NYC Subway Restaurant Tour, Part IX: Souvlaki Spot (Howard Beach)
Visitors to NYC may recognize Howard Beach as the neighborhood adjacent to John F. Kennedy International Airport, a place they pass through but never visit. Me neither, even after 49 years in the city. Howard Beach does have beaches at its southern end, on either side of Shellbank Inlet, in Spring Creek Park and Charles Memorial Park. The other part of the name refers to George Howard, who ran a glove factory on a goat farm. He accumulated land and began building on it in the late 19th century. The predominantly white neighborhood’s more recent history includes two racially motivated hate crimes, in 1986 and 2005, that shocked the nation. But a neighborhood is more than a place where people commit crimes or transfer to the airport. It’s also a place where people live and eat.
Most folks getting off the A train at the Howard Beach station are headed for the AirTrain, the link between the A train and the airport itself. It requires a separate fare, and also connects to the E, J, and Z trains. Another and possibly faster option is the Long Island Railroad from Penn Station or Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan or Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn.
But then there is The Road Not Taken, as Robert Frost would say — this exit right here, Coleman Square, a portal into Howard Beach’s three basins, suburban-like homes, and eating spots. It is named for Bernard J. Coleman, the first Howard Beach native to die in World War I. He was just 20 years old.
Compared to the grand historic squares of Europe or New England, it is fairly modest.
But as soon as I started strolling in Howard Beach, I had a sense of suburban familiarity. Not so much like the Central Jersey environs of my childhood. More like recent jaunts to Staten Island, where a year’s worth of walks resulted in my twin colossi of urban travelogue and lunching, Staten Island Restaurant Tour and Another Staten Island Restaurant Tour. Most of the older, smaller homes are reminiscent of the East Shore of Staten Island, or the more modest parts of the North Shore. The inverted blue flag in the distance is for the LA (formerly Brooklyn) Dodgers.
The newer and grander homes are redolent of the more recently developed and more affluent South Shore.
A few of the less massive houses have a pleasing distinctiveness of their own, a blend of modesty, variety, and taste. Each one is different than the others, yet in size and bulk, they harmonize. E pluribus unum: out of many, one.
Taking the A train to its last few stops can be tricky. As you can see at top right, at Rockaway Boulevard it forks off into two lines — both named the A train, no doubt leading to WTFs among the unwary. One heads northeast to Ozone Park–Lefferts Boulevard in Queens, while the other heads south to the Rockaways and the city’s best beaches. But just before the latter crosses Jamaica Bay, it stops at Howard Beach.
Not having done my due-dili, I was unaware of this when I set off. But PA announcements referring to Ozone Park set off an alarm. I considered whether lunch in Ozone Park would be the most expedient move. Checking the crawling blue dot on the online map, I realized there was time to change course. At 80th Street I got off…
…indulged in a panorama shot that made the platform look like a toothy smile…
…and noticed some odd patterns on the subway platform. At first I thought they were paint. Then I realized they were shadows from art panels.
In lieu of light shining through the stained-glass windows in many aboveground “subway” platforms, the 80th Street station has light shining through perforated steel, forming patterns on the concrete. The installation is called Soar (2016) and the artist is Mia Pearlman. Daily passengers must note, and perhaps enjoy, the weather-dependent effect: Are the shadows out today? Check Mia Pearlman’s website and Instagram.
The way the yellow tactile strip at the platform edge enhanced the composition was somehow the crowning touch, at least for the serendipitous photog. I hadn’t even gotten to Howard Beach and already I was having a meaningful art experience.
I noticed as I passed down 159th Avenue that Our Lady of Grace was “Celebrating 100 Years.” The building went up in 1924, though the parish is even older, having been founded by the Montfort Fathers in 1906.
What else happened in 2024?
One celebration most folks hold in common is Halloween, just passed as I toured the neighborhood. This homeowner had made a major investment in fresh pumpkins.
I hope they ended up in pies, like this one I made a few days later. I didn’t burn it — the dark stuff is a chocolate graham cracker crust. It was premade, and the pumpkin was from a can, but hey, it was my first.
They don’t do things by halves in Howard Beach.
I love these scarecrows. I didn’t know whether to caption them as Halloween or Thanksgiving decs, so I looked ’em up: “Scarecrows, traditionally used to protect crops, have become Halloween icons due to their eerie appearance,” wrote the Kiricard blog. “They represent the harvest season and the thin line between life and death. The sight of a lone scarecrow in a darkened field can evoke feelings of unease and suspense.”
My first of three meals in Howard Beach was at the Cross Bay Diner, located on Cross Bay Boulevard, a busy commercial strip next to Shellbank Basin — one of three inlets admitting a little of Jamaica Bay into the streets of Howard Beach. The street and the inlet both lead to the bay and its Wildlife Refuge and then to the Rockaways, parallel to the elevated A train. Several restaurants are lined up on one side of the street.
Always attracted to a water view, I was a little frustrated that I hadn’t been able to see much of Shellbank Basin from its eastern side. An Amsterdam canal it ain’t. But when I went round the top and reached the western side, where all the restaurants are…
…I lucked out. Folks have boats here, and boats have docks, and this one next to the diner parking lot had wooden steps leading up to the gate.
No, I didn’t trespass.
But I saw no harm in grabbing a few shots of the local pleasure craft through the chain-link fence.
I am not plugged in to the Howard Beach elite, so I don’t know what it would be like to take one of these babes out into the bay on such a beautiful day. I’ll bet it’s nice, though it might be even nicer to do so before the November chill sets in.
Must be nice, too, to see this from your bedroom window, I reflected, raising the phone-cam above the fence to take the final shot.
Inside, the diner’s Halloween decorations were still up. Either there’s an artist among the restaurant staff or the owner spent a few bucks to employ one. Always pleased to see a health department A-rating, even from behind.
I miss Chi-chan. He was my little black cat.
The Cross Bay Diner menu doesn’t open like a book, as a traditional diner menu would. Instead, it gets a lot done with just a pair of one-sided panels. Here’s the big one.
And the little one. I went for the hot open turkey sandwich in the panel above.
The slaw was colorful, delicious, fresh, garnished with pickle. I assume the pale pink is from the interior of a red cabbage.
The baked potato was perfectly done, with no burn marks on its surface, yet fully cooked inside, and the thin-sliced carrots and peas were as good as these things ever get in a diner. Someone didn’t just hack a carrot into a few pieces with a knife. Some care (or a food processor) produced these perfect slices. Offered a choice of turkey gravy or brown gravy, I chose the one that went with turkey. Namely the turkey gravy.
There was so much turkey, I wondered if the bread was under there.
But it was. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the turkey I’ll have for our forthcoming annual ritual at the Manhattan Diner will be firmer, more natural, more flavorful, and accompanied by cranberry sauce, appetizer, and dessert. But it will also be way more expensive.
Like my first trip, the second one included a change of trains at Columbus Circle — from the 1 train that took me from my Upper Manhattan roost to the A train — and a wait time of 14 minutes.
Columbus Circle is a place that evokes a troubling colonial legacy. But I’m glad the accompanying ceramic art hasn’t been erased, if only because I like boats. I once wrote a piece suggesting that it be renamed Sinatra Circle, and nearby Columbus Avenue as Lenape Avenue. You can find that essay in my book Medium Rare. (Yeah, that’s two shameless plugs in one blog. How much are you paying to read this?)
The station is also brightened by civic art from the 21st century. Whirls and Twirls is a 53-foot-wide group of 250 ceramic panels designed by Sol LeWitt in 2004. He did not live to see its unveiling in 2009.
On the way to the second restaurant, a cautionary note. The homeowner has both my admiration (for the creative Halloween angle) and my sympathy (as someone who sidesteps fecal messes and occasionally cleans them off his walking shoes).
Today’s restaurant was Claudette’s, featuring “Israeli-Moroccan flavors.” I suggested to a friend that intermarriage has accounted for many fine restaurants with unusual cuisine combos.
He advised that the expulsion of Jews from many countries, including Morocco, may account for the twofer. Regardless, as the front window says, EVERYBODY EATS. Also, MEET HEALTHY EATS. FAMILY OWNED. And my favorite, FAMILY AWAY FROM FAMILY.
If you’re waiting for a friend or family member to arrive, there’s a place to take a load off while waiting for your table.
The spic-and-span interior is appointed in warm pastels. The help was personable and the low-key kind of friendly.
The menu’s official portrait gives a better indication of my Israeli Breakfast Plate’s contents…
…than the photo I took, despite my best effort at retouching. My adviser suggested that the wait for an industrial dishwasher may account for the less than photogenic disposable dish. But rest assured that the organic cage-free eggs, hummus, shepherd’s salad, tahini, fiery green schub (which raised a sweat in my winter clothes), matboucha (tomato based, somewhere between a sauce and a salad), fresh feta, and equally fresh olives tasted way better than they looked. Claudette’s vivid, almost riotous flavors will lure me back to Howard Beach.
On the way back I took a look at Hawtree Basin, which stands between Shellbank Basin and Bergen Basin, with the latter wrapping around John F. Kennedy International Airport. A couple of dead-end streets, 100th and 101st, offered modest vistas of tranquil waters, homes, and boats.
I tried a pano.
Despite the panoramic bending, this one works.
A peaceful place. A good life. And a private one, no doubt.
I wended my way back to the station, grateful that Howard Beach had shared a little of its tranquility with me.
And admired a slim, squiggly, wayward fragment of Hawtree Basin as it corkscrewed past the station’s windows.
But Howard Beach was not finished with me. Just when I thought I was out, it pulled me back in — to the Souvlaki Spot. It is positioned, as the sign says, as a Greek Mediterranean Grill. I’m not saying you can’t get authentic Greek food in a Greek-American diner. But a specialist can be an exceptionally nourishing experience.
“The best…” souvlaki? Gyro? Avgolemono soup? This was an offer I couldn’t refuse. The Spot was also on my mind because while I was in the Cross Bay Diner, I spotted an older man with the lean, fit, well-proportioned body of a god. He was wearing a Souvlaki Spot T-shirt; I wondered if he might be the owner or an employee.
There are few things on this menu I wouldn’t have.
Lunch pricing (below) does not offer a significant discount from dinner pricing (above).
For the sake of completeness.
Blue and white, of course, are the national colors of Greece.
The interior is spartan (interesting choice of words) but clean, cheerful, and tasteful.
The table was set — by an exceptionally attentive server, whose spot-on professionalism was matched by the busboy — with deep blue crockery, pleasing plastic glasses, my free soft drink…
…and this beautiful avgolemono soup.
That’s a traditional Greek lemon-chicken soup, thickened not with cream, but with eggs, making it easier on the tummy. This version had potato, carrot, and celery; other variations often include rice instead of potato. The last time I had such a good version of this soup was at Happy Burgers, at Broadway and West 92nd on the Upper West Side, may it rest in peace. I ate many happy meals there and never photographed any of them.
The arrival of the chicken gyro platter was cause for further joy. Gyros and souvlakis here can also be beef or pork; the gyros also include a lamb option. I couldn’t bring myself to banish the beautiful blue plastic glasses from the frame.
But with all that luminous blue outside the frame, the brain can better appreciate the rich array of warm earthtones in the pita, fries, and of course the chicken. This was before I’d even had a taste.
You got your pita, fresh enough for maximize flavor, but firm enough to fold the chicken into.
Enhanced with some creamy yogurt-based tzatziki.
The chicken was a thin-sliced mixture of breast and dark meat, roasted to a golden hue, subtly and minimally seasoned, firm but not tough. The meat, bread, and yogurt-based sauce were a three-way — uh, no, a trinity of joy.
This was a flawless meal worthy of coveted NYC Subway Restaurant Tour featured-restaurant status, with obligatory empty-plate shot. It celebrated my love of Greek food, something fully in the present, but evoking the past of nearly a half-century of eating in New York’s Greek restaurants, so often in my life a buffer against anxiety and sorrow. With a good Greek meal in you, those things go away, for a moment, at least.
I gave the Souvlaki Spot a fond look as I hoofed it fast across massive Cross Bay Boulevard in the minimal time allowed by the traffic signals.
Next time I’d better bring a book. The subway ride is long and boring, with phone-depleting waits for the forking A trains and dull cell-free stretches underground. But every one of these three restaurants would be worth revisiting: Cross Bay Diner for, I dunno, a tuna club and waffle fries, Claudette’s for — well, everything, and Souvlaki Spot for either a lamb gyro or another souvlaki platter substituting Greek salad for the fries. I even wonder if the other restaurants along otherwise charmless Cross Bay Boulevard might be worth a visit. In future years, I may be reading a whole lotta books on the way to Howard Beach.
Previously on the NYC Subway Restaurant Tour:
Part I: Lake House Cafe (Van Cortlandt Park)
Part II: Toshkent (Bath Beach)
Part III: Kashkar (Brighton Beach)
Part IV: One Dine (One World Observatory)
Part V: Buntopia (Brooklyn Broadway)
Part VI: A-Pou’s Taste (East Williamsburg)
Part VII: Pierozek (Greenpoint)
Part VIII: Manetta’s Ristorante (Vernon-Jackson)
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