Eating In Translation

El Cocotero

Lumberjack platter, Venezuelan style: The llanero, or "cowboy," breakfast features the colorful eggy scramble called perico; arepitas, or miniature baked corn patties; shredded beef; black beans with grated white cheese; and nata, a sort of saltier sour cream.

Lighter appetites might look to arepas, Venezuela's familiar baked white-corn patties, prepared in 30 varieties; "la morillo" (first photo below) is fat with stewed goat. At your discretion, each arepa filling can instead be sandwiched between twice-fried green plantain, as a patacón. (The full name, patacón Maracucho, marks them as a specialty of the city of Maracaibo.) The fillings shown here — carne mechada, or stewed shredded flank steak, and asada negro, pot roast in a sweet onion-and-red-wine sauce — can be messy, particularly since the fried plantain is stiff and won't soak up juices. Wisely, the kitchen swaddles its patacones in a light protective wrap. Peel it as you go, or you may find that an overenthusiastic bite will squeeze out the fillings who-knows-where.

Also shown: an hallaca (aye-Yok-ah), a corn tamal stuffed with a chicken-beef-pork stew; and a cachapa asado negro, which marries the pot-roast filling to sweet-corn pancakes.

El Cocotero
228 West 18th St. (Seventh-Eighth Aves.), Manhattan
212-206-8930
Also at 749 Bergen Ave. (Montgomery St.-Fairmount Ave.), Jersey City
201-721-5111
www.ElCocotero.com

Saraswati Cultural Association Diwali

Is there ever a reason to pair hot bhaji (Bah-jee) with cold bread? Not by my lights, or by Vatan's. At its Diwali festival stall, that restaurant buttered soft rolls, or pav (Pow), and toasted them on the tawa alongside a vibrant vegetable curry. As served, pav bhaji can be assembled into a sandwich, but it's customary instead to use the pav as a utensil, wiping up bhaji bit by bit like a very sloppy sloppy joe.

Saraswati Cultural Association Diwali
Exchange Place (vicinity of Montgomery and Greene Sts.), Jersey City
www.SCAofNJ.org
(The 2016 celebration was held on October 16)

Muttley Royale

Croque monsieur meets Jersey Shore: French toast grilled cheese with pork roll ($7).

Muttley Royale
Various locations in downtown Jersey City
www.Facebook.com/Muttley-Royale-1771536633118199

Bucket & Bay Craft Gelato

(This venue is closed.) Good milk is the foundation of good gelato. At Bucket & Bay, it's telling that this ingredient — organic, grass-fed, vat-pasteurized, and non-homogenized — is itself available for tasting and purchase. Shown here, hinting at the milk's high butterfat content, is a slightly softening scoop infused with purple rice and finished with lemon grass ($4.50).

Bucket & Bay Craft Gelato
150 Bay St. (Marin Blvd.-Provost St.), Jersey City
201-503-5588
www.BucketAndBay.com

Milk Sugar Love

Blue enough for you? Newly emerged with the Jersey harvest, this blueberry crumble ice cream (with a two-scoop supporting cast, about $5.75 total) is as vibrant in flavor as in color.

Previously: a seasonal scoop of sour cream rhubarb atop a year-'round favorite, lemon olive oil (two scoops, about $4.50).

Milk Sugar Love
19 McWilliams Pl. (at Hamilton Sq.), Jersey City
201-984-0530
www.MilkSugarLove.com

No Pão

On wheels (from a truck) and on bread ("no pão"), flavors of Portugal: pork cutlet with smoked pork loin ($7); blood sausage pressed with tomatoes, cheese, and sauteed onions ($9). Both take well to the chef's aioli, but a dash of his housemade hot sauce is the clincher.

No Pão
Various locations in Jersey City and Hoboken, New Jersey
201-803-5209
www.Facebook.com/MyNoPao
On this afternoon, at the Rotary Club of Jersey City Food Truck Festival
Grundy Pier, at the foot of Montgomery St. near Exchange Place, Jersey City
www.JerseyCityRotary.org /Stories/ftf2016
(The 2016 festival was held on August 6)

Torico Homemade Ice Cream Parlor

The name Torico is a contraction of the Puerto Rican "todo rico" — "all good," or in this context "all delicious." By most accounts that's true of the old-school ice-cream-parlor standards, but usually I'm drawn instead to the many Latin American and Asian flavors, including mamey, black sesame, avocado, lychee, and dulce de leche. Shown: ube, green tea, and jackfruit ice creams, a scoop of jackfruit, and an odd couple of tamarind sherbet and soursop ice cream. Those last two flavors, individually delicious, didn't suit each other; treat yourself to a free taste or two first!

Torico Homemade Ice Cream Parlor
20 Erie St. (at 1st St.), Jersey City
201-432-9458
www.Facebook.com/Torico-Ice-Cream-Parlor-66756053544

Santacruzan Festival

Eat pork, not too much, leave room for dessert: Wise counsel at many a Filipino restaurant, and especially true at this Catholic springtime celebration. My sampler, bolstered by white rice, included brightly colored pork binagoongan, slow-cooked with shrimp paste; blackish dinuguan, stewed in pig's blood gravy; chunks of pork adobo, simmered in soy sauce, garlic, and vinegar; and slices of pork belly prepared as hamonado, with pineapple juice and sugar. See additional photos from this event, including more pork and several sweets, on the EIT page on Facebook.

Santacruzan Festival
Manila Ave. between 1st and 6th Sts., Jersey City
www.SantacruzanFestival.com
(The 2016 festival was held on May 29)

First a pharmacy, later a liquor store

At least two bygone Jersey City businesses are evidenced in this photo from my archives. The older layer of signage advertises a pharmacy, the newer, a liquor store. I took this photo in 2009 while documenting the passage of a later business at this location, Bombay Cafe, which offered a cornucopia of exotic ice cream flavors — including thandai, chikoo, kesar pista, and gaajar halwa — and perhaps a dozen seats in which to enjoy them, even in inclement weather. The current tenant, of several years' standing, is a retailer of mobile phones.

First a pharmacy, later a liquor store
Surviving signage, perhaps effaced but probably only covered, 771 Newark Ave. (just west of John F. Kennedy Blvd.), Jersey City

Fido's Cafe

(This venue is closed.) "What diners are to New York, Irani hotels are to Mumbai."