Where is the nice Wifi cafe I so desperately want near the Lorimer L stop?

Williamsburger HQ is near the Lorimer L, so it’d be ideal to spend time writing at a cafe rather than the not so inspirational home office. Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be a good option without hiking back towards the Bedford stop, and that’s no fun in the winter.

I would have sworn Gimme Coffee used to have Wifi, judging by the number of Macbooks that used to be open on all their tables, but the place is tiny and crowded, so it’s understandable why they would have dropped Wifi from their plate.

L Train Cafe on Union had Wifi under the previous few managements (it used to be Crest Cafe), but the guy behind the counter says “sorry, maybe next week”.

And going a little further from the Lorimer stop, you find Oslo Coffee on Roebling. They also don’t offer Wifi.

On the moderately good side, there is one cafe with Wifi sort of close to the second L stop. Roebling Tea Room offers free Wifi during the day, although they encourage you to pack it up as the dinner crowd starts to appear around 5. Bring a fully charged battery, too, as some friendly person taped over the electric outlets.

A ray of hope lies in Second Stop Cafe (on Lorimer & Ainslie). They haven’t opened yet, and there’s no Wifi sign anywhere, but one can dream. Hopefully they’ll set it up when they open in January ‘09, and become the kind of place people can spend a little bit of unhurried time.

Are there other options in the neighborhood to sit with a coffee and type away on a laptop?

Sometimes, you find yourself too lazy to cook and too concerned about your caloric intake to deal with delivery. On those days, having a stash of FreshDirect’s 4-Minute Meals in your fridge can make for a satisfying and healthy alternative.

The ingredients come raw or slightly cooked in microwaveable containers with special valves in them, trapping in moisture so the microwave steams them to completion. The cook times are accurate, and impressively, the contents never end up rubbery. The level of flavouring is very good, on par with the similar meals you’d pick up at Marks & Spencer or Waitrose in the UK.

FreshDirect’s got two main health-conscious categories, the “Smart & Simple” and the “Eating Well”. Both contain pre-made, microwavable meals under 500 calories from fresh ingredients. Smart & Simple focuses on nutrition and avoiding the use of hydrogenated oils, while Eating Well focuses on vegetarian-friendly fare.

Having sampled nearly everything they have to offer in these categories over the last couple months, here are some thoughts and advice. Prices reflect FreshDirect’s December ‘08 pricing.

Smart & Simple

• Chicken Cacciatore w/ Potato Gnocchi ($7.99)
  Lately, the quality control on this has been slipping, and the chicken meat has ended up with bits of skin still on, which seems unlikely to keep the calories in the advertised range, as it never used to have this issue. Still, a very flavorful dish due to the use of thigh meat and mushrooms, and the gnocchi hold up well to the microwaving. Strongly recommended.
• Chicken Teriyaki w/ Fresh Pineapple & Brown Basmati Rice ($7.99)
  Nothing special here, and the hard brown rice kernels spawned a filling-replacing trip to the dentist. Avoid.
• Black Olive Char-Marked Salmon w/ Saffron Rice ($10.99)
  Not enough food for the price. Avoid.
• Garlic Chili Wild Alaskan Halibut w/ Coconut Rice ($12.99)
  Untested as yet due to the high price.
• Grill-Marked Chicken w/ Citrus Soy Sauce & Brown Rice ($7.99)
  Like most of the chicken with sauce and brown rice dishes, there’s nothing special here you couldn’t have just done yourself. Can’t recommend it.
• Lemon-Dill Salmon with Asparagus and Fingerling Potatoes ($10.99)
  A reasonably sized piece of salmon, although it’s farmed and therefore not actually good for you. The asparagus and potatoes, though, end up perfectly cooked and complement the fish very well. Unfortunately, the price is not attractive compared to the other options. Mildly avoid.
• Moroccan Chicken w/ Herbed Couscous ($7.99)
  At only 330 calories, this is almost a snack rather than a meal, which is unfortunate, because it’s one of the best dishes they’ve got. If you hate raisins, this is one to avoid, but if you like a nice variety of textures and flavours in a meal that doesn’t need any added spice, this is a good choice. Strongly recommended.
• Spicy Massaman Chicken Curry w/ Brown Basmati Rice ($7.99)
  There’s nothing specifically wrong with this dish, but it’s uninspired. Can’t recommend it.
• Thai Peanut Shrimp w/ Noodles & Asian Veggies ($8.99)
  A strong peanutty sauce and snap peas, along with starchy noodles, make this a reliable choice. It benefits from adding some extra garlic chili sauce to kick the flavors up a bit. Strongly recommended.

Eating Well

• Hoppin’ John w/ Vegetarian Chorizo ($7.99)
  A favorite. Filling, and with the addition of some smoky hot sauce (try Chipotle Tabasco), a very satisfying meal. The veggie chorizo mimics real crumbled chorizo well enough to keep this in most orders. Highly recommended.
• Balsamic-Roasted Seitan w/ Beets, Basil & Farro Pilaf ($7.99)
  Even beets, basil, and balsamic can’t make seitan stop tasting like dirt. Strongly avoid.
• Black Bean & Hominy Succotash w/ Barbecued Portobello Mushrooms ($6.99)
  Untested as yet.
• Indian-Spiced Lentil & Quinoa Ragout w/ Roasted Vegetables ($8.99)
  Solid flavor and a reasonable proportion of root vegetables to quinoa make this another favorite, as does the addition of two or three whole garlic cloves. Mmm mmm. Highly recommended.
• Portobello Mushroom Ravioli w/ Three-Tomato Sauce ($7.99)
  If you like mushrooms, this is a good option, although there’s not enough sauce and like many ravioli meals, the 4 or 5 pieces you get aren’t really enough to fill the belly. Recommended.
• Tofu & Shiitake Lo Mein w/ Coconut-Peanut Sauce ($7.99)
  Tastes fine, but has resulted in hours spent within line of sight of the toilet. Strongly avoid.
• White Beans, Pearl Pasta & Artichokes w/ Roasted Tomatoes & Rapini ($8.99)
  The rapini is so bitter it overpowers the rest of this dish, which is otherwise bland, and more suited to being an appetizer than a meal. Avoid.
• Whole-Wheat Spaghetti & Vegetarian Meatballs w/ Tomato Sauce ($8.99)
  Not remotely filling enough to justify itself, although the veggie meatballs are decent. Avoid.

You can’t let friends visit Williamsburg without partaking in the staple of any good New Yorker’s diet: brunch. Most of the area’s many brunch venues stay open until 4, letting you and your guests sleep off last night’s hangover before filling your bellies with greasy goodness.

	Enid’s 560 Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11222 www.enids.net Although technically in Greenpoint, Enid’s is the gold standard for neighborhood brunch. It can fill up with a long line by 1pm, so an earlier brunch gives you a better chance of avoiding a long wait. I haven’t been able to go here in years without getting a Hungry Bear combo of egg, sausage, gravy, and biscuit with a side of grits, but it’s all good. Their pint-glass bloody marys are spicy, strong, and come with a nice big stalk of celery for munching on.
	Wombat 613 Grand St, Brooklyn, NY 11211 www.thewombatbar.com Wombat’s duck hash (delivered with a friendly “and here’s your crack” by the owner) and a pulled pork sandwich keep this Australian eatery near the top of the Williamsburger brunch list. The burgers are amazing. There’s also brunch here 7 days a week, so your NYC-savvy visit-on-weekdays guests don’t miss out.
(sorry, no picture yet)	Fada 530 Driggs Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp The combination of ham, gruyere, and a fried egg in Fada’s Croque Madame is one of the best brunch dishes in the neighborhood. Small tables make the meal into a comedy of geometry when brunch comes with coffee, water, and fresh-squeezed OJ, and that’s before you decide what everyone needs is a round of bloody marys.

You need coffee and sweets for the energy to make it through a day of playing tour guide, and why show your guests anything but the best? Here are a few coffee joints and bakeries who stand out above the rest.

	Gimme Coffee 495 Lorimer St, Brooklyn, NY 11211 www.gimmecoffee.com It’s hard to beat Gimme Coffee for excellent drip coffees and espresso drinks. Their beans, roasted in Ithaca, are a staple in my cabinet, and make an ideal New York souvenir for coffee addicts.
	El Beit 158 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp The multi-thousand dollar Clover machine makes $3-4 cups of coffee that number among the best I’ve ever had. The staff is extraordinarily friendly and seems to truly enjoy explaining their new machine to gawking newbies. Go here for a cup of coffee that will surprise even the most experienced coffee fans.
(sorry, no picture yet)	Fortunato’s 289 Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp This old-school Italian bakery serves up cannoli and other pastries. A great place to send your parents by themselves, as the staff is much friendlier to people over 40. It’s also one of the few places not populated by a homogenous crowd of 20-somethings.
(sorry, no picture yet)	Sette Pani 602 Lorimer St, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp Sette Pani’s got fresh homemade chocolates and a wide variety of Italian desserts. Reliable and still inexpensive, I love their single-serving tiramisu cups and the pear tarts.

Williamsburg is one of New York’s dream foodie neighborhoods, where you can get pretty much any world cuisine. Especially Thai. If you’ve got out-of-town visitors, it’s great to show them culinary experiences they won’t get at home, and ideally without spending too much of the money you need for rent.

	Fette Sau 354 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp Fette Sau is the first place anyone staying with us ends up. There’s a euphoria in going up to the counter, asking for a platter for 4, and knowing you’ll get a huge variety of delicious, unexpected meats for around $20/person. The barbecue smell lingers in your clothes for a long time, so expect to continue craving a return visit for a while, and don’t wear anything you don’t expect to wash soon.
	La Piazzetta 442 Graham Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 www.lapiazzettany.com Photo from www.lapiazzettany.com Italian food done right. The antipasto platter and any of the pasta dishes are big favorites, and the wine list is inexpensive and good. The experience falls into the frequently seen upscale Williamsburg Italian style, but with a friendlier attitude than Bamonte’s and better food than Giando’s. I tend to make reservations here, although I’m sure I’ve ever really needed them.
	Zenkichi 77 N 6th St, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp A little upscale and potentially too adventurous for some visitors, this hidden-away gem serves 10-course Japanese tasting menus in private curtained booths. The sake tasting flights are exquisite, if again, not cheap.
	Queen’s Hideaway 222 Franklin St, Brooklyn, NY 11222 www.thequeenshideaway.com I remain deeply in love with the always-changing menu at Queen’s Hideaway, up in Greenpoint. A great destination for adventurous diners, as you never really know what you’re going to get until you arrive. Reservations are a good idea here.
(sorry, no picture yet)	Fada 530 Driggs Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp Fada serves dinner late into the night, and the welcoming French bistro atmosphere and attention to good food makes this a prime choice to bring guests. The moules du jour (mussels) are always a safe bet, but nothing on the menu disappoints. If you’re good at planning ahead, you can call at least one day in advance, and they’ll prepare bouillabaisse for a minimum of 4 people.

After months of favorites-list marking and bemoaning the empty spaces on our white(ish) walls in our new(ish) high-ceilinged if not alll that large apartment, we spent most of this rainy Sunday shopping away on Etsy.

I’ve bought a few things there before, a print and some jewelry, but mostly I’ve just clicked around, saving copies of prints to put in my computer desktop background rotation, where they would lie in wait for the eventual day I’d give in and drop some money on the ones I really liked a lot. And putting painting after print after t-shirt into my favorites list (represented by a cute little heart).

Just in the interface, you can tell the people behind Etsy really care about getting their artists’ goods out to the public, including some very nice shopping features like interviews with artists, galleries (public lists by users), and the innovative if eventually unhelpful color-based shopping path. They have some performance issues at times (we seemed to have abnormally slow page load times around 6-7pm), but considering their relative newness as a tech company and image-content-heaviness, this isn’t all that shocking. If Etsy can figure out how to do Amazon-style recommendations with their content, they could have something truly amazing as opposed to just a great place to buy art.

After hours of deliberation (there’s a ton of stuff on Etsy!), we narrowed it down to a bunch of pieces that really struck us as befitting our styles. A not insignificant but fortunately also not ridiculous amount of money later, we walked off with (technically, sat around and waited for) a nice big pile of art to brighten up those sterile walls.

Target Freedom (David V Moore)

Pele (David V Moore)

Chlorophyll Dreams (David V Moore)

Together (Mattsart)

The Bunny Sisters (Sarah Ogren)

Gone To Earth, Plate Two (Magic Jelly)

The Cherry Berry Monster (Yumi Yumi)

Sitting Still (Yumi Yumi)

The Guava Berry Monster (Yumi Yumi)

Bubblegum Betty (The Black Apple)

Cat And The City (Bigrin Design)

On the end of North 8th lies the official entrance to Williamsburg’s East River State Park, a small space of grass and concrete providing a much-needed green space along the East River.

The last time I was here, a few years ago, I had to sneak in through a hole in the fence, and it was just an empty space filled with rubble and unkempt brush. Now, it’s a park with hundreds of people lounging and admiring the East River and the Manhattan skyline view. Sometimes, progress is awesome.

Granted, there are myriad problems with the way the Parks Department continues to mismanage the space; various reports have it as weekends-only, closing and kicking out everyone an hour before sunset during the summer, banning dogs, and requiring a scowling arms-crossed security guard at the gate for no apparent real reason, not to mention delaying its opening for over a year for little apparent reason, despite constant community call for action.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, though, I’m willing to put all that aside and happily sit on the grass, enjoying a New York view that’s long overdue.

I think Le Barricou has the potential to be a very good bistro, and a solid brunch site. The hanger steak cheese steak is the highest-end cheese steak I’ve ever eaten, with all the trappings of a Philly-style cheese steak (onions, peppers, cheese) but with quality cheese, bread, and sliced hanger steak instead of whatever that stuff is that goes into a regular cheese steak.

Their chicken sandwich is also excellent, with the same level of great cheese and bread.

If you show up early enough for brunch, you get a basket of croissant and pain au chocolate. Hopefully it’s just recent-opening issues, but if you show up too late in the afternoon, you get no tasty bread snacks.

Unfortunately, the coffee is disappointing, which means I’ll be going for tea the next time I return for brunch.

Le Barricou
533 Grand St
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 782-7372

• 1 rack pork spare ribs (about 3 1/2 lbs)
• Some kind of basic store-bought BBQ sauce
• 3 tsp paprika
• 2 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp ground red pepper
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp basil
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• 1/2 tsp smoke salt
• 1/3 tsp cayenne

1. Make spice rub with ingredients above.
2. Preheat oven to 350.
3. Take broiler pan out from under the oven, line bottom part of pan with aluminium foil.
4. Wash and pat dry the ribs.
5. Season both sides of ribs with spice rub.
6. Bake ribs meat side up on second-to-bottom rack for 1 hour.
   
7. Remove from oven.
8. Pour tiny bit of liquid fat out of pan and into a can to get it out of the way.
9. Paint meat on bony side with BBQ sauce.
10. Flip back over to have meaty side on top, paint with lots of BBQ sauce such that all meat is covered.
    
11. Lower oven temperature to 325.
12. Cook for about 90 minutes until meat has pulled back from the bones.
13. Remove from oven, let rest for 10 minutes
14. While resting, raise oven temp to 450 and put a package of Pillsbury biscuits in. Bake for the 10 minutes specified on the package.
15. Accompany with Brooklyn Pilsner for best effect.

Inspired by this recipe.

The Sound Of Young America - http://maximumfun.org/

The first podcast I recommend to people if they ask, and often even if they don’t. Other people have told me this show is like NPR, but I’ve never been able to make it through more than a few minutes of anything on NPR without becoming bored to tears. Instead, TSOYA’s Jesse Thorn has the gravitas of an old-time radio interviewer, but the youthful energy of an idealistic recent college grad. Produced from his living room, this show has that honest indie feel while simultaneously maintaining highly professional quality. There’s a very good companion blog as well.

Never Not Funny - http://podcast.jimmypardo.com

This is the most consistently funny podcast out there for my tastes. Never Not Funny is the first thing I listen to on Monday’s commute (new episodes come over the wire on Friday evening).

Air Out My Shorts - http://www.theitspot.com

Sophomoric humor with a contagious manic drunken energy. The two hosts — “Preston Buttons & The Word Whore” — read listener-submitted short stories while progressively getting drunker and drunker. There have been some disappointingly frequent stumbles lately with scheduling, and the show suffers greatly when they’re not co-located and instead record over the phone (using skype, judging by the sound quality?). The “let’s call a friend” sketches are hit or miss, but I did find myself missing them when they stopped for a while.

AST Radio - http://podcast.aspecialthing.com/

The production quality and focus of this conversational podcast have skyrocketed since its stumbling debut a year or two back. AST Radio is the only source I’ve encountered where you get to delve deep into the motivations and opinions of a slew of (usually west coast) comedians. Unfortunately, new episodes are few and far between.

The Sound Of Young America: The College Years - http://feeds.feedburner.com/collegeyears

With the format of a morning show (regardless of actual time of day of original broadcast), TSOYA: The College Years is an exceptionally entertaining broadcast done by intelligent college students. It’s intriguing to see the origins of the current incarnation, with sketches and banter which often entertain me more than the new episodes.

Jordan, Jesse, Go! - http://feeds.feedburner.com/thornmorris

Pretty much the same as TSOYA: The College Years, although down to two hosts from the original trio, and recorded now instead of years ago. This also has comedy-celebrity guests like Judge John Hodgman.

PopSci Podcasts - http://www.popsci.com/podcasts/

Eight to nine minutes of Jonathan Coulton interviewing people involved with stories in Popular Science. A framing device claiming that he’s doing all the interviews in an empty office on the moon provides an excuse for the low quality of the audio (it’s recorded via Skype)

Escape Pod - http://escape.extraneous.org/

When commutes and local travel cause me to burn through all of the new episodes of the above, it’s time to hit the well of Escape Pod, the best short-story podcast I’ve found. Focusing on science fiction short stories, this usually runs in the 20-30 minute range. They actually pay their authors as well, which is excellent.