I’m touched by the response to Friday’s post on breast cancer surgery and body image, and grateful to the women who reached out afterwards. Thank you for sharing your stories. If reading mine helped at all, I’m very, very glad.

Now for a lighter topic: let’s talk about food.

Last week’s excursion along Brooklyn’s 8th avenue was a solo stroll & snack affair. I began with a destination in mind, a place on 49th street just off the avenue called “Shaxian Delicacies” (Katie and I had walked by it the week before). The pictures on the sign looked tasty, and I was curious about the “Shaxian Delicacy” phenomenon. Shaxian, as I understand it, is a poor county within Fujian province where a sizeable proportion of the rural population have responded to their bleak economic prospects by opening snack bars in major cities. Local government authorities are encouraging the growth of the snack food industry, no doubt because of the economic and political safety valve it provides, and the “Shaxian Delicacies” logo (see photo) is officially trademarked. I’m not sure whether its use in Sunset Park attests to the operation’s authenticity, or to the owner’s confidence that he’s beyond the long arm of the Shaxian Snack Bureau (yes, there is such a thing). Continue reading →

Friday was the last day of Katie’s spring (hah!) break, and it didn’t take much arm-twisting to persuade her to head back to Sunset Park for one more 8th avenue lunch. This time, we had a specific destination in mind.

Yun Nan Flavour hits the big time: an 8th Avenue location.

Yun Nan Flavour Garden is an old favorite. It used to be called Yun Nan Flavour Snack and occupied a tiny storefront (basically just a kitchen with a narrow counter) around the corner from the commercial avenue. Something about it called out to me right from the start: was it the promise of flavors from an under-represented region? the British spelling? the modesty of its name?  Whatever . . . having spotted it on a dumpling outing with my good friend Shelley, I dragged Eric there on one of our bike excursions around town. (Photos exist of me slurping down cold rice noodles while wearing a helmet and padded cycling shorts, but I will not be posting them.) Continue reading →

It’s been delicious fun, eating 5th avenue, and I’m not done yet.  I am, however, done blogging about it . . . at least for a while. It’s time to move on to other avenues.

For this final post, I checked out the second, expansion location of a Sunset Park institution: Tacos Matamoros. I’d spotted this place on one of my earlier forays, and liked the look of the (non-taco) daily specials posted out front. So I hopped on an R train to 59th St. yet again and walked the couple of blocks to its narrow storefront on 5th between 57th and 58th.

A new roster of daily specials was posted on the door. Mole de olla! Pipián verde o rojo! Bistec encebollado! I felt lucky to be there on a day when all these things were offered. Then I looked at the menu, and saw that they were, in fact, regular items, priced exactly the same as always. But I’d come for the specials, dammit, so that’s what I ordered. Pipián verde, to be precise. Continue reading →

This small grocery with a kitchen and handful of tables in the back was the second stop on my eating tour of 5th Ave. I’d seen it from the B63 bus a couple of weeks ago, on the way back from a combo Century 21/Middle Eastern grocery run to Bay Ridge. The sign out front advertised “productos mexicanos y centro americanos,” but for some reason (like, maybe, the flags of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras flapping in the wind), I suspected the focus was on the latter.

Once I confirmed (thank you, Yelp and Urbanspoon) that the deli grocery served food in the back, Karen and I had a date.

First, though, I had to find the place again. I knew which side of the avenue it was on, and that it was close to 62nd St. (I’d jotted down a note to that effect on my earlier bus ride), but still managed to walk right by on the first pass. It’s that unassuming (plus, I was distracted by the storefront across the street, a botanica called “Curiosidades el Divino Niño” that had me, well, curious).

I spotted Karen on the second pass. Produce was piled out front, baked goods and containers of dried shrimp and pepitas flanked the cash register, and the freezer case held prepared pupusas, tamales and various Central American fruits. I walked by all that – must return! – to the kitchen in the back.

As far as I could tell, there’s no printed menu. The basic offerings are hand-lettered on sheets of paper taped to one side of the kitchen station, while some items (but not all) are pictured (with a number, but no name) on a display that wraps around to the front. Licuados and aguas frescas are listed on another poster on the back wall. For the uninitiated, it’s a little bewildering.

Not to worry. The two women who staff the kitchen couldn’t have been kinder, or more patient with my bad Spanish. I asked a few, halting questions – chuchitos, what are they? like tamales? what are they filled with? – and then ordered a single chuchito and a melon agua fresca. (That was before I saw their list of hot drinks, which included arroz con chocolate and atol de elote.)

So round and plump! This is as cute as lunch gets.

My chuchito was a plump ball of masa, filled with bits and pieces of chicken (watch out for bones) that had been cooked in a savory red sauce, the whole adorable package  topped with crema and powdered white cheese. I’ve had tamales that were more meltingly tender (this one was slightly singed on top, presumably from being reheated), but none that were cuter. (Think that’s silly? Well, guess what: “chuchito” derives from a Guatemalan slang term for “puppy.” So there.)

As I ate, I admired the décor (a white vase of artificial red roses made a strong statement against a lime green background) and the lunch of the guy at the table behind me. He was digging into fried chicken with a golden, bumpy crust, on a plate overflowing with various sides. It looked delicious.  Other menu items of note include pulike (also spelled pulique), a Guatemalan stew, and pacayas envueltas, date palm shoots (actually, the “male inflorescence” of the plant) dipped in egg batter and fried.

The tip jar on the counter read, in Spanish, “Thank you for your tips. May God bless you always.” I left a big one on my $4 tab.

Featured in this post:

Karen Deli Grocery, 6116 5th Ave., Sunset Park, Brooklyn, 11220

Not your ordinary agua fresca

Here’s the challenge I’ve set for myself this week: head out to a different neighborhood each day and find someplace new for lunch for $7.50 or less.  No old favorites (sorry, De Hot Pot, Ba Xuyen and Yun Nan Flavour Garden), no falling back on Chowhound or Cheap Eats recommendations, no vetting places online.  The point is to explore.

And so I took the R to 45th Street and strolled up to 5th Ave (past a Dominican spot, duly noted), where every third or fourth storefront is a Mexican restaurant, bakery or grocery store with a lunch counter tucked away.  El Comal drew me in with its name (which has sentimental associations from a favorite Central American restaurant in Detroit, now sadly closed) but mainly with the bags of chicharrones and multi-hued jars of agua fresca out front.  The menu covered all your standard antojitos (tacos, sopes, tortas and cemitas, etc.).  It’s also a bakery, so you can check out the shell-shaped, sugar-dusted sweet breads and cream-filled horns while you wait.  If you find such things tempting, be forewarned.  (Bakeries are usually dangerous places for me, but I’ve never developed a taste for Mexican pastries, so I was safe here.)

The woman behind the lunch counter won my heart by giving my bad Spanish (“dos tacos de lengua”) the benefit of her doubt.  Si, con cebolla y cilantro.  Para llevar, gracias.

The fare: soft corn tortillas, piled high with cubes of tongue steamed until the meat was practically melted down, and sprinkled with onion and cilantro.  And because I’m indecisive, one container of red sauce and one of green.

The tab: $2.50 per taco.  (Tongue is a premium ingredient: who knew?  More pedestrian options were $2.00 per taco.)

The ambiance: a row of small tables against the wall in back, religious statues on top of the bakery case, no dine-in customers to be seen.  (I had already planned to eat in the park.)

Because lunch was so cheap, I grabbed a melon agua fresca (another $2.50) from the counter out front on my way out.  But wait! What is she doing? Is that melon granita she’s scooping into a plastic glass?  And then ladling the juice over it?  Indeed it was.  It was like a combination agua fresca/granizado and it was icy cold, pulpy and delicious.

El Comal, 4711 5th Avenue, Sunset Park, Brooklyn

Tacos in the park