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Benny Blanco’s Favorite Burekas
Illustration: Igor Bastidas
On Instagram and TikTok, anything worth eating comes with a line. Whether social-media fame is sparked by an influencer or is the result of a concerted marketing effort to engineer a food’s digital moment, timeline domination does not always correlate to actual quality. With this in mind, our “Underground Gourmet” columnist queues up each month to try some of the city’s most-shared, most-liked foods to determine what phone bait is actually worth the wait.
Line 1: Hot Burekas
Buba, 193 Bleecker St., nr. MacDougal St.
This shop counts Benny Blanco and B.J. Novak among its fans, but what about the rest of us? A friend who lives in the West Village has attempted to visit three times since it opened in late March only to find everything sold out by 10:30 a.m. I asked him to give it another shot with me at ten o’clock on a Saturday. A gaggle was loitering in front of the building, but the actual line was minimal; the available space inside is so limited that it doesn’t take much to force the overflow outside. There appeared to be a surplus of burekas, which are given a final blast in the oven before being cleavered into four wedges and tucked into the corner of a personal-pizza box with sauces, pickles, cracked olives, and a halved, salt-sprinkled, medium-boiled egg. Biting into one of these dark-baked pastries topped with sesame, poppy, and caraway seeds is a pleasure as the puffed, crisp dough goes tender around the filling. Of the two we had, spinach-artichoke was the favorite. Potato was heartier but a little bland. For $16, it’s a solid meal.
Worth the wait? It’s worth a quick line, but I wouldn’t suggest setting an alarm to get there early.
Line 2: Top-Notch Fro-Yo
Butterfield Market, 1150 Madison Ave., at 85th St.
The Upper East Side is becoming a hot spot for Froyo. This column sampled the pistachio-knafeh sundae at Madison Fare last fall, and just three blocks down Madison is another viral yogurt from Butterfield Market where the benches are lined with people enjoying mountainous swirls from white paper cups. The yogurt line starts at a window on 85th Street; I counted 16 people ahead of me. Soon, six more people were behind me — the number doubled the next time I turned around. It took 20 minutes before I was able to order: half plain, half mango on a waffle cone. The plain yogurt had a dense, creamy texture with a much milder tang compared to Madison Fare’s and a pleasant, non-fatiguing sweetness; The $17 quarts I saw people demolishing with a spoon finally made sense. Mango was richer and creamier, all tartness disappeared by the mostly true-to-fruit sweetness.
Worth the wait? Yes. This is the best frozen yogurt on the UES.
Line 3: An East Village In-N-Out Dupe
HighLife Burger, 135 First Ave., nr. St. Mark’s Ave.
Here we have another establishment with minimal room inside and no real dining space besides a facing tree on the street with benches on three sides that was continually host to burger eaters, including myself. HighLife draws comparisons to In-N-Out Burger, which is a fate that befalls many burgers topped with lettuce and cheese. I loved the freshness of the toppings, however, especially a round of sharp white onion. Better yet were the queso fries, built on shoestrings that still crunched under a layer of gooey white American cheese, special sauce with a good dose of heat, and a big scoop of chopped dill pickles that brightened every bite.
Worth the wait? Yes! I can’t wait to go back.
Line 4: The Cacio e Pepe Square
Mama’s Too, 325 Bleecker St., nr. Christopher St.
“This is one of the best things I’ve ever had,” says Keila Pacheco while chewing her second bite of a drippy cacio e pepe square. Everything about it is an aberration among typically austere white slices, which is absolutely the point and popularity of Mama’s Too where I was waiting just past the entrance of the West Village location on a Sunday evening. Tables were full of students by themselves and in groups while all standing room was taken up by people waiting to order, waiting for their food, or waiting for a seat. After picking up my own slice — it took 15 minutes — I decided to take it outside. I picked up a hit of garlic among the mascarpone, mozzarella, Pecorino Romano and Parmigiano-Reggiano, which was overly salty in tandem. I needed more, fresher pepper if I had any hope of tasting it through all the cheese. It ate like a wet piece of garlic bread.
Worth the wait? Absolutely not, but I suspect this is how people like it.
Line 5: Penn Station Sushi
Yono, Moynihan Train Hall, 350 W. 33rd St.
You don’t need to have read Kitchen Confidential to be suspicious of sushi from a New York City train station, but that’s where local TikToker Sage Thomas, with a following of almost half a million, goes to treat herself to “the besssst crispy rice ever.” I went at 8 p.m. on a weeknight when there were just a couple of customers grabbing prepared sushi to go. The two employees I spoke with were unfamiliar with their viral fame yet seemed excited. After a 15-minute wait for my food from the kitchen, I sat down to eat in front of a Knicks game showing in the communal seating area. A single burned grain on the underside of my first piece evoked rodent feces. The crispy-rice base was hot, but mushy, while the crispest bits got stuck in my teeth; a thick layer of spicy tuna was extruded sriracha-flavored pulp. I have never had good crispy rice before; this one did not break the mold.
Worth the wait? Just skip. If you’re eating in the train station, get a fried-chicken Caesar wrap from Jacob’s Pickles instead.
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