I found myself at a bar in the East Village on Saturday night after dinner and a movie around Union Square. After introductions to friends of friends, we hit on something we all had in common: a love of Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar. It’s not that uncommon in New York, as Momofuku is now an institution with constant buzz and hoards of fans between its four locations (Milk Bar, Ssam Bar, Noodle Bar, and Ko), but for some reason, passion for the Bakery and Milk Bar always seems to surpass the rest.

We started to exchange descriptions of our favorite items. The pies, the cookies. I gasped in horror when they revealed they had never tried the pork buns. This was warranted horror, as the mingling flavors of thin cucumber slices, hoisin sauce, scallions, and pork belly on a soft steamed bun is as close to culinary transcendence as I’ve ever been.

The pork buns are really not the stars of the Milk Bar though. They can be found at all of the other Momofuku restaurants. At the Milk Bar, it’s all about the desserts. Christina Tosi, Momofuku’s pastry chef, has developed a menu that takes all of your childhood dreams of sugary breakfast cereals and prized lunch bag snacks and melds them into ice cream, cookies, cakes, and pies. Their current soft serve ice cream flavors include red licorice and fireball, and you can have them topped with Nerds, Lemondrops, or Twizzlers. The compost cookie™ (yes, trademarked) has almost every kind of cookie variety melded into one. It’s pictured here along with the chocolate-chocolate cookie that (I believe) is a chocolate cookie with chocolate brownie chunks.

There are of course what would be considered “fancier” desserts, such as the chocolate chip cake with lemon curd, chocolate crumbs, and coffee buttercream, or the playful Arnold Palmer cake with iced tea jelly, lemon mascarpone cream, almond tea crunch. However, I always return to the cookies. It’s the perfect polyamorous marriage of convenience, comfort, and taste, with everything you need in one little handheld package.

It was the desire for those cookies that pulled all of us out of the bar at 1 AM on Saturday morning; six twenty-somethings walking through the streets of the East Village recalling Saved by the Bell episodes in search of a taste of childhood. When we finally arrived after a short walk, the store was mostly dark and two workers were wiping down the counters. The door was locked. FYI: They close at midnight.

Lucky for us, northern Brooklyn boats a fair number of moderately-priced restaurants that let us enjoy good food on a recession budget. Here are four of my favorites where you can get a meal for $15 or less (beverage not included).

Fiore
Italian, 284 Grand St., Brooklyn, NY 11211 (South Williamsburg)
It took a year and a half, but I finally found delicious Italian food in the neighborhood. Ramsey and I went to Fiore for dinner last Friday and it had everything I look for in a restaurant for a night out: good food, an affordable wine list, good service (which can be a rare find in Williamsburg) and enough space for everyone to sit comfortably without knocking elbows with a neighboring table. I got a spinach and ricotta ravioli in a brown butter sage sauce, Ramsey got the lasagna, and we both gave it a thumbs up. 
Here’s a link to their menu, but it should be noted these prices have gone up a bit since it was published on NYMag.  

Brooklyn Label
American, 180 Franklin St, Brooklyn, NY 11222 (Northern Greenpoint) 
Brooklyn Label is a good spot for brunch or dinner, offering upscale American diner fare. It’s our go-to when we’re in the mood for sandwiches and burgers, waffles, or for coffee and espresso brewed from Stumptown beans. 
You can check out their menu at their official site. 

Sea
Thai, 114 N. 6th St., Brooklyn, NY 11211 (North Williamsburg)
Okay, this place can have too-loud, bumping techno music and a crazy wait after 7pm on the weekends, but if you catch Sea at the right time, it is a good lunch or early dinner spot. I think it’s the best Thai in the neighborhood, beating out Thai Thai on Bedford and Amarin Cafe on Manhattan, and there are a lot of entrees less than $10 to choose from. Here’s a link to their menu. 

Krolewski Jadlo (King’s Feast)
Polish, 694 Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn 11222 (Greenpoint)
Coming in at the cheapest of all of the restaurants in this mini-guide, Krolewski Jadlo is one of my favorite spots for Polish food in Greenpoint. It beats out the rest because of its regal decor, including knight armor flaking the front entrance and portraits of kings lining the walls. They offer all of the traditional Polish dishes from pirogues to stuffed cabbage, and the meal usually starts with bread served with lard instead of butter. Here’s a link to their menu (I recommend the Polish plate). 

On early weekend or summer afternoons during high school or college vacations, my friends and I would meet for lunch around the vinyl red and white checkered tablecloths in Theo’s simple dining room. My meal of choice was always fried chicken fingers with fries and Theo’s signature Sweet and Sassy Sauce on the side. This sauce is easily my favorite sauce in the history of the culinary arts and lucky for me, it comes in a bottle. The bottle pictured above (placed prominently on my bookshelf) was brought to Brooklyn by my friend Vince a few weeks ago and was actually hidden under my pillow so it would be a surprise in a tooth fairy sort of way.

This sauce served as a call to action to find a way to make delicious, sauce-worthy chicken without having to fry it as I don’t have the tools and don’t trust myself with all of that scalding oil on the stove. After doing some searching on the web and a test this evening, I think I reached a happy medium.

This is a take on a basic oven-fried chicken using melba toast for an extra crunch.

-4 chicken breasts, cut into thick strips
-1 box melba toast
-1 large egg
-1 1/2 tablespoons milk
-1 tsp. salt
-1 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
-1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
-Olive oil or cooking spray

1) Preheat the oven to 400°

2) Put the melba toast in a food processor and chop until reduced to mostly bread crumb-size chunks. A few sizable chunks of toast are okay. Add salt, ground black pepper, and cayenne pepper and process a few more moments. Pour this mixture into a large ziploc bag.

3) Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray surface with cooking spray (or coat with small bit of olive oil).

4) Mix the egg and milk in a bowl with a fork. Dip each chicken strip in the egg and milk and then place in the bag and shake individually, fully coating with the toast mixture. Place on the baking sheet.

5) Spray the coated strips with a bit of cooking spray if desired. Bake the strips for 8-12 minutes (depending on thickness) and then flip . Bake another 8-12 minutes or until cooked through.

6) Serve with the sauce of your choice.

You will note that the melba toast chunks on the chicken pictured below is a bit larger than ideal. This is because my food processor is a wimp and I gave up, choosing the ziploc bag and pounding-bag-with-canned-good route instead. Still tasty.

I realize having my first two food posts be about barbecue and mac & cheese seems to set a tone of unhealthy eating, but I promise these moments of caloric indulgence are not as often as they appear. I have my share of sensible salads from Olive’s for lunch and home-cooked meals throughout the week. However, this past Saturday, it was time to load up on delicious barbecue at the hippest barbecue spot in the city: Fette Sau.

Started by the same folks that own Spuyten Duyvil (a bar with the best international beer list I’ve ever seen), Fette Sau offers most of your standard barbecue selections in 1/4 lb increments slapped onto a piece of butcher paper and served up with a few small dinner rolls. Three varieties of sauce appear on the long communal picnic tables and in place of napkins, there are rolls of paper towels.

It all seems fairly run of the mill until you start looking around. In addition to the pulled pork, ribs, and beans on the menu, you also find duck, pork belly, and locally-made pickles. The bar offers a wide selection of local brews served up in jam jars (that’s a photo of the taps above) and no less than 40 varieties of whisky. Then of course, you have the Williamsburg crowd and indie rock soundtrack that doesn’t usually pop up at a roadside smoke pit.

My boyfriend and I decided to split ribs, pulled pork, duck, and a side of beans. All were delicious, but the duck was the clear standout for me. I love duck in almost all its forms, but have never experienced it with a rub and a side of sauce. The next time we go, I’m definitely going to get the pork belly as well

Fette Sau, 354 Metropolitan Ave (at Havermeyer St), Brooklyn, NY