Eating In Translation

John's Fried Chicken

A quipe (Key-pay) is the Dominican version of a Levantine kibbeh. The original takes on many guises; the variety adopted in the West Indies has an oblong, deep-fried shell of bulgur surrounding seasoned minced meat. Many quipes served by Upper Manhattan storefronts and street vendors are bland; sometimes they hint sweetly at cinnamon. This one offered not only the nuttiness of bulgur but also, as my dining buddy observed, an Old World flavor profile including pine nuts and cumin.

John's Fried Chicken
512 West 207th St. (at Post Ave.), Manhattan
212-567-6489
(one of several locations)
www.JohnsFriedChicken.com

Pulau Pinang

Typically they're assigned the warning label "stinky" beans; on this menu they're "stingy."

Cypress Inn Cafe

Refueling stop (coffee, $2).

Cypress Inn Cafe
1702 Stanhope St. (at Cypress Ave.), Ridgewood, Queens
347-889-5676
www.Facebook.com/CypressInnCafe

KB's African Market

Gari, granular fermented cassava, is a component of many West African meals. Lightly fried, perhaps in palm oil, it decorates Ghanaian waakye; cooked in boiling water, it is transformed into a wad of Nigerian eba. Gari keeps well at ambient temperatures, an important factor when refrigeration may not be reliably available. It's likely that all the gari used in New York kitchens is imported from Africa.

So, too, are these cakes, which list as ingredients just gari, sugar, and peanuts. To call them confections would be stretching the definition — the sugar is at best in equilibrium with the sourness of the gari, and the initial rush of peanut flavor tails off after a couple of crumbly bites — yet they are oddly compelling.

Also shown: the market beside its Jamaican neighbor, 14 Parish Caribbean Kitchen, both of them dominated by a billboard.

KB's African Market
96 Anderson St. (Pangborn Pl.-Linden St.), Hackensack, New Jersey
201-880-6773

Nely's Restaurant

Many tortas are named for their key ingredients; a choriqueso, for example, includes sausage and cheese. Others look to some purported place of inspiration, such as the Hawaiiana, which features you-know-what. The torta embarazada ($5.50), or "pregnant" torta, perhaps took its name from protein-rich fillings that address the cravings of mothers-to-be. Or, perhaps, from being stuffed so full — with scrambled egg, sausage and Mexican sausage (read: sliced hot dogs and chorizo), plus bean and mayonnaise spreads, tomato, jalapeno, avocado, and white cheese — that it's ready to burst.

Also shown: a frontal view of Nely's, with signs that advertise a BLT as well as a pambazo; and the restaurant's outdoor mural, which dwarfs the dining room, and which you might easily miss unless you turn the corner.

Nely's Restaurant
180 South Broadway (at Herriot St.), Yonkers, New York
914-613-9573

Yi Lan Halal Restaurant

(This venue is closed.) In Tianjin, the northern Chinese city once home to Yi Lan's proprietors, yangza tang ($5) is popular morning fare. Literally it's a "mixed" or "miscellaneous" lamb soup, but those names might not provide adequate notice to squeamish non-Chinese speakers. "Offal" would get the message across, but bluntly.

Instead, the menu proposes, why not breakfast on "haggis soup"? True, unlike the classic Scottish dish, this haggis is not minced with oats, and it's served without ceremony, apart from the presentation of the condiment — a wee dram of peanut sauce.

Also shown: jianbing guozi ($3). Compared with the neatly folded, grab-and-go version prepared by Liang Pi Wang, here the "egg pancake" is wrapped around a deep-fried dough stick, or youtiao. After a few bites, my jianbing became nearly as floppy as a highlander's kilt.

Yi Lan Halal Restaurant
42-79 Main St. (opposite Blossom Ave.), Flushing, Queens
718-886-3622

Alladin

(This venue is closed.) The advertised parmesan cheese was absent from our "potato spaghetti," and we never missed it.

Nizam International Groceries

"Sujux" — spelled many ways, but usually with a final "k" — denotes both a meat and a sweet. At a similar market that sources its wares from far and wide and is strongest on items from the Caucasus, a fellow customer once explained that the word refers to the oblong shape. (A language barrier thwarted fuller explanation.) The savory sujux is a dried sausage often made of spiced ground beef. Confections like these (1 lb., $14.99, courtesy of EthnoJunkie) typically consist of nuts strung on a stout thread, dipped in thickened fruit juice and dried, again and again, till the desired thickness is achieved.

Walnuts, as shown here, are common, but the thread that held them must have been uncommonly thin: I couldn't find a trace of it, by sight or by touch. Grape is an easy sujux flavor to find; this was my first taste of sour cherry.

Nizam International Groceries
608 Anderson Ave. (Washington-Lincoln Aves.), Cliffside Park, New Jersey
201-313-9540

Al Sahaba

As my dining buddies headed down one short aisle of this halal market, I made my usual beeline for the point-of-purchase display. Among the locally made baked goods were these three pastries (about $5 per container), whose labels wore an Algerian name. "Blossom water," probably orange blossom water, was common to crunchy, sticky griwash; coconut-covered, cakelike richbonds (the "bond," a thin seam of apricot jam); and weighty, grainy, date-paste-filled semolina makroot. The third of these was the consensus favorite of our small scouting party.

Regarding a pair of hanging lanternlike objects inside the market, clearly handmade of paper and hand-lettered in Arabic, a fellow customer observed that they were gifts of children from a nearby school. Community connections such as this speak well of any shop.

Al Sahaba
1955 Bath Ave. (Bay 23rd St.-20th Ave.), Bath Beach, Brooklyn
347-492-5680

The Kunjip

Seven panchan, six of them vegetarian. Can you spot the odd one out?