Eating In Translation

Vincie Bakery

On the counter, by the front door, two large pickle jars of cow-foot souse were more empty than full.

Freddie and Pepper's

Tucked behind the Beacon Theater, this tiny walk-down pizzeria offers a number of options from points south, including one sandwich that may be found nowhere else in New York.

Levain Bakery

My toughest challenge used to be making my way to this small, downstairs, side-street bakery before it closed in early evening.

Osage orange tree

Too bad those Native American recipes are merely a rumor.

The Alfred Lincoln Seligman Fountain

One of the city's more elaborate and enchanting drinking fountains commemorates a former banker and a patron of the arts who died in a car crash in 1912. The eight-foot-tall bronze, sculpted by Edgar Walter and cast two years later, is better known as the Bear and Faun Fountain; the fountain itself is by the faun's left hand. His right rests on a pan flute, which identifies him as a faun. That, and the hooves.

The Alfred Lincoln Seligman Fountain
(Also known as the Bear and Faun Fountain)
Morningside Park, at the foot of the stairs near 114th St., Morningside Heights

Immaculee II Bakery

Chocolate, milk, sugar...and a name whose rhythm rings a familiar bell.

Tracking a Venezuelan Treat

My article on the patacón Maracucho — a breadless sandwich born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, that's finding fans among plantain-loving New Yorkers — appears in the July 22, 2009 edition of The New York Times.

Haitian street vendors

Along Nostrand Ave. in Brooklyn, especially near the southern terminus of the 2 and 5 trains, I came across several clusters of Haitian women working as street vendors. Almost all of them operated from a wire pushcart, with a board or somesuch strapped on top that carried bags of cashews, peanuts, and corn kernels, Maggi bouillon cubes, and small selections of grains and seasonings.

Apart from one setup accented by a display of jewelry — this looked to be a two-woman operation — the merchandise varied very little, and sales, in my presence, were nonexistent. After allowing for the expense of the not-so-bulky bulk goods, I can't imagine what small margin of profit remains.

Haitian street vendors
Nostrand Ave., especially near Ave. H, Flatbush, Brooklyn

Gitto Sons Health Foods

A flight of emu?

Terminal Seafood and Meat

"Calas" confused me; I knew the name only from New Orleans, where it describes a nearly vanished deep-fried rice cake. More fittingly for a meat market, it's also a Latin American synonym for pork shoulder, or pernil, I discovered.

"Flying fish" I knew by reputation — and even first-hand, through a sandwich — but at the market the fish were available only in six-packs, sealed in plastic bags, on an unromantic shelf in the freezer.

Terminal Seafood and Meat
402 East 83rd St. (near Foster Ave.), beside the Brooklyn Terminal Market, Canarsie, Brooklyn
718-209-9300