Taverna Kyclades in Astoria, Queens has a nice outdoor dining area and specializes in fresh seafood cooked in Mediterranean/Greek style.
As I have written in my previous posts about Telly’s Taverna and Kabab Cafe, Astoria, Queens has now become my go-to place to eat lunch or dinner before heading out on a trip, given that LaGuardia has now become my preferred airport to travel from.
Astoria has many, many Greekrestaurants, some of which are old established restaurants such as Telly’s Taverna, Uncle George’s (Papa Georgi) or Stamatis, and others are newer. One of the “newer” ones is Kyclades, a seafood specialist cafe which I had gotten a few nice recommendations about from Greek friends that really know their food.
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Every year, at the time during the late summer when the stars align in the shape of a medium rare hamburger, the foodie elite of the world converge on a single place, much as in ancient times when the Pagans converged on the Stone Henge to celebrate the solstice.
But instead of dancing around naked and eating questionable vittles around giant stone monoliths, we converge (mostly) clothed upon Water Taxi Beach to celebrate the birthday of one of our own, Citysearch.com food editor, notorious carnivore Feedbag food blogger Josh Ozersky, aka Mr. Cutlets, also known as the devourer of worlds.
Each year, it’s been a different themed creature that is sacrificed and prepared a multiple of ways in order to feed the hunger of the Beast from Brooklyn. This time, it was a whole flock of lamb.
Here’s one of the cute little animals being cooked over hot coals on a rotating spit. Wanna see it on video? Yes, of course you do.
The smell that was permeating Water Taxi Beach was absolutely seductive. With all this Lamb, shouldn’t we be celebrating the re-birth of our lord and savior?
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In August of 2006, Babylon, one of our favorite Turkish/Middle Eastern restaurants was forced to close when its lease was not renewed along with several other stores in the ill-fated Huffman-Koos shopping center in River Edge. Needless to say, I was totally bummed out by this development — not only was Babylon a great dining value but it also made some of the best Turkish and Middle-Eastern food that you could find in Bergen County. To get anything comparable, you had to go to Patterson or Union City. While we still had Kervan in Cliffside Park (a restaurant that has seen better days, its hardcore Turkish crowd long gone) and Samdan in Cresskill (admittedly solid Turkish place, but just didn’t have the precise atmosphere or taste I was looking for) they just weren’t the same — Babylon’s doner and other kebabs were made fresh from scratch daily, and had a definitively home made flavor that couldn’t easily be duplicated.
However, all was not lost. In Late March of 2007, Babylon re-opened only about a mile away from its original location, on Kinderkamack Road on the site of Shanghai Restaurant, which had closed six months before. The owners completely renovated the interior, and now Babylon, menu unchanged, with prices more or less the same, is back and better than ever.
Babylon storefront on Kinderkamack Road in River Edge
New York City gets the lion’s share of adoration from pizza fans, but those of us who live in the Garden State know that when it comes to pizza, we have some of the oldest continuing operating pizzerias serving traditional American pies anywhere in the country, particularly in areas like Trenton and Elizabeth, where we have legendary places like Delorenzo’s and Santillo’s that have been in operation for several decades. One of these top Jersey pizzerias is Reservoir Tavern in Parsippany, which opened its doors in 1936.
Reservoir Tavern isn’t just a pizzeria, it’s also a full service Italian restaurant and also has a full bar. While I would qualify their Italian offerings as solid Ital-Am red sauce fare, it’s the pizza that keeps me and many other locals coming back again and again. During prime dinner hours it’s not unusual to see the Tavern’s huge parking lot filled with cars and no spaces to be found, and a 45 minute to one hour wait at the front door for seating. My best advice is to come early, if you can.
Main Dining Room
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I feel very, very queasy. And I know that God is punishing me. I have proof of this, because the act of punishment, served in Biblical fashion with ketchup, mayonnaise and and pickle slices was witnessed by hundreds of people.
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Telly’s Taverna, one of the oldest operating Greek restaurants in Astoria.
As I mentioned in my previous post about Ali’s Kabab Cafe, Astoria is starting to get more of my restaurant business as LaGuardia has become a more frequent departure and arrival destination for my business travel. Traditionally Astoria has been one of the largest Greek communities in the United States. Considering that I love Mediterranean and Greek food, that happens to be a fortuitous combination.
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Little Charm Thai Kitchen
210 Main Street, Fort Lee NJ
(201)944-0009
Little Charm, located on Main Street in Fort Lee, is a tiny storefront serving inexpensive Thai food.
I love cute little restaurants, particularly inexpensive ones. Recently, a tiny little Thai place, Little Charm, opened up shop next door to another one of my favorite Asian restaurants, Mo’Pho in Fort Lee. I must say up front that I am a long time friend of the owner of Mo’Pho and I am predisposed and biased towards eating her cuisine, so when I saw the competition next door, I thought I had best check it out.
Little Charm really isn’t competing with Mo’Pho in the sense that its price point is lower and is not trying to match their next door neighbor on a qualitative or creative level and is serving a different type of Asian cuisine, but from the perspective that they are next door and are serving similar types of dishes, I wanted to see what it was all about.
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In the past, I’ve written about other Asian-style buffet restaurants in New Jersey, such as Minado, in Little Ferry. Recently a new Asian buffet and hibachi restaurant — the similarly named Mikado 23 — has opened in Wayne, near the Willowbrook Mall and the recently closed Wayne Town Center, which may or may not open in the future if the economy pulls out of its current recession.
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You’re definitely know you’re not getting Asian-Fusion cuisine when you see a sign like this.
The old school New York Jewish Deli is going extinct. We have perhaps less than a dozen notable places in Manhattan, let alone the five boroughs that conform to the classic Jewish Deli archetype where you can get a good Pastrami or Corned Beef sandwich, and I may even have to downgrade that dozen to less than a handful, including Katz’s, 2nd Avenue Deli (which re-opened in 2008 in a new location) , Carnegie, The Stage, Sarge’s and Junior’s (which has really focused on its cheesecake business now more than anything else, although they do a great burger). All of those landmark delis are either downtown or in Midtown. Other fine examples, like Liebman’s in the Bronx, are lesser known but are part of the city’s restaurant culture that is in rapid decline.
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Green Door Cafe
1 Highwood Avenue, Tenafly NJ
(201) 567-8226
Green Door Cafe’s Storefront in downtown Tenafly, NJ.
As a few of you may be aware, I am a resident of the sleepy hamlet of Tenafly, which is situated on the northeast side of Bergen County, adjoining the towns of Cresskill, Bergenfield and Englewood. Tenafly, while being a wonderful residential neighborhood, has a bit of an unfortunate reputation of being the town that eats restaurants.
One of the restaurants that recently got the axe was Blockheads, an outpost of a NYC-based burrito chain. So I was rather surprised this week as I was driving by its former location to find Green Door Cafe, a self described “Doorway to real food” which only serves “proteins which are antibiotic and hormone free or organic” and produce that is “organic or locally farmed seasonally. We restrict our purchases to foods raised naturally without the use of chemical pesticides or fertilizers.”
I was expecting the place to be owned by a bunch of hippies wearing hemp clothing. What I wasn’t prepared for was being greeted by the former owner of Blockheads when I went in, Leon Bell. “Hey! Jason! The Off The Broiler Guy!”
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Posted by offthebroiler 
Posted by offthebroiler 
Posted by offthebroiler 
