red "links" at the bottom of the plate. These have the same stuffing, but use the thin lining of sheep intestine to contain everything.

The combination of these, stuffed peppers and grape leaves is a wonderful plate to share between a group.

As the younger employee and older manager fight between upbeat pop music and more traditional sounds, respectively, other diners are moving on to satisfy their sweet tooth with either one of many crêpes or an order of feteer meshaltet, the same phyllo crust drizzled with honey.

A next visit might also try the loukoumades, deep fried dough balls soaked in honey and the Greek flag-bearer of the menu. These are of course also enjoyed throughout the Arabic-speaking world, but just another fun quirk of the menu that they go by their Greek name instead.

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BAY RIDGE Brooklyn
8101 5th Avenue

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Yemen Unity Restaurant

YEMEN 🇾🇪

Sometime shortly after a 2016 article, the owners of what used to be Yemen Cuisine in Cobble Hill decided to pack up the business and start fresh in Bay Ridge. As Atlantic Avenue seemed to be less and less conducive to operating a restaurant, 5th Avenue in their new neighborhood apparently has no limits for more and more Yemeni and other Middle Eastern-owned businesses.

This address has went through a few changes since the move, first keeping the name Yemen Cuisine in English, then changing to a sign only in Arabic that said Yemen Wahdah. Wahdah means "unity" in English, and it is this name that they seemed to have stuck with, offering both languages now on their sharp new sign.

Despite being old and frayed, the old laminated menus from Cobble Hill, still with the address from Court Street, have survived and prove the kitchen is still making everything the same way. Stickers have been placed over prices to offer new (higher) ones, but otherwise the feelings of their friendly hospitality are just as they always were.

You can still expect a warming bowl of maraq (not shown) to arrive before all the orders, along with a salad. While the greens are just greens, the soup is delicious; a cloudy broth full of lamb stock. Squeeze just a bit of lemon in to cut it, and your taste buds will jump into action.

As before, some orders offer the chance of attaching what they call "cultural platters" to an entree. The salta (above) is $10 on its own and comes with their freshly baked bread, but was added to our broiled fish (below) for a total of $18 for the pairing.

Possibly the most iconic dish in Yemeni cooking, salta is a mixture of vegetables and spices heavy with fenugreek. It comes in a clay bowl still boiling, so be careful while scooping it up with the bread.

Listed as a breakfast but available anytime of day or night, lahm baltamat (above) is a sauteed dish of lamb with tomatoes and onions. For $2 extra (and a total of $14), it can be served over a bed of hummus, which seems like a no-brainer.

The lamb saleg platter ($21, below, served with a cultural platter) is a meaty hunk of lamb that has been spiced and boiled. The bones slide right out of the tender non-fatty meat. On this occasion the table paired it with the fatta (below), bread which has been soaked in a lamb gravy. As it did four years ago, the dish brought up Thanksgiving reminiscing.

The last order of the evening was a chance to sample something completely new, chicken gelaph ($12, below). This was cooked not dissimilar to the lahm baltamat, with a reliance on tomatoes and spices for sauce.

It is tasty but does not quite have the impact as most of the rest of the meal, especially since the meat used is just tasteless white cuts. For your chicken needs, stick to the lovely roasts and kebabs they offer and prepare very well.

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BAY RIDGE Brooklyn

6726 5th Avenue

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Chobana Grill Café

TURKEY 🇹🇷

It was not so long ago that this big flashy corner spot on 86th and 3rd was veteran Bay Ridge Italian favorite Leo's Casa de Calamari, which shuttered a couple years ago. Fans of the spot were thankful it was just a downsizing, for they moved a block north to 85th Street into a much smaller space. What quickly replaced them and opened over the summer was Chobana Grill Café, with two sheep flanking its name but otherwise adhering to the red theme that has lived on the corner for a long time.

As you can see from the picture above, the "Now Open" sign still hangs from the awning, but Chobana seems to be in full stride and making fans in the neighborhood. On a recent visit as the first customer just after noon on a Thursday, the proprietor was busy baking bread for the day and mentioned some baked items like pide would not be available until a bit later.

The chicken shawarma spit had been prepared for a while and was looking rather handsome, with just the right amount of charred bits. It seemed a good time to order the $9.99 lunch special which offers that meat with a patty of lamb kofte, rice and salad, and a fresh disc of bread. The amount of quality food that arrives with two sauces is actually quite astonishing, it is quite a good deal.

The first cut from the shawarma spit was indeed luxurious, the meat underneath that outside layer juicy and delicious. A plate of this with the lightly spiced Turkish-style rice and white sauce would be enough to please most anyone, but start using that great bread and life keeps getting better.

To get even more mileage from the bread, order a side like the sauteed eggplant ($6.75, above) for dipping. This is smoky and garlicky and is great alone or paired with bites of the kofte.

The only worry for this obviously talented chef is that this large corner space might be too big. Assuming the rent is as high as it seems, can enough people come here to fill the seats over on 3rd Avenue? Hopefully the lofty aspirations take hold, for Chobana is a great addition to the avenue.

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BAY RIDGE Brooklyn

8602 3rd Avenue

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Yafa Café

YEMEN 🇾🇪

A few months ago, a space that used to be a Chinese takeout restaurant started to come alive with signs of life after a fairly quick renovation. A few doors down from Yemeni-owned Yafa Newsstand & Deli, which has served the corner of 4th Avenue and 45th Street for many years, Yafa Café has now been born.

For the better part of a couple months, only drinks were offered, but an open kitchen and the eager stories of its new operators (from the same family as the Yafa Deli) promised a marriage of foods from Brooklyn and Yemen, an exciting proposition.

In the past few years, a hipster-oriented coffee shop had come and gone on busy commercial 5th Avenue nearby, but Yafa seems to be more oriented towards the entire community rather than just the newcomers. Sunset Park is still very strong when it comes to resisting changes, but I think the neighborhood might have a place in its heart for Yafa, whose coffees can nevertheless get pretty expensive with a lovely $7 Yemeni pour over available at the high end of the scale.

When the sandwich board finally announced that breakfast and lunch were being served, the former was the goal on a first pass. Along with oats, bagels, and a gussied up bacon, egg and cheese sandwich lives the Yemeni breakfast ($10, below), which revolves around their excellent flaky traditional flatbread called khubz and a variety of "breakfast dips."

From left to right above, the khubz is served with scrambled eggs with diced peppers, ful medames, and two slices of what appear to be the French Laughing Cow cheese. Their ful, a stew of fava beans and spices, is much less sour than usual and will probably appeal to a wider audience. Its spices are delicious, so it combines well with both the eggs and the khubz.

For a light lunch or the starting course of a larger meal, try the Yemeni shurba ($6, below), a tasty soup made of tomato puree and bulgar wheat. The garlic sourdough served on the side make this actually quite filling by the bottom of the bowl.

Many Yemeni-operated bodegas around town are known to have a small case of halal fried chicken. These may not warrant gallons of ink to be spilled, but are always sneakingly satisfying especially later in the evening. No matter how long the wings and thighs have been sitting there in the hot case, the temperature and texture seemed to be just right, with a dash of Yemeni hawaij to give it a unique taste.

The standout star of Yafa Café builds on this tradition with their Yafa fried chicken sandwich ($10, below), which comes on a plump soft brioche bun and is served with potato chips.

The sandwich is handsome upon arrival but it was the first bite that was a revelation. The chicken is supremely crispy and spiced perfectly with hawaij, while each end of the bun is slathered with a wonderful homemade plum chipotle sauce. Welcome to Sunset Park.

The bite-away view below reveals the all important fourth and fifth components of the sandwich: a Brussels sprouts coleslaw and generous use of pickles. Expectations were high when the order was made, but the reality blew this out of the water. This sandwich deserves some high acclaim.

Other customers seemed to be ordering the shakshuka ($10, not shown) in high quantities, a classic breakfast plate of eggs and tomatoes that they serve here on its cast iron skillet.

Also of note is lamb haneeth sandwich ($12, below), which probably plans to be the star of the show but is just a bit off from that so far. The lamb itself is slow cooked and has a lovely texture but they seem to be playing it safe with their spices, unsure maybe of the customer reception. When they go for it, it will be a pleasure to retry this sandwich.

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SUNSET PARK Brooklyn
4415 4th Avenue

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Zööba

EGYPT 🇪🇬

There are a lot of cultures currently offering their "street food" in New York City, but until this past Friday Egyptian was not quite one of them. You will find many Egyptians on the street serving great food at the city's halal carts, but these generalized menus do not really show the diversity of what you might find in Cairo, where Zööba started in 2012.

In its first move outside of Egypt, one of the co-owners has chosen his mother's home city as the popular chain's first stop. In a colorful, modern space the team here were all super busy on day one preparing foods for all the curious New Yorkers and homesick Egyptians who had had their way here for the opening.

If you have ever been to Cairo, you need no explanation about their most popular item ta'ameya. Often referred to as "Egyptian falafel," it is impossible to avoid but very unique because it is made with fava beans rather than chickpeas. Fava beans make each ball a bit denser and moister than your average falafel, and the taste you can judge for yourself. Each portion is fried to order and matched with various sauces and fresh greens depending on which you select.

Both the ta'ameya and the hawawshi (below) are inside of Zööba's freshly baked baladi bread. Travelers will also remember smelling this iconic bread around every corner in Cairo or Alexandria, each circular disc is made with whole wheat flour, has its top cut off after baking, and is stuffed with the contents of choice. The bread is a real treat.

Often a hawawshi is ground or minced meat combined with vegetables and spices, but here the beef is made of larger chunks which they claim are 45% vegetables. The cheese hawawshi ($8.50, above and below) adds an Egyptian roumy cheese along with arugula and tomato onion relish inside the baladi.

The bread holds up much better than your average hand held pita, making these options very good for takeaway meals during good weather. Don't worry though, there is seating inside, and once the initial crowds die down (this sandwich took about 25 minutes to obtain) the dining room should have a standard level of comfort for fast casual.

Zööba also serves a beef liver sandwich, koshari on the weekends, and a whole array of side dishes, dips, and freshly made teas and limeades. With this kind of spread available, grab a group and plan to eat at their large communal table in the back.

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NOLITA Manhattan
100 Kenmare Street

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Lit Charcoal Shawarma

JORDAN 🇯🇴

About seven months ago, a new shawarma spot opened in this space on Belmont Avenue, taking over from another Middle Eastern restaurant that only lasted a couple years at most. What was interesting though was the "Since 1990" which graced the awning, but this required a little more investigation since there were no other branches and this location was brand new.

This passage of time of nearly 30 years is an homage to the proprietor's father, who first opened a similar restaurant in Amman in that year. He currently has three restaurants in Jordan, but this is the first of the same style here in the United States. When asked about the differences, the woman at the counter said it was healthier, but after eating it is the importance of that charcoal smoke getting into your meat just like at the backyard grill.

Take a peek into the kitchen to get a look at the chicken shawarma spit (above) to get a better sense of the cooking style. Youtube videos of horizontal charcoal shawarma spits are on and in constant rotation on the television here, but being up close is exciting.

Options here are simple, chicken or beef (the beef is on a "standard" vertical spit), served alone as a wrap or as a combo with fries, coleslaw, pickled vegetables, and garlic sauce. Most people opt for the combo, continuing a trend of popularity of Arabic-style shawarma with fries being seen around different parts of town.

You can order these by length, in 12, 18, 24, and 60 inch increments, the latter of which is the family combo. This 18" shawarma combo (above and below) included two 6 inch lengths of chicken and one beef, as mixed orders are allowed. As promised, the wraps are accompanied with fries that are dusted with spices and a nice container of garlic sauce that is perfect for dipping them if you do not want extra on your sandwich.

While the beef is good in its own right, the chicken is the obvious star of the show, smoky from the charcoal and perfect in taste and texture. It feels like not a drop of fat has left the bird during cooking as every bite is moist and tender.

Almost as equally exciting is the fruit cocktails and smoothies portion of the menu, where many options are available. Those seeking juices or smoothies from one or a couple fruits will be well taken care of, but you can also go big with the addition of fresh fruit, nuts, honey and cream.

The concoction below had it all for $9.99, and could have been a lunch on its own if desired. Recommended.

Next time you find yourself at the Paterson Great Falls, instead of coming into Paterson for a meal, make your way up the hill to Haledon (pronounced HALE-dun) to check out this new and interesting shawarma shop. Leave a comment on the wall if you like, and take a trip back 30 years with the family that started cooking in Amman.

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HALEDON New Jersey
361 Belmont Avenue

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