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Now You Can Dine Like Action Bronson

The rapper’s picks for sushi, kebab, Peruvian chicken, and empanadas

by
Stephanie Butnick
November 05, 2013
Rapper Action Bronson performs during the 2013 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival on April 13, 2013.(Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Coachella)
Rapper Action Bronson performs during the 2013 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival on April 13, 2013.(Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Coachella)

One of the best features from Immaculate Infatuation, the anti-foodie food blog, is their weekly Friday Fives series, in which a celebrity shares his or her favorite restaurants. The Beastie Boys’ Mike D, for example, says Blue Hill at Stone Farm in the Hudson Valley is “a bit of a schlep, but so well worth it,” while Mad Men and Community star Alison Brie says “Omakase is the only way to go” at Sushi Seki on the Upper East Side.

But while it’s entertaining to read where celebrities like to go for dinner, the culinary names dropped are often fancy, well-known restaurants, with few surprises in the mix. But what about where the real eaters eat?

Well, now we know. The latest installment of Friday Fives features none other than Action Bronson, the Albanian Jewish chef-turned-rapper known chiefly for his dual loves: marijuana and food. (Jeff Weiss profiled Bronson for Tablet in January, describing his 2011 debut album, Dr. Lector, as appealing “heaviest to rap purists and anyone else entertained by nimble politically incorrect rhymes about being ‘twisted off Manischewitz’ and eating barbequed venison.)

And just where does Bronson dine? For a combo meal he hits up Sammy’s Halal Cart in Jackson Heights, N.Y., before heading to the nearby Kabab King Diner: “I get the lamb over rice with the pita bread, the green sauce, the white sauce, and the red sauce. All of the sauces man. All of ‘em. After that, I go to the Kabab King for dessert. They have the best gulab jaman ever. They’re like little balls of deep fried sugar balls filled with a milk and sugar concoction.”

He likes the empanadas at a Dominican bakery “somewhere in Queens” (“Yo, this place doesn’t have a name”) and regularly fills up on raw salmon at downtown Manhattan sushi joints BONDST and New York Sushi Ko. “If someone can show me something better, I’d be down to go grub with them.”

Dayenu, dude.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.