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.

Tarim Gourmet Food Market

Savory breakfast pastry: This "pumpkin" samsa, probably filled with butternut squash or the like and tempered with onion, was one of four hand pies heralding a Central Asian steam table (which I could not stay to see). In the second photo, which shows pastries filled with pumpkin, potato, and lamb, note the different shapes that help the kitchen to distinguish one batch from another.

H/T agog.wanderer, who reported (in a post I can no longer find) that this is the "very first #Uyghur run gourmet store in the US." The market shares its name with the Tarim Basin, which occupies the southern half of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Tarim Gourmet Food Market
1610 Kings Hwy. (East 16th-East 17th Sts.), Homecrest, Brooklyn
347-462-1270
www.Instagram.com/Tarim_Gourmet_Food_Market_

Kenkey Hut

My lunchtime appetizer to go — after convincing the Ghanaian counterwoman I wasn't concerned that "they have their heads on." Not much trouble, and, despite appearances, not all that spicy.

Kenkey Hut
2427 Webster Ave. (East 187th-East 188th Sts.), Fordham Heights, Bronx
917-569-5458

Back off!

This very New York example of social-distancing signage appears in a Brooklyn pizzeria's service window. The photo is one of seventeen (numbers 032-048) now included in New York University's Food and Covid-19 NYC archive.

Back off!
Di Fara Pizza
1424 Ave. J. (at East 15th St.), Midwood, Brooklyn
718-258-1367
www.DiFaraPizzaNY.com

Puebla Sea Food

In Mexico, "atole" is a more common spelling for a hot sweetened drink with a cornmeal base, such as atole de chocolate, better known as champurrado. This restaurant pays homage to Mesoamerican roots with the Nahuatl spelling "atolli" — and to its home away from home with "I [heart] the Big Apple" to-go cups.

Puebla Sea Food
9527 Roosevelt Ave. (95th-Warren Sts.), Jackson Heights, Queens
718-672-3556
www.Facebook.com /Puebla-Sea-Food-134379806632340

Grin

Even discounting numerous bones (in numerous shapes, not all of them familiar), this Ivorian lamb head soup offered a lot of meat, plus a generous helping of tripe. Like many a West African soup, this was very nearly a stew. Factor in the plate of rice, and it was an entree for two, easily.

Does anyone have a local lead on lamb head posole?

Grin
454 East 168th St. (Washington-Park Aves.), Morrisania, Bronx
718-292-8764
www.Facebook.com/RestaurantGrin