Eating In Translation

Mama Rao's Desserts & Pasta Fresca

Waste not, want not. "Compost cookies" demonstrate one approach to making good use of crumbly leftover bits and pieces: Bake them all together. For rainbow cookies, which are cut to size from what's essentially a sheet cake, the process is even simpler: Heap the colorful, chocolatey, almondy trimmings in see-through containers ($2) and stack them by the cash register. This was the last of the lot.

Mama Rao's Desserts & Pasta Fresca
6406 Eleventh Ave. (64th-65th Sts.), Dyker Heights, Brooklyn
718-680-7193
www.MamaRaosDesserts.com

5 Oz. Factory

(This venue is closed.) Frozen custard is richer and denser than ice cream. While both must contain at least 10 percent milk fat, federal regulations also require that frozen custard contain a minimum of 1.4 percent egg yolk solids. What's more, standard custard-making practice entails a lower overrun, the amount of air churned into the product. As a result, frozen custard can be served at a temperature about ten degrees (Fahrenheit) warmer than ice cream, without going all runny; it doesn't need to numb your tastebuds or threaten the dreaded ice cream headache.

That's a long way of saying that frozen custard is tempting even in Wisconsin-like weather. Shown: chocolate-peppermint (5 oz., $4.75).

5 Oz. Factory
24 West 8th St. (Macdougal St.-Fifth Ave.), Manhattan
212-777-MILK
www.5OzFactory.com

San Rasa Bakery & Deli

(This venue is closed.) It's zingier than your usual tunafish. Filled out with onion and chopped green chiles, this fish bun ($1.75) won't set tastebuds ablaze but is more than sufficient to jump-start your day. In addition to supplying its next-door namesake — a well-established Sri Lankan restaurant that moved here, a short distance up the hill from Bay St., in 2013 (but is also now closed) — the bakery also functions as a deli and short-order kitchen. The window menu proffers gyros, burgers and fries, and hero sandwiches as well as pancakes, bacon, eggs, and toast. A fish bun, apparently, still isn't everyone's idea of breakfast.

San Rasa Bakery & Deli
19 Corson Ave. (at Daniel Low Terrace), Tompkinsville, Staten Island

Syberia

To package designers, pictures are a time-honored shortcut for signaling flavor, especially when space is at a premium or when language may be a barrier. Pictures can also be much more enticing than words alone, provided that they can be recognized with little conscious thought — hazelnuts to the left, pineapples to the right. You might need another moment for the third flavor, in the center, since the image is one of convenience; we don't eat the bright red flowers of the poppy, we eat the specklike black seeds.

Not quickly apparent, unless you read Russian or unwrap your candy in the store, is that all three varieties ($6.99 per pound) are enrobed in chocolate. This is a poor match for pineapple, a classic pairing for hazelnuts, and an even better one for poppy seeds; the texture is midway between Kit Kat and Cadbury Flake.

See also this wrapped hard candy from the hospitality basket of a Georgian restaurant.

Syberia
268 Columbia Ave. (at Abbott Blvd.), Fort Lee, New Jersey
201-224-2555

Umami Burger

Not long ago Hatch chile peppers, an umbrella term for several varieties grown near the village of Hatch, New Mexico, made few appearances on New York menus. That's been the city's loss. Hatch chiles are better-balanced than most of their kin — piquant but not pointedly so, with a flavor that is rounded yet not overly dulled.

As of 2013, however, the peppers secured one more regular gig with the arrival of this California chain's first New York location. Though the topping on this Hatch burger ($11) also includes a roasted aioli and American cheese, it's the green chiles that sing in every bite. Cooked medium rare, the patty itself was fat and juicy, but it began falling apart about halfway through; I needed both hands to keep meat and bun together. The second photo shows the oozy aftermath.

Umami Burger
432 Sixth Ave. (9th-10th Sts.), Manhattan
212-677-8626
(One of many locations, most in California)
www.Umami.com/umami-burger

Istanbul Borek

(This post is based on a visit to Istanbul Borek's original, smaller Palisade Ave. location, now closed.) Normally I prefer to cut up my own food. From the evidence at other tables, however, I gathered that this is the bakery's standard presentation of kol boregi, sometimes called by the prosaic name spiral borek. As served, the kiymali kol boregi (with ground beef) does make a dramatic appearance. The closeup reveals the layered dough, flaky outside and chewy inside, and the crumbly yet moist filling. One of multiple pine nuts is in clear sight; some raisins were tucked in there, too. Perhaps slicing the boregi before serving is all for the good — it's so much easier to share.

Istanbul Borek & Kebab
360 Lawton Ave. (Anderson-Grove Aves.), Cliffside Park, New Jersey
201-945-3030
www.Facebook.com/Istanbul-Borek-Kebab-599516763516987

"Pasteles machine"

Evidence of increasing consumer demand from further up the the food chain: a new(ish) sign for an additional product line. Nearby, a hand-printed flyer offering similar "máquinas de guayar para hacer pasteles" — machines to grate plantains, or other root vegetables, for these tamale-like items — appeared in the window of an African market. See also this flyer posted two years earlier by an earlier adopter.

"Pasteles machine"
Seen at Steve's World of Store Fixtures
1168 Southern Blvd. (at Home St.), Longwood, Bronx
718-589-2925

Name This Restaurant

At famous dining establishments, tourists seek out not just food but also photos and souvenirs; at casual restaurants, often they leave behind a token of their visit, too. This wall of foreign currency, one of the most varied in New York, bears entries from the length and breadth of every continent but Antarctica. The most geographically remote seems to be Fiji. The most culturally remote — that's open for discussion, to be sure — might be represented by the bill in the upper left corner of the closeup. Click to enlarge the view, and you can make out Ruhollah Mostafavi Musavi Khomeini, whose stern countenance now graces the banknotes of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Can you name this restaurant? (Please post your answer online, in the comments.)

Olive Tree Cafe

For years, I never bothered to look at Olive Tree's menu. Not only because the cafe is in the heart of a college neighborhood where cheap eats often lay the foundation for happy-hour drinks, but also because it shares a kitchen with the comedy club below. It even shares a toilet; to use the facilities, cafe customers must flag down a server, obtain the equivalent of a hall pass, make their way downstairs, and risk being heckled if they interrupt the performance.

The soup, then, was a pleasant surprise. One native Russian speaker, now a Brooklynite, recently told me that she would sooner travel to the Village than to Brighton Beach for a hot borscht like this, heavy with beef and vegetables, accompanied by sour cream and, crucially, buttered black bread ($8.75). Many visitors from the home country, she added, also take pains to seek it out. (Thanks for the lead, Maya!)

Its provenance is unclear. Although the cafe's original owner was an Israeli expat, Menachem Dworman (his son runs the business today), my informant believes that the original borscht recipe was supplied by a Ukrainian chef, untold years ago; the current keeper of the flame hails from Morocco. On a bill of fare that looks extensively to the Middle East (as it always has) and to pub grub like burgers, fries, and nachos, the borscht is an outlier. Enough so that the menu supplies instructions: Deposit sour cream atop borscht, but do not stir; take a little of both in each spoonful, and enjoy them together. There's a cold beet borscht on the menu, too, and in due time I'll give it a shot — but the hot borscht is a tough act to follow.

Olive Tree Cafe
117 MacDougal St. (West 3rd St.-Minetta Ln.), Manhattan
212-254-3480
www.ComedyCellar.com/olive-tree-cafe

Plastic, not paper

And probably fresh from the dispenser, not recycled. But if this is the best the fellow can manage to screen out the wet and the cold, especially while his bike is in motion, and to keep his hands relatively dry and warm, it's hard to begrudge him a few plastic bags. (Tip your deliveryman; tip him more when the weather is so foul you wouldn't venture outside yourself.) Other bags keep water from seeping into the seat cushion and the electric motor.

Many more cycles of all sorts, some with elaborate if ungainly modifications, can be found in this (long) slideshow.

Plastic, not paper
Third Ave., Manhattan