La Fama Empanadas

I'm not sure If I've gone into detail about empanadas on this blog yet. I like them. I like them a whole lot. I like anything with a pastry crust, pretty much. There are so many variations from so many countries, and I haven't met one I haven't liked. Samosas. Burekas. Pasties. Patties. Turnovers. The list goes on and on. Empanadas are sold all along the route, at the many, many Colombian bakeries on Roosevelt Ave. The thing that makes Colombian empanadas great is the yellow, crispy crust. What makes it yellow and crispy is corn flour. There are lots of not so great empanadas, but I ventured in to La Fama Bakery the other day, just to see what they had to offer, and walked away with one empanada in a brown paper bag. It cost a dollar. It looked like this.


The crust had that great. crisp, slightly chewy texture, and the filling looked appetizing. Large chunks of soft potato, bits of shredded beef, seasoned aggressively enough to stand up to the dough. The sauce was spicy with a strong onion flavor, adding a freshness and bite to the heavy meat and potato interior. Be sure to ask for sauce because they don't always give it to you automatically. A good empanada, a nice snack.

La Fama Bakery
67-10 Roosevelt Ave.
Woodside

Mexican Spaghetti!

The day after I wrote my Chickenjoy!!! post, and promised to write about Mexican spaghetti the next time I had some, I went to visit my sisters-in-law, and guess what we had for dinner? Spaghetti! It was meant to be.
In the Gonzalez family, spaghetti is made very differently than American-style red sauce and parm. Not to give away any secrets, but a half an onion is added to the pasta as it boils. Tomatoes, onions, and garlic are pureed, then added to a pot with butter. The cooked pasta is then added to the sauce and cooked even further until the pasta becomes red and the sauce is mostly absorbed.At the table each person adds as much sour cream and queso fresco as they so desire. I always get excited when it's spaghetti time at home. So good.
The spaghetti topped with cream and cheese.

All mixed together. Yum. I am always looking for how other cultures take spaghetti and make it their own. If anyone has family recipes, please share!

Chickenjoy!!!

Jollibee is my absolute new favorite place. If Jollibee were a person, and not an imaginary Filipino cartoon bee, I know that we would be best friends. So fun. Why is fast food from other countries so much better than ours? David and I waited on the long, slow line, glad for the extra time to decide what to order. Fried chicken with fries, mashed potatoes, or corn (fries, of course). Or do we get our fried chicken with spaghetti and hot dogs or palabok (it was a tough decision but in the end spaghetti won). Jollibee spaghetti- the spaghettiest! It definitely was spaghetti. On a side note, I am fascinated by different countries' takes on spaghetti. Mexican Spaghetti is a one of my favorite dinners, not something you'd find at a restaurant (and not a light dinner, as it's topped with lots of sour cream and cheese), but maybe I'll make it and take pictures one day soon, just for fun. Anyway, back to Chickenjoy!, Jollibee's fried chicken. We wanted to try more of the menu, no hamburgers this time, but we also ordered the Shanghai rolls, an ube (purple yam) shake with tapioca, and then I went back for the mango-peach pie.

A not good phone picture of the Shanghai rolls. I went without camera, sadly. They tasted exactly like McDonald's chicken nuggets. And by that I mean everything good about McDonald's chicken nuggets. Crunchy, greasy, with a hint of chicken flavor. Maybe from frying them in the chicken-y oil? Maybe that's what they're supposed to taste like? I don't know, I don't care, they were terribly good.
Yum, icy ube! The tapioca was unnecessary and completely pushed me over the fullness edge, but it was tasty.

Terrible picture of spaghetti and chicken. It looks pretty plastic-like. The sauce was sweet, the meat was chewy, I enjoyed every bite of it.
A slightly better picture.

Crispylicious! Juicylicious! Jollibee loves inventing words and using exclamation points! It was crispy. It was juicy. It was great.
Also the spicy version (no good picture, sorry) came with a little red flag stabbed into the chicken that said "spicy". The top of the crispy juicy chicken was sprinkled with a spice powder that really is hot. Really, really good. So crispy!

Mango peach pie. Fried pie. Hot, fruity, filling. Everyone had them on their tables. I wanted one. I went back to get one a few days later, since the line was too long to get back on the first time. I carried it with me on my 20 minute walk home, and it was still hot when I finally ate it. I can only imagine the tongue burning pleasures of a freshly fried pie. The crust was crisp and bubbly. The filling was very sweet, more peachy than mango, but with a floral aftertaste.

What more can I say about Jollibee? I want to have a large family just so that I can take home big red buckets of fried chicken, and upgrade it with rice and pies. My only fear would be that my chickenjoy would be lessened were I to take it to go, for to lose any of that crispiliciousness would be a crime.

Jollibee
62-29 Roosevelt Ave.
Woodside

On the 7

Passover is almost over! I must admit that I had to do some non-kosher tasting this week. But I did bring my box of matzah with me every day to work, along with my trusty container of Temp-Tee whipped cream cheese. Which my brother David decided to snack on today while traveling on the 7 train. Such a good Jew. Lots of looks as he spread the oh-so spreadable cream cheese onto a half piece of matzah, with the other half.

Dip, spread, and enjoy.
Once a year, every year, Temp-tee is the best thing around, under or on the train.

Stop Inn

This week is a bad week for eating under the 7 train, as I'm trying to keep kosher for passover. So many things that I can't eat. But breakfast seemed to be the safest bet, so off José and I went for diner breakfast, around lunchtime, to the Stop Inn Diner in Woodside.
We were shown to a very small booth in the very small corner diner, with very large menus in hand. I knew it was a great place when I saw the condiment selection on the table.
Ketchup, two kinds of hot sauce, malt vinegar and chef sauce? Irish, Mexican, American, it's all right there on the formica tabletop. Welcome to Queens!

So I ordered two eggs, over easy, with a side of turkey bacon (if I'm keeping kosher, I might as well go all the way with it) and no toast, thank you very much. You might be thinking to yourself, why does she keep kosher for passover if half of this blog chronicles the delights of eating pork? It makes no sense. It's just one of those things. Religion is weird.
My eggs, covered in the turkey bacon, were perfectly cooked. The turkey bacon was salty and crunchy. Definitely not as crisp as real bacon, but a fine substitute. For 8 days anyway.
The hash browns, a lacy mound of shredded potatoes, were brown and crusty on top, and soft in the middle. Delicious. I did miss the toast to sop up my egg yolks, but passover is all about sacrifice, right?

José was hungry and ordered a lunch special, penne a la vodka, which came with a salad.
What they called their house vinaigrette was Italian dressing. Haven't tasted that in a while. It was a good salad, with olives, red pepper rings, large slices of carrots, cukes, and tomatoes. Lots of onions as you can see.
The pasta was ok, not that I tasted it. I trust my husband though. His biggest complaint was that it was far from al dente. I believe that pasta should be overcooked in a diner. But maybe that's just me.

A pleasant breakfast/lunch. No such thing as brunch on a weekday. The diner was packed, people seemed to really enjoy themselves, and it had a great neighborhood feel, lots of stopping and chatting with each other on the way in or out. I want to be a regular there too.

Stop Inn
60-22 Roosevelt Avenue
Woodside

Cafescaping

Stopped in at Cafescape for a cup of coffee and some sweets, just to see what's inside. It's sort of like Starbucks, but not exactly. There were people working on laptops, using free wifi, sitting for hours, drinking coffee, hanging out. José and I got two pastries, a cup of coffee, and settled into the stuffed leather chairs, where he promptly fell asleep. They were that comfortable. The desserts were interesting, not typical coffee-shop stuff, and made at a bakery upstate, I was told, but the girl behind the counter.
We ordered a mocha cheesecake and a peanut butter chocolate bar.
The cheesecake was nice, a little too sweet, but tasty. A light cheesecake filling with a puddle of ganache in the middle and a sponge-cake bottom.

The peanut butter bar was good as well. A thick shortbread crust, with a dense peanut butter-y layer, topped with chocolate and crunchy, salty peanuts. Not bad, and the plastic plates were cute.
A nice place to drop by if you're in the neighborhood.

Cafescape
59-02 Woodside Avenue (still somewhat under the train)
Woodside

Donovan's Pub

There is a banner hanging outside of this pub proclaiming that it has the #1 Rated Hamburger in NY. Of course, even if it didn't advertise the supremacy of their burgers, I would have gone in. It looks mysterious and castle-like from the outside, and the interior is dark and cozy. Jose and I were led to a booth in a private corner, close to the fireplace, but separate from the rest of the diners. I guess we looked like we wanted a romantic dinner. We were looking for burgers, not romance, but it was a nice thought. We decided to snack on wings as a starter, this being a bar and all. And a pint of Guinness to wash them down. The wings came out quickly, extremely hot, very crispy, and the meat inside was steaming and tender. The only light source was the flickering candle on our table, so the following pictures are quite dark.
The wings were not tossed in sauce, as buffalo wings often are. Instead, they were freshly fried, and sent out in a basket with two sauces: sweet and sour, and blue cheese. I like my wings to be spicy. But the wings themselves were meaty and delicious. If the worst thing in my life is that I had to dip my crispy fried wings in some sweet and sour sauce, then I really can't complain.

Then the burgers. We each got one, Jose went for the cheeseburger, I opted for a plain burger. The platters were set before us, a nice pile of fried potato wedges, the burger, and the bun. I do like a little something on my burgers, so I asked the waiter if I could have some lettuce and tomato. He apologized, saying that due to a recent change, lettuce and tomato were $1.25 extra. I still wanted them, extra charge or not, and a few seconds later he handed me a small plate with some iceberg lettuce and a slice of tomato. After topping the burger, I took this picture.

The burger, a thick patty, nicely charred on the outside, pink on the inside, was beefy and juicy.
I would have liked an onion, but it was too late to ask. The fries were crisp and hot, and quite addictive. It was fine, it was tasty, it was a good hamburger. Good, not great. I am not a burger purist, I like my toppings, so maybe I should have ordered the bacon cheeseburger. But it was not the best hamburger I've ever had. I liked Donovan's. I loved the atmosphere, the neighborhood feel, the crackling fire, the service; it's an old school pub, and it was bustling. But I was expecting greatness (with exclamation points!) the best burger in New York! Anything less is disappointing. Of the burgers sampled on Roosevelt Avenue so far, I would rate it #2. To see #1, click here.

Donovan's Pub
57-24 Roosevelt Ave
Woodside