Eating In Translation

Yo Yo Fritaille

(This venue is closed.) A old spelling system of Indonesia permitted use of the numeral "2" to deal with doubled words. The numeral might appear inline or as superscript; gado-gado, for example, would be rendered "gado2" or as a seeming "gado squared." Under a more recent spelling system the practice has been deprecated, but it is still employed in casual usage.

And now this quirk of spelling has popped up in the Haitian community, too. (Any East Indies-West Indies connection? I can't say.) After an extended closure, this casual restaurant has reopened with a new logo that perhaps is intended to give a boost to franchising opportunities ("coming soon," according to a sign in the window). "Yo Yo Fritaille" is more or less an emphatic way of saying, "here you can find a fried combo of meats and tubers." "Delicious" is implicit.

Yo Yo Fritaille
1758 Nostrand Ave. (Clarendon Rd.-Ave. D), Flatbush, Brooklyn
718-676-1636
(One of several locations in Brooklyn and Queens)

Smorgasbord of fridge magnets

Seen at the street festival accompanying the Feast of St. Anthony
Mulberry St. near Spring St., Manhattan

Sing Kee Seafood Restaurant

(This venue is closed.) Even at a seafood restaurant, leafy greens are a familiar part of a family-style Chinese meal, the cloudy yellow liquid, perhaps less so. This tangle of spinach (lunch special, $5.75) was stir-fried with fermented bean curd, which adds a slight funkiness to complement the ginger and garlic. Water spinach often receives the same treatment from Vietnamese as well as Chinese cooks.

Sing Kee Seafood Restaurant
42 Bowery (Bayard-Canal Sts.), Manhattan
212-233-8666

Cup holder

Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Sugar Foods Corp.

Surviving signage, 616 Court St. (seen from around the corner, on Lorraine St.), Red Hook, Brooklyn

Aladdin Sweets & Restaurant

Khichiri, a forebear of the Egyptian koshary and the British kedgeree, is a South Asian preparation of rice and lentils with many variations. Turmeric probably takes credit for the hue of this bhuna khichuri (with beef curry, $7.50 total), which traditionally is colored and seasoned with a paste of dry-fried spices, though roasted yellow mung beans are also a common ingredient. For this khichuri, the Bangladeshi chef has set an intact chili pepper on top to signal that more are hidden below.

Aladdin Sweets & Restaurant
29-06 36th Ave. (29th-30th Sts.), Astoria, Queens
718-784-2554

Itinerant ice-pop vendor

On another day the fellow's folding push cart might have transported a laundry bag. This sunny afternoon it carried one of those cylindrical coolers that signal DIY street food, especially in neighborhoods where much Spanish is spoken. His cooler held homemade ice pops ($1): white for coconut, orange that might have been mango, a bright pink for strawberry. That fruit also figured in this magenta pop, fresa con limón — strawberry with lemon.

Itinerant ice-pop vendor
This afternoon, on East 183rd St. near Jerome Ave., Bronx

Langos Truck

Lángos (Laan-gohsh, $6) is a deep-fried Hungarian flatbread. Though generally known under similar names elsewhere in Europe, lángos has also acquired the waggish moniker of "Slovak pizza" and has even been likened to the Native American frybread that's the foundation for an "Indian taco." On request, yours can be heavily loaded with extras or served in the (relatively) lightweight version shown here, with sour cream and cheese. A brush with garlic, as it emerges from the fry oil, gives the lángos an essential bite; it's an option you shouldn't pass up.

Langos Truck
This day, on Broadway near Astor Pl., Manhattan
646-286-9949
www.Facebook.com/langostruck

Great Taste Dumpling

This was a come-on impossible to turn down, especially in light of the final three Chinese characters. "Xiao long bao" brings to mind a lidded basket of soup dumplings, as they are often called, with smooth, almost translucent skins and a brothy payload. Elsewhere in Sunset Park, another proprietor had told me of the many varieties to be found in his native Shanghai, and of plans to expand his own roster of xiao long bao.

The improbably low price (six for $2.50) and the paper-plate-only service, however, strongly suggested that here the plain-English "steamed bun" would be closer to the truth. So did the shop's Fujianese roots, which I gathered from the menu. Partly in pantomime, the proprietor informed me that he'd need about 15 minutes (the first three Chinese characters stress that the dumplings are handmade). It's a quarter-hour well-spent: Inside the fluffy wrappers is a weighty blend of bamboo shoot and pork — many sources say pork butt or shoulder, a few insist pork belly — that's moist, but not drippingly so. Unlike soup dumplings, these don't leak.

Great Taste Dumpling
4317 Eighth Ave. (at 43rd St.), Sunset Park, Brooklyn
718-436-2516

Holy Cross Church of Armenia Spring Food Festival

When your food festival is held in a downstairs social hall, however convivial, in New York it's a blessing to have a backyard that affords the prospect of grilled-outdoors flavor. My shish kebab platter ($15) also included pilaf, roasted tomato and pepper, and (tucked under the dessert plate) pita. That shredded-phyllo dessert, kadayif ($3), rarely cuts cleanly, which explains the adjoining berm of darker material. A fastidious and generous server scraped together the loose bits, heavier on nuts and syrup; none went to waste.

Holy Cross Church of Armenia Spring Food Festival
Holy Cross Church of Armenia, 580 West 187th St. (St. Nicholas-Audubon Aves.), Manhattan
www.Facebook.com /events/282569791909399
(The 2014 spring festival was held on May 18)