Eating In Translation

Six-word short story, Gravesend, Brooklyn

Mom Grocery Store, under new management.

Taiyo Foods

"Sale" with a smiling A, a hand-drawn sign whose blocky letters resemble the neighboring Japanese character, for "goods." Another hand-drawn sign describes warabimochi as "a bracken-starch dumpling. It's a sweets," but it's also too jiggly for a decent photo of its own.

Taiyo Foods
4508 44th St. (Queens Blvd.-47th Ave.), Sunnyside, Queens
718-392-2233
www.Facebook.com/Taiyo.Foods.Sunnyside

All kosher

Hand-drawn sign outside GSA King Tomato Farm
1140 McDonald Ave. (at 20th Ave.), Mapleton, Brooklyn
718-434-2200
www.Mercato.com/shop/gsa-king-tomato-farm
H/T Deli Grossery

Punjabi Grocery & Deli

A two-dollar go-bag of pakoras; the fan-driven in-house photo gallery (detail); the view from the sidewalk, in 2007.

Punjabi Grocery & Deli
114 East 1st St. (First Ave.-Ave. A), Manhattan
212-533-3356
www.Instagram.com/PunjabiDeliNYC

Stewart's Scottish Market

Dessert first: This shortbread layer cookie was capped with vanilla icing and a candied cherry; the jam between the two cookie layers might well have been cherry, too.

Previously: There's just not much call for haggis anymore, Al Stewart told me a dozen or so years back, at least not 'round here. The owner of this specialty store for Scottish, Irish, and English chow added that he still turns out meat pies on a regular basis; sausages, somewhat less often; haggis, only occasionally. (One such occasion is before Robert Burns's birthday, on January 25.) But even plucked from the freezer, sliced haggis — ground lamb with beef liver and kidney, oatmeal, plus onion and other seasonings, stuffed by Stewart's in a natural casing — fries up nicely for brekkie.

Stewart's Scottish Market (previously Stewart's of Kearny, as shown below)
338 Kearny Ave. (Halstead St.-Garfield Ave.), Kearny, New Jersey
201-991-1436
www.StewartScottishMarket.com
Closed Sunday

D'Vine Taste

Chocolate flatka, cut from a sheet — "like babka, but flat," said the fellow who served me.

D'Vine Taste
150 Seventh Ave. (Garfield Pl.-Carroll St.), Park Slope, Brooklyn
718-369-9548

Archie's Corner

At this jack-of-all-trades corner store, the candies didn't seem to have as much turnover as the cigars, but, hey, 25 cents.

Archie's Corner
562 Elizabeth Ave. (at 6th St.), Elizabeth, New Jersey
908-354-0274

Z Fancy Foodz

Smetannik is a Russian cake with sour cream frosting; many thin layers can raise the ratio of frosting to cake considerably. (This is good.) Some of the larger markets in South Brooklyn feature a half-dozen flavors; this smaller shop offered less variety, but I was more than happy to find hazelnut.

Z Fancy Foodz
1212 Ave. Z (East 12th St.-Homecrest Ave.), Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
347-492-3315

FAL African Market

The refrigerator at the back of this snug Senegalese grocery was filled with sodas, maltas, and plastic bottles like the one shown here. The bottles were unlabeled, and except for the purple of the sorrel, I couldn't quickly identify their contents. Some were pale, others were just a shade darker. To tell these two apart, I brought one of each to the lady of the shop, who was nestled beside the aisle, about halfway in. (There was no counter, and, as I recall, no cash register.)

Both bottles contained ginger juice, she told me. While I returned the paler one to the fridge and the lady gently inverted the other one several times, to mix in the sediment, she added that the only difference was in the color.

Most likely, I imagine, the two bottles were prepared at different sessions. You could call the variation in color a lack of quality control, but when I think of the small-batch, perhaps home-based production process, I find it endearing.

FAL African Market (shown beside a deli that serves "todo tipo de frituras")
1466 Inwood Ave. (Macombs Rd.-West 172nd St.), Mount Eden, Bronx
929-453-9042

Elliniki Agora Fruit & Vegetables

I don't recall ever seeing Long Island fresh sweet "mush melons" for sale. The much more common name for the species, which includes many cultivars, is "muskmelon," owing to the aroma of the mature fruit; "mush," by many accounts, is an old corruption. This particular cultivar, considered in cross-section, you'd probably call a cantaloupe.

Elliniki Agora Fruit & Vegetables
3212 30th Ave. (31st-32nd Sts.), Astoria, Queens
718-728-0751