Eating In Translation

Korbro Salad Oil, Korchin Bros., Montrose Smoked Fish

Korbro I've discussed before; Montrose, though reportedly a family-owned business for some 60 years, has left little trace other than this sign. Korchin, whose sign is the most faded, has the most celebrated legacy. The successor business, Marshall Smoked Fish, was acquired by an out-of-state company in 2003; it's unclear how much of its fish, if any, is still smoked in Brooklyn.

Korbro Salad Oil, Korchin Bros., Montrose Smoked Fish
Surviving signage, 71 Montrose Ave. (Lorimer-Leonard Sts.), Willamsburg, Brooklyn

El Popo Mini Market

Kissing cousins: a tray of Mexican candied oranges and a handful of limones rellenos de cocada, or coconut-stuffed limes ($4.99 per pound, or about 40 cents each).

No. 1 Hunan

Shown not for the food (haven't tried it) but only for the easy fit of 1930s gambrel roofs to current commercial tenants.

Related: "When the breadth of religious practice in Queens, a product of the borough's diverse ethnography, meets its pre-existing building stock, you end up with an unexpected architectural topography among houses of worship."

No. 1 Hunan
9028 43rd Ave. (near 91st Pl.), Elmhurst, Queens
718-446-3333

Ma's Food Market

(This venue is closed.) Short-order breakfast, Dongbei style: green onion pancake with egg ($2). Or skip the egg, save a buck. Other breakfast items — including congee, salted douhua, stuffed steamed buns, fried leek dumplings, a pork-filled shaobing — are pretty much all in that same price range.

Ma's Food Market
43-07 Main St. (Cherry-Elder Aves.), Flushing, Queens
718-939-8999

Jahn's

Founded in 1897, the empire of Bronx-born Jahn's (rhymes with Chan's) once numbered more than two dozen ice cream shops, most of them in the greater New York area. Odd-sounding sundaes were a specialty. But the 2007 closure of the Richmond Hill location (shown in the first photo below) left only a single Jahn's, in Jackson Heights (second photo).

To help make ends meet, the owners filled out the diner-style menu with a typically broad bill of fare, but there's still room at the counter, or in a booth, if you just want to grab a cold one. There's no hurrying a vanilla malted, however, when you order it extra-thick ($6.25), like this.

Jahn's
81-04 37th Ave (81st-82nd Sts.), Jackson Heights, Queens
718-651-0700

New food courts planned for Queens

Good Fortune, a supermarket chain that took over several Hong Kong Supermarkets in recent years, is renovating the Flushing and Elmhurst locations and bringing two new food courts to Queens.

An announcement in Chinese, English, and Spanish of "food court space for rent" accompanies the floor plans shown here. The Flushing market remains open; its basement, previously home to a mini-mall, eventually will house 21 stalls and provide seating for 400 customers. The Elmhurst market, now closed, seems destined for a complete makeover; ultimately that location will house 31 stalls and seat 680. Opening dates for the new food courts — and the prospects for a third Hong Kong Supermarket, on Hester St. in Manhattan — are unclear.

New food courts planned for Queens
Flushing: 37-11 Main St. (37th-38th Aves.), in the basement below the market currently branded Super HK
Elmhurst: 82-02 45th Ave. (82nd-83rd Sts.), on the site of a former Hong Kong Supermarket

Vendor's cycle under wraps

A first look offered little clue: No name, no menu, and for the moment no one in sight. Only a roll of paper towels, and the bagged outline of stacked disposable cups, suggested that this cycle belonged to a street vendor and not, say, to an urban forager.

I imagine, in retrospect, that at this midafternoon hour the vendor must have been spending a few moments in conversation inside the neighboring Carniceria Hispanoamericana. It's the busiest meat market in the immediate area, according to another nearby merchant. Early some mornings, he added, restaurant vans pull up out front while Jewish and Greek well as Hispanic retail customers line up on the sidewalk.

Another clientele might be attended by a coffee cart; here the pick-me-up of choice is the oatmeal drink called avena (ah-Vay-nah, small, $2). Especially when served from a dipper, avena often includes little bits of oats at the bottom of the cup. This fellow's avena, dispensed from a spigot — attached to a sizable thermal container that I never have seen uncovered — is hot, pale, milky-smooth, cinnamon-sweet, and flake-free.

Vendor's cycle under wraps
37th Ave. near the southwest corner with 89th St., Jackson Heights, Queens
Most days, morning and afternoon

Chong Qing Xiao Mian

Your first choice is your most important choice: Which noodle? Chong Qing Xiao Mian offers two varieties, the wispy sort also served by a similarly named but unaffiliated Flushing stall and the "peeled" style shown here. True, these have unaccountably smooth edges and regular proportions for noodles that, traditionally, are brusquely hand-sliced directly into boiling water. (As for actuality, the small dining room offers no view of what must be an even smaller kitchen.)

To my taste, when the weather is colder, heft and chewiness tip the balance in favor of these ribbons, whatever their manufacture and whichever of the dozen or so bowls you ultimately summon to table. Shown: cowpea noodles ($9.75), which also feature bok choy and a raft of minced pork; special streaky pork noodles ($11.25).

Chong Qing Xiao Mian
796 Ninth Ave. (52nd-53rd Sts.), Manhattan
212-582-8866
www.ChongQingNoodleNY.com

Bangladeshi discount produce

Jackson Heights, Queens

S&J

(This venue is closed.) The tea serves as a social lubricant, as much for the proprietress who prepares it as for the customers who drink it. I imagine that this sweet, minty Moroccan variety entails some nominal charge when taken on its own; in concert with a plate of hot food from the small serve-yourself station by the window, the tea almost seems to appear of its own accord.

S&J
29-20 Crescent Ave. (29th-30th Aves.), Astoria, Queens
718-879-0080
Open each day from noon till early evening, give or take