eateryROW: FOREST HILLS: 2010

COMMON SPACE

COMMON SPACE
70-15 Austin Street
Forest Hills, NY 11375
(718) 263-2130

Common Space is one of the newest restaurants to open in the area and is trying to tap a market that few have bothered: the young and trendy. The interior itself is very nice, with stools for chairs, exposed brick, industrial lighting, a small clipboard menu, and a huge garage door/window that opens in warm weather. Add the rear patio to the mix and this is one of the few places with any serious outdoor space in the zip code. The music is pop and rap, which you'll either be totally into or seriously hate. I wasn't a big fan, but they played some seriously shitty rap with some seriously foul language and my guess is that this ain't the neighborhood for it. If Common Space wants my advice, they should stick with R&B and jazz.

Bro and I arrived on a recent, bitter cold day. I suppose it shouldn't have been much of a surprise that the place were deserted and the wait staff looked like they were dying of boredom. It was a bigger surprise when, about an hour into our meal, a group arrived from the Xhale hookah bar next door, hookah pipe in tow and sat down, puffing away(?!?).

Common Space calls itself a lounge, but it's not really loungey. It's a restaurant with loud music and Latin food. They have a fully stocked bar, and, if my $4 cola was any indication, it makes most of its money on the liquor. Bro and I had pre-partied elsewhere, so we didn't drink.

For our appetizers, Bro ordered the Bravas, fried casavas with a spicy cheese dipping sauce. They were good. A little overcooked, but good. I ordered the Tres Quesos Mac & Cheese, crispy-topped bow-tie pasta in a cheese sauce made from manchego, monterrey jack and mahon cheese. It was decent, didn't cost too much, and it was a good size. The biggest problem we encountered with our appetizers was with the poor timing. They took a solid twenty minutes plus to arrive and they arrived only about five minutes before our entrees.

The entrees were likewise not bad. Bro ordered the Lomo Saltiado, sauteed beef with onion, red pepper and cilantro, served on a bed of french fries and with a side of white rice. The beef was tender and tangy and moist, not tough, though being served over fries felt cheap. Not that this was an expensive dish to begin with ($13). I ordered the Chicharron de Pollo, a spicy crispy chicken dish with a side of red onions, lime-cilantro rice and a spicy cilantro dipping sauce. This wasn't a dish for the faint of tongue. Every part of it had some kick. But again, it was good (and cheap).

So. My verdict. It was good. Not amazing, but terrible playlist aside and the guys who were allowed to smoke their hookah aside, I liked it. I want to return when it's warmer for the rear patio for sure. The food was well priced and tasty (if not terribly unique), the service was friendly (though missing most of the time) and the decor was spot on what I've been hoping would open up around here. Do I want a place like Williamsburg's Rye or Park Slope's Rose Water, but this is a good start. Now I can just cross my fingers for a wine bar and an underground cocktail lounge.

Two appetizers, two entrees, two sodas, tax and tip came to about $53.

11:21 AM
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DINER SMACKDOWN!!!

$$$

UPDATE: The Forest Diner has CLOSED.

DINER SMACKDOWN!!!

Austin House
Forest Diner
Forest Hills Coffee Shop
Forest Hills Diner
T-Bone Diner
Tower Diner

Diners are the original American chain restaurant. They exist virtually everywhere, from the corners of big cities to the smallest of small towns. From I-95 rest stops to dusty desert backwaters. They may be cute tiny refurbished railroad cars, or they may be giant chrome and neon eyesores. Some serve porterhouse steak, others claim to have lobster on the menu. Some have Italian sections, some have Greek. Some have thirty varieties of hamburger, some have decided to ride the panini wave. But really, diners are the everything-restaurant, serving breakfast, lunch, dinner, appetizers, desserts, shakes, you name it. And regardless of where they are or who runs them or what they look like, the all serve basically the same food and they all seem to use the same menu: spiral bound, thickly laminated for quick ketchup cleanups.

Diners, in spite of a few that have pretended to go the fancy route with their surf-n-turf lobster steak combo, and in spite of a few that have pretended to go the healthy route by making salads more prominent on the menu, no one in the real world thinks that diners are fancy(*) or healthy. They're not called greasy spoons for nothing. As an aside, I always chuckle when I see the sometimes vast list of "specials", as though there was a chef experimenting back in the kitchen hand-scrubbing the last grains of soil off of the organic Swiss chard he plans to saute alongside a truffle oil rubbed Cornish hen, screaming at his staff for letting the filet mignons sit on the grill four seconds longer than he specifically said. In truth, most people regard the "specials" being offered as the "this stuff's going bad soon so use it up" list.

And that, in a large sense, is the problem with diners. The popular perception is that they're supposed to be mediocre, if not outright suck. It's their destiny. As a result, the bar for what diners can get away with is set so low that just about anything above "hey I didn't puke" status earns the joint a gold star, a smiley face and a positive Yelp review. Meanwhile, that same meal, served at Cousin Wanda's house would be cause for a family meeting. "We're never eating there again."

Luckily for us in Forest Hills, we have choices. Six diners that I know of. Of course, once that choice exists, what good does it do if we continue to patronize the ones that stink? And how do we know which ones are the ones to stick to?

I therefore decided to traverse the neighborhood to try a couple of simple meals. Most people order breakfast, so I did too. And most people order burgers, so I did too. I'm not under the delusion that any of these diners make their own pies or cakes or cookies, so I didn't bother with dessert. But, a couple of times I went with a friend and they ordered something I did not, or I had been there before or I eavesdropped on the neighboring tables. I think it would be helpful if every reader dropped a comment about their experience as well. After all, like I said, these menus are big and no one can really cover it all.

DING DING!!!

AUSTIN HOUSE RESTAURANT
72-04 Austin Street
Forest Hills, NY 11375
(718) 544-2276

With the exception of T-Bone, right by the subway, Austin House probably has the most advantageous parcel of real estate. Smack on Austin Street where all of the shopping is. I have yet to ever go past and see it empty. I also have yet to ever see it full. The interior is shabby at best. There's wallpaper peeling off the walls and the Formica tables are chipped and in need of replacement. The space feels old, and while this isn't helped by the geriatric core-clientele, it's mostly due to the feeling that the space has been letting itself go for a while. It has potential though. The dining counter has a retro feel and the layout is very 1940s. I'm not suggesting that they ditch the diner motif and become a normal restaurant, but they could revamp the place and make it far more interesting. At least fix the radio, which was alternating between LiteFM and static. I order my eggs over easy, so they should bleed across the plate, but these were watery. In other words, the white wasn't fully cooked. I enjoyed the bacon, but the home fries, which were potato and nothing else, were forgettable and stuck to the roof of my mouth like peanut butter. The coffee was for diner coffee. My friend, Seth, who accompanied me this breakfast trip, ordered his eggs scrambled and his potatoes home fried. He cleaned his plate, so maybe that's the way to go with your eggs here. Breakfast cost: $7.90 plus tip, each.

I returned a week later for a meal with Bro. When I was there for breakfast the prior weekend, it was relatively full. This time, it was deserted. Bro and I were at one of the only tables with two people and the place was positively dead silent. A TV was on to kill the mortuary ambiance, but you could still hear your heart beating. Shhh! Quiet, Heart! You'll disturb the guy in the corner.

Bro ordered the gyro and onion rings. The gyro itself was standard but thoroughly mediocre. The taziki sauce may have been poor but at least the pickle was inedible. The onion rings rounded out his dinner by also avoiding being very good, too. So far, 0 for 4. Of course, I ordered the cheeseburger platter. The fries were fine, but the burger was worse than the gyro. It was clearly skillet fried and steamed to speed up cooking time, leaving that coagulated burger goop that grills don't leave. It looked unappetizing and tasted bland. Thank goodness for ketchup. I won't bother telling you what it cost since I advise those wanting hamburgers to look elsewhere.

*****

FOREST DINER
63-61 108th Street
Forest Hills, NY 11375
(718) 896-5301

Located in what I think can best described as a truly decrepit Kosher mini-mall, north of the main Forest Hills drags of Austin/QB and Metropolitan, is the Forest Diner, the first of three diners with "Forest" in their title. Oh, for some imagination! Anyway. If the Department of Health rated the place a B (see photo), then the interior tried hard to live up to that standard. The chairs are old and torn with the foam coming out of them. The ceiling is stained. The windows are in need of soap. The atmosphere is so 1972 that I half expected them to maintain a smoking section. When I sat down for breakfast, the waitress plopped a NY Post on my table. When I said no thanks, she just shrugged and left it there. I get it, believe me. The Post is a terrible rag, but don't toss your garbage on my table. On the other hand, at least the breakfast was okay. The bacon (probably the only place on the block to get it) was thick, but not as flavorful as what other diners served. The eggs were well made and the coffee was surprisingly good, albeit too thin. The home fries stunk, but not a single diner in the entire Smackdown with the exception of the people at the Forest Hills Coffee Shop (up next), seemed to know how to make them. It was nice that I was able to sit and drink coffee, read a magazine and not be bothered or asked to leave. If the service was cold and impersonal (and it was) at least they left me alone.

The cheeseburger I ordered a few days later was thoroughly forgettable. It, along with it's accompanying fries, were squarely bland, cookie-cutter diner versions of food you can get just about anywhere else. But what my cheeseburger lacked in flavor, it made up for in raw meat. Despite ordering it medium, it wasn't yet cooked all the way through. As with so many diners, this is a common symptom of cooking still-frozen-solid burger patties. With all the ground beef recalls this past year, maybe I'll get a little surprise. After all, it is almost Christmas and my stocking is empty. Maybe this year, St. Nick will give me dysentery (instead of the habitual coal).

*****

FOREST HILLS COFFEE SHOP
96-07 Metropolitan Avenue
Forest Hills, NY 11375
(718) 261-8705
note: CASH ONLY

The Forest Hills Coffee Shop on Metropolitan is the smallest and most truck-stoppy of the bunch. The shredded signage, and the sign on the window that says that approval from the health department is "pending", the cheap booths that shift when you get in and out of them and their eschewing of credit cards only add to the low-rent feel. Yet it's oddly the most inviting. It's warm and smells like grilled burgers and pancakes. I was intensely curious about the food.

The menu here is small. A third the size of the others. In fact, other than breakfast, all they serve are burgers and sandwiches. Good. The staff is extremely personable. And by personable I don't mean that they were nice, although they were nice too. I mean that they seemed to know everyone. It was like walking into the small town diner in a made-for-TV movie. Everyone waves at Joe the line cook, everyone gossips with Eileen the waitress (I made those names up. I don't know the names of the real staff). One customer showed up to give the diner a poinsettia plant for the holidays. It was a very nice gesture that one really never sees outside of the Lifetime channel. It's a family place, clearly. So they don't really have any outside help. In other words, the service is painfully slow. You're bound to be asked to sit at a dirty table until there's time to clean it between handing you the menu and taking your order. At least, this happened to me twice.

My breakfast, which cost about the same as the other guys ($9 with tip) may have been the best of the lot. The bacon was thick without being salty, the eggs were well made and the home fries, made with onions and peppers ad a little bit of tomato, easily bested everyone else's. The cheeseburger platter ($10 with soda and tip) was the cheapest of the bunch and was delicious. It was only slightly behind Tower Diner's burger. Good cole slaw, too. Meanwhile, the fries made everyone else's look like generic potato sticks. These were the only fries I bothered to eat all of. The South Beach people may frown in disappointment now.

*****

FOREST HILLS DINER
60-60 Austin Street
Forest Hills, NY 11375
(718) 997-7744

This is the newest of all the diners in the area and its shows if for no other reason than it's the cleanest. No peeling wallpaper, no dusty tube TV in the corner playing Fox News, no missing floor tiles. Like Austin House, it's on Austin Street, but it's way down on the other end near the medical annexes and the police station. The staff was the most friendly of any of the diners by a wide margin and each time I was there no one gave me any issue when I popped out my laptop to do a little work. The eggs were almost perfect, but a tiny bit overcooked. They didn't run as much as I would have liked. Still, the bacon was good and I was impressed by the coffee. The home fries were much like the ones at Austin House though. Potato alone, no peppers, no onion and no discernible spices. Breakfast cost: $8.10 plus tip.

The burger at the Forest Hills Diner was decent. I asked for it cooked medium, and it came just that. Medium. Not well done. Not scary raw. It wasn't a spectacular burger. It's not the sort of burger one might make a trip for, the way I would for a burger at Five Napkin, or that anyone would stand on line an hour to get, the way thousands do at Shake Shack. But it was good. "The fries were okay, but nothing special. The service was still extraordinarily pleasant. It cost about $12 with a soda.

*****

T-BONE DINER
107-49 Queens Boulevard
Forest Hills, NY 11375
(718) 261-7744

Yes, I know. I've been to T-Bone before and they were such a barrel o' laughs that they were worth their own review . T-Bone is notorious for being terrible, and between consistently broken neon letters, ripped awnings and a generally dingy appearance, no one can say that they can't see the food following suit. And the staff! If my waiter told me that he was about to hang himself in the kitchen, I wouldn't have been very surprised. These guys look just miserable. I was tempted not to go back, but I felt that it was only fair to re-live the glory. And I was, for breakfast anyway, pleasantly surprised. The eggs were fine (seriously, they weren't bad), and the toast wasn't given to me on a plate that was on fire. So far so good. But the bacon, while cooked well enough, was extremely salty. Maybe you like it that way, but not me. The home fries were no better, but no worse, than the other diners' on the list. The real kicker was the coffee. I'd just seen Due Date the other day and, taking my first sip, was reminded of the scene where the ashes of Tremblay's father are accidentally used in the coffee machine. If T-Bone doesn't get the gold for the worst coffee I've ever had, it sure can't be faulted for trying.

My return to T-Bone was greeted by a packed audience. I haven't seen a diner this full since finals in college. You couldn't eat wings or smoke in the library, so everyone who wanted that little corner of life-draining decadence headed to that big chrome building across from the mall. This time, I was seated by the window and met by a chipper waitress. No final goodbye note in her pocket. I wondered "could the days of the old T-Bone be gone?" Thankfully, I was saved by the next table. Two ladies sat eating and talking. One poked at her plate. "These are cold" she said of her steamed vegetables. Since cold steamed vegetables is a scientific anachronism, what she was saying was code for , "they didn't microwave this frozen broccoli properly." Her friend was more blunt, calling the waiter to complain that, having tasted her fish, she could tell that it was obviously not fresh. She sent it back. Ahhh, this is the T-Bone I know. But what of MY meal? What if it's great? Well, fear not. The fries were fine, but because the meat was so cheap, biting into the cheeseburger itself was like sinking one's teeth into a grease sponge. A puddle had formed on my plate from the fat that had seeped through what was soon to be a worthless bun, and I found myself unable to let go of the burger for the simple reason that there was no clean place to put it down. I paid over $13 with tip for the privilege of writing that paragraph. Like a concrete floor, T-Bone has managed to retain it's place securely on the bottom.

*****

TOWER DINER
98-93 Queens Boulevard
Forest Hills, NY 11374
(718) 459-7000

The Tower Diner is just on the border of Forest Hills and Rego Park, and its 11374 zip code makes me think that there's a misprint on the business cards. Still, I love the Tower Diner. Always have. Sitting in what used to be a bank, not in a storefront hidden by scaffolding like some or with ripped awnings and broken signage like others, it's certainly the prettiest of the bunch. They're constantly busy and these trips were no exception. I find myself scratching my head at times wondering how it could be so busy in this part of town because, let's be honest, there ain't nothing there. Clearly, Tower is a draw.

Anyway, so breakfast. Again, I ordered two eggs over easy with bacon, home fries, toast and coffee. Again it cost about $9, plus tip. The waiter was... distant. Like a cross between someone bored and someone waiting for a hot date to show up. The eggs bled well, the bacon wasn't salty and the coffee, served in porcelain mugs so thick and heavy you could bash a mugger's face in without chipping it was decent enough for me to have had three or four refills. I used to have a rule. When I go to Tower for breakfast, I get the Alpine Omelet: bacon, swiss cheese, mushrooms and onions. Like I said, the eggs I ordered were fine. But I pined for that omelet. My friend Pike joined me and ordered the Pancakes Deluxe: pancakes, sausages, ham and bacon. Factor in the butter and the fakle syrup that naturally winds up sugar glazing it and this is basically a heart attack on a plate. He loved it. Said he'd definitely get it again.

I returned a few days later to order a hamburger. Walking in I took in the smell. It seemed... off. Almost weird. It smelled like... a real restaurant. I looked around, not seeing people eating diner food. I saw people eating what looked like real food. I felt almost like I was cheating myself getting a mere cheeseburger. I told myself that perhaps Tower deserved a standalone review. Regardless, chiding myself for ordering a "mere" hamburger was a chide made in error. The hamburger was simply fantastic. It was thick and it was juicy and having ordered it medium, it was bleeding. This wasn't, or didn't taste like, a once-frozen slab of grade-D-but-edible patty-shaped ground beef product. This was a real cheeseburger.

*****

So, the winner of the Diner Smackdown: Tower Diner. The best eats. The best atmosphere. The cleanest. A notable mention should go to the Forest Hills Coffee Shop, which really impressed me with what I got. The interior and exterior is a little shabby and they really need to hire a second waitress, but I will absolutely eat there again... especially once they start taking credit cards. Forest Hills Diner was pretty good too, with the best and friendliest service, and it's easily the most convenient to me. Alas, it was somewhat generic.

*****

(*) I readily admit that there is a fancy "diner" recently opened in Long Island City, Magasin Wells. But it's wears the diner name with irony, the way a hipster wears a smiley-face t-shirt. And yes, I will go there soon.

11:31 AM
5 Comments

News...

Other

4:36 PM
0 Comments

R.I.Positano

Other

5:03 PM
3 Comments

News...

Other

6:18 PM
4 Comments

BALUCHI'S

$$$

BALUCHI'S HAS CLOSED.

BALUCHI'S

113 Queens Boulevard
Forest Hills, NY 11375
(718) 520-8600

My experiences at Baluchi's in the past have been, in a word, zero. My only knowledge of Baluchi's has been through the experiences of others or the occasional message board commentary. Simply put, this particular NYC mini-chain has scored below average. Friends have called it forgettable and some message board comments have been less diplomatic. As a result, I've tended to avoid the place. This was a silly thing to do.

For the record, do I think that it's amazing Indian food? No. It's Indian food for the mild of palate. Nothing I tried was strong and even the spiciest dish was timid. That said nothing I ate was bad. Also for the record, I'm somewhat shocked that Forest Hills has so many Thai places to eat and only one Indian one. For a neighborhood whose residents seem (at least the ones who write to me) to be clamoring for new and different cuisines, it seems anachronistic for it to lack something as obvious as an Indian restaurant. But I digress.

I arrived with Dudeman and Shrink at about 9pm. It was later than we had wanted to eat, but scheduling was what it was and it was nice to find a place that still had customers in it (though by the time we got the check, they were shutting down). The music when we came in was like a death chant. Not exactly something that encourages lively banter at the table. But, the smells of curry and cumin were pleasant and we were led to a nice corner table (with a good camera angle, heh heh). The biggest downside to dinner here was the waiting. I waited quite a while for the Rents to figure out what to eat, and then once we ordered, we waited a looong time for anything to arrive.

Baluchi's has an impressively large vegetarian menu. Anyone who knows me or reads any of my blogs knows that I'm hardly a vegetarian. Nonetheless, it's good to know that the vegetarians out there have options, especially the eschew dining at Italian restaurants that serve veal (all of them).

My appetizer was the Chicken Malai Kabab, four pieces of charred chicken in a cream cheese and ginger sauce. It was super tender and everyone at the table thought it was great. The cream cheese sauce (is cream cheese an authentic Indian ingredient?) wasn't too thick or overpowering and the char added a little bit of extra flavor. Shrink chose the Aloo Tiki, a potato pancake in a chutney sauce. Ever culture, culinary evidence has shown, has some sort of potato pancake dish. The aloo tiki is the Indian one. It's very thick, like a hockey puck, but tastes basically just like any other potato pancake. Get rid of the chutney and replace it with apple sauce and you're eating Ukranian food. Dudeman rounded the appetizers out with Kachori, a cold lentil dumpling buried in chic peas and a cream sauce. Calling it a dumpling is somewhat disingenuous. The kachori is more like a dense pancake. It was good, albeit not amazing, and should be eaten with a spoon. If all of these appetizers can be summed up with one word, that word would be "mild". Indian without any real spice. Without any real kick. They were all good (especially the chicken), but I've had ramen soup with more muscle.

The entrees came out almost as soon as the table was cleared. Digestion be damned. Dudeman and Shrink went with lamb dishes. Dudeman got the Keema Matar, a ground lamb dish with spices and peas. It was the spiciest meal of the night, and that doesn't say much. Still, it was spicy enough for Shrink to put as her least favorite entree that we ordered. Maybe Baluchi's became successful because their audience prefers their Indian food muted. I liked it a lot, possibly because it had teeth. But it did have flavor, something that Dudeman's appetizer was in dire need of. Shrink ordered the Lamb Pasanda, cubes of lamb in a spiced yogurt sauce. Again, don't confuse spiced with spicy. It wasn't. The lamb was so tender that knives are overkill. Just looking at it could have cut it in half. It was my least favorite entree largely because it was somewhat bitter. My dinner choice was the vegetarian Navrattan Korma and was, in my opinion, and without a doubt, the best of the lot. The variety of vegetables and spices in the sauce made it the most complex of the dinners on the table.

All along, each of these dishes was being eaten off of our respective plates with Kashmiri Pulao, a saffron rice with almonds and raisins and Indian bread. We ordered the Bread Basket, a large basket with what we were told was a variety of bread, but which I think was actually just Naan and Poori. The basket was overkill. We only used a third of it and had to pack up the rest to go.

I thought we could do a dessert, but we were stuffed. Plus they were thirty seconds away from putting the chairs on top of the table.

Baluchi's gets a bad rap I think. It's good food, albeit not necessarily the most authentic. They would be far improved if they added some bite to their dishes. As a side note, I would very much like to see the area get another Indian restaurant or two so that when I crave nose-wateringly real Indian, I don't have to hoof it to the crazy mess of Jackson Heights.

Three appetizers, three entrees, a large bread order, a side of rice, two large beers, tax and tip totaled $130 even.

2:25 PM
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THE TAP HOUSE

THE TAP HOUSE
72-07 Austin Street
Forest Hills, NY 11375
(718) 997-0500

Along the busy Austin Street corridor, next to busy 5 Burros, is The Tap House. If you can't find it, it's the place with all the people smoking out in front. Before The Tap House came along, the space was occupied by Modus. Interestingly, before Modus came along, there was Modus. In fact, before that Modus was another Modus. The businesses died, but the name lived on through numerous incarnations. First, Modus was an upscale tea house that served lattes and cakes similar to Edgar's on the Upper West Side. It was the cutest spot in the neighborhood by miles; my girlfriend and I would spend hours there (though that has as much lot to do with its laughably slow service as with anything else). Then it became a half-coffee-shop-half-cocktail-lounge. Then a sushi bar. Or was it the other way around? Anyway, it couldn't seem to get its formula right, so now it's gone. In its place is The Tap House and I have a feeling that, barring either gross mismanagement or arson, they won't be going anywhere any time soon.

See, Tap House fills a hole in the Forest Hills going-out scene that, when you think about it, is shocking that it exists at all. It's... a bar.

Yup, a bar. A plain old bar. A place where normal can drink normal beer and eat normal bar food under the warm glow of a normal Coors Light neon sign. Other than Tap House, there are no other bars within walking distance of the subway. You have to head all the way towards either Rego Park or Kew Gardens, or go all the way to Metropolitan Avenue, which is hardly a short schlep. Sure there's always Dirty Pierre's and Irish Cottage. I like both, but Dirty Pierre's serves all-you-can-eat mussels and doesn't have a single beer on tap. Irish Cottage is closer, but not quite what I'm talking about. It's more of a pub than a bar. It has actual food. The difference is admittedly subtle on paper, but one step inside and you'll understand what I mean. You're probably never gonna hear Boom Boom Pow playing at Irish Cottage.

The Tap House calls itself a sports bar, but really that's because they only play sports on the TVs over the bar and because they want an excuse to have posters with cheerleaders on them. Really, Tap House is just your average gimme-a-Bud-bar. That's it. They serve wings by the ton and their burgers are decent. Other that... uh... their PBR in a can was delectable...? Yeah, this isn't a review about the food.

Tap House before 7pm.

If you miss a somewhat fratty, somewhat local, somewhat cheap-o, standard watering hole populated with a good mix of blue and white collar groups of twenty/thirty somethings packed three deep at the bar yelling conversations at each other over the thundering top-40 music, then this is where you want to be after seven (if you prefer your bars populated by extremely polite tattooed construction worker types, then this is where you want to be before seven). You can flirt and it won't feel like you're interrupting someone's dinner (they probably couldn't hear you anyway). The Tap House took me back to the kind of bars I'd play at in college where the Red Bulls and vodkas flow, ironically, like the wine they barely serve. Shit, Tap House has Jaegermeister on tap. And nobody over 20 drinks Jaegermeister.

There's no dress code. Come in after work wearing a tie or show up after your late afternoon nap in a t-shirt and pajama bottoms. No one'll care if they notice, but it's usually so crowded after dark (in front, the dining area is evacuated) that the odds are that no one will.

Tap House is, therefore, a love it or hate it place. Either you love the boisterous, fratty atmosphere or the "hey buddy what's happening?" regulars before the boisterous fratty types show up, or you hate it and its loud energy, in which case I suggest the far more mature bar scene down the block at Bonfire or around the corner at Network. I, for one, am glad that Tap House exists and I would enjoy some healthy competition. Preferably one with a large, microbrew-centric beer list, free popcorn to snack on, and a pool table.

1:45 PM
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MAZARA PIZZA

5:51 PM
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CHALET ALPINA

$$$

2:17 PM
3 Comments

NEW YORK FALAFEL BAR

THE NEW YORK FALAFEL BAR IS CLOSED.

NEW YORK FALAFEL BAR

72-32-B Austin Street
Forest Hills, NY 11375
(718) 268-9500

If Wafa's was too far away from Pahal Zan to be much of a threat to its dominance, then here's the NY Falafel Bar, just a few blocks away on Austin Street. It's Kosher, it's newer and has more space, it's got a TV playing bone-jarringly irritating Hebrew-language TV shows and it's already packed with people chatting to the guy behind the counter about how their mom used to make this, that and the other. "She'd put garlic and onions in everything!" Even if my experience finally did end with Pahal Zan winning in terms of taste, NYFB is mind-numbingly faster. You walk in, you order and you're out the door before you know it. Its speed has already curried the favor of the maintenance guys from National Grid, who can't afford to spend twenty minutes waiting for their lunch while their truck sits by a fire hydrant with its blinkers on.

The first time I went, I pulled up a seat by the window and chowed down on the Falafel Haim sandwich in a pita with everything. You can also get the sandwiches serve in a wrap the way Wafa's serves them, or in a baguette roll... like Subway. The first thing that went through my head as my mouth hit the food: "oh man, this is good!" This was a damn good falafel sandwich. There were just the right amount of toppings to add flavor without diluting the presence of the falafel balls. The pita was much thicker than I'm used to, but I liked it that way. It didn't shred as I was eating, spilling cucumber and tomato and hummus across my lap. The hot sauce was extremely timid however. They need to crank that up a notch or three.

I would have gotten something with lamb for round two, but NYFB doesn't serve lamb. They do serve schnitzel (Israeli, Spanish or Chinese (?) style), but I decided to leave my schnitzeling to Manor Oktoberfest and chose to try out the Shawarma. This was far less impressive. Not serving lamb, NYFB serves chicken roasted on a spit "Israeli Style" - which happens to be the exact same style used by the Greeks and the Turks and the Lebanese (and the list goes on) for roasting big cylinders of meat to be used in pita-wrapped sandwiches. Anyway, unlike my experience with the falafel, the flavor of the chicken was entirely drowned out by the toppings. Weirdly, after eating most of those toppings, the flavor of the chicken was again drowned out by the spices that were used on it. Maybe chicken isn't the way to go? I might return to give their Shakshuka sandwich a whirl.

Becuse NYFB is Kosher, don't expect to chow down Friday nights (after 4pm as of this posting) or Saturdays at all.

2:28 PM
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POSITANO

$$$$

POSITANO HAS CLOSED.

POSITANO
107-02 Queens Boulevard
Forest Hills, NY 11375
(718)-520-1778

The other night, I dined at Positano, the large Italian restaurant on Queens Boulevard by the post office, reaffirming my opinion that, so far, Il Poeta is the only Italian restaurant in Forest Hills worth anything. The. Only. One. Admittedly, the neighborhood is awash in Italian, and I still have 75 more to go, give or take. Quite literally, Positano was a laugh riot. Of course, other than laugh, what else is there to do when you’ve just spent good money on food you’d be embarrassed to serve at home?

I won't lie. I had absolutely no expectations that Positano would be a good meal. None. It bore every mark of mediocrity. It's a large Italian restaurant with a tacky Italian flag logo (if that's not like a buzzing neon sign blinking "eat somewhere else" then I don't know what what is.). It’s always mostly empty. It’s been changing ownership like underwear. Quite frankly, this new alleged partnership with the old Piu Bello people does not make me think that much change is in the air (at least they seem to have their own area in the greenhouse out back; the restaurant part remains unchanged). If anything, it seems like just another gimmick. And boy oh boy does Positano love trying out new gimmicks to drum up new business.

A couple of weeks ago, Positano put a postcard flyer under the windshield wiper of my car calling itself the “Positano Bar and Lounge” and featuring bikini girls advertising happy hour, ladies night, complimentary bottles of vodka, half priced drinks, and hookahs. “Ladies 18 to party, 21 to let loose.” Guys, 21 and up only. Shit, if I knew Positano was a club packed with stacked drunk hoochies, I'd have gone there a long time ago.

And how, you’re bound to ask, does the above ad square with the reality of that which Positano actually is? Hmmm...

Bro and I walked in only to find Positano virtually deserted. A musty odor of decrepitude permeating the restaurant that made it smell like a hospital waiting room. We nearly left. Sitting down by the window, I looked through the menu, but it was hard to pay attention. “My God, this muzak is blasting.” “Dude,” Bro replied. “That ain’t muzak” and he raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to the far wall. My eyes roamed past the two other occupied tables. There, in the dark bopped a guy in his late forties with a big microphone and bigger hair crooning karaoke machine versions of old pop songs, complete with a disco ball and fake backup singers. As Elvis's Can't Help Falling In Love transitioned to Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive I couldn’t imagine that this could possibly be attracting more people than it was repelling.

Positano’s appetizer menu is a joke. Mozzarella sticks, fried calamari, Buffalo wings. This is what they serve at bars and pizza places. We skipped them.

What’s so amazing is that they dare to charge as much as they do for their entrees. $17 to $26. Entrees that average $22 demand a certain level of quality that Positano simply doesn't even try to live up to. We decided what to get as we noshed on supermarket squishy Italian bread coated in butter from a gold-foil packet a la some diner. Bro ordered the Pollo Positano, thin cuts of chicken breast with potato, red pepper and mushrooms in a white wine sauce. It came with a side of sad-looking steamed broccoli. Before I say it was "bad", let me say that it wasn’t. But as Bro put it “this won’t win any awards.” If you’ve familiar with Chicken Tonight, the chicken-dinner-in-a-jar popular back when I was in school, then you’ve probably already eaten this meal hundred times from when mom got home late and wasn't interested in making a complicated meal. Bland, wine sauce-esque, cheap, seemingly canned vegetables, somewhat dry chicken. Not only won’t it win any awards, I don’t think the judges will even remember that it was in the contest.

My dinner? The Lamb Chops served with mashed sweet potatoes, mixed greens and a garlic crouton in a ruby port sauce. First, when asked how I wanted my chops cooked, I said medium. I got well-to-the-point-of-no-return. I did not get a “garlic crouton”, something I can only assume to be the equivalent of a piece of toasted garlic bread. The mixed greens were essentially a small side salad soaking in vinegar. The mashed sweet potatoes were straight out of a Gerber baby food jar. I shit you not, I could have eaten them with a straw. They drained through the cracks of my fork. The ruby port sauce was pretty good though.

This was $24 and I didn't even get my garlic crouton... :(

Surprise, surprise, we also skipped dessert. I mean really, what would've been the point?

Here’s the real kicker. This meal: two entrees and three beers, with tax and tip, cost us SEVENTY SEVEN DOLLARS! That's the equivalent of 25 gallons of gas.

If Positano wants to be anything more than a joke we can all laugh about, if it wants to be anything other than just another bad Italian restaurant in a neighborhood drowning in bad Italian, if it wants to have more than three tables occupied at 8pm, then I recommend dropping the bullshit gimmicks. Drop the karaoke singers and the Latin Night, and the ladies night “must be over 18 to party” dance club crap. Drop the Tex Mex brunch (yeah, you read right, an Italian restaurant with a Tex Mex brunch) and drop the tacky signage. Focus on the food. Hire a chef. A real one with a culinary degree. They should design a menu from scratch with five appetizers, ten entrees, three desserts and one special and start making meals that people talk about for days later because they're so good, not because they're so embarrassing.

Alternatively, they could close, which would be fine, too.