NYC Ferry Restaurant Tour, Part XII: Karczma (East River Route to Greenpoint)
Getting to know Greenpoint meant celebrating the Polish heritage of this northwestern Brooklyn neighborhood. But online mapping, for once, wasn’t helping — a generic restaurant search turned up nothing identifiably Polish. In the end, I found one in the best urban-explorer fashion: by walking past it on the way to confront Newtown Creek, the East River tributary and toxic-waste dump that defines the northern and eastern borders of the nabe.
Greenpoint was originally settled by Germans and Irish, with Poles arriving in the late 19th century to become the dominant ethnicity. Drilling down into online mapping to add the search term polish to the term restaurant, I discovered many more Polish eateries in the southern end of the area. But Karczma, the first one I stumbled on, proved to be the most promising.
I made three trips to Greenpoint, first walking in the northern end of the area, showing the hipster influence of neighboring Williamsburg. Then I took a stroll down Manhattan Avenue, the main dining drag. Finally I returned for an epic walk down Greenpoint Avenue, discovering some startling industrial sights along the way. NYC Ferries have names, and whenever I board a new one I note the occasion, so meet the good ship Friendship Express.
I’ve crossed under the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges before, as you’ve seen in the blogs on Williamsburg and DUMBO, so I skipped the usual dirty-window shots and waited for the big board to announce my arrival in Greenpoint.
The Greenpoint ferry pier juts well out into the water, letting you admire, if that’s the word, the neighborhood’s high-rise building boom. The towers aren’t tilted — that’s just how the phone-cam handles perspective.
Some buildings do have imagination, of the stacked-box sort, to complement their ambition.
Greenpoint is well above the Williamsburg Bridge and too far from the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges for good visibility. I squeezed off a shot of the Friendship Express as it pulled away, with the Willy-B in the background.
However, from the pier, you can feast your eyes on an East Side Manhattan skyline view that includes the Empire State Building at far left, the Chrysler building just right of center, and the United Nations at far right, wearing a foliage figleaf.
The riverside towers notwithstanding, a typical Greenpoint streetscape consists of townhouses, many of them wood-clad. The distinctive vertical shingling in the center caught my eye.
I won’t attempt a full inventory (as I sometimes do) of the Manhattan Avenue dining scene, except to note that eating spots are divided between homey comfort-food eateries and other places with more of a nightlife orientation. Many of them had curbside dining sheds which, sadly, will soon be regulated out of existence by our corrupt driver-pleasing mayor.
Every picture tells a story, don’t it? Among the stories here: Construction is ever present in the new Brooklyn. Streets in Greenpoint are alphabetically ordered, from Box Street to the north to Norman Street to the south — here we are at J-for-Java Street. This building, unusually large for the old Greenpoint, is the Astral Apartments, built in 1886 by kerosene magnate Charles Pratt (also founder of the Pratt Institute, an art, design, and architecture school). His aim was to improve living conditions for working-class families trapped in grim tenements.
Ephemeral New York writes: “For $10-$25 a month, tenants got extra closets, a coal box, sink, range, and a water closet in each flat, plus a lecture room in the basement and a spacious play area in the back.”
My first Greenpoint dining experience, at Glasserie, was fit for the masters-of-the-universe tenants of the big buildings going up along the river.
The restaurant serves high-end Mediterranean cuisine in the 1880 building that formerly housed the Greenpoint Glass Works.
Regrettably, the swordfish and quail skewers I had my heart set on were not on the lunch menu.
But I didn’t leave hungry. Glasserie served up an inspired Mezze Feast, with the items listed at the top of the menu above.
Let’s meet them one by one, shall we? Here’s the falafel.
The roasted cabbage.
The rich, thick yogurt-based labne with harissa roast red pepper paste.
The hummus, with its luminous pool of olive oil and sprinkling of paprika.
The olives, festooned with shredded red peppers.
The carrots, neither raw not overcooked, loaded with carroty taste and subtle seasonings.
And what Glasserie calls smoked eggplant, in plain English, though you may know it as baba ganoush.
Oh, and the two big puffy pieces of pita. Say that ten times fast.
I demolished the falafel and hummus, made inroads into the smoked eggplant, and tasted the rest. Note container of vintage silver cutlery!
The leftovers turned into additional meals for my roommate and myself. I had a few reasons for not making this delicious and photogenic meal the featured item: I needed something Polish for Greenpoint, and I’ve just done another superb mezze platter in the episode on DUMBO. But this was a meal worth having (and sharing).
Walking back to the ferry along I-for-India Street, I came across an Alfred Hitchcock tribute. From bottom left, I’m seeing Dial M for Murder, Psycho, one I can’t identify (my experts and I don’t recognize the floral-on-black dress), Rear Window, and moving past the doorway, the Carlotta Valdez portrait from Vertigo, Kim Novak’s before and after looks from Vertigo, Rope (with actual rope), The Birds, and North by Northwest.
Panning to the right, the gate is graced with a clapperboard devoted to The Birds. If this was a Halloween decoration, it was the best and most elaborate one ever.
The Empire State Building looked noble and steadfast in the late afternoon light. And the UN was unobstructed by foliage.
The sun glistened on the water leading down to the Willy-B.
My ride home was the Happy Hauler, another first.
I returned to Greenpoint to survey the dining scene on Manhattan Avenue. But it was not until I came a third time, to stroll Greenpoint Avenue — which stretches across the neighborhood’s midsection, as it goes from residential to industrial — that I hit Polish paydirt. This was my first trip on the Atlantic Crossing. Here it is pulling away from the Greenpoint ferry terminal after I got off, with the Williamsburg Bridge in the distance.
I stopped by Transmitter Park, former site of the broadcast tower for municipal public radio station WNYC, a cornerstone of my life as an informed citizen.
Repurposed to a waterside park in 2012, it is a quiet place to be alone with your thoughts and admire the Manhattan skyline, including the good ol’ ESB, basking in the sun at far right.
Look to the left, down the East River, and the view expands to include the Williamsburg Bridge. If I lived in Greenpoint, I’d be on these benches a lot. It’s always a good sign when I fantasize about living in a place.
A long observation deck lets you get right out there, into the East River, without having to dive in.
From the north side of the deck, looking upriver, I saw another ferry arriving at the terminal, and spotted (from left to right) the vast Stuyvesant Town housing complex, the Empire State Building, and just barely, the Chrysler Building. This is a version of New York I love to admire as often as possible, and from as many vantage points as possible.
A fisherman communed with the new waterside towers…
…as I walked to the end of the deck…
…and just drank in the view.
I looked north toward the ferry pier on which I’d disembarked just a few minutes before.
On such a fine day, I had company at the end of the deck.
I was coming to know Greenpoint as a place of peace and repose.
I used the panorama mode to take in the full breadth of the East River view. The camera struggled with the variable brightness — shooting both into the sun and away from it — but succeeded in capturing the sweep and grandeur of this prime New York vantage point.
Transmitter Park included a remarkable mural that summed up the mood here. A girl and her toad, daydreaming. That’s the toad next to her stockinged foot.
Running along the southern end of the park is Greenpoint Avenue, where I began walking east. Near the water I found a pleasant restaurant enclave — but these were exclusively dinner places. Perhaps someday I’ll return at night. But my lunch destination would require me to move farther inland, and that suited me. It was a fine day for a walk.
Like Williamsburg, Greenpoint has an industrial past that continues at a lower level of intensity in the present. Originally farmland, it became home to 50 oil refineries and other factories. Cribbing from Wiki, the area’s manufacturing prowess encompassed “shipbuilding, porcelain and pottery, and glassworks…brass and iron foundries; breweries; drug plants; book, furniture, box, and boiler makers; sugar refineries; and machine shops.”
The grander remnants of Greenpoint’s industrial history made the walk an eye-opener. This is one of eight buildings connected with the Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory, built by the great-grandson of an 18th-century pencil king in the German Renaissance Revival style…
…with the pencil maker’s star and diamond logo. The Faber family’s New York manufacturing started in Manhattan in 1866, moved to Greenpoint following an 1872 fire, and left for Pennsylvania in 1955. Today the buildings have found new tenants: condos, studio spaces, and a bar, among other things.
Greenpoint’s former industries included brewing, echoed in today’s watering holes. This scenic one reminded me of a Bert Jansch album jacket.
The residential part of Greenpoint Avenue, between the river to the west and the massive works to the east, had a pleasing uniformity and sweep. Though a wide and busy street, was also a pleasant place to walk.
I knew when I passed Karczma that I had hit my Polish-cuisine motherlode. I would get back to it. But first, I had some more walking to do.
The restaurant was located next door to the Polish & Slavic Federal Credit Union. It is not just a historic building but part of a functioning banking company, with another outpost in Greenpoint, two in Queens, and others in New Jersey and Chicago.
The Greenpoint Avenue stop on the G train, near Manhattan Avenue, is the neighborhood’s only subway link, making it more isolated than Williamsburg to the south. Unlike other subway lines that run from Queens to Manhattan to Brooklyn, the G runs directly from Queens to Brooklyn, isolating the area from Manhattan’s central business and nightlife districts.
My walk took me across Greenpoint’s killing field: the vicious McGuinness Boulevard, a multi-lane speedway that has killed many pedestrians and cyclists. A road diet was promised by Mayor de Blasio, designed by the DOT, then rejected by Mayor Adams, watered down, proposed again, and rejected again — to the unanimous dismay of every elected official in the area. When the indictments began rolling in, suddenly the mayor reverted to his former support for a safer McGuinness, presumably to avoid further scrutiny of his relationships with area businesses, who like their truck traffic to be as swift (and deadly) as possible. I look forward to seeing the safer version someday.
But for braving McGuinness, I was soon rewarded with stunning views of the former Leviton lighting factory. Built in 1936, as the company expanded out of Manhattan following its invention of the pull-chain switch, the complex sprawls over two blocks, joined by a bridge above street level.
The company was among the first to ignore race and religion in hiring, but resisted unionization in the 1940s — with Eleanor Roosevelt supporting the strikers — before moving out to Long Island in 1975. Fitting the building’s grandeur into a single shot was not easy! Especially as I was shooting into the sun.
Panorama mode to the rescue.
Without the ability to levitate into the air, I was also unable to do full justice to the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment plant, operated by the NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection.
It’s got some big pipes.
And some serious vats. Standing 140 feet tall, they are called “digester eggs.” Aided by their distinctive shape, they use a process called anaerobic digestion to break down sludge using bacteria, producing fertilizer and methane gas that can be drawn off and reused as energy. Unfortunately, at last report, some of the methane — a potent greenhouse gas — was being flared into the atmosphere.
Hope they get it right someday, if they haven’t already. I didn’t smell anything. Here is a shot taken farther south, from the Kosciuszko Bridge, where it is possible to see more of the eggs no chicken could ever lay. There’s a visitor’s center and tours are available. Count me in!
I approached Newtown Creek, crossing over what I have to assume is called the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge. This body of water is why Greenpoint needs a Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Newtown Creek is a tributary that flows out of the East River, defining Greenpoint’s northeastern corner. It looks like a grand ol’ river.
It is anything but. Starting in the 1840s, oil refineries began operating in the area. By 1870 there were more than 50 of them. An estimated 30 million gallons of oil, other toxins, and raw sewage were pumped, or just spilled, into these peaceful waters. The isolated bridge would also be an excellent place to dispose of a body. Just sayin’.
Newtown Creek is one of the city’s four Superfund cleanup sites and one of the most polluted places in the United States. At least Greenpoint is no longer hosting the city’s biggest trash incinerator, a monster that was out of compliance with all government regulations.
As heavy truck traffic passed over the bridge — and that’s its function, I’m not knocking it — the bridge’s interlaced halves bucked wildly, almost throwing the phone camera out of my hands.
It took a feat of coordination to hold onto it and get my shots.
I learned to be on my guard when a large truck approached from either direction, waiting till it was safe to shoot. File under Experiences I’m Glad to Have Had but May Not Have Again.
Greenpoint Avenue carried me out of Greenpoint and into Queens, to a small enclave called Blissville, shoehorned into the no man’s land bordered by Newtown Creek, the Long Island Expressway, and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. I found where the truckers and construction workers were getting their cool high-viz duds.
On the Queens side, I ran across the Bantry Bay Publick house, or as the sign says, “Blissville’s Gathering Place,” where I was tempted to stop for the soup and half-sandwich lunch special. The crowd streaming out of the place after lunch looked friendly. Only two problems: Not Polish. And not in Greenpoint. I backtracked.
Back across Newtown Creek.
Where the sweet southerly view included a tantalizing glimpse of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge from Brooklyn to Staten Island.
Greenpoint was not done dazzling me with vistas of its former factories, including the Miller Building. It was built by, and named for, a box and lumber manufacturer. He sold it to the Manhattan Adhesives Company, whereupon it became a glue factory — back in the days when glue was made from horse carcasses. “The building’s smell was legendary among longtime Greenpointers,” reports Atlas Obscura. Fortunately it is now a Storage Plus warehouse. No detectible odor.
Though Greenpoint is not as art-rich as North and East Williamsburg, I got to enjoy a mural on the way to lunch. It celebrates the neighborhood’s factories, shipbuilding past, film-production present, churches, views, and G-train stop. The artists are Esteban Del Valle, assisted by Angel Garcia.
Finally arriving back at Karczma, I admired its soon to be gone dining shed before entering.
Decor of the 17-year-old restaurant leans on heavy, dark, comforting wood, as you can see looking toward the front.
And the back.
The classy red leather menu lends a sense of occasion.
Its plastic-clad pages included lunch specials with soup at a price that had me saying a prayer of thanks. I’d try to summarize the overall menu but reading it just makes my head explode. (Pork shoulder! Roasted hocks in beer!) Feel free to dote over it.
This was my white borscht and the first of two portions of mashed potatoes, with a garnish of bacon.
These bright red cubes atop the taters must be what the dinner menu refers to as Hunter double-smoked bacon. Each chew was full of almost orgiastic salty fat flavor. With supermarket bacon as a gentleman’s C, think of this as an A+.
The soup wore its seasonings on its sleeve. But what was that lurking beneath the surface? (Perhaps I was still haunted by my vision of Newtown Creek.)
As I delved into the soup, I found sliced sausage and, surprise, half a hardboiled egg! It might be even more fun to have this soup in a bowl of hollowed-out bread, as the dinner menu offers. Then, presumably, you would eat the bowl.
I am, admittedly, not a borscht expert. But this white borscht was an experience I would like to have time and again. And I wouldn’t mind trying its companion on the lunch menu, the pickle soup, as well.
The entree was also a source of deep satisfaction. Let me count the ways.
We start with the tomato-sauced mound of stuffed cabbage.
We continue with the juicy kielbasa, graced with carmelized onions and a small cup of mustard. Presented as an option, because the kielbasa and its topping of carmelized onions are so perfect together, you might not want to tamper with them.
There’s the second portion of mashed, not bacon-blessed, this time, but dusted with dill. And the little cup of mildly spicy mustard, which I barely touched.
I won’t lie to ya. The stuffed cabbage was awesome. Close to what my Mom used to make.
But the kielbasa was even better: crisp on the outside, swooningly succulent on the inside, beautifully seasoned, a satisfying experience in every way. My great-grandfather, the sausage maker, probably would have approved.
I alternated between bites of the ground-meat selections, letting the flavors take turns.
My work was nearly done. Don’t think I failed to scoop up those last morsels of sausage and cabbage.
Happy 17th anniversary to Karczma. I am torn between the urge to try other Polish eateries in the area and the urge to explore this amazing menu further (albeit with caution, and perhaps help from carniverous friends who like sharing). I will probably return here first. This place is that good.
I feel a bit wistful now because the NYC Ferry Restaurant Tour will make only one more stop in Brooklyn before moving on to ferry terminals in Queens, Roosevelt Island, the Bronx, Staten Island, and Manhattan. But having been awestruck by the Brooklyn Army Terminal, I’m looking forward to touring the Brooklyn Navy Yard — literally, on a guided tour, because it is so vast and historic.
Previously on the NYC Ferry Restaurant Tour:
Part I: The Wharf (Rockaway Route to Rockaway Park)
Part II: Kimo’s Kitchen (Rockaway Route to Rockaway Beach)
Part III: Big John’s (Rockaway Route to Sunset Park)
Part IV: Salty Dog (South Brooklyn Route to Bay Ridge)
Part V: Crown Cafe (Statue City Cruises to Liberty Island)
Part VI: Pizza Yard (Governors Island Ferry)
Part VII: Lobster Pound (South Brooklyn Route to Red Hook)
Part VIII: Boutros (Atlantic Avenue Route)
Part IX: Celestine (East River Route to DUMBO)
Part X: Diner (East River Route to South Williamsburg)
Part XI: Le Crocodile (East River Route to North Williamsburg)
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