Eating In Translation

Peter Doelger's Extra Beer

Though sometimes credited as a former Peter Doelger's brewery, these vintage-1880s premises are much too small for what was, by 1895, the eleventh-largest such operation in the country. More likely this sign marked a franchise bar serving the beer in question. The stained glass has held up well over the decades; Peter Doelger's gave up the ghost in 1947.

Peter Doelger's Extra Beer
Surviving signage at Teddy's
96 Berry St. (at North 8th St.), Williamsburg, Brooklyn
718-384-9787
www.TeddysWilliamsburg.com

Mable's Smokehouse

Like single-serving breakfast cereals that can be eaten out of the box, a package of Fritos can become the platter for Frito pie ($5.75). By incorporating the sour cream, and often other add-ins, with the basic corn chips, chili, and cheese, one can create a "walking taco," I'm told.

Mable's Smokehouse
44 Berry St. (entrance on North 11th St.), Williamsburg, Brooklyn
718-218-6655
www.MablesSmokehouse.com

Mamak cart

In most parts of the Malaysian peninsula, Singapore included, this dish would be called "Indian rojak." As served by Tamil street-food vendors, typically it includes a mixture ("rojak," in Malay) of vegetables, tofu, and various fried things as innocuous as fried dough and as adventurous as lung and spleen. A crucial component is a warm, tangy sweet-potato-based gravy.

The name "pasembur" ($8), however, provides a very broad hint that the proprietor's first home was in the north of the country — Penang, to be precise. Even in Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur, which has no shortage of good chow, Penang is considered a culinary touchstone. This street-cart pasembur contains no meat, let alone offal, but the gravy maintains a good balance between sweet and spicy, and the bowl is ample.

Also shown: a boneless short-rib beef rendang ($13), moderately sweet and sufficiently tender but not complex. Hence the fixings: sambal-tinged onions and hardboiled egg; the tart salad called achat, heavy on the pineapple; and jasmine rice scented with coconut and pandan. A ramshackle papadum canopy has been removed to give a better look at the other ingredients, but the second photo doesn't capture the size of the order. The rendang is as broad and deep as the pasembur, but heftier.

Mamak cart
Weekday lunchtime: Hanover Sq. near Water St., Manhattan
Most days, dinner through late night: North 5th St. near Bedford Ave., Williamsburg, Brooklyn
www.Twitter.com/LoveMamak

Shiner Bock

Mural in progress at 354 Metropolitan Ave. (near Havemeyer St., above the outdoor seats at Fette Sau), Williamsburg, Brooklyn

East River Bread

Everything bagels — this is not one of them — were most likely conceived independently by multiple bakers. An online search, which I leave to you, turns up several claimants to their creation and suggests the existence of many others. Common to the origin stories is a thrifty and sometimes whimsical desire to use up stray bits from batches of single-topping bagels: Poppy, sesame, onion, garlic, caraway, and salt are typical. Sometimes the everything bagel is encrusted almost completely.

Rather than a big scoop of what-have-you, East River Bread's seeded bagel ($2) owes its looks to forethought, careful selection, and balance. Onion and garlic are omitted; poppy, sesame, and caraway seeds are accompanied only by fennel and the occasional squarish flake of Maldon sea salt. Even more welcome is the banishment of bagel bloat; mine was not only firm but also possessed a discernible hole. On that score, East River's onion bagels look positively old-timey.

East River Bread
www.EastRiverBread.com
At Smorgasburg, 90 Kent Ave. (North 7th-North 8th Sts.), Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Saturdays during the warmer months

NYShuk

Couscous comes in many sizes. When you consider that the proprietors hand-roll their own, the fineness and fluffiness of these semolina granules can only be a labor of love. Here a bowlful is topped with short rib and chickpea stew ($10). Only after digging in did I add the spicy condiment called chuma, which resembles Tunisian harissa; for that matter, said one proprietor, the texture of this couscous is typical of the style in Tunisia, too.

NYShuk
347-896-2075
www.NYShuk.com
At Smorgasburg, 90 Kent Ave. (North 7th-North 8th Sts.), Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Saturdays during the warmer months

Scharf & Zoyer

Noodle sandwiches are rare; sandwiches in which noodles are the framework and not the filling are rarer still. The namesakes of the "kugel double down" ($5) draw on a grandmother's recipe for noodle pudding, which is fashioned into a loaf, cut crosswise, and griddled; two warm slices clamp down on maple farmer's cheese with pickled apples and onions. Noodle kugel, as you may know, is considerably less absorbent than bread, and so the double down is delightfully slippery and drippy as well as sour and sweet.

Scharf & Zoyer
917-727-5392
www.Facebook.com/ScharfAndZoyer
At Smorgasburg, 90 Kent Ave. (North 7th-North 8th Sts.), Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Saturdays during the warmer months

Bedford Baking Studio

Palm-sized spiral boreks ($4.50), from a baker of Turkish ancestry, forgo the usual trinity of ground meat, spinach, and brined cheese in favor of combinations such as pumpkin-spice-walnut and blue cheese-ricotta-date. This potato-almond-dill borek was freshest from the oven. Unlike one of the few other local joints than uses a potato filling, but mashes them, here the spuds are chunk-style. You might almost imagine home fries, except for the almond, the dill, and — on the tail end, at the back of your throat — roasted red pepper.

Bedford Baking Studio
347 Bedford Ave. (South 3rd-South 4th Sts.), Williamsburg, Brooklyn
347-278-4548
www.BedfordBakingStudio.com

BrisketTown

Beneath the egg, these Tex-Mex breakfast tacos ($4 each) were fat with brisket. The only tough thing about them is the wait, on a weekend, if you catch a few extra ZZZs and arrive during peak hours.

BrisketTown (also known as Delaney Barbecue)
359 Bedford Ave. (South 4th-South 5th Sts.), Williamsburg, Brooklyn
718-701-8909
www.DelaneyBBQ.com

Woza

This husband-and-wife team, for the time being a pop-up-only operation, relies on renditions of South African chow that are easy to prepare in a stripped-down kitchen, and easy to carry off. In a permanent setting I might have been able to accessorize my spicy minced-meat bobotie ($7) with an assortment of chutneys or sambals; these often brandish seasonings native to Indonesia and Malaysia, and spread by a common Dutch colonial heritage. (Think, too, of the "Dutch baby pancakes" at the Singaporean-influenced restaurant Masak.) Also shown: Malva pudding ($4), an island of sponge cake in a pool of thin custard.

Back when, notes Woza's website, the husband cooked at his father's cafe near Pretoria, where he prepared a fried chicken dish I'd like to try: "walkie talkies." No white meat, no dark meat; figure for yourself what chicken parts are in play.

Woza
For the time being, at various pop-up locations
949-230-4418
www.WozaNYC.com

Rosamunde Sausage Grill

On a boisterous stretch of the Lower Haight, the subtlety of my first Rosamunde sausage was lost on me.

Schnitz

This "sweet onion" chicken schnitzel sandwich ($10) was felicitously furnished with Tom Cat pretzel bread, roasted beet tzatziki sauce, pickled red cabbage, jicama, radish, and cilantro. The fried cutlet itself, thanks to thorough breading with panko and sweet onion flakes, was moist as well as thick.

Schnitz
Shown at the Grub Street Food Festival, near Hester and Essex Sts., Manhattan
(The 2012 festival was held October 21)
Also at Smorgasburg, in Williamsburg (Saturdays) and Dumbo (Sundays), Brooklyn
www.SchnitzNYC.com

Tchoup Shop

Most everywhere else, "chop shop" suggests shady goings-on.

Grapevines and phone lines

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Potlikker

There are fatter oyster sandwiches in town, but none so beautifully balanced by bibb lettuce, bacon, and, especially, meyer lemon marmalade ($13). Also shown: heavily crusted duck confit fries with maldon sea salt ($6). They grew on me.

Potlikker
338 Bedford Ave. (South 2nd-South 3rd Sts.), Williamsburg, Brooklyn
718-388-9808
www.PotlikkerBrooklyn.com
Closed Monday

Pies-n-Thighs

The chicken is as crisp-skinned and juicy as ever.

Handsome Hank's Fish Hut

This tented enterprise offers a choice of three whiting sandwiches, as well as fish-and-chip and shrimp-and-chip combos. The Nguyener (roughly, "winner"; $8) was dressed with a not-very-Vietnamese "cole slaw and herb salad." But, boy, there's plenty of fried-just-right fish — more than enough to share, if only you can figure out how to divvy it up.

Handsome Hank's Fish Hut
At Smorgasburg, North 7th St. at the East River, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Saturdays during the warmer months

Marshall's Smoked Fish

Marshall's Smoked Fish
Surviving sign near Anthony St. and Morgan Ave., Williamsburg, Brooklyn

First Prize Pies

My instinct on visiting a pie stand is to seek out what's seasonal, but the springtime rhubarb frangipane was outshone by this well-brûléed s'mores pie (slice, $4). It's firm enough to be finger food, just like the campfire favorite.

First Prize Pies
646-338-6812
www.FirstPrizePies.com
At Smorgasburg, North 7th St. at the East River, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Saturdays during the warmer months

Sensation Neo Shanghai Cuisine

On the manner of eating xiao long bao, two schools of thought contend.