Food shocks…

This weekend the streets of New York yielded up three food surprises, all of them good:

On Sunday waltzing_tree and I took a quick jaunt to the Metropolitan Museum where I mused on the utter alieness of ancient Egyptian culture and saw an ink drawing of a god on a wood panel the lines of which, because of their casual freshness, leapt across the intervening three thousand years. Afterward, we walked down Madison in the deepening twilight toward the lower east side, increasingly hungry. It was Madison, Sunday evening, the part of town and week where the only things open were the a smattering of Starbucks. Suddenly off to our right on a side street appeared an odd vision: the Just Pickles stand on 28th. Under the cheery light we selected a hot and a half sour from the wooden barrels on the street and marched off. The pickles were fantastic, fresh and incredible eaten in combination. especially since the hot one was really hot. It made waltzing_tree laugh with delight.

On Monday we hiked over to Eastern parkway, for the West Indian Day Parade there to meet up with badfaggot somehow in the midst of two million people upon arrival I insisted we buy something that has been showing up on certain street corners as a snack lately: a whole hacked up mango, dressed with lemon juice and hot sauce. I’ve had them on a stick, but this version was in a plastic bag: you picked on out, and then the juice and greenish chili sauce were poured in and the whole sealed and tossed a bit. Rich, ripe slippery, cooling, biting, tart, and explosively wet. We set about finding badfaggot, and after some mis-communication and claustrophobia we managed to hook up. The parade route is lined with food stands, commercial and non, and one caught our eye: it advertised “Bake and Shark” we were mystified but ordered one. It turned out to be a round, deep friend biscuit like a baingiet or a donut, split in half and filled with chunks of shark steak that had been breaded and lightly fried. Ours came with ketchup and hot sauce. After two bites badfaggot was mumbling “forbidden shark donut” in ecstacy. A couple more bites and we all went back for seconds much to the amusement of the women running the stand.

0 Comments +

  1. Dangit! I just ate and now my stomach is yelping again!

    Put me in mind of wanting something really vinegary-y and really spicy. I should hit a Vietnamese place soon, I guess.

  2. Dangit! I just ate and now my stomach is yelping again!

    Put me in mind of wanting something really vinegary-y and really spicy. I should hit a Vietnamese place soon, I guess.

  3. is there anything better than a kosher dill out of the barrel on a hot day? probably, but it’s still really really good.

    you don’t see pickle barrels in the SF area.

    I remember when I was a kid in Jersey and I would go to the A&P with my dad and he would buy me a pickle out of the barrel to keep me quiet during the horror of grocery shopping. he would always end up finishing it because they were huge. there’s no reason you should find any of this the slightest bit interesting except maybe imagining me at five years old fellating a giant dill pickle at the A&P. in Jersey.

  4. is there anything better than a kosher dill out of the barrel on a hot day? probably, but it’s still really really good.

    you don’t see pickle barrels in the SF area.

    I remember when I was a kid in Jersey and I would go to the A&P with my dad and he would buy me a pickle out of the barrel to keep me quiet during the horror of grocery shopping. he would always end up finishing it because they were huge. there’s no reason you should find any of this the slightest bit interesting except maybe imagining me at five years old fellating a giant dill pickle at the A&P. in Jersey.

  5. Mango and hot sauce is waaaaay cool, but I’m not sure how new it is. It’s been a Roosevelt Ave staple for centuries, especially the section in Corona where the Colombian and Dominican communities overlap.

    As for the shark donut, didja find out from which island the vendors come? That’s one of those things that people on one island will eat and others on the next will avoid.

  6. Mango and hot sauce is waaaaay cool, but I’m not sure how new it is. It’s been a Roosevelt Ave staple for centuries, especially the section in Corona where the Colombian and Dominican communities overlap.

    As for the shark donut, didja find out from which island the vendors come? That’s one of those things that people on one island will eat and others on the next will avoid.

  7. = 1,000 words

    Doesn’t your cell phone have a camera?

    No forbidden shark donut for Thor. 🙁 I was at home eating See’s chocolates brought back from CA. I might have shared them. Doesn’t your phone make outgoing calls?

  8. = 1,000 words

    Doesn’t your cell phone have a camera?

    No forbidden shark donut for Thor. 🙁 I was at home eating See’s chocolates brought back from CA. I might have shared them. Doesn’t your phone make outgoing calls?

  9. Re: = 1,000 words

    We all assumed – fools that we are -that you would be staying on the west coast as long as possible and thus wouldn’t be back on Monday afternoon.

    Mea Maxima Culpa!

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