Unfortunately, I came down with a nasty cold that kept us more confined to Bed-Stuy than last year, for local takeout meals and outdoor dining. Being very aware that my laziness has me posting reviews of places I ate at in 2023 in 2024 (who wants yesterday’s papers?), I’ll combine all the remaining Bed-Stuy reviews into one quick-hit post.
MAYA CONGEE CAFE (excellent)
Maya Congee Cafe is one of my three favorite Bed-Stuy places (along with the Trad Room and Peaches). It is a lunch-only, outdoor-seating-and-takeout-only place with a menu almost entirely limited to unconventional congee dishes made with a combination of jasmine rice, brown rice, quinoa, and dates. It’s very low key, but not at all off the beaten path – it got a rave review from Hannah Goldfield in the New Yorker, a strong review from Eater, and was listed by TimeOut as one of the top 50 NYC restaurants in 2022. The critics are right. We got a broccoli and chicken combo with preserved eggs and a “porkducken” combo. Both were excellent. Sophisticated comfort food.
MAMA KITCHEN (excellent-minus)
Mama Kitchen is a kosher Israeli place, decorated with art honoring “the Rebbe,” which seemed pretty exotic to us. It’s been on Robert Sietsema’s list of the 40 best cheap eats in NYC the last couple of years (under a more politic version of the name “cheap eats”) and Toni had had an excellent salad bar sampler from there early in our visit). We both had meatball sandwiches with tahini (basically ground beef shawarma), which were excellent. Probably unfairly, I docked the place a notch because by the time we arrived around 5 pm virtually everything on the extensive menu was sold out. If we are able to return to our Bed-Stuy apartment next year, we’ll definitely return here earlier in the day to explore more of the menu.
ROYAL RIB (excellent-minus)
Probably the biggest pleasant surprise of the trip was the decidedly non-kosher Royal Rib. Royal Rib has been in Bed-Stuy for decades, but it closed a couple of years ago and relocated from Halsey Street to its new location on Malcolm X. When it reopened there was a spate of articles in the Times and elsewhere reporting on the long lines and the glee of longtime patrons at its returning to life.
Although we are both huge barbecue fans (my spreadsheet of notable national barbecue places currently has 1192 entries), we were skeptical of Royal Rib for a couple of reasons.
First, our recent experience with longtime barbecue places in historically African-American neighborhoods has had lots of disappointments, with gloppy oversweet sauces and meats with little or no smoke and plenty of gristle. Our sense was that with second- or third-generation owners, lots of corners are being cut in the old traditional places. Second, the reviews on Yelp of Royal Rib are savagely bad, with complaints about the slow service, the allegedly aggressively rude counter people, and about the food itself. We had walked by Royal Rib many times, but it always either closed (they have erratic hours that don’t conform to their posted hours) or with lines way out the door.
But Toni walked by there on a weekday in mid-afternoon and they were open with a reasonable line. The service was quick, the lady behind the counter was very talkative and solicitous, and, most surprising of all, the food was excellent (with the exception of the cornbread, which was Yankee sweet). The ribs were lightly sauced and the pulled pork was surprisingly vinegary, not quite at North Carolina levels, but definitely not the syrupy stuff I was pessimistically expecting. And the collards and coleslaw were both good traditional Southern versions.
Royal Rib was good enough to make my personal top 80 list of US barbecue places, ahead of some other places with national reputations.
MAMA FOX (excellent-minus)
To me, Mama Fox epitomizes the impressiveness of New York City restaurants. Not because it is world-class cuisine, but because it is so solidly good, yet completely fails to stand out in NYC. If this restaurant were in our neighborhood in the DC suburbs, we’d be eating there at least once a month, but in NYC, it’s just “ho-hum, another really good restaurant.”
Last year we had an excellent paella at Mama Fox and this year for our final meal of the trip this year Toni had a perfect hamburger; I had an outstanding bruschetta with seasonal heirloom tomatoes and anchovies, accompanied by a tremendous cocktail (“A Matter of Thyme”) made with gin and thyme and rosemary infused vermouth. And in a nice, romantic setting.
We’ll be back to Mama Fox, I hope.
SARAGHINA PIZZERRIA (excellent-minus)
We loved Saraghina so much last year that we ate there twice; it’s a bonus that they have decent vegan cheese so I can actually enjoy a pizza without lactose consequences. This year we got takeout and it was again excellent, though it of course suffered a little bit from the journey and the delay.
NANA RAMEN (excellent-minus)
Nana Ramen was another pleasant surprise. As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been reviewed by any food critics (except for one mention in a Bed-Stuy neighborhood blog). But its takeout tonkotsu ramen is the real deal, the gyoza are very good, and the fried oysters were excellent (in the heavily breaded Japanese style).
We were hungry (and I was at the peak of my cold) so only one photo:
JE T’AIME PATISSERIE
Toni gets up and out in the mornings; during our stay in Bed-Stuy she often had walked miles before I got my lazy ass out of bed. On some of these walks, she stopped by a new patisserie on Marcus Garvey that she was very enthusiastic about. She brought me one bread from there, which I waited a while to eat, so it was a little stale and nothing to write home about.
But I should really defer to Toni on this one. Here’s her Yelp review, posted after her first visit: “This is a beautiful bakery with an excellent selection of high-quality products. I had the brown sugar bread pudding-- decadent and rich with chocolate chunks and caramel. Other patrons had the strawberry tart(?), which was deemed surprisingly light, and a chocolate layered concoction, very dense and intense in a good way. I intend to be here often. The cafe itself is very airy and comfortable. The service was friendly and informative.”
No photos, unfortunately.
ZACA CAFE (good)
This place had plenty of outdoor dining with room to space out, so it was perfect for not infecting anyone else with my cold. It was doing a booming a takeout business with a burger-heavy menu. Mashed, a DIY food blog, named its salmon burger as one of the 15 best burgers in NYC and gave some interesting details about the owner, an immigrant from Burkina Faso.
We got a standard burger, which was good, but a bit overdone. The French-influenced sides were good too, in a workmanlike way.
Okay, that’s it for Bed-Stuy (whew!).
@Saregama - You had suggested I put a link to my posts about Bed-Stuy restaurants to my original post about our 30-day stay in Bed-Stuy. I’d like to do that, but I don’t know how. Could you give me a quick primer?
