Eating In Translation

La Unica Colombia Café Bakery

Despite the two-week-old Valentine's Day décor, I tried the pan guayaba ($1). The buttery roll was scantily smeared with guava; perhaps I could have picked up a better one that morning.

La Unica Colombia Café Bakery
690 Seneca Ave. (at Palmetto St.), Queens
718-418-8511

Muncan Food Corp. No. 3

"That's what you're smelling" said the counterman as he offered me a sample of "cracker" — fried pork rind that down the block might have been called chicharron, except for its smokier flavor. Lots of great barbecue possibilities at what's primarily a butcher shop, but for today I bought just a quartet of Kras "animal kingdom" milk chocolates (four 15 g. bars; $1). Didn't try them myself, but the kids at a get-together the next afternoon seemed to like them.

Muncan Food Corp. No. 3
676 Seneca Ave. (at Gates Ave.), Queens
718-418-2212

Polamia

A steam table in the back room of this deli offered "Polish-style dinners," but only if you want your meat, potatoes, and boiled vegetables to go. A dozen kinds of kielbasa and many grocery items in front.

Runoland "borowka do mies" (lingonberry meat sauce; 7 oz.; 99 cents). Also includes apples and sugar. Good balance of tart and sweet; must pick up some more before next barbecue season.

"Lesna" ("Foresty tea"; 3.52 oz.; $1.79). Includes aronia, apple peels, hawthorn, briar, rowanberry, raisins, flower of hibiscus, elderberry. Smells and tastes of dark berries; a little sour.

Winiary "budyn o smaku smietankowym" (pudding mix; 60 g.; 89 cents). Can't figure out what flavor this is by looking at the package (and I forgot to ask in the store), but this package and a similar photo (found online) each picture daisies. Butterscotch, perhaps? Some sort of crème fraiche flavor? Even after dessert, I'm still not sure. (Update: "Sweet cream" is what's meant, observes a Polish-speaking reader.)

Polamia
690 Woodward Ave. (at Palmetto St.), Queens

Bosna Express

There's room enough for four diners at the one booth, especially if everyone orders the pljeskvica ("our celebrated Bosnian burger"; $6). This grilled, flattened patty — a full eight inches across, cut in quarters for ease of handling, but just a quarter-inch thick — comes loaded with lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo, and a mild, thick red pepper sauce, pressed between two toasted rounds of pita, equally wide and nearly as thick. (So thick, in fact, that technically, "pita" might not be the right name.)

Given the thinness of the pressed-meat patty, "medium rare" would have had little meaning, and I was already prepared for a taste much like the cevapi — grilled, skinless ground-meat sausages — that I tried last year at Cevabdzinica Sarajevo. I wasn't disappointed, and I even needed to pause briefly, midway through my burger.

As I was finishing up, a couple asked if they could sit down at the one table with their platefuls of cevapi, accompanied by the same trimmings plus yogurt, which they assembled into their own mini-sandwiches on those quartered pita rounds. I'll look forward to the DIY approach next time.

Bosna Express
791 Fairview Ave. (at Putnam Ave.), Queens
718-497-7577