Results tagged “coneyislandavenue”

This year's New York City International Pickle Day Festival, taking place on October 4, will be a lot more brinier than usual, supplemented with free flowing half-sour tears. The reason? Earlier today, news broke that Lower East Side tenement-era survivors Guss' Pickles will pack up their barrels four months from now and move to Borough Park.

Turkish bakery Güllüoglu will open a new, 900-square-foot location on 2nd Avenue (a former home of Go Sushi, which moved down the block) in the next few weeks. Güllüoglu's first shop opened in 1871, making it one of the world's oldest chain restaurants; for the past four years the company has had just one location stateside, a nondescript storefront dangled all the way out on Coney Island Avenue's Homecrest area. In one sense, Güllüoglu is to baklava like Pierre Hermé is to macarons, and the peaceable dinginess of the original Brooklyn storefront belies the technical virtuosity of the baked goods inside, which have been gobbled up by UN diplomats and hungry wanderers alike. What sets Güllüoglu's baklava apart from its Greek counterpart is the 35 layers of phyllo dough—made with sheep and goat’s milk butter. There's also the matter of the special "Boz" pistachios they use, which while greener and nuttier than regular pistachios, admittedly have nothing to do with this awesomeness. If you like baklava but hate getting punched in the face by simple syrup, look for the swanky new Güllüoglu Manhattan in 1-2 weeks at 982 2nd Avenue at 52nd Street.

In addition to running the kitchen at NY dining landmark Brasserie, Chef Franklin Becker is also a tireless advocate for two particular causes: Raising awareness for Autism research, and developing recipes and healthy food choices for diabetics. Becker, who turned 38 at the beginning of the month, has been in the business for a staggering 24 years. Many New York Times stars later, he now cooks at Brasserie, and was an awarded a StarChefs Rising Star Award last year. After one recent lunch rush, Becker spoke to us at a side table about the benefits of growing up in Brooklyn, an Arthur Avenue restaurant with no menu, and what it’s like to clean the kitchen at 4 AM with the ghosts of Studio 54 keeping time at the bar.

Save for a few ethnic markets in the outer boroughs, raw pistachios are a difficult food to source in NY. Because of occasional crop blights and problems with carcinogenic, fungal aflatoxins, imported fresh pistachios are subject to rigorous inspection and regulation; perhaps not a lot see this side of customs, and eventual retail sale. What does make its way to market has often been flown in literally under the radar. Raw pistachios have some other problems as well: apparently, the whirlwind of chemical reactions taking place within each ripening kernel can actually cause the pistachio to spontaneously combust when nuts are stored en masse. Seriously.

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The Kensington-Ditmas Park area of Brooklyn is slowly becoming known for its restaurants and dishes, including the “haute barnyard” French Fries at The Farm on Adderley. Meanwhile, the wide swath of Coney Island Avenue running through the center of both neighborhoods remains a mainstay of ethnic restaurants from Prospect Park to Brighton Beach -- everything from all-night, tri-level Pakistani joints to Turkish baklava places. It’s sort of like the restaurant bustle of Jackson Avenue in Queens, but decompressed over a 5-mile stretch. In this mix are a dozen or so Mexican Torterias; tiny shops, usually with signature sandwiches. Most of these places are closet-sized, just big enough for a stove at the back, a regular household refrigerator or a steam table. Torterias are often home bases for roving tamale carts; moreover they’re round-the-clock operations, with employees pickling their own jalapenos, pulling and braiding homemade Oaxaca string cheese, or clipping cilantro leaves from plants growing in window boxes.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at me, but I love salad. I enjoy it as an appetizer. I clean off my plate when it comes as a side. And, if it’s really tasty, I could be completely satisfied with salad as an entree.

Don’t be fooled by the tired lasso of rope lights in the window; the standard issue take-out cups with frilly script “Cappuccino” on the sides. Don't be waylaid by the miniature vortex of sales circulars attacking your ankles as you approach 1985 Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn: The winner for the hardest working phyllo in the five boroughs is steps away, inside Güllüoglu.

Yesterday the Department of Transportation installed the first countdown pedestrian signal at the intersection of Coney Island Avenue and Kings Highway. Here's how the city explains the timer:

The pedestrian countdown signals are the same size as the existing pedestrian signal head, but feature a dual display - the traditional "Walking Man" and "Hand" display, and a pedestrian interval countdown display. The countdown feature is programmed to start at the beginning of the "flashing hand" cycle and end when the flashing hand becomes steady. At the five test intersections pedestrians will be given a minimum 15-second countdown before the light changes.

The city hopes people will see the timer and stay on the curb when the countdown is nearing zero. But will they? The NY Times has varying reactions to the timers - some say they'll underestimate their times. Even DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall was skeptical and only okayed the program at the Mayor's insistence. Countdown timers have been in San Francisco since 2001, and the NY Sun says that "a reduction in pedestrian collisions and an increase in compliance with the signals" have been seen in studies there.