The Garifuna people, also known as the Garinagu, are the ancestors of Africans who were abducted into slavery, shipwrecked in the Caribbean, maltreated by the Caribs, and — after generations of intermarriage between Africans and the local population — exiled, in 1797, to coastal Central America. Perhaps 200,000 people who claim Garifuna heritage now live in New York, though firm figures are elusive: A check-the-box census is a poor tool for putting a firm number on a people who are part African, part Caribbean, and part Central American.
During New York's summer soccer season, a favorite Garifuna gathering place is just outside Linden Park, in East New York, Brooklyn. On Sunday afternoons and early evenings, a line of tented stalls offer food native to Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras, as well as Haiti and Guyana, in an atmosphere evocative of the Red Hook ball fields in the old days. Perhaps the canopies are smaller and the vendors, fewer, but early evening percussion-driven jam sessions more than compensate. Labor Day weekend is the high point of the summer, several vendors have told me.
Shown on the EIT page on Facebook: a garnacha, a deep-fried corn tortilla whose most colorful topping was pickled onions; a pair of shark panades (as in "empanadas"); salbutes, cousins to the garnacha made from wheat-flour tortillas, in this case featuring shredded chicken; conch fritters; a potent tamarind drink; a mini beef pastry; salt fish and bake; cod fritters; a coconut tart (more widely known, in the Caribbean, as a gizzarda); and a "milk cake" with condensed-milk frosting on a pineapple-cake foundation. Grand total for the lot: about $20. Though judutu is unlikely ever to appear, various plate meals can be assembled to handle larger appetites.
H/T Being Garifuna
Linden Park food vendors
Vermont St. near Linden Blvd., East New York, Brooklyn
Sunday only, early afternoon till early evening, while the nearby soccer fields are hosting league play (roughly June through September)
