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Eaten, Barely Blogged: Free Coors & Condo-ized Brooklyn

Tasty hand pulled noodles duoTasty Hand-Pulled Noodles There have been taste-tests conducted and I’ve eaten my share of Chinese hand-pulled and shaved noodles over the years, though I I’d hardly consider myself discriminating. I kind of like every place I’ve tried. Even though I just went with the regular thinnish, eggy ones at Tasty, I appreciate that they’ve plainly spelled out the seven types available (love the sound of “fat hand” noodles) on the back of the menu with photos for comparison. The beef, tripe and tendon trio adds substance and chew to the massive bowls of soup, but really the soft, springy noodles are the main event. And for only $5, you won’t feel bad if you can’t slurp up every last strand.

Nelson Blue My attempt to try new, clubby, cocktailery, Demi Monde (mostly because it’s a block from my office and I’m enamored with the novelty) before the masses descended was thwarted by a pre-opening party that I wasn’t invited to (I’m not the type who gets off on talking my way past doormen) so I was coerced into a lamb burger at the Seaport where no restaurant or bar is a destination.  If you’re seeking an Australian meat pie in the Financial District, though, New Zealand-ish, Nelson Blue, is the way to go. The free bottle of Coors Light I was given due to an ordering mix-up wasn’t exactly a substitute for one of Demi Monde’s $14 spiked strawberry tarragon sodas, but I still drank it without complaint.

Mable's duo

Mable's Smokehouse I hate to be defeatist (ok, I actually enjoy it) but when a Brooklyn bbq urge struck on Memorial Day weekend, Fette Sau wasn’t even in the equation. The notion that the entire city goes out of town over three-day weekends is antiquated—there were just as many people piled onto the outdoor picnic tables as usual. But it gave me a chance to try Mable's, which is on the ground floor of one of those new buildings that makes Williamsburg seem more like a Philadelphia or a Charlotte or a gazillion other cities I’ve never seen first-hand. (Don’t give me the Shari Lind treatment, but I get kick out of the neighborhood’s suburban transformation. In fact, I’ve even entertained the notion of becoming one of those reviled condo-dwellers just to revel in it. It would’ve been impossible to have predicted the area’s tidy, adult contemporary future when I arrived in Williamsburg 14 Memorial Day weekends ago fresh from Portland when Mug's Alehouse and the Turkey's Nest were practically the only games in that corner.) And true to form, instead of numbers, Mable's hands out laminated state shapes cut from paper as an identifier when servers bring food to the table. Transplants are now proud of their Wisconsin or Virginia heritage.

But the bbq…my ribs were crazy salty, almost inedibly so.  At least the pulled pork I sampled wasn’t dried out as I feared it might be, and the beef brisket was pleasantly fatty, lightly smoked and the best meat of the bunch.  And I appreciated the number of non-carby sides like the pickled beets and sautéed kale. I would not completely write them off if I were shut out of Fette Sau again, but what I really need to do is cross the border and try John Brown Smokehouse and Butcher Bar, which I’ve yet to do.

 

Twofer Tuesday

Brooklyn Abroad

There has been an event with a charity component called Big Bite Bangkok where homemade food gets sold in a hotel parking lot (and sounds perfectly pleasant, frankly). And CNNGo reports,  “’We wanted to do something like Smorgasburg in Brooklyn,’” says food writer Chawadee Nualkhair, a co-organizer of the event.”

American food trucks in Paris got the page one New York Times treatment: “Among young Parisians, there is currently no greater praise for cuisine than ‘très Brooklyn,’ a term that signifies a particularly cool combination of informality, creativity and quality.”

Fast Food Aberrations

Last week we saw mixology take hold at Taco Bells offering a morning elixir of orange juice and Mountain Dew.

And now Subway is encroaching on the taco chain’s territory with nachos. And not just any nachos, but nachos made with Doritos. With the ridiculous success of Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Taco, it’s only a matter of times before cheese-powdered chips weasel their way into more restaurants. Kudos to the burger chain able to appropriate them first. May I suggest Wendy's taco salad as a candidate?

 

Thai Worth Driving For

I'm not against car ownership in the city. The vehicle in my household can get from Carroll Gardens to Woodside for Thai food in 12 minutes on a good day as opposed to the two trains and 57 minutes proposed by Google Maps.

Which is why the most salient tidbit in that New York piece about cars not being the enemy was this:

"I can have a Thai lunch in Ridgewood and then hop over to Prospect Park, a trip that would otherwise present me with the preposterous choice of taking four subways or two buses, or else zigzagging through the Lower East Side."

One, there's Thai food in Ridgewood? And two, it's worth driving across boroughs for? Granted, my Ridgewood years were pre-millennium, and I lived in the more isolated German/Italian/Polish/Romanian/Serbian section, not the increasingly cool Bushwick borderland. So,  I wonder if it's Ridgewood Thai or Thai Village?