This annual list is an exercise in selective memory: The trick is to remember every impressive snack, sandwich, pastry, main course and cocktail I ate over the past year without ever thinking about how much food it all adds up to.
Chef Derick López and his husband Victor Vargas started out selling a tight menu of Puerto Rican fare at NYC street fairs before opening this full-service restaurant in Astoria that serves standout bacalaitos, thin cod fritters.
It’s an exciting time for Puerto Rican food in New York (one of our favorite caterers specializing in the cuisine, Que Chevere, is about to get its own stall at Essex Crossing).
Last week I penned an ode to the excellent pasteles at the Freakin Rican in Astoria, a rare new-ish entry into the city’s dwindling community of Puerto Rican restaurants.
Puerto Rican pasteles, like the excellent ones served at the Freakin Rican in Queens, are “a project, not a quick fix,” Oswald Rivera writes in his 2002 cookbook, Nuyorican and Bodega Recipes.
At this tropical-themed destination for Boricua staples from alcapurrias to sorullitos, five bucks gets you a basket of chicharrones de pollo: deep-fried pieces of boneless thigh meat with a garlicky, acidic tang that have been brined in apple-cider vinegar and coated in a heavily seasoned batter.
El amor a la comida puertorriqueña, que viene de la mano con los recuerdos de su niñez, fue lo que motivó a Derick López a iniciarse en el difícil negocio de los restaurantes y a convertirse en el ya popular y conocido “Freakin Rican” de Nueva York.
It is true that the bacalaitos at the Freakin Rican in Astoria, Queens, are not quite as big around as the ones you will see browning in veritable caldrons of oil over wood fires at kiosks scattered along the beach road in Piñones, outside San Juan.
