We could all use more pastries and dumplings in our lives right now
Sweet, cheese-filled crepes with brown butter and pears from Agi’s Counter. Photo: Janice Chung A line of customers stretches out the door and onto Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights. It’s the first Sunday in business for the new café Agi’s Counter, where the food is inspired by Eastern Europe , and the space is packed.
Jeremy Salamon is the chef and owner at Agi’s Counter. Photo: Janice Chung New Yorkers know that Greenpoint is a good bed for Polish cooking; Long Island City has a Romanian population that’s propped up a few butcher shops and other places that bring them a taste of home; if you want Bosnian food then you get to Astoria; and if you want Russian, then you get on the Q and go down to Brighton Beach.
There is something inspiring about the various roads Salamon took to end up back where he started, cooking the sort of food his ancestors may have eaten, even if all is not well in his family’s homeland. This past summer, in what is becoming a frightening trend in the region, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán passed a law that bans any content featuring or about LGBTQ people in school material or television shows for people under 18.