Eating In Translation

Karl Ehmer Quality Meats

(This venue is closed.) For its Ridgewood home, that's all, volks.

Name This Market

"It came to pass that on his way home, he came one evening to an inn which was filled with guests. They bade him welcome, and invited him to sit and eat with them, for otherwise he would have difficulty in getting anything.

'No,' answered the joiner, 'I shall not take the few morsels out of your mouths. Rather than that, you shall be my guests.'

They laughed, and thought he was jesting with them. He but placed his wooden table in the middle of the room, and said, 'Little table, spread yourself' [a felicitous translation of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's 'Tischlein, deck dein']. Instantly it was covered with food, so good that the host could never have procured it, and the smell of it ascended pleasantly to the nostrils of the guests."

Can you name this market?

RedFarm Stand

(This venue is closed.) I'm told it stays crisp even after a spell in the fridge.

Hill Country Chicken

No puttin' on airs.

A Night of a Thousand Lotus Lanterns

The frog was part of the backdrop, not the buffet.

Ferris Acres Creamery

The cows in the pasture across the street are part of Fairfield County's last commercial dairy herd; small wonder the ice cream at Ferris Acres is fresh as can be. Meltingly smooth, too, as you can tell by that imminent little drop. Peach and sweet cream (two scoops, $2.95).

Ferris Acres Creamery
144 Sugar St. (Rte. 302), Newtown, Connecticut
203-426-8803
www.FerrisAcresCreamery.com
Closed after October 30 till late April, or thenabouts

Island Creamery

This dessert parlor, and the newer takeaway outlet that I called on, are renowned for re-creations of favorite Singaporean flavors in ice cream form. These include cendol; pulut hitam, the black sticky rice also called bee koh moy in Hokkien; and teh tarik (one scoop, S$2.80, a shade more than two bucks at the time). Island Creamery captures the taste of this milk tea very well, though there's no capturing the performance that goes into its making.

Island Creamery
Takeaway location, Great World City, Singapore
6733 7688
Flagship location, Serene Centre, 10 Jalan Serene
6468 8859
www.IslandCreamery.com

Eataly

This Ligurian frutti di mare pie ($20.00), a September special from Eataly's wood-burning oven, arrived littered with mussels, clams, squid, and shrimp. It was only a minute's work to liberate bivalve meats from shells; the shrimp, in an unaccustomed contrarian role, required no such attention.

Even without the dead weight, the Neapolitan-style "soft and elastic heart" isn't a load-bearing crust, and small slices still required two hands (no knife and fork for me). The firmness of the crust, however, was much less an issue than the flavor: Despite the puffiness of the cornicione, the "fat lip" that's also traditional to Neapolitan pies, the crust as a whole lacked any noticeable yeasty tang.

Eataly
200 Fifth Ave. (23rd-24th Sts.)
646-298-5100
www.NewYork.Eataly.it

The Original Johnny Fasullo's Sausage & Bracciole

Clear favorite of the guys who shop at Jovino's, and the guys who know the guys.

Ice cream cone playground apparatus

Several years earlier, in this same corner of Lumphini Park, I came across a hawker who sold ice cream without benefit of cup or cone. On this visit to Bangkok I wasn't so lucky; in already-brutal midmorning heat the playground was deserted, and food vendors were nowhere to be found.

Ice cream cone playground apparatus
Near the southwest corner of Lumphini Park, Bangkok