only in ny #9: sweet afton.

  

snack: beer battered fried mcclure's brooklyn pickles
drink: southern tier hop sun

you know where i hardly ever go? queens. as far as nyc goes, it's WAY THE FUCK up there. i've lived in brooklyn the entire decade that i've been in nyc & these days i live in south brooklyn, so for me queens is a galaxy far, far away. most of my experience with queens has been trying to get to the airport. back round the end of march, my brother & amy (his lady friend) moved to queens & more specifically, astoria & since then i've found myself up there at least a handful of times. at the beginning of june, the bro was traveling to vegas for the weekend to participate in a kaiju big battel performance & amy was off gallivanting around switzerland, so they needed someone to stay with their two pooches--harriet (staring at the camera in the below photo) & olive (lying down). that "someone" was me. vacation in astoria!

astoria's packed with options for food & drink so whilst there, i ended up out in the hood for every single one of my meals, visiting eco table, astoria brewhouse, euro market & a cart on steinway st over the course of the weekend. on saturday afternoon i grabbed brunch at sweet afton, a joint that's been around since late summer of '09. in addition to being a bar with a respectable beer selection, they serve a menu with a couple burgers, ribs, grilled cheese, mac & cheese, a cheese plate and some sides. all the food's sourced locally, so that's cool. although the space is mostly made up of fairly large inside area, there's also a tiny back patio area with three picnic tables & a few bar stools that's perfect for a beautiful saturday. when i arrived, the other two patio tables were filled but there was still that last table, so i took it...sorry waitress but i'm just a lousy party of one.

i started with their breakfast burger, a burger topped with a fried egg...& because i have no self respect, i had them add on caramelized onions & irish bacon. due to the disgustingly slimy nature of eggs, i eat maybe two egg dishes a year but for some reason, on the heels of a few drinks the night before, an egg-topped burger sounded perfect.  luckily, by the time my burger finally came out, the back area had cleared out & i had it all to myself. THANK GOD because as amazing as it was, the egg splotched yellowness all over the place. THANK GOD ALSO that they provided me with something that was more a face cloth that a napkin. anyway...it ruled.

BUT! when i first read about sweet afton, the first thing i'd read was that they supposedly had delish beer battered fried pickles made with brooklyn's mcclure's pickles, so even though i'd just polished off a bacon, onion & egg-topped burger, i followed it up with an order of the fried pickles. at only $5 for ten of them, they're well worth it.

the breading is soft & light...closer to a soft pretzel than the batter you'd find on sweet & sour chicken from a chinese restaurant. if you read this review & head to sweet afton & are all "OOH! i'm going to get those!" let me give you some advice: do not eat them the second they bring them to your table. seriously, dale earnhardt. let them cool down a bit first. if you don't, you will be tossing the heat of seven suns into your mouth. luckily, while you wait for them to cool, you'll have an opportunity to stare at them, drooling & thinking "goddamn these fuckers are gonna be good" before taking your first bite. when you eventually take that bite, you'll notice that the breading is soft, the pickles are firm & the aftertaste is spicy. they come with a side of smokey sauce which brings the flavor to a whole other level but is ultimately unnecessary, as the fried pickles themselves are best experienced plain. to be blunt, they're BADASS.

when the fried pickles came out, i also had the waitress bring out a pint of their seasonal tap beer, the southern tier hop sun. if you've been following the blog for a while, you'll know southern tier as the western new york brewery that's responsible for the pumpktoberfest favorite pumking. the hop sun is their summer brew, a beer that, according to their website, is "not your average wheat beer." i suppose that's true. it's an easy-drinking summer wheat beer, a light brew that gets most of its flavor from its citrus notes. i'm not sure it would taste as good from a bottle as it did on that day, in a perspiring pint glass poured from a tap, but i'd take it either way & i'm assuming it won't be the last time i'll have one this summer.

things i learned on my astoria vacation:

• if you walk two hound-looking dogs around the neighborhood on a warm spring day, attractive females will pay attention to you. kids & old ladies will too, but they don't count.
• the distance between astoria avenues is HUGE. if you plan to just take a spin around the block with two sniff-happy dogs, it'll take you at least a half hour.
• i walked around at night & there's NIGHTLIFE & shizz in astoria. it's true! in some parts, it's a bit too european clubby for my tastes but there are people getting out & getting down, so that's cool.
• astoria is basically brooklyn with more back hair.

sweet afton, 30-09 34th st, queens, 718-777-2570