Eating In Translation

Lucky Bakery

(This venue is closed.) The specialty of the house is called out on the awning, but only in Chinese. Step closer, however, and you'll find the English translation on the signboards leaning out front and on a picture menu posted within: Tsingtao fish dumplings. They're named for a city in Shandong province, to the southeast of Beijing, that today is more commonly known by its Pinyin transliteration, Qingdao. (The older, Wade-Giles transliteration, Tsingtao, still has currency thanks to a widely distributed Chinese beer.)

The fat handmade dumplings are insinuated with bits of leek, but the bulk of the filling consists of a flatfish — not longli, exactly, but a longli-type fish, I was told. (In the burbling decorative tank by the window, the shy goldfish have no cause for concern.) The best-matched condiment is black vinegar; a bottle sits ready at every table.

Lucky Bakery
44-35 Kissena Blvd. (opposite Elder Ave.), Flushing, Queens
718-888-7771

Bali and Beyond

In Chinese kitchens, lotus leaves often wrap dishes that feature steamed rice, which the leaves endow with an herbal and sometimes slightly musky aroma. Typically (in my experience) the bundles are rectangular, even squarish, with lots of extra leaf to go around.

The leaves are fragile and prone to tear, however, perhaps more so when fashioned into acute pyramids. For this Indonesian street festival, a vendor by the name of Aneka Nasi, or "Diverse Rice" (translation mine) had reinforced each bundle with a dark green slip of banana leaf. Shown: nasi babat, featuring tripe.

Below, from the 2015 event: Nasi pecel is a Javanese dish, a bed of rice (nasi) overlaid with a vegetable salad (pecel, pronounced Pet-Chel), swamped in a peanut-based sauce, and customarily garnished with the peanut crackers called peyek. "Entree salad" is a fair assessment. On the morning of a multi-festival day, rather than go the limit, I followed the lead of the gal ahead of me: Just the pecel, please. Skipping the rice saved a buck and saved valuable stomach room for more chow.

There was no avoiding rice altogether, however. In short order it appeared as pressed cubes, to be skewered bite by bite with sate kambing, or grilled lamb, and as glutinous globules, in the sweet porridge called bubur grendul.

Bali and Beyond
Street festival in front of the Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia, 5 East 68th St. (Fifth-Madison Aves.), Manhattan
www.Facebook.com/events/793523864081573
(The 2016 festival was held on August 27)

P. Schoenhofen Brewing Co.

One of several surviving buildings on the former brewery grounds.

P. Schoenhofen Brewing Co.
Surviving signage, 500 West 18th St. (at South Canalport Ave.), Chicago
(From a June 2016 visit)

Red Mountain Noodle House

It's quiet at lunchtime. During my two visits I witnessed no music and no television, only soft conversations and soundless thumb-taps on mobile phones. On this occasion I read a magazine, a literal page-turner.

Most folks got noodles, which arrived quickly, even though no two orders seemed alike. My order of 可樂雞, kělè jī, required 15-20 minutes. Much of that time, you'd think, was spent on simmering on-the-bone chunks of chicken with soy sauce and the key ingredient, which added caramel color and a sticky but tempered sweetness. Corn syrup or cane sugar, I couldn't say. Coke chicken ($10).

Red Mountain Noodle House
44-13 Kissena Blvd. (Cherry-45th Aves.), Flushing, Queens
718-886-3222

Pakistani Independence Day Mela

Preparing chapli kebabs is a hands-on affair. Ovals of seasoned ground meat — beef, in this instance — are rounded into shape, then pressed down on an oversized, tilted frypan. Only when the kebabs are flipped, then withdrawn from the sputtering oil, does a spatula come into play. Though the younger fellow who prepared my kebab was standing at his station, many veterans seem to prefer working right up close.

The loose texture of a chapli kebab enables the experienced diner to tear off a piece with the right hand (and only the right hand), then match it to a corresponding shred of warmed flatbread, perhaps sandwiching a bit of dressed green salad in between. The inexperienced diner may need several attempts before he can fashion a mouthful worthy of a photo.

For more chow, see the EIT page on Facebook.

Pakistani Independence Day Mela
Coney Island Ave. near Ave H, Kensington, Brooklyn
(The 2016 mela took place on August 20)

Schulze's Butter Nut Bread

You can still "avoid substitutes," as the line of small print advises: Although the bakery's founder sold his business in 1921, Butternut Bread is available to this day. Under the ownership of Interstate Bakeries, the Schulze name remained in use at least until 1957; the most charming Butternut promotions appeared a decade later, courtesy of a different Schulz.

Schulze's Butter Nut Bread
Surviving signage, 2024 West 18th St. (South Hoyne-South Damen Aves.), Chicago
(From a June 2016 visit)

Carnegie John's

Burger (with cheese), fries (recognizably potato), ketchup (extra napkins included, $7 all in).

Carnegie John's
Slightly to the south of Carnegie Hall, West 56th St. near the northeast corner with Seventh Ave., Manhattan
Monday through Friday, lunchtime and afternoon only

Shaxian Delicacies

Poor or incomplete Chinese-to-English translations are a sticking point on many of New York's Fujianese menus. This item, for example, was billed as "salt cabbage fried buns," which would have been much easier to share among our party of three. More-patient analysis when ordering would have helped us ascertain that 糟菜粉干, or zāo cài fěn gàn, consists of rice noodles (fěn) that before cooking are dry (gàn) rather than fresh.

The noodles are added to a soup that can be rich with proteins or, in the case of this $3 bowl, accompanied by little more than blanched greens and sliced spring onions. On top is the distinctive dark slick of zāo cài — mustard greens preserved in a much-loved enhancement to Fujianese fare, the lees of red rice wine. Not bad, I think we all agreed, once we'd managed to divvy up our bowl.

Also shown: an untranslated section of this tiny shop's wall menu, surmounted by the featured ingredient in that Fujianese classic, noodles with peanut sauce.

Shaxian Delicacies
811 49th St. (Eighth-Ninth Aves.), Sunset Park, Brooklyn

Artesanias Pochtlan

(This venue is closed.) This came from that — message seen and understood. Agua de chilacayote (Chee-lah-kah-Yo-tay) is prepared from a squash also known by the English names figleaf gourd, Malabar gourd, and cidra or sidra. And, yes, it tastes like squash, in a full-bodied, sweet, refreshing manner all its own. My cupful was compliments of the proprietor and his family, whose shop features a variety of Mexican clothing, kitchen items, and keepsakes as well as a smaller, selective inventory of hard-to-source produce and other edibles. Many of the foodstuffs, alas, come and go very quickly.

Artesanias Pochtlan
22 Joyce Kilmer Ave. (Welton-Redmond Sts.), New Brunswick, New Jersey
862-290-6168
www.Facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004989198748

New Golden Fung Wong Bakery

(This venue is closed.) The Chinese character for this steamed "cake" (slice, $1) alludes to flour made from glutinous rice. Inevitably, however, such confections also incorporate another flour — often tapioca, sometimes water chestnut — so they're not blobby, like mochi, but can take and retain a better-defined shape. For this cake the flours have been blended with ground black sesame seeds, sugar, and water, then poured into a tray and steamed, again and again, layer by inky layer.

Previously: Most hopia are on the sweet side, in the not-too-sweet manner of Chinese pastries; mung bean paste is a common filling. Generally the dough is fattened with lard, but hopia baboy take the meme to an extreme: in this five-pack (shown below, 10 oz. total, $2.75), the filling marries the flavors of fatty pork and green onion. Other hopia baboy reportedly feature winter melon that's been slow-cooked in lard; I've yet to find these in New York.

New Golden Fung Wong Bakery
41 Mott St. (Pell-Bayard Sts.), Manhattan
212-267-4037