Veritasty: Truthfully Delicious

When we recently went to a Bay Ridge restaurant called Mussels & More, you may be surprised to hear we opted for no mussels, just whatever "more" entails.  We find ourselves walking around this stretch of Bay Ridge a lot - between 5th and 3rd Avenues and from 86th Street to however far north our legs take us - and have seen Mussels & More frequently, but never thought to try it until now.  Big mistake, because the food turns out to be pretty spectacular! We shared an order of fried calamari and fish & chips, with sweet potato fries instead of regular chips.  The food came out quickly and was really fresh and tasty.  First, our compliments to the chef for frying up some of the best calamari we've ever had: light, flavorful batter with squid rings fried to perfection.  I've had lots of good calamari from a variety of places, but I think the ones at Mussels & More will be most memorable, honestly, because it was unexpected.  The fish ...

Does anyone else out there get cravings for chicken wings?  I haven't met a chicken wing I didn't like.  I have a vivid memory of my best friend Jackie's birthday party back in middle school when her dad made a giant platter of homemade fried chicken wings and I devoured my weight in poultry that day.  My dad used to work in a restaurant in Chinatown that was famous for their chicken wings, which tasted like they were basted in just a hint of soy sauce: the flavor is obviously not unique since I've had lots of Korean fried chicken with soy/garlic sauce, but this chicken from long ago was more subtle.  I haven't tasted anything like it ever since it shuttered more than 10 years ago. One of the best places to have wings in Brooklyn is Kettle Black, a pub/sports bar in Bay Ridge.  We checked it out one hot summer day for a giant platter of chicken wings.  We shared an order of buffalo wings and an order of garlic Parmesan wings.  I wasn't quite expe...

What do you say when a live musician at a German restaurant arrives after the 8:00 p.m. set-up time? She was later -hosen! Joke credit to Alex Jagendorf Last weekend, we went to dinner at Schnitzel Haus in Bay Ridge.  Funnily enough, I was craving a beer hall kind of atmosphere, but we neither had beer nor was it the ambiance of a beer hall.  Instead, Schnitzel Haus is a family-friendly eatery, sort of like the German pavilion at Epcot Center.  There were a lot of tables of guests who seemed like regulars by the way the staff interacted with them.  As we were sitting down to eat, a musician was setting up a complicated stereo system, later joined by his slightly tardy colleague.  She definitely wasn't wearing lederhosen (rather, stiletto boots and leather leggings) but had quite a good voice.  There's something pretty cool about stumbling upon a restaurant with a live music night and having a front row seat to the performance. In terms of füd...

Today, one of my interns brought a tray of assorted baklava to the office.  To reiterate how my previous post started: "Sugar crash is a very real and very brutal thing, my friends." Turns out her parents own Hookah Nuts, a store in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, that sells hookah and nuts.  Along with a bunch of hookah devices (although they are colorful and kind of elegantly shaped, I find them scary looking, like some sort of medieval torture instrument) and bins overflowing with nuts, they also sell dried fruits, candy, knickknacks, paddywhacks, nougat, and delicious baklava, the topic of day's ode.  Side note: their nougat is also amazing, but I could rhapsodize about that in an entirely other post... Look at that macro phyllo dough action!  The delicate sprinkling of ground pistachios!  The glisten of sticky syrup!  Finally, the pièce de résistance (one you cannot see in the picture), is the ever-so-subtle hint of rosewater infused in the bakl...