a celebration of street-food_brooklyn

7/28/2019 A Celebration of Street-food_Brooklyn

1/12

Economist.com http://www.economist.com/daily/diary/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9532200

1 of 12 7/22/2007 11:10 AM

Brooklyn, New York

A celebration of street-foodJul 20th 2007

From Economist.com

Our diarist swoons at the scent of barbecued meat

Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday

Friday

NO RESTAURANT for me today. Im going to a soccer match in Red Hook, an out-of-the-way neighbourhood right next to my own. RedHook is bordered to the north by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and on its other three sides by waterthe Buttermilk Channel,Gowanus bay and the Gowanus canal.

On the Waterfront was set here, though filmed elsewhere. In those days the docks were bustling. Later Red Hook shared the New Yorkshipping industry's decline. Today it may be the quietest part of Brooklyn: no industry, no traffic (you cant get anywhere from here), asubway just skirting the northern fringes. The architecture juxtaposes the personal and impersonal like nowhere else in the city. Thereare two-up-two-downs in the shadows of block-long warehouses, cobblestone streets with highway views, fishermen casting lines offpiers as container ships rumble by, andmy destinationa humble soccer and baseball pitch surrounded by housing projects.

Semi-professional soccer teams began playing on this pitch in the late 1960s. Im not sure which enterprising soul first sold home-madefood to spectators here, but the city should build a statue to her (and Id bet dollars to doughnuts it was a her, the wife or girlfriend or


2/12


3/12


4/12

Economist com http://www economist com/daily/diary/PrinterFriendly cfm?story id 9532200


5/12


5 of 12 7/22/2007 11:10 AM

Flickr/lexnger

brought a market chicken home for dinner my wife looked at the scrawny yellow thing in horror, but it actually tasted like meat, ratherthan looking like a magazine photo and tasting like nothing.

Paan: this one's for the ladies

The vegetables, all of which taste like they spent a little too long on a steam table, are a bit too soft and similar for my taste. All are

yellow with fenugreek, dotted with whole spices, and, except for some stern-fibred cauliflower, limp as overcooked noodles. Still, even ifthe vegetables are overdone and the chicken somewhat workaday, the price for this feastwhich includes two rounds of fresh naan andtwo sodasis $11. My friend and I had stopped at a midtown bar on the way to the subway; a beer and a whiskey had cost us $16.50.

As we rise to leave, a Three Stooges movie (dubbed in Bengali, of course) replaces the minatory hajji. I fleetingly and selfishly wonder ifit was for our benefit (my friend and I are the only two non-Bengalis in the restaurant), but then I notice other diners cackling as theirattention drifts away from their companions and toward the on-screen antics.

By the time we leave, night has fallen, and the street seems livelier and more bustling. Commerce spills out of stores; men chat and

smoke on stoops and in front of shop windows. At a cart next to the subway entrance we buy two sweetpaan for dessert, provoking shylaughter frompaan-wallah and his friends. Im not sure whats funny: two men asking for sweetpaan (the sweet variety is for womenand children; men tend to order the version with red betel nuts or tobacco), or two Westerners orderingpaan at all.

Watching the ritual preparationthe snipping of the leaves, the precise and delicate ordering of the fillingprovides a final bit of streettheatre. Eating thepaan is a sort of theatre in the mouth. The tastes come in wavesmenthol, honey, fennel, coconut, cloveand Iarrive home with my cheek still bearing the tell-tale bulge, smelling like a spice rack.

Back to top >>

Wednesday


6/12


7/12


8/12

Economist.com http://www.economist.com/daily/diary/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story id=9532200


9/12

p y y y y_

9 of 12 7/22/2007 11:10 AM

Flying fish

We ordered sauted peashoots with garlic, out of guilt, mainly, theyre green and healthy. But they prove the second-most popular dishafter the beef. Pea shoots, usually ignored in the western kitchen, are the leafy stalks of the green-pea plant, and have a grassy, toniccrispness similar to watercress, but with better texture.

Only our final two dishes present our bifurcated group with problems. The first sounded innocuous: six steamed oysters with ginger andscallion. The oysters in question, however, are each about the size of a human hand (not including the shell), and when the waiter placesthem on the table a fish-tank funk rises above the aromatics. They arent off, just considerably more assertive than the specimens Imused to, and it takes a strong resolve to chew and swallow one. I wouldnt do it again. Two of the six remain uneaten, and the waiter

didnt look surprised.

The second dish had an innocuous sounding name: casserole of pork with preserved vegetables. When we ordered it, the waiterabroad-necked older gentlemen with a suave manner, a head of wavy, brilliantined hair, and an aura of physical menaceactuallylaughed. You know thats fat, right? Soft fat. With the skin still attached? He stared at us fixedly.

At this point, we had two options. We could have said, No, we didnt know that; perhaps we should order something else. But then wewould have looked bad, frightened: then hed might ask if we didnt just want some spring rolls and chow mein, and for the right price hecould walk over to that lovely Irish restaurant just down the street with the red sign and golden arches and fetch something that mightbe more to our taste. Instead, I said, Of course we know what it is.

Consequently, when a cast-iron pot holding a mass of earthy cabbage covered in gelatinous chunks of fat and skin arrives at our table, Ihave no one but myself to blame. Unfortunately, thats exactly who my fellow diners also blame. I wish I could say I appreciatesomething about this dish, but I cant. I love bacon, pork belly and pig fat when it offers a nice textural contrastthe crunch of the rindgiving way to yielding fat beneathbut when its braised to uniform flabbiness, it loses its appeal. The only thing I learn here is to givecasseroles on a Chinese menu the widest of berths.

Back to top >>


10/12


11/12



12/1212 of 12 7/22/2007 11:10 AM

Despite (or thanks to) our best efforts, we eat ourselves into a stupor, but only a mild one. As we get up and walk to the front, throughthe window we see a group of Yemeni teenage boyswispy moustaches, gawky posturing, Yankees capson the stoop leading from therestaurant to the street. Theyre huddled close together, their backs to both the restaurant and the street, speaking intently. I cant catchwhat theyre saying, or even what language theyre speaking, until we pass them, and one of them points at a stocky guy about theirage, also presumably Yemeni, across the street. Look at that fat-ass knucklehead, he says in Brooklynese as thick as an Italiangrandpas. Cant hold a f----- job for s---.

a celebration of street-food_brooklyn

Documents