Pio Pio Riko 05-05-2009

Location: 996 Manhattan Ave. Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Time: 7pm
People: JLam from MeSoHungry, JodyB, ChristaM, JBH, Rich, BLee, PeeWee, RB and myself

Feelings: We had plans to celebrate Cinco de Mayo at a vegan friendly Mexican taco joint with an outdoor patio, Papacitos in Greenpoint. Unfortunately, Al Roker was correct this time. It rained all day forced us to move the party across the street to a Peruvian restaurant, Pio Pio Riko. The staff was able to accommodate 10 of us without making a reservation. They had a pleasant idiosyncratic atmosphere with food pictures all over on the wall. It was as if they wanted to say,"Who needs food bloggers! Look at all these amazing food photos WE have!"

Out of millions of dishes listed on the menu and the wall, I was excited most by the seafood soup with rice. RB mentioned he was going to order some sort of chicken dish. However, the staff persuaded us to order two platters of their four person fried seafood appetizer, Jalea, which came to be an enourmous amount of calamari and deep fried fish. I'm not sure why he recommended that particular dish, but we overstuffed ourselves on the appetizer and Peruvian beer. JodyB even mentioned later on that he had a nightmare about a fried octopus attacking him. I must say I too don't really want to see calamari for at least another 6 months. JBH ordered tostones, which were tough and uninteresting. But at that point, I did not want to see anything deep fried, so I would be a bad critic for this particular dish.

The celebration continued at Mark Bar, which was full of fun games of Americana such as Ouija and a buck hunting video game. Since PeeWee is vegan and could not find a single dish that was remotely vegan at Pio Pio, he stopped at Papacitos and picked up one seitan taco, one tempeh taco and one grilled veggie taco all with vegan sour cream and cheese. They looked and smelled amazing. He even got an oatmeal cookie and vegan cupcake for us! Oh that Peewee, what a nice boy.

I wished Al Roker was wrong about the weather (as he often is). I wish I was a strict vegan and could not eat all that calamari. I lost my concentration on the Ouija by staring at those delicious tacos at the corner of my eye. I will definitely be going back to Papacitos very soon to get the tacos and some vegan cupcakes.