No-Traffic Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day at Danny Brown Wine Bar & Kitchen

Mother’s Day Brunch
Sunday May 11, 2008
Seatings at 11AM, 1:30 PM & 4PM

Choice of

Chilled Cantaloupe Soup

or

Endive & Watercress Salad with Blue Cheese, Toasted Walnuts & Bacon Lardons

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Wild Mushroom & Spinach Frittata with Rosemary Skillet Potatoes

or

Sweet Crêpe with Fromage Blanc & Compote of Seasonal Berries

or

Smoked Salmon with Sour Dough Toast, Watercress & Citrus Crème Fraîche

or

Bowl of Mixed Fruit with Yogurt & Granola
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Flourless Chocolate Cake with Peanuts & Cold Cream

or

Rum Raisin Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Mousse

$25 per Person (Includes your choice of a Mimosa or Bloody Mary)
Reservations are suggested—718 261-2144

Taste of Forest Hills

Mark your calendars for this year’s “Taste of Forest Hills 2008”
Sponsored by: The Shops at Atlas Park & The Wine Room of Forest Hills

Saturday, April 26, 2008
1:00 – 4:00 pm
Come sample some of Greater Forest Hills’ best restaurants paired with today’s best wines!

http://www.thecommunityhouse.net/Whatsnew.htm

There Go My Omega 3s

I just heard that the fish market on Austin that is closer to the Natural is will be closing down in October, which will leave three consecutive storefronts empty. Reason cited: high rents. This is a loss to the neighborhood because the place offered a good selection and practiced good hygiene, which can’t be said about many other fishmongers.

These rents are making it impossible for many decent businesses to earn a living. Feels like we’ve been malled again. It’s also possible that two of the three empty stores will be combined into one, for some deeper-pocket business.

2 of 5

Spring Cleaning—right in the gut

A few weeks ago, I attempted to spread some rumors about a Shake Shack coming to Forest Hills. To date, no call or e-mail from Danny Meyer, but no matter. I make excellent, healthful shakes several times a week in my home, and so can you because it’s so simple.

Here’s my basic recipe:

1. Throw 1 banana of any size into your blender. You need a banana to give the shake thickness and because it mixes so well with any other fruit you might think of.
2. Toss in any other fruit you might think of. I’ve usually got a mango lying around, as well as a handful of grapes, a kiwi, a green apple, maybe some pineapple slices that are almost borderline. I also keep a few bags of organic berries in the freezer (Trader Joe’s, the Natural, the organic stores all have these) for this purpose.
3. Add in a few heaping spoonfuls of nonfat plain yogurt. Figure you want around 1.5 cups. More is okay too.
4. Add some orange juice or other fruit juice you have in the refrigerator. Orange-mango works nicely here.
5. Finally, throw in 2-3 ice cubes and pour in some flax seed oil—maybe 1/8 of a cup. By now my blender could be three-quarters of the way full, so I just tilt the plastic bottle of flax seed oil and give a couple of squeezes. As you might suspect, there’s no real cooking science or art to this—just an attempt to load it up with foods that pack a nutritional punch.
6. Blend till smooth. Drink up and store the remainder for the next morning.

This is also great on top of cereal, instead of milk, or if you add wheat germ, sunflower seeds, cinnamon, or whatever else you might want to put into it.

If all of this is too time-consuming and bothersome to you, Tierra Sana serves some very healthy “smoothies.” I had one, the Queen Bee, last week. The ingredients in it were maca, almond butter, coconut butter, orange juice, orange zest, oatmeal milk, vanilla, bee pollen, and royal jelly. It was delicious, super smooth, and there’s no way I can replicate the particular chemistry of it at home. I am tempted, though, to start sprinkling some maca into my DIY shakes because, among its many benefits, it’s an aphrodisiac. After this long winter, I’m game for a little spring fever.

So there you have it. Feel free to share your shake secrets too.

Bonfire Grilled

Dave S. of A Forest Hills Life weighed in with a semi-scathing review of the Bonfire Grill, and there have been some similarly phrased posts on the Queens Central Forums. While I’ve held back on making any comments now that Bonfire is open, I agree that the magic for me thus far ends with the facade—I love the exposed brick around the front door. But I’ve peeked in, looked at the menu, and haven’t been sure what to make of it. I expected/hoped for more, and maybe that will come. The owners are putting a lot into this, and their goal is not for it to fail. So we may be seeing opening-weeks jitters for now and some market-response corrections later.

And since the owners are paying attention to what is being said on the blogs, I would only like to add that a sports bar with an impressively long list of beers is going to have limited appeal to the residents of Forest Hills. The real thirst here is for high-quality food and service.

Am I off the mark on this one?

The Promise of Bonfire

On a recent 50-degree day, I pushed open the door at the soon-to-be Bonfire Grill to see what was shaking there. Lots of wood and workers, for starters. Amid the saw dust, and in spite of the toxic paint smell (water-based, they said!), I understood that it was going to be a beautiful place, and man, what a bar. Feeling emboldened by easy access, I went into the building’s basement to sniff out an owner, whom I found in an office that lookeding semi-loaded (the office, that is!) with a laptop and flat-screen television. My kind of management.

A chat revealed the following—

• The owners have other restaurants, most notably one on the Upper East Side called The Uptown Lounge.
• One of the owners used to work at (or own—it’s one of those two) the Irish Cottage, so when Wine Bar put out signals that it was closing down, he moved on it. That explains why this particular restaurant management team is banging some stakes into Forest Hills.
• I asked if they were hiring; my impression is that they had already run through that process, but if anyone is interested, keep checking craigslist in case they advertise for more staff. And of course, once they open, just ask the manager.
• Yeah, we heard there’s going to be brunch on weekends. Mardi Gras also serves brunch, by the way, and Bonfire’s owner did mention that particular down-the-block competitor as comparable to what they have in mind, though their menu will be more aligned with Uptown Lounge’s. Actually, I just hope that by “brunch,” they mean starting at 9, because that’s a painful void in Forest Hills since UJs closed down.

Projected opening date, at least as of that conversation, is March 10, so keep your eyes open and let readers of Splitting Hairs know if you get there first.

Nick’s Pizza, Right

I’m not behind the curve on this one. I know Nick’s was named Best Pizza in Queens by New York magazine. The problem is that this isn’t news. New York has been throwing us this crumb (or crust) on and off for several years now, give or take, and it’s starting to become a yawn because it says less about Nick’s (whose pizza I love, okay?) and more about New York’s obvious lack of on-site coverage of Forest Hills and of Queens in general.

I remain a faithful New York reader—truly, I like the articles, and their recent coverage of the Sean Bell case was a huge time-saver—but when it comes to understanding Queens in all its food and glory, I’m going with Gothamist, which is presciently ahead of the curve, as bloggers often are. I wonder if it’s because some of their writers actually live and spend time here.

Chi-chi Tofu

Who knew? Sakura-ya, the tiny Japanese market on Austin-by-Ascan, carries the Cadillac of tofu, a product called Kaze ni Fukarete Tofu-ya Johnny, which translates as “Johnny the tofu maker blown by the wind.”

You can read all about it, including its intriguing name and why it costs $4.99 for 8.5 ounces, on Gothamist’s At the Ethnic Market post today. Have I told you lately how much I love the Gothamist, all the more so because they give our ethnic markets the time of day they so deserve?

And Sakura-ya…well, even though there isn’t a label in the entire store that I can read, let alone understand, I love the place for its mystery factor. Last week I bought something off-white and gelatinous there that tasted good but I’ll be damned if I know what it is. And in response to my question about how a store like this can thrive in a neighborhood like Forest Hills, which doesn’t seem to have a huge Japanese community, the owner told me that there are indeed many Japanese families in the area, and that Sakura-ya also attracts people from all over Queens—an ethnic market and a niche market all in one.

Beating the Holiday Rush

Tonight is Valentine’s Day for me and mine because of a family visit—blood being thicker than chocolate. (Obvious question: So why on earth are you blogging???) Earlier in the week we hit our 2008 Zagat’s and picked out a 26-rated restaurant in Brooklyn, but then got skittish about the weather and switched it to Danny Brown’s. So glad we did, because our meal was heartfully memorable. We shared a salad and then the shrimp (creatively seasoned) and grilled calamari w/ white beans appetizers and Chicken on a Brick entree. All just right.

We also noticed and appreciated how considerate the staff is. The servers are becoming more knowledgeable about the wines (only fitting for a wine bar), and they seated all parties with a table in between them, i.e., every other table was filled for as long as it could be pulled off. Don’t you hate it when a restaurant smushes its diners together, one after another, even though there are plenty of tables in which to spread them out?

Danny Brown’s is completely booked for Valentine’s Day, and has been since last week. We peeked at the VD menu and saw that it’s filled with lots of culinary surprises that we won’t give away. Enjoy whether you’ll be there…

…or elsewhere!

Tierra Sana Now Hiring

A “Whole Foods Fusion” banner was recently affixed onto the restaurant’s front (there’s been one on the side since construction began), newspapers still cover the windows, and they’re hiring.

It all sounds good, still, and heck, you gotta believe in something.

From Craigslist:

Volunteers/Helpers/Waitress/Waiters that speak Spanish & English (Forest Hills, Queens)

Estamos buscando voluntarios, meseras, meseros, ayudantes que amen la cocina, que tengan conocimiento de comida saludable y que quiera ser parte de nuestro equipo.

We are a great new restaurant in Forest Hills, Queens. We are committed to making healthy eating easy for people: supporting them in living long, youthful, energetic and fulfilling lives…we believe that healthy, happy people make for a healthy, happy planet.

We are looking for a great people that are positive, well organized, high energy individual with a magnetic personality…Must be passionate about making a difference, eating natural and healthy food.

The ideal candidates should have some expertise in the areas of Gourmet Raw and Vegetarian cuisines, or familiar with diversity of cultural plates that are healthy and natural. We wish to engage our customers wherever they are in their journey to a healthy lifestyle. For this reason we need people that can share their knowledge of our menu and why people should eat healthy with our costumers. Our menu is based on whole food fusion and deliver great tasting, healthy versions of cultural favorites; focusing on the use of local, natural, organic and seasonal ingredients.

We have other positions open, please write to us as soon as possible, please include the rate you are looking to get pay. The people that sent us the salary they are looking for will be contact first by the Human Resources Department.

Stephanie Fiallo International