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.

Taiyo Foods

"Sale" with a smiling A, a hand-drawn sign whose blocky letters resemble the neighboring Japanese character, for "goods." Another hand-drawn sign describes warabimochi as "a bracken-starch dumpling. It's a sweets," but it's also too jiggly for a decent photo of its own.

Taiyo Foods
4508 44th St. (Queens Blvd.-47th Ave.), Sunnyside, Queens
718-392-2233
www.Facebook.com/Taiyo.Foods.Sunnyside

Imani

Caribbean brunch: jerk shrimp and grits; yard-style brisket (hidden beneath the vegetables and eggs); and, best of the bunch, a bake with ackee and salt fish. A bake can be baked, but often (as here) it is fried. When fried it might be called a fry bake or (as here) simply a bake. Why so much loyalty to the name, I wonder, when what's best about the bread is the freshness of the fry?

Imani
271 Adelphi St. (at Dekalb Ave.), Fort Greene, Brooklyn
718-923-0100
www.ImaniNYC.com

Jamaican Pride Bakery

Although tempted by a tray of raspberry "rugulah," I carried off a dessert that seemed closer to the baker's heart: sweet potato pudding. This version of the Jamaican favorite was much darker than most, and firmer, too, even if you grant that the name "pudding" is being employed in the general sense of "dessert." For that matter, "sweet" was a stretch as well, raisins notwithstanding.

Jamaican Pride Bakery
731 Flatbush Ave. (Clarkson-Parkside Aves.), Flatbush, Brooklyn

All kosher

Hand-drawn sign outside GSA King Tomato Farm
1140 McDonald Ave. (at 20th Ave.), Mapleton, Brooklyn
718-434-2200
www.Mercato.com/shop/gsa-king-tomato-farm
H/T Deli Grossery

Now Serving Dim Sum

On the menu, for what looks to be about a half-zodiac of customers: piggy buns, fried dumplings, char siu buns, beef balls, chicken feet, sesame balls, turnip cakes, egg tarts, durian cakes, chicken with sticky rice in lotus leaves, har gow, shrimp chow mein, tripe, green vegetables, hot sauce and soy sauce, and green tea.

This new artwork replaces a 2014 deli-grocery mural that was defaced earlier this year. Greetings from Chinatown — another 2014 mural, around the corner — has faded but is otherwise unchanged.

Now Serving Dim Sum
Peach Tao for the Chinatown Mural Project, 2020
Hand-painted mural outside Dai Sing (formerly known as Tay Shing), 100 Division St. (at Allen St.), Manhattan
212-925-2942