Grand St. Chinatown Skewer Cart

I'm glad to see the Manhattan's Chinatown finally has a skewer cart worthy of comparison to its Flushing counterparts. It doesn't seem to have an official name, but its skewers are excellent, particularly the pork and chicken sticks.

The beef stick wasn't quite as great as the pork or chicken, and if it's lamb you want, get yours in Flushing - that's what all the northern Chinese carts out there do really well. Of course, if it sounds appealing, go ahead and order one and try it. At these prices, you can afford it!

They're open until 2 a.m. every day.

Grand St. Skewer Cart
NW corner of Grand & Forsyth, New York 10002
(D train to Grand St.)

Premium Sweets & Restaurant

The other place that the grocery guy pointed out to me was almost directly across the street from Mannan Supermarket, Premium Sweets & Restaurant. I can say with confidence right now that I'm going to be a regular here.

While I have yet to try any sweets here (desserts, with a few notable exceptions, are not generally my thing), the regular food offerings all look excellent: there is a long glass counter on the left as you enter with more than a dozen prepared rice dishes and curries, and on the right there is a shorter counter of tandoori and grilled kababs. And if their morog polao is any indication, they really are good - it is sensational.

The obvious drawback with this setup is that everything is made ahead of time, and when you order something, it gets dished up and microwaved. Rice dishes and curries like these don't suffer too much from this treatment, luckily. (Pre-cooked tandoori kababs, on the other hand...)  While Premium Sweet's morog polao is not as refined as Dhaka Garden's version, it is the style that I prefer - everything baked together, so that the all flavors intermingle. There's a delightful surprise in every bite - it may be a sultana or a crisped onion shred, or a dollop of spiced yogurt, adding richness to the well-seasoned rice. Ten bucks buys a generous portion with a whole chicken leg and a hard-boiled egg.

It tastes as if someone's Bangladeshi grandmother might have made it (my highest praise: I LOVE "grandmother" food). Not quite as recommendable is the "spring roll", filled with some deliciously-seasoned minced chicken (they are halal here, after all). If one could manage to get these fresh from the fryer, I'm sure they would be great. But it had been sitting around a while, and the wrapper was rather tough and leathery. Since it only cost one dollar, it wasn't a particularly vexing misfire.

They're open VERY late, maybe even 24 hours (I forgot to ask), and have other locations in Jamaica (Queens) and Parkchester (Bronx).

Premium Sweets & Restaurant
37-14 73rd St., Jackson Heights 11372
718-672-5000
(E, F, M, R, or 7 train to 74th St.-Broadway/Roosevelt Ave.-Jackson Heights, walk a block northwest on Broadway, then right on 73rd St.)
website

Dhaka Garden

Last weekend, I attended a concert at Alice Tully Hall in which two good friends were singing: Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs and Margaret Lattimore, both marvelous singers (go hear them if you can… better yet, come to Mexico City in late June and hang out with us as we all prepare and perform Richard Strauss's opera Salome). As luck would have it, my seat was next to that of an old friend and colleague, the artist manager Alex Fletcher, who very gently tendered a plea for a new blog post. I admit it has been far too long, and fortunately, inspiration presented itself just a few days later.

During a late-night trip to Mannan Halal Grocery, I was chatting with the lovely Bangladeshi fellow ringing up my purchases and happened to mention how much I liked the dish morog polao. He brightened up, ushered me to the door, and pointed down the street to not one, but two places he thought served a good morog polao. He was absolutely right. This evening I brought both my camera and my friend Alex (a mathematics professor, not the artist manager) to Dhaka Garden, where we enjoyed some exceptionally good food.

I had heard that their mughlai paratha was also good, so we started with an order of that. It is easily the best mughlai paratha I have ever tasted – fried with lightest of hands, and filled with subtly-seasoned minced chicken (rather than the usual beef one gets in Indian restaurants) and egg. Well worth the six bucks, and easily sharable by two or three people.

Also reputed to be good was kacchi biryani, so order it we did. It was excellent. The menu says it is made with "premium baby goat", baby goat being a relative term. In Spain, cabrito asado (roast kid goat) is generally no more than 45 days old. This goat was significantly more elderly than that, but had good flavor and was actually tender, in contrast to most of the goat one gets in Indo-Paki restaurants around town. The rice was delicious with complex, fresh flavors.

With biryani and polao dishes, Dhaka Garden offers a small dish of chicken, beef or goat curry for an additional $4.95. How can one pass that up? On our waiter’s recommendation, we got beef. The gravy was rich and complex, concentrated from long simmering until almost reminiscent of Indonesian rending. A recommendation we’re glad we heeded.

The impetus for the visit, morog polao, was indeed excellent. There are several styles of morog polao, apparently, and while theirs is not the style I prefer (I like everything baked together), the quality was so high that it made no difference. My friend Alex, who grew up in India, was particularly impressed by this dish (in fact, he was impressed in general, saying, “This takes me back to my teen years... I haven’t had food like this since I was in India!”). He repeatedly remarked on how fresh the chicken tasted, and indeed the menu boasts "live chicken": you get one half chicken – and a hard-boiled egg – that has been simmered in a seasoned yogurt and cream sauce, with a plate of very subtly-seasoned rice, rich with sultanas, fried onion shreds, and a few saffron threads, served alongside.

This feast set us back about twenty bucks apiece. They also offer a good selection of snacks/appetizers (including some Indian-Chinese items), tandoori kababs, curries (their fish curry is reputed to be excellent), breads, and breakfast items.  Open 9 a.m. - 11 p.m. daily.

(A postscript:  if any Bengali speakers happen to read this and would be willing to assist in the translation of some ingredients and amounts from a cooking video in Bangla, I would be most grateful. E-mail me at the address listed near the top of the page.)

Dhaka Garden
72-23 37th Ave., Jackson Heights 11372
718-424-8600
(E, F, M, R, or 7 train to 74th St.-Broadway/Roosevelt Ave.-Jackson Heights, walk two blocks north on 74th St., then left on 37th Ave.)
website

Tikka Grill

The first time I wandered into Tikka Grill, I immediately spied a fresh chicken tikka kebab on the bottom shelf of the glass case, dripping with yogurt and spices, and I knew I had to have it. It was so delicious, I have been unable to make myself try much of anything else here. It's only serious rival I've found in the NY metro area is at the Fiza Diner.

I can tell you, though, that the onion kulcha is excellent: a layer of tender onions enclosed in light, moist, and crispy bread.

On a busy corner of Astoria Blvd. near LaGuardia airport, this place is, in fact, rather easy to miss. Tucked in the ground floor of an unprepossessing low-rise building, it's almost literally a hole-in-the wall. If you go, you'll be rubbing elbows with a bunch of New York's Pakistani taxi and livery drivers, who are almost always eating curries, not kebabs. I'm sure they're great, too (the taxi drivers always know where to eat) - I just haven't got around to trying them yet.

Tikka Grill
24-02 82nd St., East Elmhurst 11370
718-458-4848
Q33 or Q47 bus from Jackson Heights
menu (add $1 to most of the prices)

Sodesh

In the Norwood neighborhood of the Bronx, there is a relatively new restaurant called Sodesh that says it serves Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani food. Whatever style the food is that they serve, it's absolutely delicious. I'll go with Bangladeshi, since their versions of familiar dishes are stylistically unique in my experience.

Perhaps the term "restaurant" is overstating things just a tad... it was clearly one of those Chinese take-out counters that populate the less-gentrified neighborhoods of New York until quite recently, and has about 5 tables. No matter - the food is stellar.

We started with an assortment of kababs as appetizers:

There is the usual tandoori chicken, chicken tikka, and a seekh-style minced chicken kabab. But the winner was the one at the bottom of the frame, which I think is called chicken tirka (didn't get the name – but one can always just point!). Delicately flavored and moist – it was fabulous.

They serve the most subtly delicious chapli kabab I have ever tried (minced chicken with egg, diced tomato, green pepper, and spices):

Preceding the arrival of the entrées was a plate of rice for each person. I don’t know what is in it, but it is the most beautifully perfumed rice I think I have ever been served anywhere. It complemented particularly well the popular winner of the evening, butter chicken:

Every time I have ordered butter chicken elsewhere, what generally comes out is some sort of variation of chicken tikka masala. Not here. The menu says "boneless chicken, butter, ginger, tomato purée, yogurt, cream, lemon juice & all spices." The tomato purée was surprising to read, because I could not identify any tomato flavor at all.  This is not a bad thing.  All those ingredients are in perfect balance with one another to create a creamy chicken dish that is both light and rich at the same time. It's simply stupendous, and the caramelized onions that garnish almost all the dishes here are a delightful addition.

A seemingly close cousin of the butter chicken, chicken kurma, is, in the end, quite different in overall effect. The sauce is creamy in texture, but its base is ghee, coconut milk, and puréed nuts, which throws the aromatic qualities of the ginger and spices into sharper relief. Depending on ones tastes, this dish is as good or better than the butter chicken.

(And there's that beautiful rice in the background.)

On the menu is a northern take on the south Indian (Goan, actually) dish, vindaloo. I’d never seen beef vindaloo on offer before, so I had to order it (when, oh when is the original PORK vindaloo going to come to NYC?). It was spicy, but not overly so, and pleasantly vinegary, with the de rigueur potatoes. A nice, warming dish.

Goat biryani was aromatic and everything it should be, and the chunks of goat were actually tender

Their saag paneer is the tastiest, most interesting version of this dish I've ever tried. The spinach was perfectly cooked, and the texture of the homemade cheese was just right – it so often gets dry and grainy – and the fresh flavor, even better. The menu doesn’t mention tomato in this dish, and it's the one dish where I thought I could taste it. In any event, the flavor had a lot of dimensions to it – not something I normally associate with saag paneer!

Marvelously inexpensive - the only dishes over ten dollars are the shrimp dishes (and the goat biryani).

Sodesh
3111 Bainbridge Ave., Bronx 10467
718-231-5370
(D train to 205th St., follow the signs for Bainbridge Ave., then half a block down the hill)

Cafe Avat (CLOSED)

Today, I had the good fortune to join an expedition to the Bath Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn to try a Kyrgyz restaurant that Charles Bibilos, creator of the wonderful United Nations of Food blog, had heard about. Joining us was Dave Cook, creator of the amazing Eating in Translation. Lunch with the two of the most intrepid eaters I know was huge fun – all we needed was Joe DiStefano to complete the triumvirate. It’s a fairly long haul out there, but I’m delighted to report that Cafe Avat is worth it.

The Kyrgyz Republic is a former Soviet republic in central Asia that borders on Uzbekistan and China, among other countries, and those influences and more can be discerned in the food (the chef is from the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek). As one would expect from any self-respecting former Soviet republic, there is a good-sized roster of Russian-sounding salads on the menu, but on the plate of pickled vegetables, one does not expect the presence of what is essentially kimchi (Chin-cha, or Чин-ча)!   That and the pickled cucumbers were the standouts:

I was pleased to discover that in Kyrgyz cooking, as opposed to Uzbek, Azeri, or Kazakh cooking, there is a certain measure of spiciness. Ashlyam-fu (Ашлям-фу) is a mildly spicy, vinegary, cold dish of handmade lagman noodles (central-Asian-speak for ramen), shredded cucumber, tomato, and strips of mung bean starch "noodles". Refreshing on a warm day.

This dish immediately struck me as tasting more or less Chinese. Come to find out in my subsequent research that it is a Dunghan dish. What is Dunghan, you may, as I did, ask? Ethnic Chinese Muslim (Cafe Avat is halal).

Gan-fan (Ган-фан) was a huge hit. A stew of beef, onions, bell peppers, tomato, and mushroom is ladled over a mound of white rice. One of those dishes that is more than the sum of its parts.

I was also crazy about hanim (Ханим) – my companions, not so much. Seasoned shredded potatoes are enshrouded in an ultra-delicate dumpling wrapper and steamed, served with a zesty mashed red-pepper sauce. Delightful.

The two kebabs we tried were both spectacular: lamb rib meat and lyulya (Люля - ground lamb). These are the first kebabs I’ve tried up to the quality and of the late, lamented Café Sim-Sim (because Cafe Avat is halal, there is no pork neck kebab, alas!). Juicy and very flavorful, and only four bucks apiece.

The only real miss of the meal was the home fries with sautéed mushrooms, a dish I requested precisely because Café Sim-Sim’s version was so wonderful. Here, it is merely some ordinary home-fried potatoes, sliced a tad too thick, with ordinary white mushrooms – no chanterelles. There are many, much tastier items on the menu with which to sate oneself.

The charming Uzbek fellow that waited on us went above and beyond the call of duty to make our first Kyrgyz dining experience a pleasurable one. It will not be the last.

Cafe Avat
2158 Bath Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11214
347-275-7377
(D train to Bay Pkwy, walk 2 blocks SW on Bay Pkwy, then turn right)

Farid Halal Cart (formerly Al-Shamy)

(UPDATE 7/22/13: Something is up with this place, and it's not good. I had tried to go three times in the last couple of weeks, at times when they normally should have been there... they weren't at their spot. I finally called this evening - the response was just short of rude, but I was told they were at their spot. When I got there, people were tense and weird. Ahmed was not around, and I dared not ask why. The formerly-wonderful thick, deep-red hot sauce had been replaced by a vinegary/watery abomination, the sort of thing one gets with Peruvian roast chickens. The meat was okay, but my request to leave it a bit less done went unheeded or unheard. The seasoned rice had substantially less flavor than before. And I never got an answer to my question as to why they've been AWOL lately. In the end, a most depressing experience. I suppose I should use at as a Buddhist exercise in non-attachment. Go at your own risk.)

During a stroll up Steinway St. a while back, the Farid Halal Cart caught my eye. But of course, how could it not, with large skewers of varied meats sizzling over real smoldering charcoal...one doesn't encounter that on the streets of New York every day.

Since then, I've managed a few visits, and I think I can safely these guys serve some of the city's finest street cart fare.

Apart from the ingredients, it's the guys that work the cart that really make it something special. Ahmed is the public liaison - he'll take your order, chat you up, and really make you feel attended to. He positively radiates good spirit. Quietly tending the skewers with careful attention is equally good-spirited Ishem (I hope I got his name right). Both of these guys prepare their food with real care and pride - watching them cook and assemble dishes is a thing of real beauty. They prepare all the excellent ingredients by hand, and the difference is palpable.

 There's a bucket of skewers on the sidewalk waiting to be loaded up...

 
...and that's exactly what happens when a customer's order is placed - nothing is sitting around waiting to be slapped on the grill.

The offerings seem to vary slightly from day to day, but they almost always have half-chickens (spatchcocked, seasoned, and grilled to order, of course)...

...beef kebabs, chicken kebabs (cubes of white meat marinated in yogurt and spices), kofta (ground lamb kebabs), homemade beef sausages, and lamb chops.  (Ed. to add: I just found out the grilled half chickens are fantastic - the best thing I've had here yet. Moist, but with just enough charred bits to keep things interesting... even the wings, which I normally skip altogether, are juicy and delicious.)

My first visit, I had a really lovely chicken kebab...

...wrapped with some greens in a pita: a large, thin - delicate, even - pita, not the thick, chewy abominations most Middle Eastern joints in NYC serve.  (I learned later that the pitas are broken out only when they run out of the crusty baguettes they normally make their sandwiches with.)

More recently, I decided I wanted to try beef and kofta. So, chunks of good-quality beef were loaded onto one skewer, and ground lamb mixture was expertly formed on another.

(From left to right: three kofta kebabs, two beef, one chicken kebab and one half chicken.) I was even asked how well-done I liked my meat...and even better, it came out that way! They have two kinds of rice to choose from: a terrific, fragrant brown (the color of the dish, not the grain - Ahmed said it's cooked with a bit of tomato and green pepper, but there are definitely other spices working their magic in there) and a delicately-perfumed yellow rice.

I naturally couldn't decide, so opted for half and half, over which Ahmed beautifully arranged the freshly-grilled chunks of meat.

They have a bunch of sauces to choose from: tahini and their hot sauce seem to be the stars, but there is also white sauce, "French sauce" (essentially an excellent French dressing to put on greens), and a complex, slightly sweet brown sauce I forgot to inquire about.

The finished product:

Prices, like their offerings, apparently vary a bit, but sandwiches seem to run $5-7, rice platters $8-12, and half chickens are $10 (the only posted menu is in Arabic, which I can't read, and I haven't yet inquired about the price of their lamb chops). They get there sometime in the late afternoon (except Wednesdays, their day off) and stay open until 4 a.m. - MY kind of cart! And if you happen to live near enough, they will deliver telephone orders.

If you go, tell Ahmed that Eric the musician sent you.

Farid Halal Cart
Steinway St., east side, between 25th and 28th Aves., Astoria NY 11105
718-200-7618
(M or R train to Steinway St., then 5 blocks north)

BZ Grill

I had been reading about BZ Grill for a while and finally decided I needed to try it. Happily, the hype is correct - they do make the best gyros in town!

At least, the best I've tried... I have great difficulty imagining that there is better in NYC. No cylinders of processed mystery meat here - there is a rotating spit of layered sliced pork right up front, alongside its fraternal twin of sliced chicken. Although good, the chicken meats tends to get just a tad dry.  The pork gyro, on the other hand is fantastic... moist, perfectly seasoned, and just enough crunchy bits to keep the texture interesting. The sandwich is great (excellent tzatziki sauce):
 

The platter - even better:

Plenty of meat, along with rice, some non-iceberg lettuce, chopped and scrupulously fresh, tomato slices, thinly-sliced red onion, a good dollop of tzatziki sauce and one of kopanisti (feta cheese spread), and toasted pita bread - well worth the 13 bucks they charge for it.

They have a good selection of souvlaki, kebabs, and other simple Greek specialties, but there are other places one can get most of those things, although quality here is assured to be good.  There is NO place else one can get gyro like this.  Open until 11 p.m. daily.

BZ Grill 
27-02 Astoria Blvd., Astoria 11102 
718-932-7858
website

Café Kashkar

When I came across Robert Sietsema's mini-review of Café Kashkar, I realized that my quest to try as many different regional Chinese cuisines as possible had to include a trip to this restaurant. It ended up including several. Although Brighton Beach is a long way from Manhattan, it's worth the trip now and then for what is essentially home-cooking at marvelously low prices.

Of course, were it not for the vagaries of history, this would not in any sense be a Chinese restaurant at all, and there is indeed nothing overtly Chinese about it. Café Kashkar serves food of the Uyghurs, which is a Turkic ethnic group that comprises almost half the population of Xinjiang, China's westernmost province. Over the centuries, most Uyghurs ended up settling in what is sometimes called East Turkestan, and now comprises the western third of Xinjiang. Kashkar is the westernmost major city of the province. The area has gone in and out of being under Chinese rule, finally ending up as part of China, apparently permanently, in 1949. In the course of my conversation with the lovely fellow serving me on my first visit, the son of the owners, I learned that his parents are Uyghurs from Uzbekistan and, if I remember correctly, Kazakhstan.

In any case, the food at Café Kashkar has much more to do with Russian cuisine than Chinese, with some occasional cross-pollination. Since most Uyghurs are Muslim, the kitchen is halal--no pork! There is a fairly typically Russian selection of salads here; we had a rich, tasty eggplant salad (photos courtesy, once again, of Pete):


Lamb takes center stage here--it's in almost everything. One of the specialties of the house is lagman (notice the similarity to the word "ramen"?), a delicious, hearty noodle soup made with lamb and vegetables. "Hearty" accurately describes a lot of the menu's offerings... this is great cold-weather food.

Fried lagman is essentially Russian fried lo mein, with lamb, vegetables and egg:


Plov (pilaf) is Russian fried rice, with carrots and lamb. I liked this much more than my dining companions did, but I tend to love good fried rice:


Samsa are like baked rolls, filled with seasoned ground lamb--another house specialty:


That is one samsa there, with four parts, and it will set you back $2.50.

Manty are big dumplings filled with... your guessed it... lamb. We got ours fried:


Another cognate: manty is awfully similar to the Korean word for dumplings, mandoo. I'm crazy about the seasoning of their lamb filling. There are sauteed onions in there, and a subtle blend of spices I can't quite identify.

To complete the triumvirate of lamb-filled dough creations, we had to try the gusht nan, too. Anyone familiar with Indian food ought be able to form an idea what this is--a baked, lamb-filled flat-bread:


I suppose it is possible to overdose on lamb here... luckily, they have a selection of kebabs to add a bit of variety (and none more than $4.00): chicken, ground beef (lyulya), liver, veal, and, of course, lamb. The lamb rib kebab is really pretty great, I have to say--seen here with chicken:


Tender, juicy, and expertly grilled.

They had exactly one dessert the night we asked: homemade chak-chak. It's like a Rice Krispy treat made with fried noodles, and it's good:



Café Kashkar
1141 Brighton Beach Ave., Brooklyn 11235
718-743-3832
(B or Q train to Brighton Beach, then 7 blocks east on Brighton Beach Ave.)

Fiza Diner

As a Manhattan dweller, I keep hoping to find great, cheap ethnic joints a bit closer to home than, say, Flushing. Instead, I find outrageously good food even farther away. This evening I tasted the most delicious Pakistani I have tried in the course of my wanderings so far in the Glen Oaks/Bellerose/Floral Park section of Queens, a few blocks before it turns into Nassau County, at Fiza Diner.

It's little more than a hole-in-the-wall, and it's definitely no-frills (of the Dera variety): the prepared dishes are on display at the counter, and kebabs are grilled to order in the back. But Michael, Elizabeth and I all literally moaned with pleasure when we tried the chicken tikka kebab--tender, juicy, and expertly spiced. Apparently, we were all in the mood for chicken... in addition to the kebab, we ordered chicken tikka masala (perhaps the most delicious I've had anywhere), chicken korma (korma with a kick--fantastic), and chilli chicken (all those peppers looked more intimidating than they actually were--sweet and delicious), and even a chicken roll as an appetizer (rather like a deep-fried, Indian-spiced spring roll filled with ground chicken--quite tasty). A couple of vegetables did make their way to the table, too: a good chana masala (chickpeas) and Elizabeth assured me--because I DETEST okra--that the bhindi masala was delicious. Purely in the interest of research, of course, we felt compelled to try three of the breads, all of which were fantastic: garlic naan (best I've ever tried), onion naan, and keema naan.

As if the great food weren't enough to make one very happy, it's unbelievably cheap, too. I'll be back, especially since I'm a big fan of bhatura bread (one doesn't find that everywhere) and didn't notice it on the menu until after we had already ridiculously over-ordered!

A second trip with Jose and Jennifer yielded a couple of things (besides a great meal): the information that they only serve bhatura bread for breakfast (dashing any hopes I had of ever trying it), and.... pictures!

Top left to right: salad/garnish, rice, and chicken tikka masala (which identically reproduced the "moan effect" from the first visit--EVERY time any of us took a bite of it), with a spicy lentil dal just below it. Bottom left to right: chicken tikka kebab, naan, and spinach with potatoes.

Naan, dal, and aloo sag (spinach with potatoes):


Kebabs--the stupendous chicken tikka, and the delightful new discovery, chapli (spiced ground meat):


Keema naan and garlic naan:



Fiza Diner
259-07 Hillside Ave., Floral Park 11004
718-347-3100
(F train to 179th St., then the Q43 bus out Hillside Ave.)

Café Sim-Sim, revisited (CLOSED)

Café Sim-Sim continues to be my all-round favorite restaurant in New York. I eat here on an average of perhaps once a week, and let me tell you, it is NOWHERE close to where I live. But for food of this quality, prepared with this kind of care, it is worth every bit of the effort it takes to get the there. And folks, it's not such a bad trip: 3 blocks from the Ditmas Ave. stop on the F-train. Go. Enjoy. Return. Try everything on the menu. I've worked my way through probably two-thirds of the menu and haven't hit a dud yet.

Here's some food porn from one of my many recent visits, courtesy of Jose. Unfortunately, we still don't have a picture of my favorite thing so far on the menu, the home-fried potatoes with chanterelle mushrooms (described here). And for you sturgeon fans, Aron cures all of his fish in-house and offers two kinds of smoked sturgeon--I am especially partial to the Sevruga. Also not pictured are the sturgeon kebabs, which are, as one would expect, fantastic. But this should entice at least a few of you to give this place a try.

The "Stolichniy" salad, or Russian salad--a delicious take on egg salad, with the addition of ground chicken:


The wonderful lipyoshka bread (лепёшка), served warm:


Piti, a hearty soup made with lamb on the bone:


Kharcho, a soup of lamb, vegetables (tomatoes, onions sweet red peppers), and rice, garnished with cilantro:


Kebabs and fried potatoes: chicken lyulya (each wrapped in its own piece of lavash flatbread), and a piece of pork neck:


My favorite kebab on the menu, pork neck, starring in its own solo shot:


As I recently found out the hard way, it's probably a good idea to call ahead just to be sure they're not closed for a private party. Although it's not a bad trip if one gets to eat upon ones arrival, it's a huge annoyance to be go and be turned away, and you'll get no apology from anyone for it.

Café Sim-Sim
312 Ditmas Ave., Brooklyn 11218
718-484-1031
(F train to Ditmas Ave., then 3 blocks east)