New in New York: Potatopia is a Paradise of Potato Possibilities

By Mitch Broder

If, like me, you can’t enjoy a potato without a choice of 10 aiolis, then you grasp the importance to total potato gratification of Potatopia.

Well, actually, that’s not like me. I really don’t want any aiolis. And if I did, I probably wouldn’t want them anywhere near my potato. I would want sour cream, or maybe cheese. But Potatopia has those, too, which means that it seeks to gratify everyone, which makes it truly a Potato Utopia.

Potatopia is a new idea that, in New York, you’d think is an old one: a restaurant that serves only meals featuring potatoes. It offers 10 different forms of potatoes, 16 different toppings, six different “proteins,” and 15 different sauces, including, indeed, 10 different aiolis.

I got 100 on my eighth-grade math midterm, but I still can’t begin to calculate how many different potato-meal options those choices can yield. But I’m pretty sure that you could get a different one every day for the rest of your life and die in old age regretting all the potato combinations you missed.

Your potato choices include Baked Potato, Baked Sweet Potato, Smashed Potato, Mashed Pie, Skin Chip, Shoestring, and Curly. Your topping choices include Broccoli, Sweet Pepper, Cilantro, Red Onion, Cheddar Cheese, Asiago Cheese, Pepperjack Cheese, and Specialty Cheese.

The proteins are Chicken, Sausage, Bacon, Shrimp, Steak, and Egg. And the sauces — besides Sour Cream, Melted Cheddar, Ketchup, and BBQ — include Mustard Aioli, Ranch Aioli, Curry Aioli, Chipotle Aioli, Truffle Aioli, Savory Bacon Aioli, and Roasted Pepper Aioli.

All these choices are on the menu under “Build Your Own/Follow Steps 1 - 4.” As I have previously expressed here, I tend to get ruffled by Steps. But for the Step-averse, there is “Signature Meals/Leave It To The Potato Experts.” The Potato Experts offer seven Step-free selections.

These include Frequent Friers, comprising “Shoestring, House Salt & Pepper, Parmesan Cheese, Parsley, Garlic with Parmo Aioli,” and Smashed Hit — pictured here — combining “Smashed Potato, House Salt & Pepper, Cheddar Cheese, Asiago Cheese, Scallion, Red Onion, Garlic, Cilantro with Roasted Pepper Aioli.”

There have long been guys in the city with potato carts. But to make all the stuff in Potatopia, a guy’d need a potato Winnebago. That’s the point of Potatopia: It’s not a baked-potato joint. It’s closer to an unprecedented spudian smorgasbord.

Not unprecedented, though. Potatopia had an out-of-town tryout. Its first store opened two years ago in, inventively, Edison, New Jersey. But its founder, Allen Dikker, acknowledges that he opened it with the goal of opening his second store in New York.

He anointed potatoes, he says, because “everything else is out there.” In a city with restaurants like OatMeals, that’s more or less true. He conducted aioli experiments at home to assemble his roster of sauces. Not surprisingly, he’s now at work on an all-potato cookbook.

Before the grand opening.

Potatopia’s top potato is the Smashed Hit, though there is interest in the most complex choice, which has 16 ingredients, four of which are cheeses. It’s called the Comatoser. The store has been open for just a few weeks, but Allen says that more are already on the way. He’s understandably feeling his oats.

Still, he also acknowledges that I’m far from the only person who is perturbed by the profusion of potato possibilities. As the store manager, Albert Sierra, told me: “In the beginning, people find it a little intimidating. But by the second or third time, they get used to it.”

Weigh your options at Potatopia, 378 Sixth Avenue, between Waverly Place and West Eighth Street, New York City.

POTATOPIA HAS A LOT — BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE A KNISH. FOR THAT, YOU NEED THE CENTURY-OLD YONAH SCHIMMEL KNISH BAKERY. FIND YONAH SCHIMMEL, ALONG WITH OF DOZENS OF OTHER CLASSIC CITY SPOTS, IN THE AMAZON BEST SELLER “DISCOVERING VINTAGE NEW YORK”!

New Yet Old in New York: Reclaim Your Youth at Mr. Throwback

By Mitch Broder

Somewhere there’s a place where the Power Rangers still morph, the Smurfs still frolic, and the California Raisins still wrinkle.

It’s where the Nickelodeon blimp always sails and the Mighty Ducks always play.

It’s on East Ninth Street. It’s called, not surprisingly, Mr. Throwback.

It’s designed to look like the childhood bedroom that you left behind, specifically if your childhood took place in the eighties or the nineties. It’s filled with the kind of stuff that you most likely left in it. And now that stuff can be yours again. If you want it. And can afford it.

Yes, though it may be unsettling to people who come from earlier decades, nostalgia now refers to years like 1993. It means the Jerky Boys. It means the Spice Girls. It means “Beethoven.” It means “Full House.” They’re all here, waiting to comfort all the people who never forgot them.

Among those people is Michael Spitz, Mr. Throwback himself, who is thus, but only coincidentally, Mr. T. He never forgot them, so he got them back. And now he sells them. And when he’s not selling them he’s still happy, because he walks among them.

He was teaching t-ball to four-year-olds when his life went into reverse. But it wasn’t because of the four-year-olds. It was because of his parents’ house. “You see your old video games,” he says. “You see your old toys. You go into your basement. I guess the concept of the store was to bring back everything from my childhood.”

He brought back He-Man. He brought back the Ghostbusters. He brought back the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They’re all here in the form of figurines and other playthings. He brought back Pokémon and Game Boy and Super Nintendo. Not to mention Hulk Hogan and the Energizer Bunny.

They’re in a space that’s actually a cross between a bedroom and a bedroom closet. It has scuffed-up wood floors and posters on the walls. Michael sits in the rear at a desk equipped with an Alf phone. On his tube television he runs a VHS tape of “The Mighty Ducks.” All day.

Other videocassettes on hand include “Home Alone” and “Free Willy.” Audiocassettes feature Billy Squier and New Kids on the Block. Everything’s sprinkled among period sports jerseys, jackets, sweatpants, caps, and T-shirts, along with T’s that celebrate the likes of the Backstreet Boys and MTV.

The sports collectibles are a big draw. “All the old brands I sell are coming back now,” says Michael, who is usually modeling some of the stuff in the store. “Stylists are coming in here because this stuff is so hot, they’re using it as inspiration to create their next lines.”

But everybody love the toys. “My favorite part of this,” Michael says, “is when someone comes in and says, ‘This is the coolest store ever.’”

“This is my life and I’m reliving it every day,” he says, and picks up a He-Man. “I played with this when I was a kid, and now I’m holding it again.”

Regress at Mr. Throwback, 428 East Ninth Street, between First Avenue and Avenue A, New York City.

New in New York: Another French Roll Rocks at Baguette Bar

By Mitch Broder

I can’t promise you a Houska House or a Pumpernickel Pub, but I can follow my report on Croissanteria with one on Baguette Bar.

And considering that the city is full of places like Popover Café, it could soon very well have a restaurant named for every bread and roll.

For now, Baguette Bar is the apparently the newest, undoubtedly the tiniest, and surely the most focused. It serves meat-and-vegetable sandwiches on toasted baguettes. If you don’t want your meat and vegetables on a toasted baguette, you’ll most likely have to take them in a pile.

The meats are pretty much limited to corned beef, pastrami, salami, and turkey. The vegetables include corn (the cereal) and avocado (the fruit). On a standard sandwich you get one meat, two vegetables, and one sauce. Ketchup Mayo is a sauce. Ketchup is still a sauce.

The bar is about to roll out its Signature Sandwiches, which are based on five of its most successful combinations.

The New Yorker is pastrami, lettuce, red onions, pickles, and honey mustard. The Pirojok is corned beef, roasted red peppers, jalapenos, and spicy honey mustard. Lettuce does not count as a vegetable. Pickles and onions do. Pirojok means pie, even though it’s a sandwich.

The categorization may be challenging, but the concept is simple. The appeal of the simplicity is nicely explained by a comment on Yelp: “Cool New place downtown and its open super late! Perfect for when you’re really drunk and need something to eat…”

Just weeks ago the Baguette Bar space was a storeroom for Pink Elephant, the glittery new club whose entrance is around the corner on West Eighth Street. The club’s owner set up his brother, Ben Nahmani, and Ben’s friend Zachi Ozery as baguette baristas.

The idea came from places that sell comparable food in Israel. The furnishings came from a nearby defunct delicatessen. The location is the MacDougal Street corner of the regenerating West Eighth Street, just across from the appealingly simple Sticky’s Finger Joint.

The sandwiches, besides being panini-style, are also kosher-style, which means that the corned beef and pastrami are better than what you get at the diner. And they’re toasted not once but twice, the second time with an olive-oil glaze that Zachi says makes for “a much more nice taste.”

“Now,” he says, “I want people to recognize this product, and we’ll be able to open more.”

I’ll let you know when they do.

I’ll also let you know about the Brioche Boîte and the Sourdough Saloon.

Belly up to Baguette Bar, 179 MacDougal Street, near West Eighth Street, in New York City.

New in New York: Two Buddies Are On a Roll at Croissanteria

By Mitch Broder

As long as you’re going to open a humble neighborhood bakery, you might as well make it a global destination for crescent rolls.

It’s unusual logic. But Selmo Ribeiro and David Simon wanted something unusual. And so far, their humble bakery and global destination are doing well.

Having determined that they wanted to launch some sort of restaurant, they went on to determine that Alphabet City could use a homey café. They then determined that — at least locally — the croissant was a short-changed pastry. With that determination, they launched Croissanteria.

It’s a plucky alternative to the nearby Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. It has tiled walls, ceiling fans, an antique mirror, and an antique bench. It’s comfortable. It has what any good bakery-café should have. With the addition of croissants that Parisians have said rival the ones in Paris.

They include almond croissants, chocolate croissants, and almond-and-chocolate croissants, not to mention apricot croissants, and just plain croissants. Those varieties come in full-size or mini, but you have to go full-size if you want the peanut-butter-and-jelly or Nutella-and-banana croissants.

Croissanteria makes gourmet sandwiches, and they all come on croissants. They include French Ham, Italian Tuna, and Smokey Turkey. The Prosciutto di Parma has “Buffalo Mozzarella, Sliced Prosciutto, Tomato, Basil, EVOO, & Cracked Pepper.” You wouldn’t think that all of that could fit in a croissant.

Selmo and David gave me a couple of croissants, though without Nutella, Buffalo Mozzarella, peanut butter, or EVOO. They were perfect — soft and fluffy, with a thin crispy crust and a buttery flavor. And without any of that pesky croissant greasiness.

These were croissants that virtually any neighborhood could use. And not at all what you’d expect from guys with backgrounds in hamburgers and smoked fish.

David worked for his father’s Catskill Artisan Smokehouse — known as Catsmo — which sells smoked salmon and caviar to places around the city. Selmo founded the Nah Nah Bah café and lounge, a burger joint on the beach in Lagos, Portugal.

The guys had met at Northeastern University, where they were roommates. “The one thing we really had in common,” Selmo says, “was that we liked going out to eat.” He adds: “We always spoke about opening something together having to do with food.”

David first went to Catsmo and Selmo went to Lagos. But they stayed in touch, and Selmo came to New York every year. They decided to open a bakery, but with a twist, Selmo says: “If you’re in New York, the more niche you go in what you offer, the better you can make it.”

They’re happy with their success as a global destination. But they seem happiest with their success as a humble neighborhood bakery. “We’ve gotten such a friendly reception from the neighbors and the neighborhood,” David says. “We focus on this, and try to make the place special.”

One day, Selmo says, they had to close for a plumbing repair. One of the regulars emailed him, in fear that they wouldn’t come back.

“I don’t know how he got my personal email,” he says. “But those are the small things that are just awesome. Really, really awesome.”

Get flaky at Croissanteria, 68 Avenue A, between Fourth and Fifth streets, in New York City.

New in New York: At Baconery, Everyone's Taken With Bacon

By Mitch Broder

Wesley Klein’s plans for his bakery became clear to me when I asked him if he thought there was anything at all that doesn’t go well with bacon, and he said no.

“It works with everything,” he said. He named his place Baconery, and he meant it. Today he puts bacon in a few foods. Tomorrow he may put it in all foods.

So go now, while the menu is manageable, and decide for yourself how clever he was to open the city’s first all-bacon bakery. The response has been promising, he says: “People come in with their expectations too high and go out saying it was even better than they expected.”

Their choices include bacon cookies, bacon brownies, bacon blondies, bacon muffins, bacon croissants, and bacon pecan pie. Also bacon lollipops, bacon caramels, bacon marshmallow bars, chocolate-covered bacon, and gluten-free bacon macaroons.

If they really want to pig out, they can precede (or follow) the sweets with one (or more) of the bakery’s six bacon sandwiches. They range from the Miss Piggy (Grilled Bacon & Cheese) to the Porky Pig (Bacon, Egg, Lettuce, Cheese, Tomato, Avocado, Cucumber, Mayo). There's also a Wilbur.

Wesley’s idea was to address our need for sweet combined with salty. He got the idea while sopping up pancake syrup with a slab of bacon. He consulted with chefs, established his main ingredient’s versatility, launched Baconery online, and a year later opened the store.

He started small, but he went whole hog. It’s a hard-core bacon store. There are bacon slices on the walls. There are bacon rugs on the floor. There are bacon-colored sofas accented with bacon-print pillows, behind red-and-white-striped tables and baconian wood-topped stools.

Besides the food, he sells T-shirts that say things like “Feel Like Bacon Love,” along with items like bacon-themed platters and wallets, and actual gourmet bacon. And he has posted “The Rules of Bacon,” of which Number Four is: “Even the pigs like bacon. That’s a fact.”

It’s a curious obsession, especially curious since Wesley is Jewish, which he says only proves that Baconery welcomes customers of all faiths. And you can glimpse the obsessive future with a glimpse at the selections currently served from 6 to 8 p.m. as “Snack of the Night.”

Sunday’s snack, for example, is the Ultimate Bacon Mashed Potato Bowl. Wednesday’s is the Nutella Bacon Strawberry Crepe. Monday’s is Bacon Wrapped Pineapples; Tuesday’s is Bacon Wrapped Jalapeños. And Friday’s is apparently what it’s all leading to: Bacon Wrapped Bacon.

Get bacon for granted at Baconery, 911 Columbus Avenue, between 104^th and 105^th streets, in New York City.

New in New York: Warm Up to the Cup at Meatball Obsession

By Mitch Broder

When it’s hot, you want a cup of ice cream. When it’s cold, you want a cup of meatball.

When you look at it that way, you may begin to grasp the logic behind the Home of the Original Meatball in a Cup.

The Home is Meatball Obsession, which looks like an ice-cream stand except that instead of ice cream containers it has meatball pots. It serves you a cup with a giant meatball in the flavor of your choice, with the toppings of your choice and Parmesan bread instead of a wafer.

It opened in time for summer, since it is clearly up for a challenge, but it is now embarking upon its maiden meatball season. It has unveiled new items, new toppings, and a new meatball, and it is waiting to see you having yourself a little Italian meal walking.

In keeping with popular practice, it provides you with three steps toward acquiring your optimal movable feast. Step 1 is “Indulge Your Obsession,” which means “Choose Your Meatball,” which means you can have Beef, Turkey, Pork Sausage, or the new Chicken, in Sunday Sauce.

Step 2 is “Choose Your Style,” which means that if you don’t like cups you can have your meatball stuffed in the Original Pocket Sandwich. Step 3 is “The Toppings,” which means that you can complicate your meatball with flavorings from Locatelli Pecorino Romano to the new Sautéed Peas and Onions.

You get a single meatball — in either format — for $4; you get one topping free and others for 50 cents or $1 apiece. To expand your options, there are now ravioli, and to complete your meal there are now cannoli, which come from Arthur Avenue but get assembled in the store.

It may all sound a little detached, but be assured that, in fact, it all came straight from Grandma’s kitchen. The Grandma was Anna Mancini, and her grandson is Daniel Mancini, who has spent his life obsessesed with her meatballs, which is why he brought them back.

“One of my favorite memories was waking up every Sunday morning to the wonderful smell of her meatballs and Sunday Sauce cooking on the stove,” Daniel says in his meatball credo. “Sunday afternoon our home was full of family and friends enjoying the feast my grandmother prepared.”

He had a career running clothing companies but ditched it to make meatballs, which he has since sold in stores under the name of MamaMancini’s. But he also wanted to sell them hot, so this year he opened his meatball stand. He didn’t come up with the cup. Grandma did that, too.

The city, of course, has been in a meatball phase for a while. The phase has given us, among other things, The Meatball Shop and The Meatball Factory. No meatball source, however, has been quite as accessible as Meatball Obsession’s color-coded pots and open window.

I had meatballs. I had Beef and Turkey. (I had them before there was Chicken.) Both of them were excellent, and the sauce was delicious. Two or three make a good meal. You get two for $7.50 and three for $10. You get a 10 percent discount on 50, but my limit is 45.

“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous before we opened Meatball Obsession,” Daniel says in the credo. “Would people not want a meatball in a cup?”

So far people have wanted it. And more are bound to want it, because meatballs always look better in December than in July.

Roll with it at Meatball Obsession, 510 Sixth Avenue, between 13^th and 14^th streets, in New York City.

New in New York: Populence and Pop Karma Make a Crop Pop

By Mitch Broder

For Porcini Cheddar popcorn, you want the East Side. For Three Cheese popcorn, you want the West Side. Then again, for Pumpkin Spice popcorn, you want the West Side, whereas for Bacon Apple Bourbon Caramel popcorn, you want the East Side.

It could have been simple. But nothing ever is. So the popcorn department of your life just got complicated. Through what you’d have to call karmic opulence, New York has just furnished you with two new popcorn shops — Pop Karma and Populence.

Each is a little place run by a woman inspired by corn. Both popped up at practically the same time, though apparently by coincidence. Each offers popcorn in flavors that you don’t get in cellophane bags. Both sell popcorn with a conviction that it will make you happy and healthy.

So take your pick. Or don’t, for if you love popcorn, you’ll want to try both. They’ve made themselves just different enough so that you have no choice.

Populence, in the West Village, is run by Maggie Paulus, whose very life was essentially launched by popcorn. “My dad proposed to my mom with a ring in a Cracker Jack box,” she told me. “So growing up, popcorn was always associated with something fun.”

Pop Karma, on the Lower East Side, is run by Jean Tsai, who wants to inspire you in much the same way that popcorn inspired her. On the chalkboard outside her store, she puts inspiring quotes like Herbert Spencer’s “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”

Populence carries six flavors at a time — usually three sweet and three savory. The top sellers have been Salted Caramel, Sun-dried Tomato, and Jalapeño Cheddar. There’s also Kettle Corn, Ginger Caramel, Garlic Rosemary, Real Raspberry, and Sweet Cinnamon. Salted Caramel could count as sweet and savory.

Pop Karma carries six flavors at a time — usually three “classic” and three seasonal. The classic are Caramel, Mediterranean, and Zen Cheddar. The seasonal have included Barbecue, Margarita, and White Truffle Cheddar, and now include Za’atar, which is described as “a visit to a Middle Eastern souk.”

The Populence Web site says: “Our artisanal method of creating cornfections involves small batches of heirloom popcorn combined with the finest whole ingredients.”

The Pop Karma Web site says: “Our ingredients lists are minimal since we source the best food possible from responsible, sustainable producers.”

It’s close, but I have to give that round to Populence, because of “cornfections,” and in spite of “heirloom.”

Maggie and Jean, of course, are not the first to have popcorn stores in New York, regardless of which one of them thought of having one first. Awhile ago, Times Square had a store called Popcorn, Indiana. In the eighties, the Upper East Side had Jack’s Corn Crib. The Jack was Jack Klugman.

Those are gone, of course. But they were chains. Pop Karma and Populence aren’t. Yet. And their owners both seem devoted to their products and their neighborhoods.

As the Pop Karma Web site puts it: “Kind words and kind actions inspire a beautiful day. A lifetime of beautiful days is a work of art. Live it.”

Pop into Populence, at 1West Eighth Street, and Pop Karma, at 95 Orchard Street, in New York City.