Eddie Fancy Food

Food was ok but Im upset that i got overcharged, and I didn't even realize it until I left the restaurant -_- Since I took a picture of the menu, I did the calculations in the car and based on the menu prices, whatever I ordered should've been $42. When we asked for the check, she showed me the price on a handheld calculator, it read $52. I'm not sure where the extra $10 came from. If it was taxes, it should've been an extra $4-5 only. Then when we paid by credit card, they tacked on an extra $2 fee and swiped $54. So everyone just double-check your check to make sure you're getting charged whatever you're supposed to be charged.Manti- it was ok. The skin was kinda hard and dried up even though I ate it hotKuksu- it was refreshing. Soup was a bit more sour than another place I go to.Uzbek plov- a bit on the small side but it was ok. Rice had flavor and was moist but it came with 3 pieces of meat and they were on the dry side.Begodya- it was ok. Like a Chinese mantou but with meat. It came with a flavorful red sauce on the side that was a bit spicy.Overall, food wasn't bad but I don't know why I was charged more than what the menu stated which is why I dropped a star.

Eating at your mother-in-laws, complete with obligatory fleecing and a slight bit of abuse.So many moons ago I wrote about a tiny place near Brighton beach called Cafe At Your Mother-in-Law, which is this tiny little 2 table shop on one of the side street below Brighton Beach Avenue on the Q. They disappeared from my radar some time during COVID, and re-opened below the D on 86th in Bath Beach.I could make you re-read the old review where I mention the history of Koryo-Saram cuisine, but to summarize quickly, it's the cuisine of roughly 500,000 people who were deported by Stalin from the border of Asiatic Russia and Korea (then a Japanese colony) to Uzbekistan, mostly because Stalin thinks the native Koreans in the area are a bunch of Japanese spies. Since the ethnic Koreans are thousands of miles away from their homes, they have to adapt to local foodways, borrowing ingredients and cooking methods from both the Uzbeks and the cuisines of the 11 constituent Soviet Republics to survive and to thrive. So what do you end up with? Well, the banchan. The Korean style salads are not exactly freebies like banchan at your local Korean joint, but they are fairly cheap. The fish hye tastes like the classic Russian cooked cold fish salad, but with flecks of pepper flakes, vinegar and sesame oil, and the shitake is like a Russian mushroom salad, but minus the dill and meatier to boot. The Plov is your solid/standard from Uzbek joints in Rego or Avenue U - flavorful, unctuous but nothing thrilling. The best thing we had on the day we visited was perhaps the meaty blintzes with smetana that we had, which was both buttery, meaty and has that nice thin eggy crepe that works so nicely...but it's probably not a good reflection of the "Soviet-Korean Fusion" like the kuksu (more like a nyengmeon/kalguksu hybrid), or their version of the gukbap (which oddly enough contains cumin, coriander and Aleppo peppers). Much like dealing with a conniving mother-in-law with an agenda in a run-of-the-mill Korean drama, you are dealing with a bit of a hot-and-cold personality here. If you speak a little Uzbek or Russian, the little lady running the kitchen seems to treat you a bit better. For me, I get by with a few terms picked up here and there, and gesticulating. Service is never really a thing, but a bit of shown courtesy can go far. One thing to keep in mind - an 18% service charge is automatically tacked onto your bill, so you don't need to tip them - you might find that a little underhanded, but for a married man like me, dealing with the MIL is the cost of doing business - you are sticking it to her daughter on a regular basis. So yes, Eddie fancy might be the name of the place but it's totally like dealing with the old Soviet Korean mother-in-law's cafe, the one that makes the weirdly off-script but tasty ban-chan from the other side of Asia.

This is an amazing mom and pop hole in the wall. My favorite dishes are the plov and the kuksu, and the samsa and manti are decent too! The plov is a marinated tender lamb that falls off the bone on top of a super savory rice with slivers of carrot. The kuksu can be hot or cold and is like a bibimbap in soup! The noodles in it are delicious.

Humanity is capable of wreaking havoc and also creating beautiful things, and when it comes to food, horrible historic events like war and colonization have also wrought incredible new cuisines. Such is the case for the cuisine of Koryo-saram, which is what ethnic Koreans in post-Soviet states used to refer to themselves. As I understand it, a population of Koreans moved to Siberia in the 19th century to set up better lives for themselves, and a series of wars and conflicts over the years culminated in the deportation of Koreans from Russia by Stalin, over to Central Asia in countries like Uzbekistan.There's a community of Koryo-saram in Southern Brooklyn, and Eddie Fancy Food (formerly known as Elza Fancy Food, and Cafe at Your Mother in Law before that) is one of the best in the game. On their menu you'll find Uzebki-Korean dishes like Uzbek plov, Korean stews, lamb kebabs, samsas, and a whole lot of salads. My group devoured a dish of lamb served over Uzbek plov, which was buttery and full of flavor. We also loved a cold mushroom salad, made with shiitake and marinated in a sauce that gave it so much flavor. It complemented the pumpkin samsa we ordered, a flaky pastry filled with mashed pumpkin that was a cross between a sweet pastry and a savory dumpling.There isn't a lot of space in the way of seating, so you might enjoy taking your food to go. Go with a group and order a bit of everything, leave feeling nourished and well fed, as though you were eating in a grandmother's home.

Hidden gem that offers delicious homemade Korean Uzbekistan food. Mostly a to go place since they only have one dining table. I got the kuksu which is a cold Korean noodle soup. It is a refreshing dish that mixes sweet spice and vinegar. Must try.

Got the kuksu to go. Small little joint that I think can sit a handful of guests if you want that experience of dining at a local Auntie's shop.This was my first time having Uzbek Korean food, which is supposed to be a blend of Uzbek flavors using Korean ingredients. The kuksu, which I got cold -reminded me of naengmyeon aka Korean cold noodles (usually made with buckwheat noodles), but is served here with I think white flour noodles. These noodles are nice too, but more slippery compared to the thick starchier buckwheat.The broth that it comes with is very sour, and similar yet different to naengmyeon. I would say the kuksu has a pretty intense (but not too intense) sour, raw vegetal taste to it- probably from the ways the vegetables are prepared which can be a bit of an acquired taste. The beef strips were kind of meh, tasted kinda dry and old but at least you get a good amount of protein with it.I enjoyed it, but I think other reviews set the expectations too high for me. It was refreshing, but I couldn't finish it in one sitting as I would other cold noodle entrees.

Service with an attitude but there no where else to get a Kuksu soup. I've never tried anything like it and its delicious.Who doesn't love a chilled spicy cabbage noodle soup with beef?

Korean-Uzbek is a fusion that I never expected, but it's so good! This is a small spot with so many different options - definitely need to return to try more!

I've wanted to try Cafe At Your Mother-In-Law for the longest time, until I discovered Elza Fancy Food (now renamed Eddie Fancy Food) was also owned by the same family and functions primarily as a take-out spot. They specialize in Koryo-Saram cuisine, ethnically Korean food adapted to ingredients available in post-Soviet states including Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. This distinctive cuisine was a result of the forceful deportation of the Koryo-Saram community from Siberia (many of whom migrated there in the 1860s) to Central Asia in the 1930s. At Cafe AYMIL/Eddie Fancy Food, there are a lot of Uzbek staples (including manti, plov, samsa) as well as Korean-style pickled/marinated vegetables reminiscent to that of banchan. I'd recommend the bean sprouts ($6/lb) and the chim-cha ($5/lb), a derivative of traditional kimchi but made using white cabbage. I ordered the samsa ($3) which came in three balls of onion-beef filling wrapped in baked pastry dough. The samsa were circular, instead of triangular and were stale. Although they were reheated prior to serving and piping hot inside, the crust was so hard I could barely bite through it. This was disappointing, especially since the filling was quite good and went well with the tomato-based dipping sauce. I also ordered the kuksu ($8.50), a beef noodle dish garnished with pickled cucumbers, sliced cabbage, scrambled egg strips and sesame seeds. The kuksu is served with a cold vinegar-y broth but can be heated up upon request. The noodles are very thin, almost like somen and they provide a small cup of dried pepper flakes in case you want to spice things up.

Small mom and pop with a very cozy and homey feel. Get their kuksu noodles and plov! This restaurant is run by lovely ladies that are usually quite busy in the back whipping up delicious food. We also had a chance to try their kimchi, which is also conveniently packaged in to-go containers to bring home. There's about two tables that can cater to two separate smaller groups (of 2-3). Definitely worth a visit!