Three for the Weekend, February 21

Grilled pork neck in Brooklyn and a new destination for a Chicago dog

Grilled pork neck at Moldova

This weekly column appears every Friday. In it, I’ll suggest fun dining spots worth devoting your leisure time to on the weekend. Places recently opened get special emphasis, as do long-forgotten chestnuts that are still superb. Many places feature corollary attractions, such as hikes, museums, eminent architecture, and neighborhoods distinguished by their unique feel.

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Moldova in Brooklyn

Quick, where is Moldova? If you said “sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, to the northwest of the Black Sea,” you’d be correct. Most Moldovans speak Romanian, and the culinary cultures of the two countries overlap by about 90 percent, with some Ukrainian and Russian dishes overlapping for good measure. Moldovan food is unique for another reason: New York City has only one Moldovan restaurant. Note that we have three Romanian restaurants that I know of (Romanian Garden, Danubius, and Oti), though we had many more in the last century.