Staten Island Restaurant Tour, Part XXVII: Luk & Bart Homemade Food (Mariners Harbor)

Looking back.

The Lower Manhattan skyline had nearly disappeared from view when I realized I’d never shot the rear view from the Staten Island Ferry. The original Dutch and Huguenot settlers of Mariners Harbor, where I went to chow down on pierogi, didn’t get to see a view like this. I grabbed the shot and then crossed the boat to board the bus — on which I grabbed a long-desired shot of the Bayonne Bridge (to New Jersey). Perhaps I’ll get an even better one from outside the bus in an upcoming visit to easterly Port Richmond.

In the meantime, not bad for a window shot.

I got off the S40 bus, which runs along Richmond Terrace on the North Shore, and ran across a giant propeller. I might be called a propellerhead, as a former tech writer, but here it’s the corporate symbol of Clean Water, whose mission is “to provide reliable and efficient marine tank cleaning, water treatment and oil recycling.” The water-treatment angle reminded me that there was fishing and oystering in the Kill Van Kull before 20th-century industrial pollution ravaged the narrow waterway separating SI from NJ.

Clean Water of New York, Inc. on Richmond Terrace.

Having recently been thrown out of Rossville’s Witte Marine Scrapyard, I didn’t expect a warm welcome from the Mariners Harbor Yacht Club. And really, if I were running it, I wouldn’t want people wandering in off the street either. The neighborhood’s maritime background isn’t all present-day yachting and bygone fisherman and oystermen. There are two tugboat companies in the area and once there were shipyards that built destroyers for World War II. Love the giant, uh, anchor.

That is an anchor, isn’t it?

There are many houses of worship in the neighborhood, including several historic ones. The one that has attracted three mayors (Dinkins, Giuliani, Bloomberg) is Fellowship Baptist, in humble quarters next to an air-conditioning firm. The founder, Rev. Arthur D. Phillips, after whom the adjoining street is named, was a community leader active in the NAACP and the Urban League. However, the oldest church in the neighborhood is Summerfield Methodist, not pictured, circa 1840.

Fellowship Baptist Church, Richmond Terrace.

Residential architecture along South Avenue is more or less townhouse style: the homes are narrow, but go back a ways.

With driveways, not built-in car storage. Easier to wash the car.

There are older homes, too, some immaculate, some needing a coat of paint. The western neighborhoods on the North Shore are more socioeconomically diverse than those to the east, not to mention the newly constructed ones on the South Shore, my original intro to the island.

Old Victorian.

But renewal and redemption are always possible in New York City. With its pleasant bus ride of modest duration from the ferry terminal, Mariners Harbor may be one of the city’s up-and-coming neighborhoods. This kind of boxy building, more typical of Brooklyn than Staten Island, could be either a home renovation in progress or a relocating construction business.

Whatever it is, it’s coming soon.

Off the remains of what might have been Erastina Station — a now-closed stop on the now-gone North Shore branch of the Staten Island Railway — I found a path leading to a place for quiet contemplation. The station, if this was a trace of it, was named for Erastus Winans, who “canonized” a fellow real estate magnate in exchange for selling him the land for the St. George Ferry Terminal.

Path by the tracks.

No redemption is possible for this probable crack house. Even replacing the missing windows would not save it — the walls and foundation are probably rotted by now. At least no one was observing my moment of contemplation. I wondered if the folks who once lived here had jobs along the waterfront. The North Shore is the only part of Staten Island with derelict houses. Many of its original Italian American families have relocated to newer housing south of the Staten Island Expressway.

House by the tracks.

A moment of affirmation along South Avenue in what the map calls Arlington, though the locals clearly prefer to think of it as Mariner’s Harbor — with pride expressed in the added apostrophe, otherwise missing from maps. Nearby is a public housing project with its own farm and a park called The Big Park.

Yes indeed.

A moving object turned my head and I saw whirling pinwheels. The owner of this modest house captured my imagination.

Like I said, I’m a propellerhead.

I did a little capturing myself — the imprint of a leaf, embedded in the concrete.

Sidewalk fossil.

Delectables were to be had, but not captured this time, at the Mekkah Mart. It’s along busy Forest Avenue — recently developed shopping and dining strip in the southern part of the neighborhood, and border between Mariners Harbor and Arlington to the north and Graniteville to the south.

When I get to the border.

But my destiny today was pierogi at what Google Maps identifies as L&B Homemade Food Inc., where locals posed for a street tableau.

The stage is set for a Polish lunch.

L&B is actually Luk & Bart Homemade Food. One piece of the house specialty, in Polish, is a pieróg. Two are pierogi. English-speaking people say pierogis or pierogies. It’s a “you say tomato” thing. Let’s call the whole thing off.

Except for the eating part.

Outdoor dining seemed like a better option than the single table or window stools inside, where the unpartitioned kitchen made it stifling hot on this muggy day. Here is either Luk or Bart, a somber aristocratic man with piercing blue eyes, at work with kitchen staff, making pierogi. It was kind of them to let me use what was probably the employee restroom (long bus and walking trips can challenge my plumbing). I squeezed through a tight space narrowed to ten inches by vintage kitchen equipment but did not pause to take a picture of it.

Co-owner and two cooks.

I ordered a half-dozen pierogi, and was tempted to go for a dozen, but with the sour cream, I figured I’d have enough calories for one meal. While waiting, I inspected the menu on the single indoor table, adorned with bright tablecloth and flowers.

Prettier than your average takeout joint.

The choices are rich in potato. There are also three forms of cheese, two forms of meat, and saving the best for last, three kinds of fresh fruit.

Sunday potatoes, Monday potatoes...

An excellent value, as you can see from the prices. Sides were carmelized onions (which looked like baked apple chunks on the plate, but were not) and sour cream (a substance I made friends with when I had borscht in Bay Terrace).

I'd have taken some home but it was a warm day.

Not eating in? No problem. Get some pierogi, kielbasa, soup, or other Polish cuisine to go. If you pick from the cabinet, you won’t even have to order ahead or wait to have it made.

The plural of kielbasa is kielbasas or, surprise, kielbasy.

Here is my Polish feast, laid out in the outdoor-dining area.

With seating for two.

If memory serves, I had the potato-onion, (soft white) cheese, cheddar, and the three fruit options: blueberry, strawberry, and cherry.

Another pretty tablecloth makes an excellent backdrop.

I busted into the pierogis to reveal the fillings for the food-porn shots. Here is the blueberry, flanked by two of the cheese options, soft white at top and orange cheddar at bottom.

Cheese and fruit, two of my favorite things.

I was surprised and very impressed to find that the fruit fillings were fresh fruit with its natural colors and flavors, as opposed to artificially colored goo. From bottom to top, here are the strawberry, cherry, and potato.

Technically, potato is not fruit.

View from my table, looking east, where neighborhood residents had been conversing near the puddle before I entered to give my order. Note the lovely delicate ironwork. Luk and Bart have put some love and money into this place.

There were even planters with fresh flowers.

View from my table looking west, with North Shore waterside view literally walled off. The neighborhood was designed more for industry than pleasure, with most of the waterfront walled or fenced off from residents and picky food-blogging dilettantes. Though there are exceptions here and there.

Study of Richmond Terrace with pierogi and wall.

It would make a better story to say that after my meal, I finally discovered a way to view the Kill Van Kull. But it was actually before the meal that I discovered Richmond Terrace Park, named for the street that runs across the northern border of Staten Island.

Richmond being the county name.

Let’s take a look!

Kill Van Kull in the distance.

The park was small. I walked from one end to the other in maybe a minute. But it offered beautiful views of the Bayonne Bridge, connecting the North Shore of Staten Island to the New Jersey industrial town south of Jersey City. My beloved maternal grandmother was a Jersey City girl; I wonder if she ever crossed this bridge for trips to New York. I have often longed for one more conversation with her.

Study of bridge and industrial waterside.

I wasn’t the only one enjoying a moment of (visual) contemplation.

Gentleman and his phone.

A couple, skateboarder and lady friend, were enjoying a tender moment. I really shouldn’t have shot the picture. They saw me. In embarrassment, I waved. They waved back. Once again the kindness of Staten Islanders spares the urban explorer.

He should have hit me with the skateboard.

Gentleman and cat on the bus ride back to the ferry. I admired both his cat and his beautiful speaking voice as he told me that the cat mom had been run over by a car. He had rescued the kittens and found homes for all except this one, his soulmate. She looked like a male tuxedo cat I had as a young man.

Miss you, Matty.

Previously on the Staten Island Restaurant Tour:

Part I: Angelina’s (Tottenville)

Part II: Fina’s Farmhouse (Arthur Kill)

Part III: Laila (Richmond Valley)

Part IV: Il Forno (Pleasant Plains)

Part V: Breaking Bread (Prince’s Bay)

Part VI: Woodrow Diner (Huguenot)

Part VII: Il Sogno (Annadale)

Part VIII: Riva (Eltingville)

Part IX: Marina Cafe (Great Kills)

Part X: Do Eat (Bay Terrace)

Part XI: Canlon’s (Oakwood Heights)

Part XII: Prince Tea House (New Dorp)

Part XIII: Inca’s Peruvian Grille (Grant City)

Part XIV: Colonnade Diner (Jefferson Avenue)

Part XV: Baci (Dongan Hills)

Part XVI: Chinar on the Island (Old Town)

Part XVII: Cinco de Mayo (Grasmere)

Part XVIII: Phil-Am Kusina (Clifton)

Part XIX: Lakruwana (Stapleton)

Part XX: Pier 76 (Tompkinsville)

Part XXI: Chang Noi Thai (St. George)

Part XXII: Mike’s Unicorn Diner (Bulls Head)

Part XXIII: Melt Shop (New Springville)

Part XXIV: Da Noi (Travis)

Part XXV: Big Nose Kate’s Saloon (Rossville)

Part XXVI: The Manor (Manor Heights)

If you’re enjoying the Staten Island Restaurant Tour, please follow my blog by clicking follow next to my name at the top. Then subscribe to get emails on new episodes. You can also subscribe to the SIRT channel on YouTube. For offline reading, the first 21 episodes of the SIRT are available as an ebook. See you soon!