I like brunch but hate the crowd and the wait time, so it’s a good thing Allswell does weekday brunch. Unlike their dinner menu, which changes daily, their brunch pretty much stays the same. There’s something wonderful about leisurely strolling into a restaurant, sit down and leisurely eat your lunch and maybe drink three cocktails (which I did).

The biscuits with sausage gravy and fried eggs was excellent. I usually tend to stay away from biscuits and gravy because I’m afraid it’ll get too heavy in my stomach. But Allswell does it really good and it was quite light. I think I needed an extra biscuit to mop up ALL the gravy.

I even got to taste their housemade chicken dogs which they serve during their late night hours. This made a perfect late night snacks, wash it down with a pint!

- Allswell 124 Bedford Ave. Williamsburg

Last night a bunch of us attended City Grit: Brunch Village dinner. Yes! Brunch food for dinner, my kind of dinner. It was Sarah’s homage to the show Portlandia. I’ve only seen the pilot but judging from the awesome tasty food Sarah cooked up last night, I may have to at least watch the episode “Brunch Village”.

The dinner started off with Collin’s chicken and waffle. Hello bite sized goodness. I ate 4 and totally forgot to snap a photo. Next up (picture above) was “Craig’s crazy guac tacos” with pulled brisket, guac, queso, and scrambled eggs.

Click to see what else was on the menu last night

Summer maybe over but there are still loads of tomatoes to be eaten. Here are some of our favorite ways to cook and eat tomatoes.

Tomato and egg over rice, a total comfort food meal.

A quick and easy tomato sauce. Howard used canned tomatoes but fresh tomatoes should work just fine.

And once you got your tomato sauce down, you can totally add other ingredients to it. For the tomato and capers with linguine, I used tomato paste but go ahead and substitute it with your freshly made tomato sauce.

Howard cooks tomato and linguine his way.

How about a tomato gratin dish?

Tomato, eggplant and smoked mozzarella make a great side dish.

And for the adventurous people, freeze your tomatoes and grate them over everything!

No Name Bar in Greenpoint is one of those rare bars that I just really liked after one visit. Happy hour drinks till 8pm, cool crowd, cool bartenders, backyard, locals only and most importantly the noodle bar downstairs. Last week I met up with Howard at Allswell for some happy hour food and then we were off to Manhattan Inn so that he could do a write up about their veggie options. Manhattan Inn is sort of across the street from No Name Bar so I thought “heck we should go!” After getting our beers and ordering our food, we proceeded downstairs to the noodle bar.

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Here’s something I’ve been WANTING to do but never got the chance (more like me being lazy) and finally doing it (YES). You may not know this but I’m helping out Blondie and Brownie with their cookbook as a photographer along with Ultraclay. They’re writing about the New York City street food scene and one of the must-not-forget-and-missed food street is Roosevelt Ave in Queens. All along Roosevelt Ave, it runs directly underneath the 7 train, from the 111th St stop on the 7 train to the 74th St stop and beyond, you’ll find the most delicious food trucks/carts serving tortas, tacos, tamales, esquites, fried fish, pork with rice and beans and many things I’m not too familiar with. Even if there weren’t any trucks or carts, you’ll find so many good looking restaurants along that street that may make you think about moving there just to eat at all the restaurants.

So couple weeks ago Blondie, Ultraclay and I were joined by Jeff Orlick (actually I think we kidnapped him when he was having dinner with his family?) where he took us around and explored Roosevelt Ave in search of good food. Jeff is an expert of everything Roosevelt Ave and gives midnight food tours along the avenue. So yeah we were in pretty damn good hands. We walked from 111th St down to 74th St and ate..explored along the way.

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Lentils are great. You can do crazy, fancy and elaborate things to them or just plain simple like adding them to miso soup. They are great at absorbing flavors and at the same time hold on to their own distinctive flavor. They are cheap, healthy and delicious.

Here’s a quick way to eat lentils. Saute diced garlic and onion with lentils in some olive oil. Add enough liquid (water or stock) so that there’s about half an inch between the lentils and the top of the liquid. Bring to a boil and simmer till lentils are done. Add tomato paste, ketchup, salt and pepper to taste. Serve an egg (fried, poached, hard boiled) with the lentils.

Here are few more ways you can cook lentils.
Lentils, Beans and Pork Cracklings over Toast

Pork Belly Stew with Lentils and Kale

Lentils with Pasta

And then there’s always the reliable lentil soup or if you some have some spices laying around, try making daal.

So on a lovely Saturday afternoon with the food TED talks playing in the background on the Netflix, I made a bunch of flatbreads (I ended eating all of them). This was inspired by watching Jamie Oliver’s TED talk from 2 years ago.

Few months ago I saw a clip of Jamie Oliver and Levi Roots making jerk chicken. Jamie Oliver made a simple flatbread to go with the jerk chicken. It looked so easy that I actually thought about making it. Of course I didn’t actually make it till just few days ago. So here’s the thing, for my flatbreads I used regular old all purpose flour and instead of yogurt (in the recipe) I used buttermilk since that was what I had. And instead of jalapenos I sliced up some pickled serrano peppers. Okay, even though I TOTALLY didn’t use the same ingredients, it came out pretty darn good. Especially with a fried egg on top.