Brooklyn Eats

Among the many benefits that my new career might offer, the opportunity to travel easily ranks near the top. There's not much better than paying a couple of dollars to board a bus and, a few hours later, stepping off in some place that the younger version of me never could have imagined visiting. And one of my favorite things about going somewhere new? The chance to discover and eat new and interesting foods. In fact, if you were to look inside the matryoshka doll of my decision-making process, you'd find, sealed inside the innermost doll, a delicious sandwich.

I love eating. The fact that restaurants in New York never last any amount of time is awful if you own one, but great if you eat in them. My neighborhood constantly has new places popping up, and leaving the neighborhood has given me an excuse to try each and every one of them. Of course, finding a new place to love risks making it that much harder to leave, but I'm willing to take that chance. Some of my recent favorites include: Bark Hot Dogs, whose dogs are truly amazing and beat out my old favorites (Oscar Meyer with cheese inside) by such a wide margin that I sometimes wonder if I'd ever eaten a hot dog before; Franny's Pizza, which some say is the best pizza in New York, though my Judge, an ancient Brooklynite, holds that nothing on Flatbush Avenue can even be sanitary, let alone good; and finally, iCi, where they promise that they know how to treat eggs right and serve a decent bloody mary while they prove it.

I don't really have any real idea what kind of food I'm going to find in D.C. All told, I've spent less than two weeks in the capitol and, while I didn't run across anything truly memorable, I've always enjoyed the area more than I thought I would. One thing that I do know is that I'm going to be relying heavily on Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide while I'm there. He explains where you can find amazing things like Bolivian food trucks and the finest gas station/tacqueria in the metropolitan D.C. area. Don't be surprised if this turns into a food blog for a few weeks.

We still have a few more days in the neighborhood yet, so this weekend I'll be visiting the Milk Truck Grilled Cheese stand at Brooklyn Flea, which I suspect is one of those places that is only remarkable for the length of the line, and Roman's on DeKalb, which is meant to have some pretty serious gelato. Other than that, it's eating whatever is left in the fridge. We've got a week to empty that thing and we have seven pounds of raw chicken to get through to do it. That's a pound of chicken a day until we pack out. I can hardly believe it!