Dim Sum at Pacificana

Yesterday some friends who live in Williamsburg suggested we go to Pacificana, an immense dim sum restaurant on 8th and 55th. We got there at around 1pm, and the half hour wait we were advised we'd have when we got our wait number turned out to be no more than fifteen minutes. Once seated at a large round table that was half our party and half a Chinese family (which was not awkward in the slightest considering all focus was on the assortment of food being wheeled around the room) we nodded eagerly or said "no thank you" to the plates and steamers of dumplings, savory cakes, vegetable dishes, meat and fish selections that were offered to us from carts or on trays by strictly-business Chinese servers.

Here's the system, for the uninitiated (like me): your party is seated, you receive an empty restaurant check ticket, and with each item that you accept, the servers write your selections in, and at the end, a hostess totals your bill, which is what you bring to the register.

We tried a roast pork dish with crispy skin, sliced into strips and laid atop a crunchy salad of sweet pickled radish and chewy cold tripe (which I mistook for clear wide bean starch noodles); dumplings that miraculously contained soup with bits of pork, and are eaten from a soup spoon with the guidance of chopsticks; translucent shrimp shumai and shrimp/pork dumplings with a delicate pale yellow wrapper; warm, bright, crunchy, tasty green Chinese vegetable dressed with sesame oil and soy; rectangular taro cakes that tasted like potato pancakes with a creamy inside reminiscent of au gratin, and a cold summer-style roll that I couldn't exactly identify but that contained fried tofu skin or something texturally similar. We ordered a few sweet items for dessert - custard filled buns with a light, fresh creamy filling and a dusting of sweet crumbs, and small ruffly green tarts filled with durian that my husband loved and I vow to try on my next time back.

Path Mark and Circus Fruits

Seeking an alternative to the small but neatly stocked Met Food on 5th Avenue between 58th and 59th, I checked out (ugh, pun not intended) the PathMark located on 13th Avenue at 61st.

The store is a tremendous suburban style grocery store, with wide aisles through which two roomy grocery carts can easily clear each other. The prices aren't any great bargain, but at least the tab was cheaper than Fresh Direct (which does not yet deliver to our block) or grocery shopping in Manhattan. It was definitely a pleasure to shop aisles with such a good variety of products, and to not have to squeeze past other shoppers with a hand basket on my arm. There's also a good selection of Passover items in the store right now, handy to know if you need your egg Matzoh fix.

I also stopped off at the closer-to-home Circus Fruits, Inc - it's on Fort Hamilton Parkway and 59th street. Yelp.com users have given pretty favorable reviews of the store here. I got some amazing deals - honeydew melons on special for .69 cents each, beautiful, firm red bell peppers for less than $1 a pound; fresh green broccoli at $1 per bunch.

Welcome to the 72nd Precinct

On February 27, we got the keys to our new home, a 2 bedroom apartment on a semi-brownstone block near 8th Avenue in the upper 50s of Brooklyn - aka, Brooklyn's Chinatown. Wedged in the southeast corner of Sunset Park, our block is within easy walking distance of pretty, residential Bay Ridge, old-school Borough Park, and diverse, frenetic West Sunset Park. These are safe, homey neighborhoods with devoted generations of residents, as well as newcomers like the Chinese who have decided to put down roots in the community, buying homes and opening businesses.

Our cozy, lovely 2-bedroom, just shy of 700 square feet, has a rent of less than $1400 a month, and although we had to stand firm on our expectations to find it, there were plenty of 2-bedrooms in the 1400-1700 range to choose from.

Our train is the N, 8th Street stop (8th at 62nd), and my morning commute to Tribeca and my husband's commute to midtown Manhattan are about 55 minutes door to door.

If you have any questions about the hood; if you're thinking of moving here or you're just curious, feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment.