On my previous visit to this annual festival, more than a decade ago, I would dearly have loved a cup of sassafras tea, but at the Iroquois Eatery tent it was 86'ed from the menu. "We didn't get out to the woods" this month, said my server.
The menu this year at Iroquois Eatery was considerably larger, sassafras tea included. If I had remembered the heft of an Indian taco — a dense frybread topped with refried beans, ground beef, cheese, lettuce, salsa, and sour cream — I would have ordered a second cup of tea straight off.
Also shown below, from that past afternoon: freshly planked shad cooking beside hot coals, and a sampler of the fish served three ways, pickled (palest), smoked (darkest), and planked. Alas, shad no longer swim up East Coast rivers on their springtime spawning runs in such numbers as they used to. In season, you might still find the filleted fish and their roe at seafood restaurants, annotated with the legend "market price," but planked shad have disappeared as festival food.
At bottom: participants entering the festival grounds, and a view from Inwood Hill Park, across Spuyten Duyvil Creek, of the Henry Hudson Bridge.
Drums Along the Hudson
Inwood Hill Park (enter at 218th St. and Indian Rd.), Inwood, Manhattan
www.DrumsAlongTheHudson.org
(The 2019 festival was held on June 23)