The great Williamsburg bang-bang, part 2: Sweet Chick! So, I walked past this place a handful of times throughout the night, simultaneously annoyed ("Ugh, of course, a hipster chicken and waffles joint on Bedford Avenue in fucking Williamsburg"), and intrigued ("Ugh, chicken and waffles sound really good"). But of course, since it's a hipster chicken and waffles joint on Beford Avenue in fucking Williamsburg, it was packed to the gills every time I checked back, even at 10:30 at night.

But eventually, I saw a spot at the bar open up, and my inner intrigued voice beat out my inner annoyed voice. After all, this was my real last night in New York, I may as well give in and pay through the nose for some Williamsburg fried hipster. I squeezed in at the bar (surrounded of course by local bartenders and other staff members who apparently just hang out at this place at all hours of the night even on their off nights), and ordered the regular fried chicken with the dried cherry waffles. Okay. Look. It was really good. Like perfectly good. Like, I've had chicken and waffles plenty of times, and it's always sort of good enough, but never quite reaches that magic pinnacle of what you assume chicken and waffles should hit. Well these hit it. Thoroughly satisfying.

I learned later, in a beautiful cosmic coincidence that did tie a nice bow around my trip, that Sweet Chick is owned by the same husband-and-wife duo that owns Pearl's, the first place I ate on this NYC adventure, and also one of the best. Whatever my misgivings about modern day restauranteurship may be, these two certainly know how to make some incredible food.

So what happened is: My flight got cancelled and rescheduled for the next evening, so I got an extra night in the city! Lucky me! Lucky me? Well, I guess the place I was staying was free, so I can't complain. So to make the most of it, I decided to do a classic Louie-style bang bang!

Dinner 1: Hot dogs. Boring, yeah. But it sounded good. I hit up this little place in Williamsburg called Crif Dogs. They deep fry them there, which I hear is sort of a New Jersey thing. Which is funny, because the hot dog I had in New Jersey wasn't deep fried. Anyhow, I don't know, they were good! The chili dog was particularly good in that chili dog sort of way. Better than the NJ chili dog even. Otherwise, not a whole lot to report. On to the 2nd part of the bang bang!

For my last night in New York (spoiler: it wasn't actually my last night!), I wanted to do an at least half-fancy, "nice" dinner, rather than the garbage that I'd been eating all week. But I also really wanted some meatballs—some real authentic New York a-spicy-meat-a-ball-za. A quick search of "best meatballs in New York" led me to this place Frankie's Spuntino, which was conveniently also a half-fancy "nice" spot in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn. Perfect! I even rode a bike to get there!

Frankie's is a nice little 'neighborhood' place. I mean, it's newish and pricey and definitely not a hole in the wall, but it still has that no-bullshit feeling that I like in my restaurants. I ordered a small plate of the meatballs, which are beef and veal and stuffed with pine nuts and raisins, and are seemingly what this place is known for, as well as a lima bean pasta dish, because I didn't want to be the dummy just eating three meatballs by himself at the bar. The meatballs themselves were quite good. Really. I have zero complaints. Although I question whether they were truly 'Best Meatballs In New York' good. The pasta, however, was a wet sloppy mess, that sort of made me sad. I don't know what I was expecting, but it just seemed like a bad combination of flavors and textures, as if they were going for 'simple homestyle Italian,' but didn't really put enough effort into making sure it all came together correctly. It was a bummer.

I had more pizza at a bar called Pizza Party, which is this close to being an annoyingly twee hipster name, but I think is actually fun and charming. Anyway, the pizza reminded me of our beloved 'Minnesota style' pizza, if that's actually a thing. It was pretty good I guess. I don't remember what else I had to say about the place. Anyway.

After the disappointment of La Lupe, I still had a taco jones to fix. San Loco did the trick. This is a tiny little take-out counter that advertises itself specifically as "Gringo-mex". Or as I like to call them: "Mom tacos." Interesting see a non-chain place specifically advertise this sort of Americanized, Taco Bell style taco as a feature rather than a bug. But I guess San Loco has been around for quite a while in the Lower East Side in Manhattan, and had a good enough reputation. Anyway, I got the San Loco equivalent of a double decker taco (basically the most perfect fast food item ever created, in my opinion; a hard shell taco coated in refried beans and wrapped in a flour soft shell. Get one next time you're at Taco Bell. It's great). And hey, it was great! Ground beef and cheddar cheese and iceberg lettuce. Not trying to be a "real" taco, but absolutely satisfied me. Talk about authenticity all you want, but there's something to say about this global cultural exchange of ours.

La Lupe is a somewhat cool taco joint in Bushwick, but I'm not going to write much about it, because the service was unreasonably slow and the tacos were very boring. But the photo looks pretty, huh?

You've already read my thoughts on the Brooklyn Vietnamese food scene. Actually, you probably haven't. Well scroll down to Little Mo and then come back up here maybe.

Back? Good. Hi there. Thing is, I didn't love Lucy's. I don't remember the details of why I didn't like it, but the bread felt wrong, the meat was a little tough, and in general it just didn't come together as I'd like it to. But part of that might have been spoiled expectations, because: Lucy's is the best smelling restaurant I've ever been or walked past. Not exaggerating. The place is tiny—it's basically a kitchen, a counter, and one table. So you're a lot closer to the smells of a kitchen than you often might be, making the smells that much stronger. But even then, the aroma coming out of Lucy's front door is incredible. Because aside from the standard smells of a Vietnamese kitchen, that pho broth and lemongrass and fish sauce, Lucy's is smoking meats back there. It's magical. I bet the pho is amazing, but my sandwich just didn't live up to the smell.

I was surprised at the number of Vietnamese places in Brooklyn. Well, maybe not simply the number (there are plenty more to be found in Minneapolis and St. Paul), but the number of cool Vietnamese places. Where most of the Twin Cities spots are hole in the wall, family affairs, the Brooklyn places seem to operate out of the "Hey, pho and banh mi are hot new food trends!" mindset. Which, sure, why not? Lucy's is the real hot spot (you probably scrolled past it already), but the best one I tried is Little Mo's. Not much to report in terms of the makeup of their banh mi—it's got all the stuff you want, and some nicely flavored short ribs—but the best thing about it was the bread. To me, the hard crunchy crust of the French roll that tops of a banh mi is often what ruins it. It shouldn't be painful to eat a sandwich! But Little Mo's bread actually had a nice softness to it, without feeling cheap or lesser. A great sandwich! Sadly: I overheard the cashier mention that the place would probably be closing soon. There's some elevated train construction happening nearby that's going to tie up that corner for months, and the owners just decided to shut it down entirely. So, you'll have to go to Lucy's instead I guess.

First world problem, sure, but I'm a little bummed that my first dinner in New York was maybe the best meal of my entire trip! Pearl's is a Caribbean restaurant tucked around a corner, just barely away from the mustached and braless masses of Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, who specifically announce themselves as "Pearl's Bake & Shark"—a bake being a sort of Caribbean sandwich on a corn-based fry bread, and shark being, yes, that. I didn't eat any shark, because it kinda creeps me out and makes me sad, but I did have a jerk chicken bake, with a side of rice and beans. And there's not a whole lot to say other than that it was delicious! Not too spicy, not too "jerky", just a well balanced pile of flavors in a slightly-hard-to-eat package. Maybe not as mind-bendingly good as the best meals at Harry Singh's, but far more approachable and not nearly as olfactorally exhausting. Highly recommended!

There's a restaurant in Brooklyn with no windows and no signs and they have their own radio station and a secret garden on the roof, where the bartender looks like Morrissey and you have to wait two hours to get a table. Well, there's actually probably a handful of those. At least one other one on the same block, I'd bet. But this one is Roberta's, and it's the shit and their fennel sausage pizza is pretty great.

For our second NYC dinner, we met up with Libby's old friend Chris (who, insanely coincidentally, lived literally around the corner from where we were staying), and went to his favorite local spot called Northeast Kingdom. The food was fine. All you really need to know is "duck fat tater tots." Yes. But more important for me to note about this place is how it represents a eye-opening and noticeable trend in the world of Brooklyn restaurants (specifically Bushwick, Brooklyn restaurants). Maybe it's a European thing or something, but the branding happening on new restaurants there is absolutely minimal. No signs, no logos, no awnings. At most, the name of the place will be hand painted in a small corner of a window. Or written on a chalkboard on the sidewalk. Maybe some gold leaf window lettering. But it's almost as if there's an unspoken competition happening about who can make their bar/restaurant more inconspicuous (see: Roberta's). The interiors are all similar, too; dark, bricky, woody, earthy, desperately trying to feel lived-in. It works though!

I've had chicken shawarma before, and I've had plenty of gyros before, but this thing I ate at this randomly chosen Williamsburg deli was something else. It started as a standard pita stuffed with sliced shawarma--lamb and turkey in this case--but on top of that was a pile of red cabbage, some sort of peppered pickles (which, according to my research, may have been pickled gherkins), mystery onions, a tzatziki sauce unlike any I have ever seen, and a substance that can best be compared to Chipotle's hot salsa. It was like Egypt, Germany, and Mexico all crammed into one unfortunate pita. The meat, I'm sad to report, was a little bit dry, and the meat/veggie distribution demanded some creative bite-taking. But as I made my way to the middle, it was juicy and delicious and different. And just five bucks. I can't imagine finding a much better and equally filling five dollar meal anywhere, be it New York or wherever. Okay, so I could probably get a better deal on it if it was "Oasis of Cairo" (where it would likely be served to me by the immigrant deli owner, a guy from Kansas City named Andy), but the more I think about it, I don't know if I could ever find a similar sandwich in the Twin Cities. As soon as I get home, I'm storming into the Lyndale Deli and demanding gherkins, dammit! Gherkins!

The obvious first thought: "Oh god, someone opened a breakfast joint in the middle of Williamsburg and decided to call it Egg? Why don't you just shoot me in the head and feed my body to some free range chickens and get it over with? However, after eating there, I have nothing to complain about. For having the gall to name themselves "Egg," there was little or no sense of self-importance or preciousness in either the menu or the interior itself. The space was small and contemporary, but inviting--white walls, unfinished wood ceilings, reclaimed wood tables, that sort of thing, but lived-in enough that you wouldn't get kicked out if you spilled ketchup all over the floor (which I didn't do, thank you very much). The food was perhaps a little too pricey, but really no more than eating at French Meadow or such a place (and cheaper than Cafe Maude, although you should expect to pay a premium for suchcivilized leisure). I suffered major ordering regret--cognitive dissonance, if you will--about my omelette. I should've went with the biscuits and gravy, which Ben ordered and were spicy and just how I like them. The omelette was okay, a little too mushy in the middle, but the hashbrowns were fantastic. Very different, as well; they were basically a big ball of potato hash deep fried into what could easily be confused as a giant falafel ball. Crunchy on the outside, hash-browny in the middle. And of course, I wouldn't dare eat at this place without ordering their candied bacon, which sounds a lot more ridiculous than it really is. Basically, they cook up their bacon coated in maple syrup to create a nice layer of sweetness on the outside. Very tasty. All in all, it was probably a little too expensive, and it can be an awfully long wait to get in if you don't get there early enough. But I'd certainly go back there in the future if its space isn't taken over by a cupcake shop or discount keffiyah outlet. (Oh, and also, free homemade donut holes when you are seated.)

For the second time this year, I found myself standing in line with a horde of bitter people for a unusually long amount of time outside a highly-regarded pizza place in a very large American city. But unlike my experience with Gino's East in downtown Chicago, this time I actually left satisfied. Granted, Grimaldi's is a completely different beast than Gino's East; we're talking about a one-off, family-owned, coal-fired pizza joint who's popularity is based solely on its reputation and quality, not a mythic regional institution who filters millions of customers a year through its several locations in search of a pizza the size of a tractor tire. The fact that it is located practically underneath the Brooklyn Bridge (very impressive, by the way) certainly doesn't hurt, either. Thin, chewy, and fresh, the pizza was much more similar to something you'd get at Punch than any big greasy pie you might find somewhere (anywhere) else. And to be honest I have a hard time finding anything particular that distinguishes it from Punch. But if you were to set a Punch pizza and a Grimaldi's pizza in front of me right now, I'd choose Grimaldi's, hands down. It was just a perfectly enjoyable pizza with good sauce, good crust, and good cheese. As we were finishing up, we were kindly greeted by who I assume is the owner, a cartoonishly Italian Brooklynite who managed to disparage Bostonians, Asians, gays, children, and himself in about 1.5 minutes, in a way that would've been charming even to gay Asian children from Boston. I believe the staff of Gino's East simply turned the lights off and spit in our to go boxes as they pushed us out the door.