For our inaugural episode we’re visiting Astoria, Queens. One of NYC’s most diverse neighborhoods and one that I’ve called my home for the past 20 years. Come with us as we stop by some of my most favorite places to chat, pick up some ingredients and eventually attempt to create the fabled ‘Astoria Club’ sandwich!
CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Intro
00:42 - M&M Bagels
01:07 - International Meat Market
02:06 - Gian Piero
03:42 - Muncan
05:07 - United Brothers Fruit Market
06:20 - Little Arabia & Levant
08:10 - Sandwich Clubhouse
11:25 - Tasting Moment
[VIDEO] See a Brooklyn Dim Sum Restaurant From the Food Cart's Perspective
Pacificana is a cavernous Dim Sum restaurant in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, that serves up some of the best Cantonese Chinese food in the City. In this unique video from video producer Natalie Holt for Serious Eats, see what it's like inside the restaurant from the cart's perspective.
Manager Jimmy Ching was kind enough to let us mount GoPros on multiple carts for several hours during a busy weekday morning. What followed was a whole lot of (mostly literally) steamy footage and a unique look behind the curtain.
[VIDEO] The Most Secret Building in Manhattan
This video sheds light on 33 Thomas Street in Manhattan, a towering, windowless brutalist building initially constructed in the late 1960s as a highly secure telecommunications hub for AT&T, designed to withstand a nuclear blast and operate off-grid for weeks. The building, nicknamed "Project X" and later "Long Lines building," was equipped with advanced 4ESS switches to process millions of long-distance calls daily, making it indispensable to New York City's communication infrastructure, as evidenced by a 1991 power failure that disrupted air traffic control. However, whistleblowers like Mark Klein and Edward Snowden's leaked NSA files revealed the building, code-named "Titanpointe," to be a critical NSA mass surveillance site. It is believed to house a "sensitive compartmented information facility" (SCIF) that taps into communications and uses satellite dishes to intercept internet data, including video calls, all funneled to NSA headquarters and accessible via the XKEYSCORE search engine. Despite the revelations, AT&T has never publicly acknowledged its cooperation with the NSA regarding the activities within 33 Thomas Street, and other similar windowless buildings operated by AT&T across the US are suspected of serving similar surveillance purposes.