In my effort to bring you up-to-the-minute Astoria-specific news, I googled "Astoria, NY news" and found an article about the recent Vendy awards. For those of you, such as myself, who weren't yet familiar with the Vendy awards, allow me to enlighten you: Vendies are given out annually to honor the best and the brightest of New York street food vendors. This year the Vendies were swept by Queens, with residents of the burrough claiming the top 3 spots. The third place winner was Astoria's own Fares (Freddy) Zeideia, the self-proclaimed King of Falafel who was not surprised by the sweeping victory. "Everything is better in Queens," insists Zeideia. Zeideia also had kind words for his Jackson Heights competitor (the dosa king), saying:
"Dosa guy — his food is great — but I'm not much of a vegetarian."
Suddenly, I could really go for a nice falafel cart shawarma.
In the land of chickpea fritters, this man rules as king. More specifically: the land located where Broadway meets 30th St.
In other food-related news, my roommate just launched a food blog. (Because she lives with me in Astoria, I'm going to round this up to Astoria-related news as well). As I've mentioned before, she's a vegan. She's also a very ambitious vegan, and, as such, has taken on the herculean project of translating all of Julia Child's Art of French Cooking into vegan glory. Think Julie & Julie only without the butter. I'm very excited to be sharing a kitchen with the project and look forward to the day she tackles de-boning mock duck or making an eggless souffle. It's going to be epic. You can (and should!) follow her adventures here: http://ladlelady.wordpress.com/.
Speaking of followers, thanks to a recent addition, I'm now only one follower away from double digits! Is this a worthwhile blog milestone? At any rate, I encourage any readers of mine who find this fact rather sad and are not yet following me to jump on the Living the Astoria Dream bandwagon. In an effort to make this vaguely food-related, and thus keeping with the, albeit tenuous, theme of this post, I will offer to personally buy my 10th follower a sandwich. This really only applies if you live in Astoria though. If you're a non-local follower, well then I promise to send you warm, sandwich-like thoughts. I'm beginning to see why I don't have more followers...
I finally signed up as a follower a few weeks ago but did not see the number of listed followers change. If I am "invisible," you may already have ten! I tried adding a picture. Maybe there is a box I failed to check. Anyway, I am in your fan base (but then, I always have been). :)
ReplyDeleteI thought I'd do you the honor of signing up and push you into the double digits, lol. Idk if you're interested but I have something of a vlog on youtube about trans identity and what not. If you're bored feel free to check it out: Namelessqueer. :) I think I need to locate this Falafel cart. I make Falafel at home sometimes when I want some change to the regular take out food cycle of "Italian," "Mexican," "Chinese" and "Latino."
ReplyDeleteBarrie -- I like to think I have a silent army of loyal followers such as yourself. Thanks for reading!
ReplyDeleteLorenzo -- I checked out your vlog! Very high tech. I left a comment, then realized you wouldn't recognize the handle and posted a second comment clarifying the first one. Thus making my explanation just now fairly pointless. Also, I haven't been to that falafel cart either, but the Vendies are seldom wrong (I'm assuming).
your numbers grow, however slowly. Just sayin' . . .
ReplyDelete