Hooray for Red Hook Sunday! I have been splitting my time between Red Hook and the Brooklyn Flea this summer. Which is great, one weekend I eat lobster roll and the next I eat tacos. As much as I love lobster rolls, it’s just hard spending $13 on 1 food item while I can get 6 tacos for $12. But it’s okay once in a while though last time I went to the Brooklyn Flea in DUMBO 2 Sundays in a roll.
I really wish that I have more stomach space so that i can eat more tacos at Red Hook or just more of everything at Red Hook. I usually stop after my 2nd run. I know I can do better and I will next time. Next time. The very first time I went to Red Hook, oh 2 summers ago, I had a huarache from the Martinez Taco Truck and pupusas from El Olomega, which I just found out has a website. After that first day I rarely go off to other food trucks to try other things. But one day last year I decided to stop eating those delicious pupusas and try other things. That was when I started my next phase of eating from the 2 same trucks routine. For the rest of the last summer and part of this summer I went to Perez Truck, the very last truck on Clinton St., for carne asada tacos sometimes topped with fried pork skin and Rojas Ecuadorian, the very last truck on Bay St., for beef and cheese empanadas.
Click to continue

On a random Monday night, I was standing outside the Smith and 9th St subway stop waiting for either the Ikea shuttle or the B77 to take me and surprisingly, for a Monday night, a large group of people to Ikea in Red Hook. Finally the B77 bus comes after about 15mins of waiting. It dropped everybody off right in front of Ikea. While on the bus I was debating if I should go eat dinner there or wait till I go home and cook. It was either a plate of yummy meatballs or Korean ramen. I do like ramen but heck since I was at Ikea I SHOULD get some meatballs. Why did I even bother to have that mental debate, when the answer was so obvious.
It’s weird to go into Ikea on a weeknight because it was practically empty. I ran up to the cafeteria and only few people were around. I got my usual Ikea food items, open faced shrimp sandwich and a plate of meatballs. Did every Ikea changed their potatoes to mashed potatoes? I missed those baked potatoes. So while waiting in line for my meatballs, I noticed the person in front of me got the last of the meatballs that were sitting in the counter. It was about an hour before Ikea closed so I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get some meatballs. Thankfully when I ordered my meatballs the lady grabbed a new tray of meatballs from the oven (yay fresh!). Grabbed my food, my drink and paid the cashier. I noticed the sunset was setting and cast a beautiful light into the dining area. I sat down facing the sun. The dining room was quiet. Yummie meatballs. *sigh……..perfect.

- Ikea 1 Beard St, Red Hook Brooklyn

I totally forgot about my first trip to The Ice House and the photos I took! Thanks to Howard and his post, I remember now. Yes I was quite disappointed with the onion rings when Howard, Steph and I went because as you can see from my photo and compare to his photo the rings look nothing alike.
Click to continue the adventure

With the Red Hook Ballfield Vendors returning this coming Saturday, I thought I’d take the opportunity to point out that there’s plenty of great food to be found in Red Hook all year long. Last week I went for lunch at the new coal-fired brick oven pizzeria Anselmo’s and then stopped at Baked for dessert afterwards. Red Hook may be one of Brooklyn’s best neighborhoods for walking when the weather is nice, and when you add in great the great food it only gets better.

Click to continue…

I always enjoy reading Top 10 lists at the end of the year. As a writer, I enjoy posting one of my own because it allows me to be a little lazy — I’m just recycling old posts.

I restricted myself to meals I paid for, and meals that I blogged about (it may be hard to believe, but I eat a lot of meals that I don’t blog about). You can click on the photos to read my full write-up of each meal. So without further ado, here are my five favorite blogged meals of 2008:

5. Red Hook Ballfield

The Red Hook vendors were back after a fight with the DOH, and even though the venue was a little different the food was better than ever. In fact, the pupusas above tasted better to me than the pupusas I had last year.

Click to continue…

I like to think that I’m pretty much a veteran when it comes to the Red Hook Vendors. It’s fun to see newbies trying to navigate their way around Red Hook and the vendors at the ball field. It’s not fun when the newbies ask silly questions and hold up the line. Once I was asked, while standing in front of the ceviche vendor getting a cheese empanada, if the ceviche there was safe. *sigh….
The first thing I do when I get there is to stand in the pupusa line, knowing that later the line will be a 45min to an hour wait. Also they usually have lots of meat and cheese pupusas already cooking on the griddle and they’ll ask who wants meat and cheese. If meat and cheese pupusa is your thing grab it, that’ll make your wait shorter. After eating the pupusas and resting I head for the ceviche cart to get 2 cheese empanadas. They’re sooooo good. Fried to golden goodness with the melty cheese inside. Then I wash everything down with a watermelon juice or a pineapple juice, large please!
Recently I started to not go to the pupusa line but instead go for the less crowded ones. When you get to the ball field you’ll definitely know which vendors are more popular. I know the general idea is if there’s a long line it must be good! Well this time I decided to go to go for the vendors with short to no lines. So if you walk down on Bay St and make a left on Clinton you’ll find Perez Tacos. They serve awesome steak tacos and I usually get two. Last year while waiting in line the guy in front of me got chicharron or pork rind on his tacos! I obviously copied him and was I glad I did! For no extra money you get four to five pieces of chicharron. They went soooo well with the steak tacos. So this time around I went with the same thing but now to get chicharron with your steak tacos you’ll have to add $1 extra. For $1 you only get two but it’s only $1 more for good fried porky skin goodness.
So I say go try something new and give all the vendors at the ball field a chance.