Finding real roti up in the Bronx.
You can see the place from the nearest subway platform. The dinner-rush line spills onto the sidewalk. If ever a far-flung restaurant screamed "Try me," it's Feroza's. Its sign's Trinidadian flag image alone is inviting enough for a rotimaniac like myself. Trinis are serious about roti. I'm anticipating a crackdown on all the Jamaican places with neon "HOT ROTI" signs and no roti for sale inside. But you, who travel to eat only with reticence, and who perhaps have more questions than demands regarding roti, should appreciate how popular and easy to find Feroza's Roti Restaurant is.
It's worth mentioning that the elevated subway platform it's near (Burke Ave.) is a good hour from downtown Manhattan. And we're talking about a storefront takeout joint (there are a few tables in a windowless back room, but no table service). Also, Feroza's clientele is familiar enough with what's offered that the menu doesn't need to supply much information. In fact it supplies hardly any. Placing an order that involves a lot of questions can be embarrassing?especially with that out-the-door line behind you?and my face was the color of a ripe tomato by the time I was through. But a little discomfort is hardly too big a price to pay for multicultural knowledge and good eating.
Quick primer: Essentially, a roti is a West-Indian burrito. An alternate to serving saucy dishes over rice is to wrap them up in a doughy bread shell. Roti shells are comparatively huge, and the wrapping that's done with them is usually too loose to allow for much hand-to-mouth action. The shells are double-layered, chewy and sort of crumbly along torn edges. They're Indian food. Lentils are involved in roti-shell baking. The technique came to the Caribbean from India with a 19th-century wave of immigration, as did curry. How is it that the culture of the very same place 16th-century European conquerors mistakenly thought they were conquering later actually blended with the by-then very-mixed-up culture of the islands? That's just the kind of world we live in.
There are a lot of people on the Feroza crew?the baking operation alone must be an enormous job?and most look South Asian and speak Caribbean. The pace these folks work at is, by island standards, blistering. It's not like you can see the line move, though.
Start with fritters, either codfish or saltfish, because of the amazing tamarind sauce they come with. The fritters themselves are balls of deep-fried dough, pretty much. The dipping sauce is chunky with fresh tamarind seed pods, their cooling tropical flavor rounded out with something orangey and spiked with hot pepper. It's a knockout. We found it no less spectacular on Feroza's potato pie, which otherwise isn't very different from a street knish. Put Feroza's fritter sauce next to that watery tamarind condiment served at practically every Indian restaurant in Manhattan, and suddenly an excursion to the North Bronx for takeout isn't so outlandish.
Curry shrimp roti also exceeded expectations. The shrimp were fat, juicy and fresh. The yellow sauce was sumptuously flavorful, yet mild as a Port of Spain winter. Shrimp essence suffused this mellow curry, the refined flavor of which benefited from the carefully spare use of carrot, green pepper and crunchy steamed cabbage. Holding it all together was Feroza's spongy/flaky roti wrap?as tasty as any I've had in New York.
Goat roti was not on the same level. The meat had been stewed with chickpeas, onion and potato until it was halfway off its bones, and its fat thickened the floury brown sauce. That must be a relative of New Orleans gumbo, but Feroza's goat sauce didn't quite exemplify Creole gastronomy. It was more of a soulfood belly-buster. I tired of it halfway through, and still felt like I'd swallowed a brick. (Unlike rice dishes, roti are just as good as leftovers the next day.)
Another highlight was pelau chicken. Pelau is a meat dish served over rice and peas ("peas" is Caribbean for "beans"?at Feroza's there're also lentils in the rice). There's a traditional Trinidadian pelau sauce made with caramelized cane sugar. Feroza's chicken pelau sauce is reddish, with a flavor more reminiscent of roasted peanuts than raw cane. I have an issue with sweet sauces, but I loved this one both with a dash of Feroza's four-alarm scotch-bonnet sauce and without. The only problem was that some of the meat was dried-out inside?a common problem at restaurants that serve from chafing dishes.
Feroza's serves bottled beers and an array of imported goods?from Trinidadian newspapers and peanut bars to Lucozade and Thai coconut milk. We tried a package of vacuum-sealed, preserved-and-spiced mango slices for dessert. They were disgusting.
Prices are low. It's $4-$6 per roti, with patties and other appetizers falling in the $1-$2 range. Sandwiches of fried shark (and other fish, as available) top out the menu at around $7.50.
My pal Mike recently waxed furious about the terrible service he received at Moutard, a new French restaurant in his Brooklyn neighborhood. Mike's big point was that Park Slope and its environs are packed with restaurants owned by people for whom having their own place is a dream come true, so they treat every customer as practically a gift from God. Moutard, in contrast, according to Mike, seemed to be operated by "some mooks from Bay Ridge" who, seeking only to cash in on the lucrative Slope scene, came across overtly contemptuous of their clientele. I haven't been to Moutard, but I'm sure Mike's mistaken in his characterization of restaurant-franchising mooks from Bay Ridge.
The new East Village restaurant Barracuda Bistro is a spin-off of a family seafood restaurant and corner bar in, yes, Bay Ridge. It's called simply Barracuda, and I covered it in this space last July. Unless you read that piece, or unless you know your Bay Ridge, you'd never know Barracuda Bistro was related to such a place. The setup isn't trendy?just so functionally East Village the place seems to belong in its spot near St. Marks Church. There's a single-pane front window, lots of wood and brick, long candles on every table and a little perch of a back bar serving beer in pilsner glasses the size of flower vases. The manager who bartends and serves is a garrulous outerborough fellow, but this is one mook who knows how to treat his yuppies.
Think of Barracuda Bistro as another reliably reasonable neighborhood local, joining Orologio and Boca Chica. The seafood is fresh and well-prepared. There are plenty of options and some originality on the menu, plus, there's a decent low-end wine list. The room is neither empty nor crowded on weeknights, and they also deliver.
My first visit to Barracuda Bistro was most memorable for an encounter with a party at the next table: six middle-aged Russians drinking ice-cold vodka shots and getting extremely extroverted at one in the afternoon. It was a good encounter, as those sorts of things go. There's a Russian element in the kitchen as well, and one can do worse at the restaurant than going ethnic. Fisherman's Ucha ($3.95; pronounced with a throat-clearing "ch") is a salty seafood broth seasoned with a shot of vodka and fresh dill. Bigger-than-bite-size chunks of whitefish further promote a sense of seaside Slavic machismo.
A pickled-sardine appetizer was the highlight of my Bay Ridge excursion. I'm happy to report that the dish arrived in Manhattan intact. The little fishes come beautifully filleted, with some more fresh dill, red onion slices and a sphere of boiled potato. Don't think you have to like pickled-fish snacks to enjoy this wonderful starter. You only have to like sashimi. And vinegar. And salt. Premium vodka's probably a good idea, too.
Barracuda Bistro serves quality shellfish for exceptionally low prices. A half-dozen oysters or clams on the halfshell go for $7.95, while sesame-crusted shrimp with seaweed is a dollar less. An excellent grilled calamari salad with lime dressing is only $5.95 (as are the pickled sardines).
The menu includes an array of pasta dishes and sandwich entrees for under $10. Its feature section, though, is a lineup of classic eating fish?salmon, sole, perch, grouper, snapper, swordfish, halibut, yellowfin, etc.?any of which the kitchen will steam, smoke, broil, fry, grill or blacken to your liking. It is unlikely, verging on impossible, that the restaurant keeps all 15 of them on-hand and fresh every day. The place just isn't busy enough. My experience, though, is that if you ask the manager for a recommendation, you'll end up with an expertly presented fish so fresh it doesn't need a sauce. Which is an especially good thing, given that sauces are $1.95 extra at Barracuda Bistro.
Same goes for the side dishes, which need work. The original Barracuda's soggy vegetable sides didn't even past muster in Bay Ridge. The same 1970s-grandma's-house approach in the East Village?for $1.95 extra, no less?is well below passable.
So it's a big surprise that someone in that same kitchen has their dessert game down. One fine example is the white chocolate bread pudding ($5.95). It's a sculptural mass built from cubes of angel-food cake smashed together, drizzled with fresh strawberry sauce and elevated on a platform of what seems to be a cake-coated chocolate bar. Some things work in any borough.