Eating In Translation

Taste the Tropics

You might want a drop cloth yourself.

Passport to Taiwan

The volunteer-staffed food stalls at this annual event, which also features arts and crafts and live performances, serve a number of dishes dear to the heart of the local Taiwanese community. Rarest, in New York, are Hakka dishes, the culinary heritage of a people who emigrated to Taiwan from Guangdong and surrounding regions of southern China.

Shown above: "silver needle" rice noodle soup. The noodles, which had been extruded by hand the night before, were perplexingly short and fat but also pleasingly chewy. Below: "burning" grass jelly, whose namesake ingredient is melted and served hot rather than cut into pieces and served cold. The heated grass jelly was poured over mung and azuki beans and what looked like escapees from a fruit cup. In reality some of those sticky orbs may have been made from glutinous rice flour, while others may have employed taro or sweet potato. The different colors seemed to be only for looks; all had the same bland flavor and sticky texture.

See these treats, and other menu items from multiple incarnations of the festival, in the slideshow.

Passport to Taiwan
Union Square
www.P2Tw.org
May (the 2013 festival was held May 26)

"Kind of Brews"

Previously: Kind of Blue

"Kind of Brews"
Evanescent artwork seen at Continuum Coffee
199 Ave. B (East 12th-East 13th Sts.), Manhattan
646-504-3107
www.Facebook.com/ContinuumCoffee

Our Lady of Refuge Barbecue and Street Fair

The "street fair" was simply a sidewalk flea market. "Barbecue," as at many Memorial Day affairs, meant grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken, and dollar slices of watermelon. But the church's diverse congregation was also represented in the partially canopied parking lot by Puerto Rican pasteles and pernil, Mexican tacos and tamales, and a choice of several Haitian plate meals. This rendition of the thick vegetable stew called legim (leh-Gem, $5) also featured crab.

For dessert: pineapple upside-down cake ($2). Even the festival's vigorous Gaga-Gangnam soundtrack couldn't flip it rightside-up.

Our Lady of Refuge Barbecue and Street Fair
Our Lady of Refuge Roman Catholic Church, 2020 Foster Ave. (at Ocean Ave.), Ditmas Park, Brooklyn
Memorial Day

Berikoni

Bakeries and other food businesses have devised all sorts of in-house shortcuts to distinguish their look-alike wares. The hole in this lobiani khachapuri might appear to have been cut for ventilation, except that its fellow cheese breads, which have different fillings, lack one. I suggest that it's a keyhole that allows bakery staffers to spy the mashed pinto beans inside. Tearing into the khachapuri, of course, affords an even better look, but, as with the pork-filled kubdari style, count on that pizza box to corral stray bits of filling.

Berikoni
125 Brighton Beach Ave. (Beach Walk-Ocean Pkwy.), Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
718-708-5040
www.Facebook.com/Berikoni

King's Gourmet Food

A dining buddy brought me this bar, snagged at the Turkish-market equivalent of the candy counter. First impressions aside, "fistik ezmesi" isn't a brand name, and this isn't a candy bar; the literal translation is "pistachio paste." Not unfairly, fistik ezmesi is also known as Turkish marzipan. The flavor is intense enough that you could share a bar with a friend and not feel shorted.

King's Gourmet Food
1508 Kings Hwy. (East 15th-East 16th Sts.), Homecrest, Brooklyn
718-376-1585

Young & Rubicam Building

The namesake ad agency was this building's prime tenant from its construction in 1926 until early 2013, when Young & Rubicam moved to Columbus Circle. It's unclear whether Y&R inspired the dozens of whimsical figures carved into the masonry near street level. Many depict traditional occupations; many others, like these, illustrate pastimes. Just possibly the connection with the ad agency is the embrace of minds at play. Shown: bagpipe playing, trail blazing, slingshot shooting, and what seems to be sweets eating.

Young & Rubicam Building (also known as the Murray Hill Building)
William Rouse and Lafayette Goldstone, 1926; carvings attributed to Arthur Seale
285 Madison Ave. (at East 40th St.), Manhattan

"State of Maine potatoes"

In the early years of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad (1891-2003), "State of Maine potatoes" were so essential to the company's financial well-being that caretakers were hired to shepherd the spuds during their travels. The chief task of these men was to protect the potatoes from freezing by tending stoves or heaters that would maintain the boxcars at an appropriate temperature.

Better-heated, better-insulated boxcars would have supplanted the caretakers in this model-railroad scenario. The place, according to the model-makers, is a contrived setting in the mountains of northern Orange and southern Sullivan counties, in New York. The time, I reckoned, would be the late 1940s or early 1950s, judging by the curves of the automobiles at the crossing (click on the second photo for a closer look).

Rail aficionado Larry Goss observes that only a very few red, white, and blue State of Maine railcars were labeled "Potatoes," beginning about 1950. These soon gave way to "dual service insulated boxcars which were designed with heaters to carry potatoes in the winter and newsprint paper during the remainder of the year. Probably because of this dual service 'Potatoes' was changed to 'Products' on these and all subsequent boxcars and all later refrigerator cars were painted orange."

"State of Maine potatoes"
Grand Centennial Parade of Trains
Grand Central Terminal, 87 East 42nd St. (at Park Ave.), Manhattan
www.GrandCentralTerminal.com/centennial/event.cfm?eventid=2145406609
(This 2013 event, in celebration of the terminal's 100th anniversary, was held on May 11 and 12)

"Maxwell House Coffee, Good to the Last Drop!"

Most model railroaders are rigorous about the internal consistency of their railcars and related equipment. For the maximum "gee, wow" effect, however, on occasion they mix and match scenery from very different settings.

According to the hobby company that supplied it, the animated Maxwell House billboard seen here is meant to evoke the New Jersey original. On the Hoboken skyline the sign stood alone, in a bleakly industrial context, but in this HO-scale display, the building is closely flanked by bowling lanes and a mozzarella factory on one side and a Domino Sugar warehouse on the other.

"Maxwell House Coffee, Good to the Last Drop!"
Grand Centennial Parade of Trains
Grand Central Terminal, 87 East 42nd St. (at Park Ave.), Manhattan
www.GrandCentralTerminal.com/centennial/event.cfm?eventid=2145406609
(This 2013 event, in celebration of the terminal's 100th anniversary, was held on May 11 and 12)

Il Tricolore

When national colors appear in the public realm, not just at homes and businesses but also in shared spaces or on government-owned fixtures, they signal a sense of community. In these two photos the green, white, and red of Italy appear in Morris Park, on a pair of bollards that protect an electronic Muni Meter, and in Corona, on an old and probably defunct FDNY call box. Judging by the relative freshness of the paint and the objects painted, in which neighborhood would you expect today to find a greater variety of Italian-American chow?

Il Tricolore
Bollards protecting a Muni Meter, Morris Park Ave., Morris Park, Bronx
FDNY call box (probably defunct), near William F. Moore Park, Corona, Queens