Eating In Translation

What's Eating In Translation?

This website began as a collection of field notes on interesting food I'd tried, or planned to try, in and around New York. Since its launch, in January 2005, I've visited thousands of venues, from white-linen restaurants to elbows-on-the-table eateries, as well as street vendors, fairs, festivals, grocers, and greenmarkets — and my "to eat" list is longer than ever.

Beemer Kitchen

Sate kerang — clam, with sweet soy sauce — by a vendor with roots in Surabaya, East Java, and now in Elmhurst, Queens. For the next grab-and-go Indonesian bazaar, scheduled for April 3, let's root for warmer outdoor-dining weather!

Beemer Kitchen
917-862-5803
Indonesian bazaar at the parish hall of St. James Episcopal Church
8407 Broadway (at St. James Ave.), Elmhurst, Queens
www.Facebook.com/IndonesiaFoodBazaar

Aiello's Food Store

Other text, visible or partly so — the shop also occupied what's now a medical office next door — includes "Italian specialties," "latticini freschi," and "Jersey pork sausages made daily." Photographed in 2021, although the storefront has been vacant, and the signage, visible, since before the pandemic.

Aiello's Food Store
Surviving signage, 335 Court St. (Sackett-Union Sts.), Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn

Medan Pasar

Soup and salad, Malaysian style: curry laksa and rojak from Medan Pasar, a restaurant named for the old market square in the owner's birthplace, Kuala Lumpur.

Medan Pasar
102 East 7th St. (First Ave.-Ave. A), Manhattan
646-756-4006
www.MedanPasar.com

GOnuts DOughnuts

This tiny shop is just around the bend from Newtown High School; in the first photo, one of the school's distinctive stepped gables is visible in the near distance. If classes were fully back in session, my sour cream doughnut would likely have disappeared by lunchtime — perhaps to the cafeteria, perhaps to a teachers' break room.

H/T @garsleat

GOnuts DOughnuts
9018 Corona Ave. (90th St.-91st Pl.), Elmhurst, Queens
929-666-7217
www.GOnuts DOughnuts.store

BF Soul Food Restaurant

When cut open, the candied centerpiece of my meal, surrounded by collard greens, black-eyed peas, and ham, didn't reveal the uniform color and texture I expected. Still good, just different. At this new East Harlem buffet, whose owners come from Burkina Faso, yam means yam.

Also shown: the roofline, bearing the legend "Pythian Hall." Evidently the building was designed for The Knights of Pythias and completed in 1891, but the fraternal organization doesn't seem to have met here in ages.

BF Soul Food Restaurant
54 East 125th St. (Park-Madison Aves.), Manhattan
646-964-5440