Out in Astoria (Viva El Mariachi; 33-11 Broadway)

The Mexican restaurants along Broadway in Astoria aren’t going to win any awards for ambiance. Garishly lit, indifferently decorated, and resolutely utilitarian, they won’t transport you out of your everyday life -- even if mariachi music is playing, and even if the name of the particular restaurant you are in suggests that the place exists to celebrate such music.

But there wasn't much music happening when we visited Viva El Mariachi, just a few desultory songs from a jukebox. The restaurant's name is utterly arbitrary as far as we could tell. There was, however, a lot of energy in the restaurant, as it had been recruited to serve as the somewhat unlikely host to an Out Astoria meet-up, which was just beginning to break up when we arrived. That it would be chosen for such an event is a testimony to its perfectly nondescript nature -- the restaurant is the lair of no particular group of regulars so far as we could tell, and so it’s open to be claimed by anyone for an hour -- but no more. There are about a dozen tables, some of which are on an elevated platform behind a wooden railing. We're not sure of the purpose of this barrier arrangement -- it seems to make service a bit more awkward than it need be (and created sight lines to nothing in particular).

We ordered tacos and a steak special. The tacos were a touch better than the ones procurable at the El Rey del Taco cart on 30th Avenue, which is no small feat. They came on a plate with limes and radishes, which makes for a more pleasant dining experience than jamming them down from out of a piece of aluminum foil as you walk home from the subway. (We're eager for the taco truck's storefront to open, however.)

The special, a paillard of steak sautéed with a flavorful jalapeno sauce, tangy crema, and nachos (yes, nachos) was delicious. The sharp zest of the sauce and accompanying limes collide with the steak, which managed to stay juicy despite its thinness; the crema kept the mix from overwhelming. We've never heard of sautéing nachos, and it's probably a candidate for This is Why You're Fat, but hell, it worked. It was also enormous, serving as lunch and dinner the next day.

Assuming fresh ingredients are being used, this sort of simple, straightforward Mexican food is somewhat difficult for professionals to get horribly wrong -- not that other restaurants don’t manage to mess it up (see Taco Fresco, which happily falls outside of our rules for eating at every restaurant in Astoria). That also means it's equally hard to make it truly outstanding. But "outstanding" is not really a reasonable expectation for the utilitarian Viva El Mariachi. Instead it exudes a basic reliability that is far too easy to take for granted; it can make you delighted and satisfied with a meal even when you haven't psyched yourself up for something spectacular.

Price: $20 for the whole meal, including bottled sodas and tip
Will we go again? It's in our top Mexican choices -- absolutely

Old-School (Omonia Café; 32-20 Broadway)

We had time to kill before a movie, so we decided to do something we had been putting off and pay our obligatory visit to Omonia for the purposes of this blog. Perhaps the most quintessential of the dessert-and-coffee Euro cafes in the neighborhood, Omonia is actually pretty staid relative to the scene on 30th Avenue. The requisite ambient techno isn't blasting, and the neon backlighting is kept to a minimum. On the night we went, Tropical Storm Hanna was threatening outside and the humidity outside was extreme, so the window wall beside our table on Omonia's outer perimeter was sweating and the view to the street streaked and foggy. The curtailed visibility was probably hurting business -- the main point of the cafes is protracted people watching -- but it made the atmosphere less intimidating for us.

Omonia's menu is surprisingly extensive -- you could actually eat dinner there if you were so inclined -- but the core lies with its coffee drinks and its pages-long list of desserts. When asked for a recommendation, our waitress, an artificially friendly Eastern European who attempted to upsell us to a bottle of wine, demurred and told us to go up to the counter and inspect them ourselves. This wasn't much help; it's the kind of display in which everything looks practically shellacked in its slightly sterile perfection. In the end we ordered the caramel cake and a piece of baklava along with two booze-enhanced coffees, each topped with a pile of whipped cream. We were somewhat embarrassed by our perplexity at the mountain of cream; we had a hard time figuring out how to even drink them without making a huge mess. (The carousers at Athens Café make it look so easy!)

The desserts were okay but not good enough to make us forget about how self-conscious the place made us feel. They're thoroughly European in their approach, with mathematical precision in the layered desserts, pristine clarity on the glazed desserts, and mounds of cream (are Europeans less prone to lactose intolerance than Americans?). This means that whatever you get will be good, but nothing will be great unless you want a by-the-book approach to whatever you order -- reliably sweet, expertly done, uninspired. As the Alpha Astoria ladies wrote of the phyllo-encased custard, the taste isn't worth the calories. (Plus, the baklava was soggy, but we're willing to blame Hanna for that, as it seems unthinkable that the original Greek cafe would have anything but crisp phyllo on the national dessert.) In the unlikely event we ever return to Omonia, we'll like get our goods to go.

Price: Consistent with other cafes, which is to say, overpriced. Two desserts and two spiked coffees set us back $29.
Will we go again? If eager non-New-York friends with outdated guidebooks visited Astoria and insisted on going to get a "taste of the boroughs," sure. Otherwise, we'll pass.

Wanna Be Eatin' Somethin' (Locale, 33-02 34th Avenue)

We approached Locale with a hint of trepidation. Astoria seems maxed out on Mediterranean restaurants -- both the old-school tuxedoed waiter kind and the supposedly chic places with blaring music and insider attitude -- and we wondered what this new cafe-restaurant tucked away on a quiet corner of 34th Avenue would add to the mix.

What we found wasn't earth-shattering: Locale won't necessarily go on the list of Astoria must-trys. But its atmosphere and menu collide to create what Cafe Bar strives, and fails, to be: a restaurant offering Astoria's Mediterranean heritage to its influx of younger, non-European residents, without alienating the Euro crowds that populate the more established cafes on 30th Avenue.

The largely Italian menu features well-selected glimpses of personality beyond red sauce: chicken with fontina and figs, pasta with red beet mascarpone. Its standard dishes please -- we've tried a variety of salads at Locale, and the gnocchi, a dish often overcooked and made gummy even in supposedly schooled hands, was toothsome without being chewy or mushy. Vegetarian options abound on the pasta panini menu (and the salad menu too, if you're content with goat cheese, which Locale heavily relies on to bulk up the salads). We stuck with a (slightly overpriced) bottle of wine, but the cocktail list is primed to please -- pineapple mojitos and martinis abound. (We'll forgive Locale the unfortunately named "Panty Dropper.")

More than the food, though, Locale is the rare place that allows one to feel like you're out on the town without being thrust into a crowded joint with thumping music and attitude. Sure, the large-scaled images of nudes in the fetal position are a bit much, but they're not really in-your-face, and the rest of the glass-and-wrought-iron decor is low-key and classic enough to make up for it. Best of all, we could hear both our conversation and the music, which on our recent Friday night visit included the greatest hits of Michael Jackson.

Locale's website claims the restaurant reflects "the neighborhood's modern yet multicultural chic aspect, which has become a signature of present-day Astoria." We wish more places had a clear-cut mission statement, perhaps printed on their business cards -- not so much so we can evaluate them based on the description, but on how close the proprietors come to achieving their goal. In this case, it's a match.

Price: Entrees in the mid-teens.
Will we go again? Seems to suit our mood when we want to go out for a low-key night on the town.

Paul Bunyano (Tierras Colombianas, 33-01 Broadway)

We thought we were hungry when we ventured to this Colombian restaurant late on a Saturday night, but then our food came. Keeping things simple, we ordered the first two entrees listed on the menu, the bandeja campesina (the country plate) and the bandeja montañera (the mountain plate). We were warned about the mountain plate's dried shredded beef -- not to be confused with a steak -- but we were undeterred.

For around $12 each, we got steak (shredded or solid) topped with a fried egg, rice, pinto beans, fried plantains, and a chicharrón, basically a huge hunk of fried pork -- think of it as a really thick piece of bacon, or a pork rind for Paul Bunyan. These were meals, no doubt about it, served with astounding promptness, as if they had a stack of grilled steaks in the back, waiting to be ordered. Maybe anyone with any sense who patronizes the place gets what we ordered, so it's always kept ready. (Or maybe it was because the place was about to close for the night, which we hadn't realized.)

Though everything we were brought was appetizing, there was no way we were eating it all, and hacking away at our mega-pork rinds, we wondered if overabundance was meant to be part of the experience. The shredded beef worked well, especially when the yolk spilled from the egg, binding the meat with the rice and beans in a delicious protein-packed mélange. The hammered steak of the country plate, though less exotic, was just as successful (and just as filling -- it came with an avocado wedge, which sadly went untouched in the midst of all the other food).

Tierras Colombianas tends to be mentioned by non-Astorians as being among the pantheon of neighborhood restaurants that are worth crossing the river for. And it is, don't get us wrong, but foodies seeking transporting cuisine may want to go elsewhere. The food is exactly as it should be, but don't come expecting perfect seasoning and tip-top preparation, or even the down-market ambiance that adventure eaters look for. It's not really a dive, not a place where you just sit and stuff your face, and it lacks much substance for sustaining a hearty Anglo ethnocentrism. ("My, isn't it quaint how these ethnic people eat? I believe I understand these Colombians now.") You sit yourself down at one of the pastel diner-like booths, you pick at that has come from the country and the mountain, you look around at the bustle -- whenever we've walked by, the patrons seem nearly manic with meaty delight, as opposed to stuporous after all that food -- and you eat, unadventurously but with earnest satisfaction.

Price: Cheap for what you get. Entrees are around $10.
Will we go again? We're still too full from last time, but could be persuaded.

Locker-Room Lamb (Ditmars Gyro Place, 33-01 Ditmars Boulevard)

It may have been an effort to compensate, but in mid-March, the desultory Valentine's Day decorations were still hanging up in what has to be in the running for the least romantic restaurant in Astoria. Ditmars Gyro Place has all the ambiance of a locker room: the bathroom-tile walls, the bright fluorescent lighting, the muscular dudes loitering around with a vaguely menacing attitude. Even the cards with big numbers printed on them that were stuck in wire stands on each table suggested the impersonality of the gym. (The purpose of this numbering system remained entirely opaque, but maybe it helped out the waiter, who seemed responsible for all the dozen or so tables.)

But despite the antiseptic air, the place remained busy for the duration of our visit, after eight on a Sunday evening when most everywhere else in the neighborhood is dead. So they must be doing something right. And it's not like they are without competition; gyro and souvlaki places are everywhere. But in some ways, this is almost a guarantor of quality: To survive amid all the other Greek takeout places, a restaurant has to do at least a reasonably good job, and Ditmars Gyro Place clears that hurdle by a far stretch.

Gyro sandwiches are sort of Astoria's equivalent of the Philly cheesesteak. You can get gyros in just about any neighborhood, but outside of Astoria, they tend to suck, and for the same reasons cheesesteaks suck anywhere outside of the greater Philadelphia area. The bread has to be just right -- Amoroso rolls in the case of steaks; the thick, fluffy pocketless pitas for gyros -- and the meat needs to be sliced and prepared properly. It's not rocket science, but only in neighborhoods where a lot of pride is taken in the local staple will restaurateurs bother to make the cherished cuisine correctly.

Ditmars Gyro Place definitely did things right. As far as rotating meats go, they were taking no chances, with three different kinds spinning on their spits. The cubes of chicken in the souvlaki sandwich were moist without being chewy, and one could bite through them without having to wrestle with the pita and make a mess of things. The combination gyro, ordered at the suggestion of the waiter when we couldn't decide between lamb and beef, was made moist not by tzatziki but by slow, careful roasting of the meat. And to top it all off, $3 bottles of Mythos, a bargain for the not-bad Greek lager.

We know we have many gyros to come, and we expect them to all be pretty reliably satisfying. The similarity may tempt us into worrying about peripheral things -- the atmosphere, the demeanor of the cooks, whether our pronunciation of gyro gets corrected. But our experience at Ditmars Gyro Place should serve to remind us that gyros sell themselves. We need not worry about the window dressing too much with these places; instead we should think only of the meat and the pita, and enjoy the small miracle of the combination of the two.

Update (8/10/08): This restaurant may have improbably renamed itself "Aphrodite Cafe."

Price: Like other gyro places. Cheap.
Will we go again? Perhaps, but we have 487 other gyro joints to work our way through, so it'll be a while.

Tea for Two (Himalaya Teahouse, 33-17 31st Avenue)

We were both under the weather and were in the mood for maybe a restorative tea and some good hot broth. It seemed a tall order to find these both at the same restaurant, until we remembered the Himalaya Teahouse on 31st Avenue, which seems to exist to expressly cater to such a combination as we desired. Quaintly decorated outside with bamboo where you'll often find aluminum siding, the tea house inside is spare, with a few rugs hanging on the walls, which are painted a solid, soothing blue.

On the afternoon we visited, the teahouse was a two-woman operation, one cooking and one preparing the teas and waiting on the tables. This didn't make for the most efficient arrangement, but it certainly made things feel homey, and there weren't enough patrons in the restaurant for anyone to become truly neglected. The tea selection, as one would expect, is elaborate -- and the menu copy is full of inexplicable names for the teas but mercifully light on mystical mumbo jumbo.

To eat, we had thukpa, which was the yearned-for broth with what appeared to be hand-shaved noodles and boiled beef (we had ordered chicken, but alas), and momos, which are tasty Tibetan dumplings, also in broth. We may have found these a little bland under normal circumstances, but (a) the food of the Himalayas is meant to fortify, not enchant, and (b) we couldn't taste much through the late-winter cold plaguing our sinuses. What the food was lacking in pep, it made up for in delicacy, a feat considering we were eating beef with noodles and dumplings.

Where Himalaya Teahouse shines, unsurprisingly, is the teas. One of us was further along in our shared viral infection than the other, prompting one order of the Black Velvet, a mint-licorice tea that's supposed to encourage recuperation; the sicker one between us went with Fellini's Folly, a rooibos-mint blend designed for those in the thick of a cold. Andrew Weill and the FDA can battle it out as to whether the teas actually helped us recuperate, but they tasted good regardless of their health benefits. (What the "Really Goethe" lemon myrtle-jasmine-gunpowder blend is supposed to do, we have no idea, but we're not up on our Sturm und Drang.)



We've seen the restaurant floated on Astoria message boards as a late-night hangout, as they serve a handful of international beers and wines. We understand the impulse to have a beer in a setting other than a bar, but we can't imagine coming here to kick back a brewski. Forgive us for painting the Himalaya Teahouse in shades of Orientalism, but we prefer to come here for a sense of calm, a pot of Fellini's Folly, and the best momos in town.

Price: Under $12 for food. Around $5 for pots of tea.
Will we go again? Where else would we get our momo fix? Yes, especially when befallen with illness.

Dining With Client Nine (Arcos Churasqueira, 33-05 Broadway)

The ambiance of Arcos (the only Portuguese restaurant in Astoria we know of, so we are rooting for its success) is a bit of a puzzle. The white-linen tablecloths and relatively subdued lighting suggest austere formality, an impression our gracious waiter -- an elderly man with halting English -- quaintly reinforced. But at the same time, the television above the bar was flickering with the latest updates of the Spitzer scandal on CNN. Fortunately, we were too pleasantly engrossed with the delicious bread (Portuguese rolls with an herbed olive oil to dip them in) and the wine -- from the list of mostly Portuguese wines -- to have our meal spoiled by prostitution and hypocrisy.

The waiter wished he could recommend his favorite entree, porco à alentejana (pork cubes and clams), but it wasn't available, so we ordered the comparable dish that subbed in shrimp instead, along with steak prepared the Portuguese way -- with a slice of ham and a fried egg on top, all covered with a rich brown gravy. Both dishes came with some strips of carrot and broccoli florets, and fresh-made thin-sliced potato chips, which were right in the sweet spot between too crisp (which would have made them into Utz) and undercooked (which would have made them into scalloped potatoes).

The steak was everything we hoped for, a decadent protein bomb with a megaton of meaty flavor. The pork-shrimp dish, with chunks of meat suspended in a delectable herbed sauce (we have no idea what was in it, and didn't need to), was nearly stew-like in its hearty simplicity.



Plenty of places in Astoria offer a sort of charmed slice of the old country -- which country that is depends on which street you're on. We've happily dined at many of these restaurants and will again. But the overload of, say, Greek and Italian establishments means that, while their overall quality is high thanks to the intensity of competition, it can also be difficult to find a true standout. For every person who swears by the joint on Ditmars, there's someone on 28th claiming that his little Greek place is the best in the neighborhood. Maybe our naivete concerning the food of Portugal means that we've been snookered by a restaurant that would be considered mediocre at best were there more competition. We don't think that's the case -- but if it were, would it matter?

Arcos' owner-chef made it to our table to make a personal greeting, which was sweet, if slightly awkward. You can't help but feel slightly on the spot, and in a restaurant that seems unjustifiably empty far too often, the temptation is strong to want to go overboard with reassurances. We couldn't help but be wildly effusive in our praise, but we were sincere in almost everything we told him.

Price: $15 to $25 for entree. Well worth it.
Will we go again? One of our most delightful discoveries. Looking forward to repeat visits.