Thursday, October 27, 2022

Cafe Mogador

Cafe Mogador on St Marks Place in the East Village was founded in 1983 by Rivka and her family still owns and operates it today. It is known for its Moroccan-inspired cuisine and serves a great breakfast/lunch and brunch on the weekends including pancakes 🥞, French toast, and a Middle Eastern breakfast with eggs 🍳 hummus, tabouli and pita 🫓.




Monday, October 24, 2022

32nd Annual Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Festival

Yesterday was the 32nd Annual Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Festival and there were lots of “hot dogs” 🌭 at this fun event. We only wish that the St Marks Place East village location of the amazing hot dog 🌭 shop, Papaya King was still in business so that we could have stopped off there afterwards. Our 2nd -7th photos show some of our favorite dog costumes seen at the world’s largest Halloween 🎃 dog parade @tspdogrun including our dog Hudson dressed as a Yankee kissing a new “Cowardly lion 🦁 “ friend he met at the parade. (thanks Destiny for the photo of Hudson).









Friday, October 21, 2022

Pan Donut & Pastry Shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Halloween is fast approaching and many shops have decorated their windows with pumpkins 🎃, black cats 🐈‍⬛ and scarecrows and Pan Donut & Pastry Shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn has a very festive display. This lovely donut shop and cafe has been in business since the 1950s. It has been owned by Cristos and Donna Siafakas since 1993 and still has its original interior including a fantastic S-shaped counter ;swipe left for 2nd photo). In addition to a wide variety of delicious fresh doughnut flavors, Peter Pan also serves amazing breakfast sandwiches and has great milkshakes. But if you want to get their huge variety of freshly baked donuts 🍩, be sure to arrive early in the day as they sell out fast, especially on the weekends. As you can see from our interior photo, when we arrived later in the afternoon, they only had a few donut flavors left. Luckily we were able to get a toasted coconut donut and a strawberry-filled and blueberry-filled jelly donut. Let us know what some of your favorite flavors are.





Monday, October 17, 2022

Yankee’s Pizza, Bronx

We are huge Yankee fans and our thoughts immediately went to one of our favorite old-school Bronx pizzerias, Yankee’s Pizza 🍕. This family-owned spot with very economical prices also has a great interior complete with vintage arcade games (swipe left for 2nd photo taken in 2008…note that prices have changed since then but are still very reasonable). Let’s hope the Yankees win today so we can celebrate with some pizza!





Thursday, October 13, 2022

Lemon Ice King of Corona

Even though the warmer days are winding down and fall is in full swing, our thoughts still go to the Lemon Ice King of Corona, which was founded in 1944 by Peter Benfaremo. This Queens institution originally sold ‪Italian‬ ice that was hand-cranked in tubs and sold only during the summer. Now the store is open year-round and the ‪ice‬s are made with electric machines but they still use the same basic three ingredients: sugar, water and flavoring. Cases of lemons 🍋 and oranges 🍊 are used to create an authentic taste and all flavors use real fruit and nut pieces. The most popular flavor is lemon 🍋 with peanut butter studded with real peanuts a close second. Our personal favorites are the lemon and the pistachio which has real pistachios in it! The Lemon Ice King appeared in the opening credits for the TV show the “King of Queens”. Our photo and full interview with Peter appear in our book "New York Nights".




Sunday, October 2, 2022

Lower East Side, NYC

From Chrystie Street looking towards Bowery, before Whole Foods, Lower East Side, NYC Photo: JamesandKarla Murray