I’m not sure what keeps drawing me back to Brighton Beach. Perhaps it speaks to my Eastern European heritage, somewhere in the back of my consciousness. Even though I haven’t eaten meat in almost 15 years, when I think of the comfort foods of my youth I think of things like stuffed cabbage and brisket, dishes my grandmothers made based on their own ideas of comfort food passed down from generations of Eastern European Jews.

All of this is a long way of saying that when I recently found myself in the neighborhood Brighton Beach on an early Saturday morning I knew I wanted to grab some food while I was there. I stopped into the Belarus International Food Market (apparently referred to as Belarus II) on Neptune Avenue to see what they had. Less than $2 got me one each of five different flavors of pastry. The smear of neon-bright “fruit” filling was fine, but the real treat was the amazingly light, chewy-crispy pastry itself.

Belarus II — 495-497 Neptune Avenue, Brooklyn

pickles @ brighton bazaar

Brighton Beach was never really on my culinary radar; I saw a live production of Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” when I was in high school, but that’s about it. Until last week all I could have told you is that it’s right next to Coney Island, and that it’s a predominantly Russian neighborhood. There was an odd confluence of events recently that made me want to visit Brighton Beach (this happens to me pretty often actually — it’s one of the hazards of a food-obsessed mind): over at Serious Eats there was a discussion of the hot buffet at Brighton Bazaar, and then The Girl Who Ate Everything included a trip to M & I International in her top 10 posts of 2008. I began to crave Russian food. As I said, this happens to me fairly often, so I knew there was only one way to rid myself of this obsession — give in to it.

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