Dining Out: Cinamoon

Some weeks back I visited Greenpoint, a neighborhood in northern Brooklyn known for having a large Polish population. Immediately out of the subway I saw a large and elegant vodka window display, and further down the block was Cinamoon, where I had lunch with a friend. The food was delightful and pretty exotic for a Texan.

Pierogies: some potato and cheese, some mushroom and potato

Borscht, and a "cutlet," which seemed like a kind of spring roll whose wrapper was made out of a crêpe, and then the whole thing rolled in crumbs and fried.

Brooklyn Home Cooking

So the truism is that New Yorkers don't cook, and I have to admit that having a small kitchen, having to carry my groceries, and being without my own cooking equipment (and sometimes having very little time) has made me more likely to rely on convenience foods, or what I like to think of as the college student diet (tuna-eggs-rice-beans-yogurt, in various combinations).

After I joined the Park Slope Food Coop last fall, though, I started cooking more, or at least eating better at home. Here's a salad I made for Thanksgiving - salad greens and goat cheese that anywhere else I'd consider a luxury are affordable at the coop.

And as with most things, the generalization "people don't cook in NY" must be a bit of an exaggeration for a diverse city of almost 8.5 million people.

Actually, one of my favorite food scenes in a movie takes place in a Brooklyn neighborhood not far from where I live now. Do you remember the egg frying scene in Moonstruck?

Why is it so fun to cut a hole in a piece of bread and crack an egg into it?

Co-op Fight!

Ha ha, no, just kidding. I love both my coops. But I thought it would be fun to do a comparison of them. They're not in any way in competition with each other since they are in different cities.

Park Slope Food Coop

Location: Brooklyn, New York
Year Founded: 1973
Number of Members: I believe I remember hearing that there are 16,000 active members.
Slogan: "Good food at low prices for working members through cooperation since 1973."
Payments accepted: cash and debit only
Do you have to work?: Yes
Open to non-members?: No
Prices: Low (they estimate 20-40% less than you'd pay elsewhere)
Special items: Cheap sushi, cheap and plentiful cheeses, lots of local produce, beer
Bulk: Most of it is pre-packaged by member workers on the "food processing" squad. No bulk liquids.
Bags: No bags offered at checkout; members bring their own or re-use boxes that have been used as packaging for the store's goods
Floor space: Highly competitive
Vibe: Intense, serious, political

Wheatsville Coop

Location: Austin, Texas

Year Founded: 1976
Number of Members: unknown
Slogan: N/A
Payments accepted: all
Do you have to work?: No, but apparently when it was first founded working was a requirement
Open to non-members?: Yes
Prices: Similar to a gourmet grocery store
Special items: Beer and wine, deli counter
Bulk: DIY, including bulk oils, syrups, soaps and shampoos
Bags: BYO, use a cardboard box, or get a paper or plastic bag at checkout
Floor space: Plentiful
Vibe: Concerned but laid-back

Eating at the Brooklyn Flea

The Brooklyn Flea takes place every weekend and I suppose it's a gathering place of sorts for the hipper types of Northern Brooklyn. The stalls have all kinds of antique clothes and knick knacks that would be finds at garage sales, here sold at a premium. No matter, I was more interested in the food.

This guy was doing all right selling nothing but pork on a roll

And I, sadly, couldn't resist the bbq sausage roll

Food vendors ranged from some faces familiar from the Red Hook ball fields, to Middle Eastern, to wood-oven pizza (they had installed one at the tent!), to this table advertising themselves as Texas barbecue. When I asked if they were from Texas, one of them answered in the affirmative, so I had to give them a shot.

Belleville

Brunch is a big deal in NYC, and there are lots of restaurants who offer it. A couple of weekends ago I met friends at the French-inspired Park Slope establishment called Belleville. My "oeufs pochés" were delicious - sautéed mushrooms and a creamy sauce over nicely round eggs. Thumbs up on the home fries too, which were crisp on the outside.

Everyone else's meal looked equally tantalizing.

Court St + Sahadi's

Having read about Monteleone's Bakery in a book, I decided to check them out recently. They have a nice selection of cookies, but the counter service was eternally slow, so I left and headed down the block, where it turns out there are a number of old Italian bakeries, some with windows selling Italian ices, like this naturally colored pistachio ice...

Further down, Court St runs into Atlantic Ave, home to several stores selling Middle Eastern food and wares. One such is Sahadi's, a venerable old store. There are always crowds inside checking out their enormous bulk section (dried fruits, nuts, olives...) For the Atlantic Antic festival, Sahadi's set up a sidewalk cafe...



I wasn't sure what to expect from their deli counter, but everything I got was delicious and inexpensive. Creamy hummus, a nice eggplant salad, vegetarian grape leaves, and a feta, cucumber and tomato salad. The focaccia bread, also good, was from a bakery on Court Street.

Huarache in the City

Ever since I read David Byrne's description of the Red Hook vendors several years ago, I'd been longing to see them for myself. Since the ball field is a manageable walk from my apartment, I headed over there over Labor Day weekend. The crowds were small at 11AM on Sunday. All the better to observe the offerings of each truck, and make a careful decision.

I ended up with a shrimp huarache and some horchata, which I sat down to enjoy at an empty picnic table. The huarache, on a giant, handmade, masa, tortilla-like structure, disintegrated quickly and as I had failed to ask for a fork, I ended up eating it with my fingers. It was delicious but very messy and I was glad no one was sitting next to me... Until a little old lady sat down with her arepa and looked over and said, "Bueno?" To which I enthusiastically responded "Si!" and then continued contentedly to stuff my face with saucy bits of huarache.

Park Slope Farmer's Market

I wouldn't exactly call South Park Slope a "food desert," but it is a bit tricky to find good produce, and next to impossible to find organic fruit and veggies. The PS Farmer's Market, which takes place on Sundays, is not all organic, but the produce is largely pesticide free, and beautiful. They also have a few vendors of prepared foods...

A Finnish "rye"

Kale and chard

Corns

Beans

Collards?

Purty eggplants and peppers