NJTransit is free all week as an apology for sucking, so me, @DaveCook and @Ike took a bus out to Paterson for a food crawl down Main Street. First stop, Al Basha Quick Serve, for amazing stuffed falafel, very fine cheese borek, and qudsiyeh, not that great of a dip (too stiff and starchy for my taste), but an excellent scrabble word that I need to memorize. Plus an okay pickle plate.
Next up was a visit with the friendly honey specialists at Asal Bee, who introduced us to the medicinal properties of their (very expensive) Jordanian honeys and gifted us little cups of soft serve.
We were ready for our next bite, a sandwich from Baladna Bakery. I like to have eggs in the morning, so despite having already basically had lunch and dessert, we went with this beauty of a ka’ak (stop snickering) - chopped hardboiled eggs, thyme, black pepper and olive oil on a soft bun. We all got egg salad under our fingernails trying to split the damn thing in three while seated on a crumbling park bench, but it was worth it.
And we were not finished! A pleasant sit-down at Nouri’s cafe to sample some appetizers - the muhammara was my fave, because the babaganoush was not smoky enough for me. And a couple of purportedly brick oven pies, which were not very brick oven-y: one with kishk (dried yogurt and pepper paste), and one with flehfleh (spicy tomato paste and pepper paste). And our second - much better - plate of pickles.
There were also pastries, which I did not get a picture of. And some grocery shopping - has anyone had pussy willow water? Please share your experience.
I drank about a gallon of seltzer when I got home.
Thanks for posting your photos, which were definitely far better than mine.
I actually preferred the first pickle plate! The second was too funky for me, even bordering on earwax-y, and the first plate was spicier. But that muhammara was fantastic. Overall I think I need to go back and try everything at Al-Basha and Baladna, but I don’t know if I’ll go to Nouri’s for a meal again. Love their grocery store, though.
That Baladna sandwich was one of my favorite sandwiches of the last few years and can almost compete with the egg bánh mì at Ba Xuyen in Brooklyn for me, and that’s high praise in my book.
Maybe someday we might get to try Almazaq, the Iraqi restaurant on E. Railway Ave., too. We took a peek but we were too full to order anything. Got some nice sweets next door at Alhamadanya though.
Also availing of the fare-free NJTransit holiday, I intended to hit up Taşkin Bakery to replenish the bread box.
Yet, those “best laid plans” were summarily kiboshed when in this thread, I noticed a reference to Baladna Bakery.
Combining a falafel eggplant sandwich from there with spicy şalgam (pickled purple carrot) juice made for a nice picnic at Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park.
so you are sure it was thyme Herbs in the middle east are often super confused and get called by wrong names I find. Maybe I just need to drop by there and taste it!
The window menu listed thyme as well as boiled egg, olive oil, black pepper, and salt, too. But a close look suggests that it might well be a za’atar-and-egg sandwich. Even if we had thought to ask, however, the counterwoman didn’t speak enough English to clarify the ingredients for us.
I’m sure the menu called it thyme and that it tasted like thyme. There may have been other stuff in there as well, like the sesame seeds. It was not sumac-y at all, though.
There are a number of herbs in the eastern mediterranean that are included in a za’atar blend - sumac is not always an ingredient regarding the herbs, what we would buy as “thyme’” which is from western europe would not be one of them. Ive tried to grow some of the herbs mentioned in this article and they have powerful and distinct fragrances but they are not for this climate Im imaging people going up onto the stony dry hills like I botanized in greece and turkey last year and collecting and using what they find. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Za’atar… Kalustyan wa selling za’atar herb(s) a couple years ago but I have not seen it there recently.
however - this sandwich sounds wonderful and would probably be great with any pungent herb mix.
Corraling New Yorkers to cross the river for our own crawl wasn’t easy. (You’ll find most of us posting much more regularly on the NYC board.) But just today, I came across this tour …
… which largely replicates the scope and destinations of our crawl. Of course, I have no idea what food they have in mind; we got to choose our own.
If you put together a crawl of your own with folks on the NJ board, perhaps you can cross-post to the NYC board and lure some of us to join you!
Herbs in the middle east are often super confused and get called by wrong names I find. Maybe I just need to drop by there and taste it!
