Korean Food in Palisades Park, NJ. I'm a Seoul Man...

With less than a week to go before we return to Hungary, we have to cover a lot of ground finding things that we can't ever eat in Budapest. Although Hungary actually does have Korean food, it doesn't have Palisades Park, New Jersey, a suburb just across the George Washington Bridge that hosts the densest population of Koreans in North America. The northern New Jersey towns of Fort Lee, Cliffside Park, Leonia, and Teaneck all have large populations of Koreans, but Palisades Park wins on the culinary front. Broad Street, the main drag, is a two mile long taste of Seoul, with all manner of Korean BBQ joints next to catering shops, bakeries, noodle shops, and Korean fried chicken places.There is a huge Han Ah Rheum Korean shopping mall nearby. Last year I discovered the amazing Dokdo Seafood restaurant (Raw sea squirts! Raw sliced sea cucumber!) on Broad street, but this year we were headed to our favorite soft tofu soup diner in Fort Lee when I remembered a Tofu restaurant in Palisade Park. We decided to try something new. Officially, this is the Pal Gak Jung Restaurant at 268 Broad Avenue - a place often known simply as the Tofu Restaurant, although the menu is a pretty full of all of my korean cravings, from meat to seafood.

The lunch menus were excellent value, averaging about $10 a lunch, which comes with then obligatory slew of ban chan plates – pickles, small bites, and the ever present kimchee without which it is simply not a Korean meal. I had the soft tofu soup – as good as any I have ever eaten, in which the tofu serves the purpose of noodles, and you can take a spoonful of rice to slurp up the spicy red pepper stock, which in this case contained beef, shrimp, and seafood. Fumie went for the octopus stew on rice lunch plate, which was a huge portion of fresh octopus bathed in a mildly spicy red pepper paste.

This place was so good that a few days later when our friend Bob Godfried suggested we go out for some Korean food, we jumped at the chance to return to the Pal Gak Jung Tofu Restaurant. We weren't disappointed, Bob knows New York's ethnic music and food scenes inside out – anything diluted for tourists or compromised into unspiciness would immediately earn a rain of opprobrium from the astute Godfried. But no... he liked it. More kimchee banchan,,, and then out came a free plate of cold sliced pork with the skin on and two dipping sauces. This is why it is good to go to places like this late – they realize the goodwill value of dumping the day's banquet leftovers on you. We ordered a bit of everything: Korean seafood pancakes came out nice and crispy, stuffed full of crab and shrimp.

The grilled short ribs here were cut in a special style leaving a nice hunk of bone to gnaw on, but these were some of the tenderest kalbi ribs I ever had, and three of us could not quite finish the whole order.

Fumie ordered a red kimchee stew while Bob went for a beef bulgogi stew, both excellent and filling. After our first lunch trip, we went down Broad street to the Parisian Baguette Bakery.This a is a chain that can be found in any Korean shopping mall or town, and it competes on Broad street with the equally good Shilla Bakery and a few other trendy coffee and bubble tea spost for the very active Korean need to eat high quality Euro-Asian pastries and coffee. Fumie went on a buying spree, setting aside boxes that would serve as her breakfast for the coming days.

I have an addiction to Korean food... which shouldn't be pricy. Why pay double to eat in Manhattan when you can eat in style in NJ. Well... for some reason, New Jersey absolutely fails in the American restaurant category. There are some pretty bad places to eat out here, but when it comes to certain ethnic communities – Korean, Dominican, and Lebanese come to mind - you can find some of the best food in the USA just off some highway exit tucked into some nondescript ethnic neighborhood. Just ask Mr. Godfried.He gave the Tofu Restaurant in Palisades Park a great big thumbs up!

Coney Island and Brighton Beach: Shooting Freaks in Little Odessa

A week ago when my Dad - still feisty at 84 - had to drive down to south Brooklyn to deliver some important papers to somebody in Sheepshead Bay area, and we decided to go along for the ride. My Dad is a long retired New York detective with a lot of time pounding the pavements as a beat cop back in the classic days of New York cop life, during the 1950s, and whenever I get a chance to cruise around with him in the city I get to listen to his nonstop stories from the old police precincts.

Papers delivered, we took a cruise down memory lane to see Coney Island, where my Dad lived for a few months in 1931 and where my Uncle was born. Coney Island is one of those slices of New York life that never really changes - it spruces itself up now and then, but essentially it is a visit back to 1935 every day in this part of town. At least on the boardwalk. The old neighborhood used to be characterized by hundreds of small bungalows and homes that were rented out each summer to New Yorkers looking for a beachside weekend or a summer at the sea.

In the 1950s the area began to run down and New York's "Master Builder" - the never-elected-to-office Robert Moses - decided that the seedy amusements day had gone. The Luna Park and other fairgrounds were closed, and the Aquarium were built in its place. The last big fair, Steeplechase Park, closed in 1964. The cozy bungalows were replaced by ugly apartment projects. Robert Moses remains one of the most hated names in the history of New York - he destroyed nighborhoods, even entire boroughs in order to carry out his megadevelopent plans between the 1940s and the 1960s (ending with the construction of JKF airport and the site of the 1964 World Fair in Flushing.) Still.. a lot of housing went up during his years. Ugly housing, but housing nonetheless. In fact, Klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras spend his twighlight years living in this building, across the street from the boardwalk, and spent most of his days in a chair by the window watching the endlessly turning Coney Island Ferris wheel. Coney Island went on a decline that lasted until about a decade ago. The new Coney Island owes a lot to the Nathan's hot dog stand and Delicatessen.

Nathan's has long since franchised itself into a thousand suburban malls, but the original still serves fried clams and boiled corn - and Nathan's excellent but ridiculously overpriced NY beef hot dogs. Ya want heritage, ya gotta pay for it. And while Robert Moses was able to pretty much destroy Brooklyn and much of New York with his Stalinoid building projects, some of the old Brooklyn spirit was guaranteed to creep back. They didn't have paint ball back in the day, but if they did you can be sure they would have featured "Shoot the Freak."

Basically, a guy (from Bensonhurst, we met him) gets armored up in hockey gear and hides amid the rubble between two clam and beer bars, and for $5 you can shoot at him with a paintball gun. This, in Brooklyn, constitutes "fun." Who could resist an advertisment offering "Live Human Targets!" It was a bit early for us to start shootoing freaks (they begin at 11 AM) so we cruised down to Brighton Beach, to the nighborhood known as Little Odessa. Starting back in the 1970s, as Russian Jews began emigrating to the USA, this became the single most concentrated Russian nighborhood in the USA. It is a little like being in Chinatown, only with Russians instead of Chinese. And these are happy Russians, at least the ones we met. With markets serving all the flavors of home and produce you would only dream about back in Moscow, this is a bustling, healthy ethnic nighborhood that has some amazing places to discover.

We stopped at a small cafe on Brighton 12th street, ordered a coffee, and by chance lucked into the best cheese pastry any of us had ever had in our lives. We live in east Europe, so we know our cheese pastries, and this place had the most exquisite, mouthwatering, delicately flavored, harmonious cheese pastries ever encountered. I know of what I speak. These were gooooood. I should just drive down to this joint in the morning, buy all their pastries at $1.50, and then sell them on the street in Manhatten for $4 a pop.

My Dad immediately wanted to jump from breakfast to lunch. The counter was filled with good old Russian comfort food: pierogis, pelmeni, roast chicken, kasha, potatoes, latkes, mayonnaise salads, boiled beet borscht... all for $3.99 a pound for the meat dishes and $3.49 for the carbs.

All the foods of my grandmother's depression era kitchen - the amazing things one can do with chicken and spuds. We didn't have enough time to really eat our way through Brighton Beach, but it is worth a return trip, if only for those cheese pastries.

New York's Chinatowns: Fa-lo-shen and Manhatten

Yes, I have been lazy posting while traveling, something that I have never been guilty of before. Since the Ukrainians left town we have both been taking it relatively easy - we both have writing work to complete while we are here, and the weather is still warm, and since we can sit in my parent's garden watching the squirrels while working, we have been enjoying life in New Jersey. New York is a ten minute, $3 "Spanish bus" ride away, though, and we have to make up for lost time eating Chinese food. For some odd reason, New Jersey doesn't have much in the way of consequential Chinese food. Lots of local Chinese , check... lots of Asian supermarkets... check. But the Chinese food in Jersey... meh. The Korean food here is amazing, and good Japanese is never far away, but for good Chinese you have to hit The City.
We started out by exploring Flushing with my Dad. Flushing, Queens (written as "Fa-lo-shen, Emporess City" in Chinese on the shuttle buses that run to Manhatten's Chinatown) is an half hour on the subway outside of Manhatten in the Borough of Queens, known to most as the home of JFK Airport. It is also the home of New York's largest and most vibrant and diverse Chinese neighborhood. This is where all the different ethnicities end up, including Manchurians and Uighurs, and everybody eventually dines at the Flushing Mall, featuring a food court and a few offball shops. The Food court is the main attraction - noodles, regional foods, almost nothing over $6.00.

But we were here because my Dad once tried out the Dim Sum lunch at Ocean Jewels Dim Sum Restaurant, across the street from the mall. We got there on a Saturday at lunch - a great time to check out full fledged Chinatown dim sum frenzy, a bad time to cruise for parking. But finally we did it. Rice Noodle Rolls with Shrimp.

And amid the shiu mai, the turnip cake, the bacon wrapped shrimp balls, the stewed tripe (two kinds,) the har gow, there were the highlight of dim sum for me, the steamed vongole clams in garlic hoisin sauce. The road to heaven is paved in the crushed shells of Cantonese dim sum clams, believe me. Of course, there is a lot more to find in NYC if you like calssic Cantonese food. Manhatten was next, two days later. We were too lazy to head all the way to the eastern edge of Chinatown by Division St and the Manhatten BVridge, but we hit the nabe near the old remnants of Little Italy and found one of the classic roast duck in the window joints and gave it a shot for lunch.

Two kinds of roast meat (here, roast duck and roast pork) with rice and stir fried cabbage, five dollars. a bowl of Cantonese style nooodle soup and shrimp and pork wontons, $3.75.We have no complaints. None at all.

Manyo in New York

It has been a week since the Técsői Banda played at the Central Park Summerstage for the New York Black Sea Roma Festival. It was the high point in the life of these guys, who today are safely back in their home town of Tjaciv recieving an award from the Mayor of Tjaciv himself for playing at an esteemed international festival.

Not to mention that tsymbaly player Vasil Hudak's daughter is getting married today. Not shabby at all for a traditional Hutsul band from the western Ukraine. The boys were a joy to be with while they were visiting New York, especially when we brought them down to the East Village for their gig at the Ukrainian National Home Restaurant on 2nd Ave.

With some time to spare, they strolled around the village, amazed at the presence of so much Ukrainian culture to be seen - the Ukrainian Museum, Ukraianian churches and schools, the impressive Surma bookstore. Even more impressed was the crowd at the Black Sea Roma festival. Alongside some of my favorite East European and Balkan musicians like Selim Sessler from Turkey, Yuri Yunakov from Bulgaria and now the Bronx, and the Mahalla Rai Banda from Romania - who are old friends who remembered me from our now legendary festival gig in Finland some years ago during which we spent three days trout fishing on a river near our festival.Yes, I taught the Mahalla Rai Banda how to fly fish for trout. Sombody had to. I'm in a bind for time so more posts to follow. The last week has been a non-stop manuscript race against the clock for some contract work I had to finish... but the joys of watching the the Técsői Banda discover New York Pizza - eyes bulging in surprise that pizza was never like this before! Thanks goes out to the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in NY (Ethel Raim, Pete Rushevsky, and Eileen Condon,) and to Isabel Soffer of the World Music Institute, and especially to Shaun Williams for getting the details done that got the band here. You all did a great job.

Técsői Banda in New York City

After a half year of organizing, negotiating, and waiting for visas, the Técsői Banda has finally made it to New York city. I've written about - and played with - this Ukrainian Hutsul Gypsy band before in these pages, and tonight they are playing on 2nd Avenue in the Village at the Ukrainian National home Restaurant for a dance sponsored by the Center for Traditional Music and Dance. Tomorrow they play at the Black Sea Gypsy festival in Central park at summer stage. The first few days they were here we put them up at my sister's house in New Jersey. We didnt have room for a huge party, but we did manage to grill up some cevapcici and with the help opf Michael Alpert, Sruli and Lisa, and Pete Rushevsky we were able to play outside and disturb the sleeping chipmunks a bit. It has been fun to watch the guys observe us Americans and our strange and outlandish ways.I'm in a rush... this post is more of a space holder. The guys are leaving on Monday... and I will have more time to write then.

Montreal: Geoff Berner, Josh Dolgin, and Smoked Meat Chez Schwartz's.

In Toronto Geoff Berner said “Arise and follow me to Montreal.” For a recording session, at least. Geoff - last seen in these pages verbally harrassing neo-Nazis in Budapest - has spent much of his career verbally and musically harrassing the forces of hypocrisy and greed as one of Canada's most prolific politico-Yiddological singer songwriters with several great CDs to his credit. I first met Geoff years ago when he convinced me to take him on a trip to Romania to look for Gypsy and Jewish musicians in Maramures and Moldavia. I was wary about it - I didn't know who the heck this dude was and what the heck he wanted... and when I get wary, I mean slit-eyed, nasty-ass cynical about what a person's agenda is... and I basically told him to frack off and be on his merry way. But he persisted, and eventually we traveled together with his band in tow, and I was converted. We actually had a great time together. No simple folkie pilgrim, Geoff came with open eyes and a musicians' Big Ears and soaked in the history of the past and the stark reality of the present in Maramures, and eventually turned his experiences into some amazing new music.

For Geoff's new CD he got together with Josh Dolgin as producer to put together a crack band of klezmer musicians including Mike Winograd on clarinet, Benjy Fox-Rosen on bass and vocals, and Montreal native Brigitte Dajczer on violin to build up the sound he's worked out.On hand were Geoff's go-to musicians: my old Maramures traveling buddies from BC, Diona Davies(fiddle) and Wayne Adams (drums and percussion.) Me? I was brought in to add the quality called “skronk”... either playing the Romanian vioara cu goarna or just plain screaming into the mike in Romanian.Studio work is a combination of intense focus and concentration interspersed with long periods of wasted time and what we musicians call “the hang.” This was one of the best hangs I have ever had the pleasure to spend with musicians...This was a non-stop jam with epic tales of musicians' road stories, joke telling, and opinions about Chinese take out food.We started our Montreal experience with Geoff's gig at the Casa del Popolo on Bl. Saint Laurent to a rowdy crowd of Berner loyalists fueled by eminently affordable beer and shots. Geoff is known in Canada as "The Whiskey Rabbi" and he playes an audience like a fined tuned violin, shot glass in hand, reeling with a balance of drunkards swagger and the timing of a top notch stand up comic. And while his songs are funny, they are a dark kind of funny that makes you want to run loose in the streets yelling "No Pasaran!" and upsetting garbage cans until you can find another bar that is still open. Folks... Montreal proves that you don't have to spend a lot of money to have a nightlife. As Brigitte told me “Toronto works so that Montreal can play.” Amen.I'll post more about the food we encountered... such as the famed Montreal bagel. No, it is not like a New York Bagel. It is its own animal, slightly sweet, small, and perfect for breakfast - especially if the breakfast is at the Club Social cafe, in the Mile's End nabe next to the St. Viateur bagel shop... which Winograd declared - rightly so - to be the best coffeehouse in the entire Universe. .And yes, it is very, very good. As bagels go. But the Holy of Holies, the grail of Montreal munchies, the steamed, rye wrapped prize atop the highest Himalayan peak of Jewish meat products was finally within my grasp... Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you... the smoked meat sandwich from Schwartz's Delicatessen, or as they call it, Chez Schwartz, Charcuterie Hebraique.C'est magnifique! C'est almost better than Katz's pastrami, si c'est possible. Take one Canadian Jewish singer songwriter (yes, he idolizes Leonard Cohen who also like to frequent Chez Schwartz' for the occasional smoked meat sandwich) and add a steamed, fat laden, delicious helping of Jewish culture that has morphed into a solid piece of Montreal - and Canadian - identity... stick it between two slices of rye bread, slather with mustard, serve with pickle...And that deserves an entire post in itself... when I get some rest. After a ten hour drive from Montreal... no more tonight!

Toronto, Ontario: Smoked Meat and Ashkenaz Festival

It hasn't been all that long a time since I was sitting on the roof of our flat in Istanbul mourning the loss of my laptop. Since then I have moved on... to New York via Canada. It has been a week of jet lag, long and loud jams, and smoked meat sandwiches with some of the best musicians in the Klezmer scene. I'm exhausted. For access to the computer world that we all know and love, in front of me is a tiny computer. I was given a "net book" - sort of the pygmy monkey of the laptop family - and it is tiny and occasionally annoying. It is like typing on a paperback book sized keyboard with a 10” screen, but for the time being it is what I have to use. I just spent last weekend at the Ashkenaz festival in Toronto.Ashkenaz is held at the Toronto Harbourfront Center, a pleasant stretch of Lake Ontario dedicated to events celebrating Canada's diverse patchwork of cultures that hosts a series of ethnic festivals each summer culminating in this huge Klez-ma-thon of Jewish culture. Canada's Jews are quite diverse in themselves, and it would be misleading to characterize the festival as one of simply Yiddish culture – although it is one of the most Yiddish festivals around on the klezmer circuit – because of the strong presence of Canada's large Sephardic and Mizrachi Jewish communities. Chickpeas and bourekas (the Israeli/Turkish Sephardic bureks that have become one of Canada's main snack pastries) far outnumbered Ashkenazic foods, but I finally got a chance to taste Canada's version of pastrami – smoked meat. And I can say that while different, it is good. Very good.I started at Caplansky's on College avenue in the company of my old friend... let's call him... Walter... AKA Marshall Tito and his family. Marshall Tito had a brisket and smoked meat combo, which may be the only possible improvement imaginable. Later at the festival site, we discovered that Caplansky's was a festival sponsor and had a stand in the food tent, further narrowing any decision I could make as to what to eat. Caplansky's is described at length in David Sax's must-read encyclopaedic examination of the world of the delicatessen Save The Deli, and it is a modern, hip answer to the deli of old. I ordered the $11 (Canadian loonie) smoked meat sandwich with fries and the sandwich arrived surprisingly smaller than those parodic NYC pastrami towers, but all in all, just about the right portion to eat without waste.It isn't pastrami or corned beef at all, but somehow manages to make a third way in between the two noble deli meats and carve out a niche and identity for itself. Less processed than either pastrami or corned beef, more like a cross between pastrami and rare roast beef. And there is Caplansky's pulled brisket sandwich... which is a protein-pcaked ode to the joys of slathered mustard on cheap belly meat.If I had these in New York I would be in utter confusion about which to order – as it is I usually jump between my beloved pastrami and my old friend corned beef, but these would leave me in utter confusion. With luck... not promising anything yet... there is a chance I may go to Montreal next week in which case I will get a chance to sample the legendary Chez Schwartz' smoked meat sandwich. More on that later. If you had to visit only one Jewish cultural festival a year... Ashkenaz would be it.Unlike festivals in Europe, Ashkenaz not only features concerts, but workshops, lectures, events for kids, and more all compactly located on the shore of beautiful Lake Ontario. For the participants, its a chance to get together and meet old friends and hang out and play together. I was there alone, but I also sat in on Alan Bern's Other Europeans panel and played in a variety of bands for dancing.I met old friends like best-selling author Michael Wex, who was flogging his new novel The Frumkiss Family Business, and his wife Marilla,British born stand up comic and all around whirlwind who wore a participant's ID identifying her as “Wife of Wex.” Mark Rubin – about one third lighter and more compact than the last time I saw him – was on hand for blues fiddle jamming. My old buddies from Vancouver via Maramures, Geoff Berner, Wayne and Dione were in on Monday and we had a klezmer musician vodka and smoked meat sandwich party to end our festival. At my age one is not supposed to have this much fun. Thanks to Erik and all the Ashkenaz organizers (Ilana... I'm talkin' bout you!) for a great weekend. And don't worry - after our north American travels I should have some more details about what we did in Istanbul, as soon as the ophotos I lost in the Great Laptop Robbery of 2010 are replaced by even better photos of the same shots. Until then, the midnight "Quiet Dance" wiith Pete Rushevsky and Steven Greenman (Di Tsvey) along with Mike Winograd and Amir and others, led by Steve Weintraub on the shores of Lake Ontario .