BKTX

Breakfast Tacos

Brooklyn TexasComment

Breakfast Tacos are now officially a thing in NYC. What a beautiful world we live in! When we meet other Texans in Brooklyn, the first topic of conversation is always and without fail about where to find breakfast tacos (the second topic of conversation is usually about queso). There was a tiny handful of places throughout the city offering solid breakfast taco options we’d pilgrimage to, but finally that number is growing. This Tex-Mex phenomenon is becoming a real NYC trend and we couldn’t be happier.

People ask us all the time why breakfast tacos are so good and how are they different from breakfast burritos. There are so many reasons why, but really it boils down to the fact that because the tortilla is smaller, there’s basically the same amount of all the different components making up your taco making the whole thing more flavorful (and often fresher tasting, if you get avocado, pico de gallo, or other veggies) than a burrito, which has a lot more tortilla and egg than most other things. It’s the Texas version of a bagel with egg, bacon, and cheese (though usually less of a gut bomb), and we’re so excited to see it’s roots take hold in the city. See where you can get your breakfast taco fix on our map!

1.Gabriela’s
688 Columbus Ave, New York, NY 10025

2. El Original
735 10th Ave, New York, NY 10019

3. Choza
Three locations:
100 Park Ave, New York, NY 10017
66 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Gotham West Market, 600 11th Ave, New York, NY 10036

4. Tacombi*
Three locations:
30 W 24th St, New York, NY 10010 (This location is Tacombi El Presidente)
255 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10014
267 Elizabeth St, New York, NY 10012

5. Javelina
119 E 18th St, New York, NY 10003

6. Empellon Taqueria
230 West 4th Street, New York, NY 10014

7. Downtown Bakery
69 1st Avenue, New York, NY 10003

8. Avenida Cantina
25 Avenue B, New York, NY 10009

9. Dimes
49 Canal St, New York, NY 10002

10. Jalapa Jar*
100 Henry St, Brooklyn, NY 11201

11. Chilo’s
323 Franklin Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11238

12. Gueros*
605 Prospect Pl, Brooklyn, NY 11238

13. King David Tacos
for delivery only!

*BKTX's favorites!

What's on BKTX's phone, Part II: Olivia

Brooklyn TexasComment

We both use our phones constantly but totally differently - last week, we saw that Emily sorts her apps by color and has zero unread emails. Now, take a look at what app Olivia can't live without (sports!) and how she gets the perfect Instagram filter.

bktx_phone-01.jpg

What kind of phone do you have: iPhone 6

Background: This picture of my puppy dog Annie

Number of unread emails: 1,579 unread emails— eeeeekkkkkk!

First app checked in the morning: Facebook and Messages

Last app checked before bedtime: Instagram

Most used app: Messages 

App most likely to be viewed while in a checkout line: Instagram for sure...

Most essential app while traveling: Does phone count as an app? 

Cities listed in weather app: New York, Neversink, Houston, New Haven, Aix-en-Provence, Paris, Marfa, Philadelphia, and New Orleans

Favorite shopping app: Ebay

Most surprising app that you can't live without: The ESPN Fantasy app — I recently joined a fantasy league... and well I'm gonna kick some serious butt!!!! #slay #bitchesgoingdown #queen

Most recently downloaded app: NJ Transit — I recently had to trek to Newark Liberty Airport and forgot to buy a train ticket — oops. 

Most recent Uber ride: From dinner in Long Island City (at this super tasty Mexican restaurant called Casa Enrique) to my apartment in Park Slope after probably one too many margaritas. 

Favorite photo filter: Oh this is a tough one. I never use Intsagram's filters. Instead I use the filters from this app called VSCO. I don't have a favorite one (the filter I use really depends on the light in the photograph), but I think that they have the best filter options by far! I am really like the photo editing settings in Afterlight  — so I am constantly switching my photo back and forth between the two apps before a photo hits my Instagram feed. 

Favorite podcast: I don't have podcasts on my phone, but I listen to NPR's Morning Edition every morning. 

Favorite Instagram feed: One time Emily and I accidentally ended up at a Lil' Yatchy show at MoMA (?!?). Everyone there was 16 years old and the whole lobby was filled weed smoke and people were doing cocaine in the bathroom — no one seemed to care and we were so confused. This was a new side of MoMA that we had never seen before. At the time we had no idea who Lil' Yatchy was and we still don't really understand why he is such a big deal. Consumed by my inability to understand his success or music (it is really bad...), I became obsessed and I'm always amused by his lil' boats and the things he posts: @lilyachty.  

Your most liked Instagram photo: This picture of an alligator my momma and her friends found after an epic flood in Houston... 

What’s on BKTX’s phone, Part I: Emily

Brooklyn TexasComment

Our phones might as well be attached to our brains at this point. Inspired by the Wall Street Journal Magazine's illustration of BJ Novak's phone, we decided to take a close look at our own home screens, the place we stare for hours a day and stopped really seeing a long time ago.

What kind of phone do you have: iPhone 6S

Background: Purple fading to pink

Number of unread emails: ZERO!!!! I am the queen of email.

First app checked in the morning: Instagram

Last app checked before bedtime: Messages

Most used app: Does Messages count?

App most likely to be viewed while in a checkout line: Probably Instagram, specifically Instagram stories. It’s like a weird TV show of everyone I know or stalk.

Most essential app while traveling: Google maps. Offline maps is life changing.

Cities listed in weather app: New York, Houston, Paris, Rome, Taormina, Cagliari, Washington DC, Neversink, Aruba, Portland. Apparently I have a habit of adding the weather of any city I’m planning to visit and forgetting about it.

Favorite shopping app: Grubhub

Weirdest app: It's called "the space between us" and you sync it with another person and the only thing it does is tell you how many miles (or kilometers) you are from that person, along with an arrow that points in their direction.

Most recently downloaded app: Citi Bike!

Most recent Uber ride: From a dinner party in Red Hook to my apartment. It cost $11.13 and it was a minivan, which made me feel like a teenager in the best way.

Favorite photo filter: No filter (or texting it to Olivia to filter).

Favorite podcast: This Week Had Me Like

Favorite Instagram feed: @amysedaris and @lazymomnyc

Your most liked Instagram photo: A BKTX illustration Olivia made of us singing the wrong words to Kanye West songs at the beach

What's the deal with Yummy Taco!?

Brooklyn Texas2 Comments

After a particularly disheartening day at work I (Emily) dragged myself into BKTX headquarters, i.e. the living room of the apartment we share. “I need food but I can’t think. Can you just pick something for me? I don’t care what it is,” I said to Olivia, who had kindly offered her services in helping me eat some delivery before we got to work on this week’s post.

Olivia scrolled through GrubHub and suddenly balked. “What is the DEAL New Yummy Taco? How can they possibly have four out of five stars with over 200 reviews? Maybe… maybe today is the day we go to New Yummy Taco.”

Here, dear reader, are the cold hard facts. For three years, we avoided the Greenpoint Yummy Taco, a perpetually empty, somewhat dirty half-Tex Mex half-Chinese food restaurant, mostly because of the washed out images of brown, watery guacamole and lumpy ground beef on the windows that looked like Montezuma’s Revenge had already ravaged the place. We were shocked to find a second, NEW Yummy Taco, near our new neighborhood in South Slope. Neither of these neighborhoods is known for affordable real estate, and after spending years walking past the storefronts and never seeing a single person inside, we naturally couldn’t understand how these empty restaurants with exceedingly unappetizing pictures of the food they produce could possibly afford to stay in business. We were even more surprised to learn that there are no fewer than seventeen Yummy Tacos (and New Yummy Tacos) distributed across Brooklyn and Queens, all with the same logo. The only thing holding us back from really diving into the mystery of Yummy Taco was the knowledge that we would, one day, have to try eating their food. Buoyed by unnaturally high delivery ratings and a few effusive Yelp reviews, including some that claim it is the best Tex Mex in the borough, one particularly enthusiastic Google review finally pushed us over the edge:

Game on, dude.

As we started down the stairs of the apartment, Olivia said “I can’t believe I’m excited to eat New Yummy Taco. I never thought this day would come.” A phrase from the book I’m reading came to my mind: “Art is despair with dignity.” New Yummy Taco was definitely despair, but COULD there be a chance to find dignity in there too?

When we arrived at New Yummy Taco, the sign flashed open and the door was ajar, but all of the chairs were already stacked on tables. We ordered a chicken soft taco, a “Tex Mex Chili” crunchy taco (which just meant ground beef), steak quesadillas, and nachos with guacamole and steak.  It was $10. When the food arrived, it came with two tiny baby cups of salsa — real red salsa of a higher quality than Pace — and there were bottles of Sriracha on the counter.

Both of us preferred the steak quesadilla best of all. It was truly an outstanding quesadilla, where the cheese gets to its true melting point and gels a bit. The steak was almost unnaturally tender, a bit charred, and perfectly seasoned. It was full-on umami. The chicken was similar, a bit more charred-tasting even, but was a little pinker inside than we liked. The flour tortillas are worth mentioning, exactly the right texture with no weird processed flavor, which is hard to come by. The ground beef crunchy taco was Texas public school cafeteria realness, and though the guacamole looked terrifying, it really wasn’t that bad. We probably wouldn’t order the nachos again, but the quesadillas (and we suspect the steak tacos) would make for some top notch late night grub. Overall, we thought it was better than Taco Cabana, which frankly, we love. Weirdly, the chips were EXACTLY Taco Cabana chips — the red and white ones that are greasy but somehow always stale. While we dug in to our styrofoam containers, the five people (FIVE!) working there sat down at one of the two (TWO!) other tables in the place to eat a beautiful feast of glass noodles, pea leaves, and some kind of chicken that was definitely not on the menu (but we wished it was: one detail of note is that each Yummy Taco location offers varying amounts of Chinese food). One person left to make one single small delivery while we ate.

Afterwards, we felt basically like how we do after eating at Taco Cabana: gastrointestinally worried and in need of a shower, but comforted by food that would be passable in Texas. “I have a satisfied belly,” said Olivia as we walked out. I started burping and hiccuping at the same time somewhat uncontrollably, so take that for what it is. Twenty minutes later, Olivia ran down the hall shouting, “Oh the belly ache is coming! I’m getting the belly ache! I feel it, I feel it happening!” So, it's pretty authentic actually.

Many questions about New Yummy Taco remain: why does every location have its own website? Why were all of the chairs put away hours before it closed? How can it possibly be so cheap, yet so empty? And how can they afford both their rent AND so many employees? Maybe it's simple. Maybe one taco-loving family with terrible photography skills and a broken printer happily owns all of the locations. Maybe seventeen severely non-creative taco shop owners are stealing an obvious name and dancing taco clip art from each other all over town. Maybe something darker is going on. All we know is that there is NO explanation to be found, and the quesadillas are pretty damn good. 

Pondicheri Opens in NYC!

Brooklyn TexasComment

Pondicheri, one of our favorite restaurants in Houston, TX, has finally opened their New York City outpost for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In Houston, Pondicheri is our go-to for exciting brunches (the green masala chicken burger is a must) and, more importantly, one of the best bakeries in Houston. The masala shortbread cookies and coconut mint chocolate chip cookies are just the best. So, when we heard that one of our favorite Houston establishments was opening in the city, we high-tailed it over as soon as they opened to bask in some BK (NYC) TX action.

The first thing we noticed when we walked in was that it’s definitely more upscale than the OG Pondicheri, much fancier than the Houston location’s clattering counter service. The menus are generally the same, though, and we ended up ordering a little bit of everything: an appetizer that was spicy and bitter and sweet and salty, two different thalis, and pistachio apricot stuffed naan. There were some opening night kinks — some of the curries seemed more like non-spicy stews — but we pretty much immediately forgot about them after taking a bite of the beautiful rose cake with cardamom cream we got for dessert. Pondicheri’s strength is DEFINITELY in its baking. This was the cake of dreams: fresh raspberries kept the fluffy (not too floral) rose cake from being too sweet, and the cardamom cream was as thick as butter. We can’t wait to go back soon to try their cookies and treats — we’re especially intrigued by their kolaches (Czech-Texan-Indian-New York?) — and taste a little bit of Houston in New York.

Does Good Queso From a Jar Exist?

Brooklyn TexasComment

This one goes out to all our homies from the south who no longer live in a state bordering Mexico: is good queso from a jar an oxymoron? We’re so over trying to explain that queso is so, so much more than “cheese dip” to our well-meaning, cheese-loving Yankee friends, but when you live in a place where there are just a handful of places sparingly dispersed that even attempt to do queso justice (some failing explosively), it can be harder to show than to tell. What are you to do if you’re desperado for queso and you can’t make it to Texas or the few places in the city that do right by a discerning Texan’s queso palate? Suffer? We decided that wasn’t an option and took one (four) for the team to see if it is ever worth it to eat queso from a jar. We taste tested a range of jarred cheese foods ranging from gas-station to fine quality to see which, if any, was best.

Trader Joe’s Queso Cheese Dip

This was weirdly fresh tasting thanks to lots of lime and cilantro, almost like salsa mixed with cheese. It wasn’t too salty and had lots of flavor, though it was pretty mild. Wouldn’t be mad if someone served this to me in a restaurant.

Desert Pepper Chile con Queso

This is more like nacho cheese that comes from a big tub at baseball games or in cafeterias. Like Velveeta in the worst way. Real sad and not legit.

SalpicA Salsa con Queso

This was pretty smoky and good, like there were chipotle peppers involved. It was creamier with big chunks of tomato and pepper, which seemed right, but it didn’t really taste authentic.

Tostitos Queso Nacho Cheese Dip

Too creamy, like mac and cheese sauce. We don’t hate it though!

Our favorite NYC spots for queso that will fill the queso hole in your heart (but, you know, it’s never quite as good):
•Javelina
•El Cortez
•Gueros

Vacation All I Ever Wanted

Brooklyn TexasComment

It’s hardly a summer without a proper summer vacation! From cliff jumping to street dancing, too much Miller Lite and trouble at sea, both of us have been on (and are planning) some pretty memorable trips so far. Check out where we’ve gone this summer  — some near NYC, some very, very far — to get our adventure fix.

The Catskills

We never let too many weekends go by before we head up to the Catskills. Each summer, Olivia hosts an epic fourth of July party at her family’s house — this year, it was complete with a fish boil, s’mores with homemade graham crackers and marshmallows, and a giant box of fireworks. The highlight of our last trip was definitely a visit to our favorite Peekamoose Blue Hole. It’s so cold it takes your breath away, but a few of us had the guts to jump off of a little cliff into the deepest part of the creek. It was definitely colder than it was scary!

Asbury Park

After we posted our guide to swimming in NYC, we heard about Asbury Park’s resurgence and headed there immediately. Hours after reading about Asbury Park, we armed ourselves with bacon, egg, and cheese bagels and Voodoo Chips and drove south to the Jersey Shore. We have to say, Asbury Park is the cleanest, least crowded beach near the city we’ve been to. You have to pay a fee to park and to enter the beach, but it’s definitely worth it to hang out at a beach that isn’t trashed. The water was swimmable and the waves were giant, inspiring some very committed body surfing attempts. Also some equally committed (and loud) renditions of Kanye West’s “Waves” and no, we don’t know the words thank you.

New Orleans

Olivia has been trying to go to New Orleans for years, but even though she’s planned multiple trips in the past, she’s never been able to actually get there. Finally, this summer she made it happen over a long weekend. Olivia flew down from New York to meet up with a group of her old friends that drove up from Houston for a vice-filled weekend of public drinking, gambling, decadent food, and too much Miller Lite. One of the most magical parts of the trip happened late one night when, after devouring crawfish étouffée hot dogs, Olivia and her friends Peter and Evan got swept up in a crowd of people in the street dancing in loincloths, sailor hats, and Speedos. Music was blasting from a boom box in a shopping cart, and people were dancing on trash cans. They welcomed us to the party and we joined right in! Our new friends planned to dance around the whole city.

Aruba

A midsummer wanderlust crisis led Emily to plan a last-minute adventure to Aruba. Suffering months with neither travel nor temperatures above 50 degrees, a beach vacation was in order and a trip to Aruba delivered — and what better time to go with her mom for her birthday? Every day, we made a habit of drinking fluorescent teal cocktails on the end of a dock after long days of floating in the fluorescent teal water. The big adventure came on the last day: the two of us rented a tiny catamaran and sailed about half a mile down the beach and suddenly, the boat broke! A piece of hardware came loose and went *plink* into the ocean, and all of a sudden the ropes were useless. We couldn’t use the sail at all. For a split second, we were terrified and wondered if we should abandon ship! We managed to manually hold the sail in place and float into shore, rescuing the boat… and not floating out to sea.

Upcoming Adventures!

Portland

Later this summer, Emily is going to Portland, OR for a wedding… and also for Salt and Straw ice cream, which is the only ice cream she has ever had a dream about. Besides playing ping pong and eating a sandwich from Bunk (and maybe trying the OG Pok Pok!), she’s most excited to go on hikes that end in hot springs or a geyser you can swim in. She’s also excited to head to the Oregon coast, where she can wear her Tevas with abandon (and also with wool socks), play in tide pools, and re-watch (act out?) the Goonies where it was filmed. #neversaydie

Houston

In a few weeks, Olivia is going to Houston, TX for her momma’s birthday. Going home is always a blast. It is different from other vacations because it’s more about all of the people you get to see than about what to visit and explore. That said, she will for sure pop into some of her favorites: Irma’s and Lei Low. She is so stoked to catch some late summer thunderstorms, take her dog Annie for a run around Rice, and to stay up late drinking beer in the backyard.

Three Pizzas

Brooklyn TexasComment

We’re really lucky to live in a place that is rich in organic produce. Farmer’s markets, CSAs, co-ops, and local food delivery services abound! Our fridge is often overflowing with fairy tale eggplants, tatsoi leaves, and kohlrabi. It’s truly a delight for anyone who likes food.

Except when it’s 100 degrees out and you can’t think of what you can possibly do with all that produce.

One sweaty evening, we were discussing what to do with an abundance of squash blossoms that had appeared in our kitchen. While we appreciate a deep fried flower, we weren’t excited about the idea of frying them up ourselves. The squash blossoms were wilting by the minute. And then, a stroke of inspiration hit: PIZZA! Emily, facing a similar predicament with a bunch of garlic scapes, remembered that Trader Joe’s sells ready-made pizza dough for about $1.50. And you know what makes great pizza? A bunch of random vegetables, whatever meat you have in the freezer, and mozzarella cheese. That’s all you need. If you have sauce, great. If not, just add extra cheese.

We pulled out all our weird veggies, rolled out the dough, swiped on a bit of olive oil, sprinkled some dehydrated garlic on the crust (that’s our secret ingredient), piled on our toppings, and stuck them in the oven at 450 (ugh, I know) for about 15 minutes each. Pizza magic. Here are the combos we went with:

• Squash blossoms
• Garlic scapes
• Ricotta cheese
• Spicy honey

• Red onions
• Sweet italian sausage
• Garlic scapes
• Mozzarella

• Mozzarella
• Heirloom tomatoes
• Basil

 

Farmer’s market handled.

 

The Essentials

Brooklyn Texas1 Comment

Some things you like; other things are your essentials. These are the things we have on us every single day.

1. No one should ever try to communicate with us before we've had our morning iced coffee. We frequent Cafe Grumpy, Ladybird Bakery, and Brooklyn Roasting Company. 

2. You probably won't see Olivia without her Swedish Hasbeens. She wears them every day — even to bicycle in and to the beach! — and rocked her last pair until the day they snapped in half.

3. Olivia has one or two notebooks on her at all times. For the past few years, she has been addicted to these notebooks by Public Supply. They are the perfect size and a portion of the profits go to help fund creative projects in classrooms all over the country. 

4. Both of us normally keep a cardigan or some kind of sweater with us — Texans in Brooklyn are susceptible to chills! After buying this sweater on Ebay, Emily had to ask a friend to stop her from wearing it every night out (really, who wears a cardigan on any night out?)

5. Some people change up their makeup everyday, but when Olivia finds a beautify product she loves, she's fiercely loyal. She's used some version of Dior's Diorshow Mascara for 14 years — since she was in middle school!

6. Emily wears the same three necklaces every day and never takes them off. They’re all simple, gold, and gorgeous, and they all have a story behind them. One of them says BKTX on it, of course.

7. If Emily lives by one rule, it's never to leave the house without a book (or three). She normally has a book, a Kindle, and a stack of a few recent copies of the New Yorker Magazine on her at any given time.

8. According to Emily, RMS Living Luminizer is the best beauty product on the planet. Put a little on your face and instantly look more awake; layer on a little more and your skin takes on the glowing quality of a baby angel. For something that is not glittery or oily and is basically colorless, the wonder of LL is unexplainable, but Emily uses it every single day.

9. After staying with us on a visit to Brooklyn, Emily's mom sent us a care package with a few bottles of Aesop's Resurrection Aromatique Hand Wash. Hand washing immediately became exciting and we were both obsessed — we are never going back to normal hand soap again. 

10. Neither of us leave the house without a couple of hair ties around our wrists. 

Hello, Halo-Halo!

Brooklyn TexasComment

We think we found the best dessert in New York City, and it’s not rainbow, it’s not French, and it’s definitely not made by Dominique Ansel. Halo-halo is the best ice cream sundae you’ll eat: creamy, icy, fruity, and decadent while still feeling light and summery. The Filipino treat literally translates to “mix-mix” in Tagalog, and — though every iteration we’ve tried has been a little different and wacky in its own way — the foundation appears to be a big scoop of shaved ice, a little scoop of purple yam ice cream (it tastes like taro, bubble tea drinkers), and then a mix of toppings ranging from fresh fruit, evaporated milk, coconut, cereal, candy colored fruit gel, rainbow puffed rice and other delightful crunchies. Sometimes, we don’t even like the individual toppings that are on the halo-halo, but taken together something magical happens, kind of like when kids put every soda in the same cup and mix it together. It’s a little bit crazy, and OK, maybe a little bit rainbow sometimes, but we promise it is delicious and it’s unlike anything we’ve had before.

Talde

Olivia discovered halo-halo at Talde, the Asian-fusion staple in Park Slope, where shaved ice drenched in condensed milk is topped with fresh fruit, lemongrass, tapioca and, most exciting, Cap’n Crunch cereal. It was so exciting that she dragged Emily back to try it, but they were sold out the night we both went!

Pig ANd Khao

Emily first got to experience her now-favorite dessert at Pig and Khao, where the shaved ice and purple yam ice cream are topped with evaporated milk, fresh coconut, caramelized plantains, buttery flan, and toasted rice. The textures were amazing: one bite creamy, the next one squeaky, the next one crispy. And the ice cream is extremely purple, so when it melts the whole thing looks like a disco alien crash landed in front of you, which we think is cute and delicious.

Mission Chinese Food

More recently, we both went to Mission Chinese Food, and we really weren’t planning on getting dessert, we were just curious about what deserts they had. But when we asked our waiter if we could see the dessert menu, he said, “no.” There was no dessert menu, because they only had one dessert, and when he told us what it was, our answer was "yes”: How could we say no to halo-halo with strawberries and pop rocks!? This version was pared down, just shaved ice (they really nail the texture of snow here) and sweetened condensed milk topped with strawberries, but the entire thing was encrusted with pop rocks. Every bite literally explodes in your mouth, and anyone eating this becomes incapable of talking; you're basically forced to keep your mouth slightly ajar the whole time, emitting a low-grade popping growl. While maybe not the most authentic or decadent, this was definitely the most creative version we tried, and we highly recommend it.

Next on our list is Jeepney, which we hear serves up the most authentic version in the city, with a coarser ice texture and three kinds of milk topped with coconut gel, jackfruit, lychee, and sugar palm fruit. Sometimes, there's even red bean paste in there too. We can’t wait to try it!