Strip Mall Parmigiana (Porto Bello, 43-18 Ditmars Boulevard)

It likely would have taken us a lot longer to discover Porto Bello (the Pretty Door?) were it not for Leo, the diminutive Italian barber on 21st Avenue that one of us goes to now and then for a haircut. Leo has been practicing his trade in Astoria since well before either of us were born, back when the neighborhood was much more Italian than it is now. Figuring he'd be able to sort out which was the best of the many old-school Italian restaurants in the area, we asked him what his favorite Italian restaurant was. He recommended not one of the storied (and possibly mobbed up) places, but Porto Bello, a relatively new restaurant in the shopping center on Ditmars at 48th street.

It's not what we would have expected. Because it's in a strip mall and has a parking lot, Porto Bello is like something out of suburbia, the kind of run-of-the-mill pizza restaurant you'd find in any small town as a staple option. It would be easy to lump Porto Bello (Port-O-Bello on the shopping center's sign) in with those often-unimaginative places and expect mediocrity. Perhaps aware of this, though, it seems to work harder, making none of the little mistakes that can creep in when expectations are low.

Porto Bello is larger than you'd expect inside, and this helps make it seem like more than a glorified pizzeria. The uniformed waiters help too, though ours -- lumbering, bulky, and brusque, yet not at all incompetent -- seemed like a moonlighting high-school football player. We asked for recommendations, as usual, and he was a little too generous, naming so many different dishes that he may as well have used the time-honored cop-out and said, "They are all good."

But that said, everything we tried was good. How Porto Bello executed the typically humdrum chicken parmigiana was indicative. There was nothing adventurous about it; it was just well done. The dish was made not from a prebreaded cutlet but instead a chicken breast lightly coated with a fresh layer of peppery bread crumbs, supplying texture without giving the grease somewhere to collect when the meat was fried. Mozzarella cheese was not piled on indiscriminately, but was applied with a knowing artistry, to complement rather than overwhelm. The marinara sauce was rich and flavorful without being too acidic, sweet or lumpy. And the pasta was properly cooked; it wasn't limp or waterlogged, and the portion was not wasteful. All and all, an unimaginative plate of comfort food was made entirely respectable. Our pasta dish, the Rigatoni Fiorentina (Porto Bello's most popular entree), was similarly pleasing. Tender chicken, spinach, and mozzarella in a creamy pink sauce, much like a vodka sauce (we can't be sure if there was any Finlandia action happening backstage), was perfectly sweet-savory, and filling without being belly-achingly heavy.

With Astoria's depleted Italian contingent, it's easy to stick to the standbys: Trattoria l'Incontro, Piccolo Venezia, and the like. But Porto Bello shows that a restaurant doesn't have to have known the neighborhood way back when to get it right.

Price: Reasonable. Good value for quality.
Will we go again? Yes, and we'll feel smug the whole time that we're getting a good meal in a strip mall.

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.

Among the Autopaparazzi (Koliba, 31-11 23rd Avenue)

We had all but given up. We were actually walking away from the restaurant down 23rd Avenue when we heard the stern Germanic voice of the hostess call out to us: "You, you." She had run out into the cold February night to retrieve us. "You want to eat." It was more a command than a question, and we felt that we had no choice but to go back inside, even though it was crowded and chaotic in the Czech restaurant and, given our problems with the service in the past (they can be slow to get to the non-Czechs and non-Slovaks), we had no reason to expect we'd ever be waited on once we were seated.

We were glad we went back in though. Yes, Koliba, which features a vaguely chalet-like décor that's highly suitable for wintry nights, was packed full, with a curious mix of Eastern European locals -- the sort who were glued to the hockey game on the TV -- and a rowdy bunch of autopaparazzi theatricals gathered for a birthday party, who took more pictures of themselves that evening than we had on a weeklong vacation by an exponential margin. And we were seated mere centimeters away at a two-top next to a group of out-of-towners, two couples who seemed very Long Islandish. During one rare lull in the hullaballoo inside, one man asked the other, "So how's the car running?"

None of this spoiled what turned out to be an excellent, extremely filling meal. Quickly, we were brought drinks -- Czech beers on tap; Krušovice, BrouCzech. When we asked our waitress what she recommended among the entrees, she looked puzzled and said, "It is all good." We have a general policy of asking servers this question and have found that generalized answers ("It's all good," "Depends on what you like," or simply reciting half the menu) yield lesser meals than places when the server has a ready answer. But this wasn't the case here. We could tell she honestly didn't get why we'd bother asking when everything they had was delicious.

After some coaxing, she finally made some specific suggestions: the roast duck on a bed of red cabbage, plus pork schnitzel with potato-pancake batter. The duck was flavorful and incredibly moist and tender without being too fatty, as duck can be. Neither of us are fans of cabbage, but we still managed to down most of the mound piled on the plate -- no idea what they did to make it taste good, but it worked. Our schnitzel was as hearty as one would expect, but more important, it was done right. Schnitzel in this country can easily be disappointing, relying on the fail-safe of frying to make it taste good. Koliba's version was done with knowledgeable care. Both entrees were accompanied by knedliky, the quintessentially Czech sponge-bread dumplings. (For those eager to play at home, advertised in the foyer was a factory in Chicago from which one could order knedliky. "This is for everyone. Do not remove" was handwritten across the ad, which was printed off of a website.)

Koliba is more than a match for its cross-neighborhood rival, Zlata Praha. Rumor has it that Koliba was formed by a rogue breakaway chef from Zlata Praha, sort of the way Roger Williams founded Rhode Island after being exiled from the Massachusetts colony. The restaurants offer rival venison feasts in early February; sadly we missed them at both venues.


We dined with a miniature sheepskin rug hanging at eye level next to our table, and the ersatz brauhaus roof over the bar was littered with an array of giant stuffed Easter bunnies. Frankly, we're suckers for a eccentric ambiance, and the bunnies alone would have been enough to bring us back. But what we especially appreciated about Koliba was that this sort of thing wasn't odd at all to the its regulars, and this lent the restaurant a quaint familiarity even to those of us who are clearly outsiders. Koliba's patrons come for the food. And so will we.

Price:Between $15 and $20 for entrees.
Will we go again? We're already looking forward to the dueling Venison Fest with Zlata Praha. Otherwise, for deep comfort-food needs only.

A Circle in a Spiral (Wave Thai, 21-37 31st Street)

For a time, there were no Thai restaurants in the area near the Ditmars stop (unless you count Bangkok Tasty, which may not meet the table-and-chairs requirement for consideration in this project). Then, suddenly, as if in compliance with antitrust ordinances, there were two -- separated on 31st Street by only a laundromat and an ABC Superstore. Wave is the closer of the two to the subway stop, with what looks to be some sort of postmodern bull's-eye over the window. (Down the street is Thai Elephant, which isn't trying nearly as hard.)



Each Thai place in Astoria tries to put its own distinct twist on accommodating the neighborhood's seemingly ever-expansive demand for the cuisine. Thai Pavilion is known for quirky Thai in an oddly formal setting; Arharn Thai is the mom-'n'-pop Thai; Yajai sates diners who apparently prefer their Thai in a setting that rivals Trade Fair for poor feng shui. (We're not particularly looking forward to our obligatory visit there.)

Wave Thai is all about the romance -- and though we generally roll our eyes when restaurants employ tricks that might have wooed us in college (red walls, half-blackened light bulbs), the place has enough ingenuity to get a pass. The fountain near the entry, bedecked with small statues of elephants, imparts a genuine calm, as does the lulling but kind of weird soundtrack (elevator-music versions of Prince?). The concentric-circles motif, plus the flatware with undulating handles, is gentle and wavelike -- we get it -- but it too works toward its end. The bathroom deserves special mention for making us feel like minor royalty -- the faucet was like one of those fancy showerheads you find in nice hotels, the kind that's supposed to mimic rainfall. Again: a semi-classy gimmick, but one that turns out to be welcome.

The food? It's Thai. That's all there is to say; it's just Thai food, it fills you up for a reasonable price and tastes yummy and the noodles are fine and the curry is spicy but not too spicy. The Pad Kee Mao looked like this (even the plates are a bit wavy):



In truth, we mourn the departure of Ubol's Kitchen every time we try to go out and find someone special again. But until something that good comes back to Astoria, we'll go to Wave again, and Thai Pavilion, and Arharn, and Thai Angel, etc., depending on the mood we're after. Sure, Wave tries a little too hard, but ultimately we just shake our heads, squint in the dim light, and give in anyway.

Price: Under $15.
Will we go again? No, but we'll send you there on an Internet date.

A Brief Enquiry Into Pizzeria Ethics (Alba's Pizza and Restaurant, 36-20 Ditmars Boulevard)

We expect to encounter many places like Alba's on our mission, serviceable places that you would never go to unless you lived down the street. Neighborhoods need places like Alba's but rarely will anyone bother to sing their praises; it would be like championing your garbage collector or corner-bodega proprietor. In short, a pizzeria needs to be pretty conspicuously good (or remarkably awful, for that matter) to warrant special attention. Alba's is neither of those things.

We went in on a cold afternoon and were thankful for the heat blasting out of the pizza ovens. We asked what was good, but the answer surprised us, as the counterman recommended what looked to be clearly the least appetizing offering behind the glass, the penne a la vodka slice, which looked like an ordinary slice with some ziti baked into it on top.

This raised the ethical question that confronts any food-service employee when asked for a recommendation: Do they say what they really like, or what it would be expedient for the establishment to get rid of. We suspect that we will become more adept as we proceed at placing the divers waitstaff we encounter along that moral spectrum. But right now we need other cues. For instance, should we be alarmed that Alba's, like La Mia Vita, also offers a Grandma pie? If we can't trust Alba's nana, who can we trust?

The penne a la vodka slice ended up being perfectly edible, if a little bizarre, and the plain slices were adequate and filling. No pizza toppings at individual tables, but they were readily available at the counter. And seating was ample and the mood relaxed. It felt like a safe harbor from the street.

So if we were hungry for slices and happened to be walking by Alba's, nothing would make us hesitate from going in. But it's hard to imagine planning a special trip there.

Price: Like all other pizzerias.
Will we go again? Totally unnecessary to do so.

Night With Armor (Just Arthur's, 22-08 Steinway Street)

The mute façade of Just Arthur's, at the strangely desolate corner of Steinway and Ditmars, has always struck us as mysterious. The restaurant has somewhat lavish signage and what looks to be roof-deck dining, but it always seems eerily forlorn, an inscrutable relic from a previous time, perhaps from when people like us didn't live in Astoria.

We had never heard of anyone actually eating at this Italian place, and it seemed to us plausible that it was a mob front. And the name invited questions: Why "just" Arthur? What happened to the others? Was there a falling out? Foul play? On a cold Saturday, we decided that we wanted answers, so we made a reservation for 9:00 to get to the bottom of things.



When we arrived, a sullen quiet seemed to have settled on the scene. It seemed much later than 9:00; we seemed out of time altogether. Hardly a soul in sight, just a vacant bus shelter and a dour man having a cigarette in front of the pair of windowless doors that lead into Just Arthur's, the smoke blending with the steam from his breath. He didn't smile, wouldn't even move aside to let us enter easily; instead we had to edge past him, through the door that wasn't marked "This is the exit."

Once inside, we were surprised to find ourselves deposited in a run-of-the-mill old-man bar, complete with blaring flat-screen TVs and half-drunk regulars. It had the air of a private club, and we felt like gate-crashers at a party we wouldn't have wanted to be invited to anyway. But then we were brought into the dining room by our eventual waiter, an amiable teenager who was quick to see that we received wine but strangely slow about providing us menus. At one point, we wondered aloud if it were one of those menuless places, like Elias Corner. Perhaps we would have to eat whatever Arthur in his wisdom felt like providing.

The dining room had some interesting accoutrements -- a working fireplace with whiskey decanters on the mantel, a piano with a set of foot-high jazz band figures arranged atop it ("please do not touch" read the attached sign, presumably applying to both the keys and the figurines), and, weirdly enough, a suit of armor. Apparently it was obligatory at some point in the history of American restaurateurship to procure a suit of armor, but what this was intended to signify is something we have yet to fathom. Were diners in the 1970s nostalgic for feudalism? Or was the suit of armor so patently gratuitous that it signified the kind of luxurious abandon one should feel when eating out?



Eventually we did get menus, though the Mystery of the Missing Waiter was soon replaced with the Mystery of the Waitstaff Switcheroo, as halfway through the meal the teenager vanished from our table (though he was still hanging around the restaurant) and a ponytailed, suntanned woman started tending to us. She gave us a casual but sincere eye-roll apology to us for the boisterous table across the room, and later made a mob reference that showed us that we weren't the only ones who'd had suspicions about Arthur and his ilk ("I can say that — I'm Irish," she said with a wink).

The food? We ordered the recommended Pasta alla John (for meat lovers, the first waiter said carefully, though he was unable to tell us who John was, or why John and not Arthur), and one of the specials -- the pork chop pizziola, which was a pounded piece of pork topped with cheese, prosciutto, marinara sauce, and fried peppers and onions. Neither of these were revelatory; both were satisfactory. But really, the food is beside the point at Just Arthur's. You can get better food at other places in Astoria, and probably "better" ambiance, if you're after fine dining or a down-home feeling. But nowhere else can you get its peculiar mix of jollity, frowsy elegance, and nostalgia for an era of the neighborhood we never knew.

Price: Under $25 for entrees.
Will we go again? There's better food to be found, but the suit of armor just might bring us back. And we aspire to become the sort who could hang out at the bar.

Dear Mr. Fantasy (Fatty's Cafe, 25-01 Ditmars Boulevard)

When we first discovered Fatty's, one of us was following an inherently absurd macrobiotic diet and scoffed at the name. Before we'd consent to try the place, we sniffed, "Is Fatty's really the best name for a restaurant?" picking seaweed and unseasoned tofu out of our teeth. After a few visits, however, we saw the name as it was likely intended, a jovial nickname for an old, reliable friend who you'd never give up on.

Not that there's much reason to give up on Fatty's: The food is consistently excellent, it has a better-than-average beer list (all in bottles, alas), and the mojitos are made with genial enthusiasm rather than resignation. The walls sport work from local artists, which perhaps has unfairly ensnared Fatty's in the overhyped hipsters-versus-Greeks skirmish. Fatty's is too down-to-earth to run like a well-oiled machine or boast of "service with a smile," but even during its most hectic times the staffers are genuinely friendly and make duly diligent efforts to be efficient.

Our favorite menu choices for dinner include the thick black-bean chili, served with tortilla chips that seem homemade (the meat version is equally delicious, but it's rare to find plain old black beans prepared this well); the jerk-marinated Yard Burger; and the Chofan, which even suits our foolhardy macrobiotic needs. Sandwich-wise, the Cubano (the classic pork-ham-cheese-pickles with a yummy chipotle mayo) and Chavorrayo (chicken, avocado, jack, and garlic mayo) always delight, and are hefty enough to take a half home for the next day's lunch. At Fatty's brunch, the polenta cakes are our default choice, best with the side of ham, though any of the offerings will hit the spot (except maybe La Pistola -- fried eggs on rice and beans with a tortilla, which can be lackluster). We've never asked why the side dish called Mister Fantasy is so named -- it's not described on the menu -- but we've ordered it sight unseen, and no, we won't tell you.

Like any old friend, Fatty's can get on our nerves sometimes. Our most recent visit is a case in point. The music, usually au courant club music of some sort, was intrusively loud, as it is far too often, and the beer stock was depleted. And we often wonder whether Fatty's might consider possibly making the menus readable in the bar's murky half light, so that we need not risk immolation while holding the votive candle up against the pages trying to decipher the microscopic print. One last thing: Isn't it about time that a wind shield was installed outside the front entrance, so that diners in the front of the bar don't have to eat with their parkas on? Seriously, even Gregory's 26 Corner Taverna has one now.

But these are quibbles, almost lovable idiosyncrasies to us at this point. None would prevent us, or its crowd of regulars, from frequenting Fatty's. And the manager doesn't seem surprised whenever we hit it twice in one day (which has happened more times than seems decent). And so we tolerate our pal's Fatty's occasional bouts of distracted boorishness, since we know him too well to be taken in by these feints at aloofness. We can see through you, Fatty's; we know you really care.

Price: Cheaper than bistros.
Will we go again? The best of "new Astoria." We've neglected our old buddy in order to complete our mission, but he knows we miss him.

Notes Toward a Theory of Tapas (El Olivo, 21-15 31st Street)

Provincial as we are, we'd never seen white asparagus before our trip to El Olivo, a tapas restaurant on a stretch of 31st Street where the subway dare not go. We later found out that the white asparagus is a variety preferred in Europe, but in our minds it became a metaphor for El Olivo's cuisine: limp, bloated, drained of color and life.

Not that anyone present seemed to mind -- the joint was jumping with families, including a multigenerational birthday party, and everyone seemed to be in good spirits. As were we: No matter how oily or flaccid the dishes may be, that a group has chosen to have tapas at all suggests an open readiness to have a good time. After all, you wouldn't agree to have tapas unless you trusted you were to be accompanied by people you enjoy, people with whom you can make group decisions and feel comfortable sharing with. They presume community among a group and then help reinforce it. Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss has written of the French tradition of pouring a neighboring stranger a glass of wine from your bottle, calling it "an assertion of good grace which does away with mutual uncertainty." Sharing tapas has the same effect.

So at El Olivo, we made a few of these community-building group decisions and agreed on the following: a plate of Serrano ham and manchego, oily anchovies that looked as unappetizing as they tasted, rubbery octopus, shrimp in a watery tomato sauce, that unspeakable asparagus, and assorted other forgettables. That's another social prerequisite with tapas: You must be among people you like well enough to be able to confess, after a veneer of politeness during the initial tasting, that you are united in the opinion of ick.

In America, the definition of what counts as tapas is flexible, and like most New Yorkers, we were accustomed to tapas bars with more flair, offering bacon-wrapped figs, gourmet Spanish tortillas, manchego from hand-fed cows, and so on. In Spain, the custom is to wander from tapas bar to tapas bar, cherry-picking the best at each place, and you have to be in the know to order well. We were not in the know at El Olivo, and while that was perhaps our main problem, we ordered enough food that something besides the ham and cheese plate should have meet a baseline of pleasant. Maybe there's a tapas or two that explains El Olivo's longevity -- or maybe it's the simple merriment of the place that explains the bustle and cheer, or the pleasant, prompt service. Maybe it's the obligatory items of armor that seem to grace the walls of every Spanish restaurant in the city. More likely, it was the fine sangria, which we downed in large quantities to salve our disappointment over the food.

Three quarters of the way through the meal, we started talking about getting cupcakes at Martha's Bakery, on Ditmars Boulevard. These turned out to be the best part of the meal. We tried. We really, really tried. But no matter how inauthentic it may be, we will take our Americanized bacon-wrapped tapas finery over El Olivo's insipid offerings any day.

Price: Too expensive.
Will we go again? No, unless heavily drugged.