Fauzia's cart was a fixture near the Bronx courthouses till late last year, when Columbia entreated her to set up beside the construction site of the school's Manhattanville campus. New to the neighborhood, from the rotating menu: a Jamaican-ish grilled lamb platter.
Fauzia's Heavenly Delights
Cart on Broadway near the northwest corner with 131st St., Manhattan
718-930-5711
www.FauziasHeavenlyDelights
Weekday lunch only
The medium reinforces the message: Open for delivery, 5:00-10:00 p.m., handwritten signage on delivery bags. Not just food but cocktails and wine, too, thanks to new (and probably temporary) rules issued by the State Liquor Authority.
Pisticci
125 La Salle St. (Broadway-Claremont Ave.), Manhattan
212-932-3500
www.PisticciNYC.com
Prettier after: leavings of my lunch special. Below, what I was working with: rice and chicken nuggets, in bulk, and a dunking pond of sweet-and-sour sauce, accompanied by a tub of wonton soup and a Kari-Out bag of fried wonton strips.
Peking Garden
3163 Broadway (La Salle St.-Tiemann Pl.), Manhattan
212-865-3600
Breakfasttime lentil sambusa — a fried Ethiopian pastry, in this instance also seasoned with jalapeño, pepper, cilantro, and onion.
Oasia Jimma Juice Bar
3163 Broadway (La Salle St.-Tiemann Pl.), Morningside Heights, Manhattan
646-590-0685
Also at 600 W 139th St. (Broadway-Riverside Dr.), Hamilton Heights
646-918-6729
www.OasisJJB.com
The awning mentions only "Middle Eastern cuisine," but the decor in the dining room speaks to the family history of the owners: out of Jordan, by way of Jerusalem. So does kalaya, a homey tomato-based dish that elsewhere might be spelled with an initial g- or a terminal -at or -et. The humblest versions feature seasoned tomatoes alone, others add beef or chicken; here, in the presence of a little fresh garlic, the tomatoes are cooked with marinated lamb.
Falafel on Broadway
3151 Broadway (Tiemann Pl.-Lasalle St.), Manhattan
212-222-2300
www.FalafelOnBroadwayNYC.com
Often you'll lay eyes a mulberry-littered New York sidewalk before you'll notice the tree itself. (The same is true of Miami date palms.) Birds shun the fallen fruit; if you nibble, your berries should come fresh from the tree, too.
Mulberries
West 133rd St. (Eleventh-Twelfth Aves.), Manhattan
The muscular freight elevator of the 1923 Studebaker Building transported its originally intended cargo only till 1937, when the building was sold to the Borden Co. First as a milk pasteurization and distribution plant, then in service of various warehouse and light manufacturing operations, the structure has been home to many businesses; today it is owned by Columbia University. For obvious reasons, however, the building's original name has stuck.
The Studebaker Building
Surviving signage at 615 West 131st St. (Twelfth Ave.-Broadway), Manhattan
The name of a beer distributorship wrapped around this corner as recently as 2011. When that business moved on to the great redemption center in the sky, the landlord stripped away the old signage, exposing this still-older signage that dates to the neighborhood's meatpacking days. The burly blue-collar aesthetic apparently suited the incoming tenant, 9A — a restaurant-lounge of the sort that enforces elaborate dress-code regulations — which added only modest signs of its own. 9A has since closed.
Contract Packers
Surviving signage at 2331 Twelfth Ave. (at West 133rd St.), Manhattan
The beans were hard to find for all the meat and potatoes.
This tagline is one of several devised for the first brand of prepackaged biscuits in the late 1800s, not long after the merger that created the National Biscuit Company, later called Nabisco. Another, "Lest you forget, we say it yet, Uneeda Biscuit," I know only from printed accounts. "In rain or shine, just as fine," a reference to the product's moisture-resistant wrapping, has survived in at least one well-preserved painted ad.
The signage shown here was brought to light during construction of Columbia University's new Manhattanville campus, just north of 125th St., on the side of the building at dead center of the first photo. The surfaces to either side of the window column seem to contain different texts that may have been repainted several times, with variations. In the right-hand section (click for a closer look), a large-type "biscuit" and an equally dramatic question mark apparently succeeded a smaller "biscuit company."
As with many such signs, we may never be able to read the wording with precision. Is this a surviving example, at least in part, of the catchphrase "Do Uneeda Biscuit?" The question stands.
"[Do Uneeda] Biscuit?"
Signage at 614 West 131st St. (Broadway-Riverside Dr.), Manhattan
(As of 2014, no longer extant)
Thank you!
