Evening Roundup: Major Crime Drops but Complaints Reach 10-Year High, MTA Expands Open Gangway Trains, Adams Issues Social Media Policy, and Jersey City’s Fo...

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Sean Carlson: Welcome to NYC NOW, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Sean Carlson. Major crime in the city dropped for the third straight month, but overall complaints to police in 2024 hit a 10-year high. WNYC's Charles Lane reports.

Charles Lane: Police data show major crimes like murder, robbery, and assault are down this year, but not all trends are positive. While felony assaults have dipped slightly, reports of rape have increased, and despite recent declines, total number of complaints remain higher than last year and well above pre-pandemic levels. Experts say these numbers don't capture the everyday disorder caused by harassment, shoplifting, and drug offenses.

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Sean Carlson: The MTA's newest open gangway trains are coming to the G Line. It's the latest upgrade to the only subway line that does not enter Manhattan. WNYC's Ramsay Khalifeh reports.

Ramsey Khalifeh: I'm standing in the middle of an open gangway G train. To both my left and right, I can see passengers two cars over. These trains don't have doors between the cars. Instead, there's an accordion-style connector like on some buses. Liz Longo is a regular rider on the G Line.

Liz Longo: The time continuum with a different train look, I like it. It's refreshing to see people all the way through. It's fun.

Ramsey Khalifeh: Around 166,000 riders ride the G every day. Last year, the MT upgraded and cleaned 10 different stations on the line.

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Sean Carlson: Mayor Adams released a social media policy for his mayoral staffers after some city officials caught controversy for their online statements. WNYC's Elizabeth Kim reports.

Elizabeth Kim: Under the new rules, mayoral aides can post opinions on their personal social media platforms as long as they include a disclaimer that makes it clear they're not speaking on behalf of city government. The policy comes weeks after Jasmine Ray, the director for the Mayor's Office of Sports, Wellness, and Recreation, got into hot water when she expressed her support for President Trump's executive order banning transgender athletes from participating in women's sports. That order is in direct conflict with city policies.

NYPD top brass were also reprimanded earlier this year for social media posts that targeted journalists and elected officials.

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Sean Carlson: Up next, a look at the burgeoning food scene across the Hudson in Jersey City. That's after the break.

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Robert Sietsema: You're listening to NYC NOW.

Sean Carlson: Food critic Robert Sietsema has been writing about dining in New York city since the 1990s. With two decades at the Village Voice and more than 10 years at Eater New York, he recently launched his own newsletter, Robert Sietsema's New York, and we'll start seeing more on Robert's food writing on our news website Gothamist as well. My colleague David Furst spoke to Robert about some of the best places to eat in Jersey City.

David Furst: Robert, welcome back.

Robert Sietsema: Hey, David, thanks for having me back in my new guise.

David Furst: Let's focus on Jersey City to start. It's just an easy PATH train ride away from New York City, but for some New Yorkers, it sort of flies under the radar, certainly as a dining destination. You are here to say it is time to pay attention.

Robert Sietsema: Oh, gosh, yes. My goodness. There are 300,000 people in there. It's the second largest city in Jersey. It has the same area exactly as the island of Manhattan, and it's much more filled with recent immigrants. There's a lot of amazing cuisines there. Not only do you have the PATH train, you got the light rail, you got buses. I took a bus into the Jersey City Heights recently. It was 65 cents.

David Furst: Well, can you tell us about a few of the restaurants that you featured on Gothamist?

Robert Sietsema: These are not in ranked order. There's places on there like Sri Ganesh's Dosa House, which is a place specializing in the vegetarian food of South India. In particular, dosas and idlis and things like that. Just delicious rolled fermented pancakes around a potato filling. They're wonderful. They're diet conscious, they're ecologically conscious. That place has been there for like 25 years. If you've never been to Newark Avenue, just north of Journal Square, ride the PATH train up there, walk three blocks, and you got the biggest concentration of Indian food stores and Indian restaurants. Even in New York City, you don't have anything quite like it. Even Jackson Heights.

David Furst: Sri Ganesh's Dosa House, and this is right by the Journal Square PATH station?

Robert Sietsema: Yes, just two or three blocks north of there.

David Furst: Well, let's get a sense for the diversity of options in Jersey City. What's next?

Robert Sietsema: McGinley Square is due south by about half a mile from once again, the Journal Square PATH station. Very nice walk through some gorgeous architecture, including an Alexandrian Christian Egyptian church with marvelous, marvelous stained glass windows, past an old chocolate shop that dates to the 1980s. This place called a little further south of there, right at McGinley Square, which isn't a square, but just a crossroads, it's called Krewe, K-R-E-W-E. It's probably the best Cajun Creole restaurant in New York City or in the Sixth borough of Jersey City.

Krewe is amazing. If you want to go there for a po' boy, you got a choice of crab cakes or the relatively rare roast beef with gravy. It is absolutely fantastic. They have a fried shrimp po' boy, jambalaya, and the most amazing freshly made beignets, which you get at the end of your meal. They sprinkle powdered sugar on them. They're piping hot. It's great. It's intimate. It's right next to a barber shop. You can look through a window and see them cutting people's hair. It's just these kind of quirky things make a neighborhood and make a restaurant exciting.

David Furst: Cajun Creole at Krewe, K-R-E-W-E, at McGinley Square in Jersey City. Where should we finish up today, Robert?

Robert Sietsema: God, what a toss up. I mean, I might say Hamilton pork, which is a wonderful Texas-style barbecue, but I'm going to go for Yuan, Y-U-A-N. It turns out that there's a lot of Asian students living in the high rises right along the Hudson river, and they are patronizing a dozen, a full dozen new Chinese restaurants that put many of the Chinese restaurants in the city to shame. They are modern Chinese restaurants such as you might find in China. Many of them, like Yuan, have a mixture of Sichuan, Hunan, Shanghai, and northern Chinese food.

In other words, you're not going to go there for your chicken and broccoli. You're going to go there for dan dan mian, for dan dan noodles. You're going to go there for northern specialties, for big thick dumpling stuffed with pork and chives, Westlake beef soup from Shanghai. Everything there is great.

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Sean Carlson: That's food critic Robert Sietsema in conversation with my colleague David Furst. Thanks for listening to NYC NOW from WNYC. I'm Sean Carlson. We'll see you tomorrow.

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