All this blogging about Brooklyn doesn’t mean I don’t heart other boroughs. Astoria is a great neighborhood, even though most landlords don’t approve of Pokey’s. My favorite Americanized Chinese food is there, where I get can order of chicken wings with fries for like $3.

The Cuisine of Queens & Beyond Food Tasting Event

Tuesday, May 22nd

6-9 pm

$50 in advance and $60 cash the day of

Featuring 47 different Queens restaurants

718-777-7918

The flyer

How did I not know about The Brooklyn Pigfest?

I mean, for $85, I wouldn’t have gone (from the photos, it’s looks like only yuppies shelled out for it).

But still, it would have been good to know about.

I get really psyched when I hear about a beer pairing dinner. They are pretty rare and harder to pull of than wine pairing (due to beer losing carbination once opened). It’s a nice, freshing alternative to wine pairing. Especially for this kind of weather.

Stone Park Cafe in Park Slope is having a Six Points Brewery beer pairing dinner this Wednesday. $55 prix fixe, six courses. Reservations required. 718-369-0082. Peep the menu.

I’ve been thinking of having a meet-up for Brooklyn food bloggers. No so serious plans as of yet, but hit me up if you are interested and I will make it happen. Maybe an outing to 360 or any affordable, fun eatery that you can suggest.

I’m beginning to think that one day my blog is going to become solely a tool to report food events in New York City. There are so many free and cheap food-related things to do in this city. And I don’t know of a resource to find out about them. Do you?

Today I found out that the OG Macy’s (er, Macy*s), in Herald Square, has free cooking demonstrations by top chefs. I think most of the attendants are old ladies who still shop at Macy’s and have nothing better to do in the middle of the day and like free shit. May 3rd, Ming Tsai and Marcus Samuelsson are going to be there, but it costs $50. Call 1-800-292-2450 by April 23 for that. More info can be found here.

The French Culinary Institute is also The International Culinary Center. Go to their website and sign up for their newsletter. They occasionally hold free special events, like lectures about techniques. I went to their open house last month and found out about this (and got to sample it).

June 17th, Taste of Health is going on at Lincoln Center. Free admission. Free samples. From their website: “Taste of Health presents the best in local, healthy cuisine - healthy for you and for the planet - together with the information you need to transition to a healthier lifestyle.” I can’t comment on how hippy-dippy it may be.

On the Upper East Side, Park Avenue Cafe offers a three-course prix fixe “pay your age” everyday after 8:30pm (minimum being $25 and the maximum being $65). The New York Times gives the Park Avenue Cafe two stars and says that the normal a la cart menu is “expensive”. I haven’t been, but ChewFood contributor Vincent says the pay your age deal is pretty damn awesome. What a great way to get younger people into appreciating fine dining and gourmet food.

The Natural Gourmet Cooking School, in Chelsea, offers a Friday night four-course prix fixe menu for $34 (includes tax and is BYOB). Details here.

There’s an underground wandering supper club based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn called Peerless Platters. Sign up for their mailing list to be in the know or to be a chef, to host a diner or to volunteer at their events. 14-20 people per seating, one seating per night. Customized music. Seasonal, fresh and sometimes rare ingredients are used. Sometimes it’s cocktail pairing, sometimes it’s BYOB.

This last one is for shits and giggles: Ahoy! Ye and ye maties should climb aboard the SS Jive Turkey Culinary Cruise. Arrrgh. To the Caribbean she sails! Deep fry land lubbering fowl on a boat! Tis safe! From a Craigslist ad: “You will experience two one-hourhands-on cooking experience on preparing your own deep-fried turkey with Jive Turkey’s chefs on Holland America ms Noordam on November 10, 2007 for an 11-day Southern Caribbean journey roundtrip from New York with port of calls at Tortola, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, Dominica, St. Maarten, and Barbados. In addition to the two one-hour demostration, you will get a 45-minute premium wine-tasting event with a cellarmaster and a group 8″ by 10″ per cabin.” I don’t know what that last part about those measurements mean, but it sounds like it could end in sexy results. Weigh anchor!
Cost: $919 to $1969 per person, based on double occupancy. Plus taxes.
Contact: kchow@cruiseplanners.com or 718-360-1988.
This is for serious. I did not make this up.

Twice a year, Chinatown in NYC holds “Taste of Chinatown”: Roughly fifty participating restaurants set up outdoor tables directly infront of their respective locations and sell mini-portions of various foods for $1 or $2.

I’ve only attended once before and I can tell the food offered is becoming homogenized. It reminded me of that Simpsons episode where Marge and Homer go to the South Street Squid Port and order food from seperate kiosks, but the slabs of steak come from one big, shared vat in the basement.

Most places will offer lo mein, egg rolls and other western ideas of Chinese food. Even the Vietnamese places offered lo mein. I don’t know if this is because a lot of white people show up and they think that’s what white people want. Or if it’s a cost thing and producing those items still yields them good profit. Or if it’s just easier for them to offer those things because they get slammed at the tables. Or it could just be that the restaurants are tired of doing this and don’t want to put the effort in anymore. (I’m always thinking about people’s motivations.)

That’s not to say that it’s not worth going to. And not all of the food is shitty. You can find some really good eats down there. We found roast pork on rice, tea eggs, mochi, shrimp summer rolls, soup dumplings, these stuffed sticky rice deals wrapped in banana leaves, peking duck, bahn mi, beef balls, full pint servings of soup, bubble tea, green papaya salad, curried empanada-type things, seitan on a stick, and more. I’d recommend Taste of Chinatown to everyone except vegetarians.

ChewFood grade: B+
Pros: Cheap, MSG, deep fried, tasting portions, gluttony, rice gluten, Chinese fried chicken wings.
Cons: Crowds, tourists, hard to find good items, hard to find places to pee.

I should have reported this earlier. If you haven’t left your house yet to enjoy this beautiful day, check out Taste of Chinatown. I’m leaving for it now.

Broadway Panhandler is sponsoring a knife sharpening and knife skills event. You can have up to three knvies sharpened for $10, which will be donated to City Harvest.

Saturday March 31, 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Knife skills workshop from 12 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

65 East 8th Street
(between Broadway and University)
NY, NY
212-966-3434

Dine In Brooklyn (aka Brooklyn Restaurant Week) is going on right now and until the 30th of March. Three (or sometimes two) course prix fixe for lunch and/or dinner for $21.12.

The hot-spots seem to be: Bay Ridge, Carroll Gardens, Fort Greene and, of course, Park Slope (including Blue Ribbon).

Neighborhoods with only one participating restaurant: Canarsie, Bushwish, Columbia Waterfront (which is really just WeCaGa for you n00bz), Coney Island, Crown Heights, Ditmas Park, Flatbush, Greenpoint, Mill Basin and Windsor Terrace.

Matt and I attended Split Thy Skull VIII at Mug’s Ale House in Williamburg this past Saturday. From 11am until close on Saturday and Sunday, they offered samplings of high alcohol beers (the lowest being 7% abv and the highest being 13.25%) for $3.50, 5 oz servings in little snifter glasses. We had attended their Belgium 2 Brooklyn beer fest in December, which I found more enjoyable because they had sour beers and I could drink a gallon of that stuff. At three pm, the bar was already three people deep. The good thing about it was that it was 90% beer nerds and beer nerds are very patient and there was not cutting or cursing or shoving that you get from regular booze hounds. There Matt’s coworker, Andy, met up with us.

We then sauntered over to Barcade, which is a green bar (solar powered). They have a nice selection of craft beers, a full bar and olde tyme video games. I suggested going there because I’ve been wanting to try the Dogfish Head vodka. Dogfish Head is an extreme American craft brewery that does crazy, delicious stuff like brew beers with a 20% abv or copy the recipe of the elixir found in King Midas’ tomb. And, apparently, they also distill their own liquor. Unfortunately, Barcade was out of it their vodka, so I decided to try their Jin, which was very herbally (pineapple mint, rosemary). It made an odd martini, but not unpleasant. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t drink gin. Now I’d like to ask a question for any bartender that may be reading: I’ve bartended before, but I find it odd how more often then not, when I order martini on the rocks the bartender mixes it in a shaker. Is this because of James Bond?

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