After the whole Egg Tart King debacle I was still craving for some sort of Chinese dessert. The next best thing on my list was a cake log or cake roll whatever you want to call those things. I randomly walked into Lucky King Bakery, it was diagonally across from what used to be Egg Tart King on Grand St. At first I was looking for egg tarts but I didn’t see any. Then I scanned through their cake log choices. They have the usuals coffee flavor and vanilla(?) flavor. They also have chocolate flavor (have I seen chocolate before?) and green tea. Never had or heard or seen a green tea cake log before I decided to get that and it was only $4.25 or around there. WIN! These usually go for $8! Thats crazy talk. Oh and the ones from Lucky King Bakery were all pre-sliced. Can’t get any better than that.

Besides it being green tea and that its green, its just a typical cake log and nothing else. There was just a slight hint of green tea and as always there’s never enough cream in these logs.

- Lucky King Bakery 280 Grand St. New York

Meat cone. Yes MEAT. CONE. Yummie ground curry lamb stuffed into phyllo dough and deep fried. MEAT. CONE. Yes I guess I should find out the official name for this deep fried yumminess. So where can one find this meat cone? At Damascus on Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn. They also sell pitas, falafels, hummus, cheese, other fried pastries but everytime I go into Damascus I only have 1 thing in mind, meat cone. There’s also a plain cheese version but no thanks! What’s more fun than walking down the street holding and chomping down on a meat cone? The only thing you need to worry about is that if you want these nice and hot and crispy you gotta go there earlier than say…..2pm. They’ll gladly reheat it for you in the microwave but it just becomes soft and not crispy.

- Damascus 195 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn

I was reading through FIPS yesterday and came across a story about a new bakery that had opened on 9th St, just off of 7th Ave, called Almondine. I was surprised to read about it, because I walk past that intersection every day and had never seen it. So on my way to work I decided to stop by and check it out. It’s no wonder I hadn’t noticed it before — I was standing where I thought it was looking around for about a minute before I realized I was standing right in front of it. The bakery is set back from the street and the sign isn’t very eye-catching. According to the man behind the counter they’ve been open for three months at this location (they have another location in DUMBO). The bakery has one case with sweets, and another with savories. The sandwiches and quiches looked good but I just wanted a snack, so in honor of the bakery’s name I got an almond croissant. It was quite good — crunchy and flaky outside, with a creamy, almost custard-like inside (and at $2.65 a relative bargain). I’ll definitely be back, if I can find the place again.

Almondine Bakery — 442 9th Street, Brooklyn

Toby’s Public House

This was my 2nd time going to Toby’s and was our last stop on the Brooklyn pizza tour. By then Mo, Howard and I were stuffed up with pizza but since it was our last stop we went all out. A table full of Old Speckled Hen is pretty eh?

Dramatic lighting on my spicy pecorino pizza. Ah.

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My parents grew up in New York, but moved to Virginia before I was born. Jewish culture in Northern Virginia in the 1980’s wasn’t quite what it is today, so every few months my parents would make a trip up to a kosher supermarket in Maryland to buy a ton of kosher meat to bring home, where they would keep it all in the freezer until it ran out. And when it did run out it was time for another trip. We always referred to it as “the kosher butcher” but it was in fact a full-fledged supermarket; I remember in addition to the meat they had kosher specialties we couldn’t find at our local supermarkets, like kosher frozen egg rolls. I didn’t usually go on the trips; an hour ride in the car to go grocery shopping wasn’t high on my list of fun activities. However, on the few occasions I did go, I remember getting a black and white cookie as a treat. When I moved up to New York myself, I was happy to see that you can get black and white cookies at lots of bakeries, though the quality is variable. Plus it’s hard to live up to a childhood memory that’s probably exaggerated in my mind. But on a recent morning I found myself in Midwood looking for a late breakfast, and I noticed J Korn Bakery. I wandered in, not knowing what to expect, but when I saw the black and white cookies I knew I had to have one.

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One of the reasons it’s good to be friends with Donny is that he occasionally sends out emails like the one he sent out last month, inviting people on a bakery crawl through Brooklyn. Of course we only ended up going to two bakeries, but the fun of it was walking through Brooklyn, and we did eat a lot of good food.

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