Eating In Translation

Meat-O-Rama

Meat-O-Rama
Surviving signage at 8004 Fifth Ave. (80th-81st Sts.), Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

Ratner's

Site of a companion restaurant to the better-known Ratner's on Delancey St., run by other members of the same family. Jeremiah's Vanishing New York serves up many more surviving (if virtual) bits and pieces, including a 1970 menu. It's hard to find a good huckleberry blintz.

Ratner's
Single surviving letter, underfoot, at the entryway to Met Food, 108 Second Ave. (6th-7th Sts.), Manhattan

Normandie Bake Shop

Also shown: a nearby sign for another business of long standing that's still a going concern. I especially like the cracks in the sunbaked silhouette. Sugar glaze, anyone?

Normandie Bake Shop
Surviving signage at 860 Nostrand Ave. (Union-President Sts.), Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Qebaptore Kalaja

Though this venue is closed — it opened and closed twice, in fact, over the course of a year — I'm freshening this post nonetheless. Almost everything at this qebaptore was shpije, which is to say, the bread was brought in from an Albanian bakery in Connecticut, but the ground beef sausages called qebapa (you may know them as cevapi), the gullash, and the desserts were homemade (shpije).

Fabio's Helado de Coco & Tropical Ices

(This venue is closed.) There are helados, and there are helados.

Beijing Cuisine

(This venue is closed.) Pick up sticks.

Chengdu stall

(This venue is closed.) First stall on the left, with the fuchsia menu board.

Double Dragon

(This venue is closed.) Red cooking is one hallmark of Fujianese cuisine.

Chinatown Fair

(This venue is closed.) In years past this ramshackle video arcade also hosted live entertainment: "world famous dancing & tic-tac-toe chickens."

Big George's Soulfood Plus

"This is not a restaurant; no food or beverage sold."

Cafe Niagara

(This venue is closed.) The name is the proprietor's nod to a "beautiful" vacation spot in upstate New York; the map hung near the door portrays his first home, Sri Lanka.

Deccan Kabab

(This venue is closed.) My dining brief on this Hyberabadi eatery appears in the December 22, 2010 edition of The New York Times. For more photos, see my slideshow.

Oktober Fest

(This venue is closed.) There are a fair number of German-Austrian eateries in Singapore, and there's no denying the broad appeal of big meat and beer. But one of the country's most famous food centers — home to hawkers who prepare scores of Asian specialties — was always destined to be a tough location. Tougher, even, than the pork knuckles.

Oktober Fest
Chinatown Complex, #02-83, Singapore

Magasin Wells Diner (M. Wells)

(This venue is closed; the owners plan to reopen in late 2011 in another Long Island City location.) It may be the only diner in town with a copy of the Larousse Gastronomique behind the counter.

Song's Stationery

(This venue is closed.) Stationery store: You know, with a waist-high rack of 50 or 60 candies and gums; a refrigerator case well-stocked with soft drinks; Wiffle balls and matching bats, among many other plastic playthings; fresh flowers, flavored cigars, watch batteries, blank cassette tapes, lottery tickets, and telephone calling cards; and toward the back of the store, three aisles flanked by composition notebooks, felt-tip pens, and pre-penned greetings for relatives, in-laws, and that someone special. But as with another stationery store, a half-mile to the north, at this shop the song is over.

Song's Stationery (1977-2010)
2845 Broadway (110th-111th Sts.)
212-666-8533

Takeout Burmese

(This venue is closed.) Three weeks later I was still picking away, one pinch of fish and garlic at a time.

Garifuna Kitchen

(This venue is closed.) Garifuna Kitchen opened, and shuttered, during the nine months since my previous visit to the neighborhood. Sorry I couldn't get here sooner, folks.

Garifuna Kitchen
1250 Southern Blvd. (Freeman-Home Sts.), Foxhurst, Bronx

Goods

(This venue is closed.) Finally, a trailer that's got the goods.

Bromo Satay House

(This venue is closed.) If these had been fried spring rolls, I would have been well pleased.

P. Ballantine & Sons

It being baseball season, my first impression was rows of red double stitches; a closer look revealed the weathered but unmistakable outlines of several stalks of grain. I didn't know anything more about the prior or current use of these pale cylindrical towers, but several follow-up emails helped fill in the blanks (see the comments).

P. Ballantine & Sons
Former brewery seen from St. Charles St., near the Ironbound Recreation Center, Newark, New Jersey