Eating In Translation

Argentina Bakery

An alfajorcito de maizena ($1.50), as you'd imagine, is a petite version of an alfajor.

Fallen ice pop

Union City, New Jersey

Bakery "La Brioche" Café

Russian, despite the name. La Brioche displays an abundance of sweet confections everywhere you turn, on counters, tables, shelves, and large rolling racks. Shown: nut-filled gata ($6.99 per pound) and two purchases from years back, a hefty date-walnut square bound together with honey, and rolled pastries filled with cherry, apple, or cheese.

Bakery "La Brioche" Café
1073 Brighton Beach Ave. (Brighton 12th-Brighton 13th Sts.), Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
718-934-0731

Russian bread

Surviving signage, Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn

Tulcingo Bakery

This cuerno ("horn," 75 cents) is just one pastry from an unusually abundant and well-kept display of panes dulces. At many Mexican bakeries, these "sweet breads" sometimes wear festive colors (pink, especially) that belie their flavors. Despite the two-tone appearance, this horseshoe pastry was essentially a cinnamon cake-style doughnut, albeit a good one.

In common with many Mexican food shops, Tulcingo offers barbacoa on weekends; shown is a sample of this salty, fatty, long-cooked goat procured by a dining buddy (who kindly also procured extra forks).

The counterman that day was sipping his soda from a plastic bag, with a straw, a fashion he'd acquired on a visit to Mexico, where "they don't want to give you the bottle." Another time, he also suggested, he'd set me up, too — no deposit, no return.

Tulcingo Bakery
103-02 Roosevelt Ave. (at National St., beside Corona Plaza), Corona, Queens
718-457-9262

Pizzaiolo wanted, need not speak Italian

Bensonhurst, Brooklyn

Scratchbread

(This venue is closed.) This egg 'n' pesto sandwich (as served, $7) also boasts chunks of bacon, adds an optional smear of cheese, and swaddles the lot in a cushy housemade flatbread. The pesto, made not from pine nuts but from kale and, occasionally, dandelion greens, gets second billing for good reason: It's one potent pesto, perhaps best paired with strong coffee.

Count on taking your order to go, since Scratchbread offers no indoor seats, just a narrow ledge on one outside wall. In the second photo, it's at bottom right, beside the takeout window.

Scratchbread
1069 Bedford Ave. (at Lexington Ave.), Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
718-744-8231
www.Scratchbread.com

Fairtown Trading

"Purple heart the potatoes" is the key ingredient, according to the ingredient label slapped on the bag (500 g., $2.75) before export from the PRC. Call them Chinese purple yam gummies — or confound and amuse friends and trick-or-treaters alike with this and hundreds more packaged curiosities in the sweets and snacks aisle.

Fairtown Trading (previously known as Evengrand Trading)
272-274 Grand St. (at Forsyth St.), Manhattan
212-219-8883

Guatemex

(This venue is closed.) As you've gathered, this restaurant serves chow from both Guatemala and its larger neighbor to the west. Often the differences between the two cuisines can seem very slender, and I didn't attempt to parse a distinction between chicharrones Chapines and chicharrones Mexicanos.

Big Fleishig's Express

"Heimishe" is a word whose meaning is the subject of much disputation. Within the context of a kosher menu and a roster of "heimishe hoagies," however, you'll manage just fine if you understand it to mean homey or homestyle. This sandwich (half is shown; $10.25) featured diced chicken grilled with tomatoes, Spanish onions, and geshmaka sauce (from the Yiddish for "tasty"), unfussily spilling from a house-baked French loaf. The sauce, fairly described by the counterman as sweet and sour, brought back old memories of takeout Chinese; the crunch of the onions suggested chop suey.

"Fleishig" signals that this restaurant serves meat; the kosher dairy counterpart is "milchig." During observances such as The Nine Days (which in 2013 begins on the evening of Sunday, July 7), observant Jews abstain from meat and poultry, and many such restaurants close up shop. Big Fleishig's Express, on the other hand, will make appropriate modifications to its kitchen and menu, and remain open — perhaps providing a rare opportunity to try the heimishe equivalent of sweet and sour fish.

Big Fleishig's Express
5508 16th Ave. (55th-56th Sts.), Borough Park, Brooklyn
718-435-2779
Closed after 2:00 p.m Friday and all day Saturday