An Azerbaijani Feast Awaits in Brooklyn, If You Can Find It
'During the five years Village Cafe has been open, I must have driven the length of Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn a dozen times without noticing it. At best I might have spotted the tiny parking lot in Midwood, with tattered red, blue and silver streamers flapping over its 10 or so spaces, giving it the appearance of the world’s smallest used-car dealership. In the back is a wide, single-story structure that looks like the trailer office where you would sit down to discuss loan options with Marty from financing.
But that building is an Azerbaijani restaurant that stands out among the dining outposts of former Soviet republics that stretch north from Brighton Beach, and each time I’ve gone inside I was given not a credit check, but a test of my appetite’s limits. This is not just because almost every platter of food that leaves the kitchen at Village Cafe seems intended to feed an actual village. I run into trouble because there are so many things I want to order and so few things I am willing to leave on the table as the meal winds down.
There will never be a time when I go to Village Cafe and decide not to have at least one qutab, if not all three. The menu gives the name of this delicate Azerbaijani flatbread, the diameter of a pita but thinner, as kutaby. Either way, it is very good when stuffed with minced, quietly spiced chicken or lamb. It is exceptional when filled with greens: spinach, scallions, and dill and cilantro, two fresh herbs that turn up again and again in Azerbaijani cooking.
I will always want the crimped dumplings, the size and shape of chicken drumettes, that the English menu calls ravioli and the servers call pelmeni. Filled with chicken or lamb, these dumplings can be boiled, but the urge to ask for them fried is overwhelming, and the fried ones are better dunked in the tomato-pepper sauce that I would call salsa if I were not in an Azerbaijani restaurant.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/dining/village-cafe-review-brooklyn.html?
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