Friday, September 23, 2011

Further gluttony

I'm still coming down from the aforementioned gluttony of last weekend, but no Astorian blogger (albeit a fair weather one) could overlook mentioning that it is presently Queens Restaurant Week. In fact, "Queens Restaurant Week" is kind of a misnomer because the event runs all of this week and all of next week--excluding the weekend in between. You can check out all the participating restaurants here. You will note, those of you who live in Queens and actually clicked on the link, that there are quite a number of them right here in Astoria.

Last week I had made a solemn vow to eat nothing but vegetables for seven days and seven nights in homage to those farm share veggies I let rot while gallivanting around New York's eateries with my parents. Rest in peace, gentle heirloom tomatoes. At any rate, I gave that up when a friend invited me to an art event that happened to be at a Croatian restaurant on the Queen's Restaurant Week list. The event was pretty crowded though, so we decided to down our free cocktail and duck out to eat somewhere where we didn't have to shout at each other. Unfortunately, all the other Restaurant Week restaurants were far from where we were. We were quickly deterred from walking farther for the joys of paying $35 for a three course tasting menu and ended up at a non-Restaurant-Week-restaurant actually right around my apartment called Sugar Freak.

I've been meaning to try this place since it opened up a few months back. It advertises traditional Cajun and Southern food from Louisiana, and I generally find it's hard to go wrong there. I tried the Prohibition lemonade (vodka + hibiscus tea + elderflower + (I assume) lemonade) and the fried chicken which was very tasty. My friend had a muffuletta or rather half a muffuletta that still looked like it could squash many lesser sandwiches. She was less impressed with hers citing a previous muffuletta made for her by hand by a friend from Louisana made with bread she had personally shipped in for the project. It's hard to compete with that, Sugar Freak. We both enjoyed the decor of the place, which looked very much like the below picture:

An actual promotional photo of Sugar Freak!

So basically what you've learned from the preceding post is that I will gladly forgo eating vegetables in favor of fried things even if it is not in the interest of saving money through Queen's Restaurant Week. However, I recommend all of you living in Queens County to support your local restaurants in the next couple of weeks. I would join you, but I'll be at home dicing sunchokes. Or, what the hell, I will join you!

4 comments:

  1. Let us know what you do with the sunchokes. They are very easy to grow. All I ever did with them is eat raw. They are a lot like jicima -- mostly crunch and not much taste.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wonder how Sugar Freak got their name? Any good sweet items on the menu?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anon--I'm making a sunchoke puree to go with salmon. Will let you know how it turns out!

    Marla--My friend tells me it was originally going to be a bakery or something, but it seems to me if they changed their entire concept, it shouldn't be that hard to change the name. They do have sweet stuff though, although I'm not sure what kinds because I was so full from the fried chicken that I declined to see the dessert menu when offered. Next time!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have never ever heard of sunchokes. But I have heard of jicima...and love it!

    And yeah the name of the restaurant is really different, but Cajun places always have a different flair. It actually didn't throw me too much that that's what its name was. :)

    Ooo I want a beignet right now...go eat one for me the next time you go!

    ReplyDelete