Eating In Translation

Hudes Delicatessen

The most recent business at this address was 103 Grocery & Flower; earlier, according to a onetime resident of the upper Upper West Side, "that place was the Olympia Superette for decades." And earlier than that? The neon lights are long gone, and some of the Art Deco lettering has peeled away, but what remains is strongly suggestive of "Hudes."

Q.S. Grocery

Some Fujianese moon cakes approach the size of a personal pizza; most are too filling to tackle on your own. These single-serve squares ($1 each), though apparently cut from a sheet, probably feature ingredients much the same as in the circular cakes they're sitting on. The add-ins aren't particularly bountiful, but the heft is sufficient for a few bites now, a few more later.

Q.S. Grocery
99 East Broadway (Pike-Forsyth Sts.), Manhattan

Villa Brazil Cafe Grill

Buffet sampler ($4.99 per pound, without churrasco): okra, chicken rolled around spinach and rice, and feijão tropeiro. In their original form these "cattleman's beans" provided sustenance during long horseback expeditions; nowadays the basic combo of beans, toasted manioc flour, and nubbins of bacon or sausage are often enhanced, as here, by bits of fried egg and greens, perhaps collards.

Villa Brazil Cafe Grill
43-16 34th Ave. (43rd-44th Sts.), Astoria, Queens
917-396-4087
www.VillaBrasilCafe.com

White Castle

Typical: These limited-edition sriracha chicken sliders were fuller-bodied in promos than in practice. The basic slider ($1.49) and the slider with jalapeño cheese and jalapeño crisps ($1.79), as served, were only about half their advertised height. (Being squeezed into individual cardboard caddies probably had something to do with it.) But they weren't half-bad; if not for a pending lunch date I probably would have ordered another round, with fries.

Also note the promo's emphasis on "spicy" and its implication, for some remote White Castle franchise, that sriracha is still little-known.

White Castle
42-02 Fort Hamilton Pkwy. (at 42nd St.), Borough Park, Brooklyn
718-438-7550
(One of many locations)
www.whitecastle.com

Thin-crust pizza

See also street pretzels.

Thin-crust pizza
Eighth Ave., Manhattan

Chung's Market

Why "jackass"? The label of this two-pack from Jamaican Pride (3 oz., $1.50) — bought at a "West Indian, American, French grocery" that seems to be Korean-run — is unilluminating, except for the absence of "corn." The short list of ingredients comprises only "flour, sugar, coconut, ginger, spices."

Further reading offers two etymologies. Like the jackass, said an informant for Frederic G. Cassidy's 1961 study Jamaica Talk, this "famous hard biscuit" is "faithful, long-serving and tough." Another informant, for Cassidy's later Dictionary of Jamaican English, co-edited with R.B. Le Page, added that it is "very thin and hard and crisp and when being eaten sounds like the eating of corn by a donkey."

Upshot: By one account, the jackass is the biscuit; by the other, the jackass is you.

Chung's Market
1228 Fulton St. (Bedford-Nostrand Aves.), Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
718-636-6194

Brick Bar NYC

Some like it runny: Though this pastry is named for a fish, inflected by parsley and capers, and accompanied by tabouli and a trio of sauces, the featured ingredient is egg. My Algerian-style tuna brick ($8) — often spelled brik, sometimes briq — was fresh from the fryer, and the folds of warqa, a stiff cousin to filo, were too hot to handle at first.

Eating brick with the fingers, and not with a knife and fork, is de rigueur, and by the time I managed a few bites, hélas, the egg had cooked through. A quicker-thinking fellow would have pushed aside the tabouli and cradled his brick in the lettuce leaf underneath.

Brick Bar NYC
917-400-8793
www.Facebook.com /brickbarsavoryandsweet
At the Arab-American and North African Cultural Street Festival
Great Jones St. between Broadway and Lafayette St., Manhattan
www.Facebook.com /events/1466197993608713
(The 2014 festival was held on June 21)

"Pineapple Mural"

This block-long artwork brightens the southward view of a concrete plant operated by Quadrozzi Enterprises, which helped sponsor the mural, and the elevated station at Smith and 9th. The pineapple has plenty of company, but at least one local edible is missing from the picture: The mulberry, represented by the trees at the far left of the first, wide-angle photo. In early summer, the branches were filled with fat purple berries, though you wouldn't want to make a meal of them. The grayish-blue background, in the final photo, is the water of the Gowanus Canal.

"Pineapple Mural"
Ruth Hofheimer (2013), in collaboration with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy and some 60 volunteers
Huntington St. east of Smith St., Gowanus, Brooklyn

Lezzetli

Dondourma, Turkish-style ice cream, is more chewy than creamy. The elastic consistency is traditionally provided by sahlep, the powdered tuber of a Middle Eastern orchid, but in recent years the orchid has become increasingly endangered and Turkish sahlep has been barred from export.

A common substitute is konjac powder, derived from the corm of a plant that grows abundantly in East and Southeast Asia. Even if you spent your formative years chewing on dondourma in Istanbul, you might find it difficult to detect the difference. Here konjac adds its distinctive texture to a cup ($4) of spiced date ice cream.

Lezzetli
See website for locations
www.LezzetliIceCream.com

"Western groceries"

Also "baby stuff, food, beer, daily stuff."

"Western groceries"
Wan Ke Lai Grocery
5902 Seventh Ave. (at 59th St.), Sunset Park, Brooklyn
929-277-4566