At this Caribbean café in East Harlem, curry chicken (above, with callaloo plus rice and beans) is prepared in the Guyanese bunjal style. Cooked down till it clings, this is no "dry curry." For a recent breakfast of sautéed codfish and boiled provisions, or root vegetables (below), the cassava was particularly creamy. A freshly griddled roti (bottom) was wrapped around curry goat — as with many Caribbean goat dishes, beware the occasional bone — with potato and chickpeas. My plate also sported sweet potato and callaloo, which in this rendition was sparing with okra, brightened by spinach.
I enjoyed that roti during research for my first article in The New York Times, "Grab a Bite If You Don't Have to Run," a guide to 26.2 places to eat along the route of the 2008 New York City Marathon. To evoke the diversity of marathon competitors, each entry offered the cuisine of a different country; the "point-two" was for a relative novelty at the time, a food truck. In the dozen years since publication, the interactive map and my photos have been withdrawn from the newspaper's online archive; alas, a dozen or so of the venues have vanished, too.
Sisters Cuisine
47 East 124th St. (Madison-Park Aves.), Manhattan
212-410-3000
www.SistersCuisineHarlem.com