The morning after our BBQ fest at Fette Sau, we headed to Queens for one of our more epic and varied culinary experiences: a food tour through and around the Corona, Jackson Heights, and Elmhurst neighborhoods of Queens, where the hustle, diversity, and--I'll say it--the "international food everywhere!" nature of everything made fall in love instantly. We met up with our guide, Esneider--Colombian, himself--and his friend from Mexico (whose name, I'm hugely embarrassed to say, I didn't catch, and then was too embarrassed to ask again later, a sequence of events which occur somewhat regularly in my life) in front of a Walgreens that used to be the Plaza Theater (still has the marquee and some decorative touches around the front!) and went straight to our first stop: the amazingly colorful Tulcingo (Mexican) bakery...
...the incredible smell from which washed over us as we opened the door. We bought some concha bread (fluffy, lightly sweet, primarily breakfast bread) and champurrado (a hot drink made from chocolate and thickened with corn), then headed around the corner to eat and drink in a lovely little park while Esneider told us about the ethnic history of the place; for a part of the city that wasn't really developed until the 1850s, it has an unbelievable diversity of population! After the Queensboro bridge made the area accessible in 1909, Italians were Corona's first significant immigrant population, followed by a wave of African Americans--including prominent musicians, athletes, and civil rights leaders (Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Malcolm X among others)--in the 1940s through 1960s. With a change in immigration law in the 1960s, Corona became a center for Dominican immigrants, followed by an influx of people from Latin America and all over Asia in the 1990s. Currently, the neighborhood is at least half first-generation immigrants and predominantly Latin American, with people from all over the Spanish-speaking world (including, but not limited to, Dominicans, Colombians, Ecuadorians, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Bolivians, Peruvians, Mexicans, Venezuelans, and Chileans), with the smaller historic Italian and African American communities still intact, and also a growing Asian population (from China, India, Korea, the Philippines, Japan, Tibet, and Thailand, just to name a few). It is a remarkable, colorful, noisy, mishmash of a place, full of hard-working people maintaining and sharing and interweaving their respective cultures, and the absolute epitome of the pre-Trumpian American immigrant dream. And full of people bringing and sharing their crazy-delicious food from, quite literally, around the globe, which is a topic far more preferable than the whitewashing our racist, xenophobic "president" and cronies are want desperately to inflict upon our nation.*
But back to said food. (Ahem.) Our next stop, south from Tulcingo on National Street, felt rather homey, actually: a Mexican taqueria serving remarkable homemade flour tortillas filled with your choice of delicious traditional toppings; ours happened to be barbacoa goat topped with onions, cilantro, and two optional spicy salsas, one red and one green.
Heaven on a plate.
Wasting no time, we moved on to the Beky Bakery, run by a Colombian-Mexican family, the matriarch of which, we were told, runs the kitchen with an iron fist. Whatever she's doing back there, though, it produces magic: we shared a giant cemita (Mexican sandwich on a fluffy sesame bun) filled with ham, Oaxacan cheese, chorizo, avocado, pickled adobo peppers, and an herb new-to-us called papalo, which tastes a little like a strong, bitter cilantro, but was still somehow unlike anything I've tasted before, and quite good.
People, that was a good sandwich.
Post-cemita, we strolled down Roosevelt Avenue past all of these green carts--small stands selling only fresh fruit and vegetables (not frozen, processed in any way, or even chopped), which not only allow access to fresh produce in places that might not necessarily have much of it, but create small-business opportunities in designated areas in the boroughs. (Wish we had those in Zürich.)
Our next stop was the Seba Seba Bakery (Colombian) for three different little bread rolls: one kinda hollow one made with yucca flour ("African influence," said Esneider) and baked with cheese inside; the next, more European, white bread-like (denser, sweeter); and the last, and best, a buñuelo from Colombia (fried, divinely crunchy, and stuffed with cheese). Plus we tried a little fritter made of mashed yucca stuffed with chiles, meat, peas, tomatoes, and garlic. (I think it's called a carimañola, but I can't be sure. Not quick enough on the draw with my note-taking!) Also delicious.
Then, we passed a whole line of these Ecuadoran trucks selling all things meaty and fried, and--sadly, passing them by--went around the corner to another string of Ecuadoran trucks selling an entirely different lineup (stews, soups, rice dishes, seafood) to try out a couple of drinks: a "Quaker"--a passionfruit drink thickened with oats, hence the name--and morocho, a warm hominy drink with cinnamon and allspice, so thick you had to finish it with a spoon. (Could have carried around a jug of that passionfruit stuff all day.)
Next, we swung by a botanica, a religious goods store selling items related to Catholicism, Santa Muerte, Santeria, voodoo, Latin American shamanic practices, and even some African and Afro-American religious traditions, not to mention teas and other herbal remedies. This place sells all manner of fascinating things: statues; rosary beads; icons; amulets; candles; incense; crystals; herbs; and, among many other things, sprays, food additives, oils, soaps, etc., for love/luck/fortune/banishing evil/success/peace/...and a few for creating the opposite effect on one's enemies. The staff knew Esneider and very generously let us look around for a while before moving on to our next stop...
...the Buenos Aires Bakery, a tiny wonderland full of goodies with Italian and French influences, where we sampled afajores, these crumbly little maracon-like sandwich cookies with dulce de leche filling. Utterly delectable. (Speaking of Italian influence, those are cannoli on the bottom shelf, but they're filled with dulce de leche, too.)
Then, over to Jackson Heights and La Gran Uruguaya, a coffee-and-eats place where we tried out three different empanadas (distinctively Uruguayan in that they use white flour, and not corn, in the pastry): one with tuna, one with beef, and one with spinach.
Next, we stopped at Chivito d'Oro, an Uruguayan steakhouse, where we got a steak sandwich topped with bacon, ham, cheese, a fried egg, lettuce, tomato, and mayo, and took it just down the block to La Casa de los Antojitos, where we got some champu, a drink made with pineapple, corn, and lulo juice, drink along with it. (Best steak sandwich of my life. And lulo is some sort of exotic fruit from South America, one that I'd never seen before nor heard of since. Neat, and yummy.)
Passed row of people selling tamales (so many tamales!) on our way to...
...a stellar granny slice with tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, and a little pesto at Louie's Pizzeria & Restaurant in Elmhurst. (An honest-to-God indie pizzeria, in this day and age. Amen.)
Next, Esneider suggested a little experiment: sweets from Khao Nom Thai cafe, which isn't usually a part of his tour, but he was considering adding it, so of course we agreed to try it out for him. (So generous, we two!) I didn't get the desserts' names, but here's what my notes say about them: "banana jelly thing with coconut; coconut cream and green-coconut salty thing on a banana leaf; green tea coconut mochi thing but not frozen, not too sweet." Very chewy, a little gelatinous, and entirely different from American/European desserts, to be sure, but all super tasty.
Then came our grand-finale picnic in the park, including house-made chips we'd picked up earlier in the day at Tortilleria Nixtamal; house-made salsa from El Molino Supermarket (so fascinating--a small grocery store run by three families, one in the front-of-house, with prepackaged foods and household goods; the second in the center section, with fruits/veggies and homemade foods like our salsa; and, in the back, the butcher, who specializes in the meats/cuts/sausages/etc. requested by the neighborhood!); Tibetan momos from Lhasa Liang Fen (which, like Beky Bakery, started out as a street cart, eventually purchased a tiny store front, and now has enough success that they own a sit-down cafe); and, not pictured above, half of a Singaporean dish called Haianese chicken, which is steamed and the juices (plus ginger) used to make the rice which comes on the side. It was served with a small, very rich cup of ginger lemongrass chicken soup also made from the juice, and about Eim Khao Mun Kai, the place that makes this, Esneider says this: "You can have anything you want there, as long as it's steamed chicken and rice." Seriously. That's all they make.
At this point, Esneider offered us a choice: we could get Chinese noodles with crab, and/or a dessert featuring durian, and/or just be finished now, as we'd eaten basically a ton already. In retrospect, we probably should have tried to stuff in the noodles--everything else had been so good!!--but we were both about ready to explode. For some reason, however, Mike really, inexplicably, wanted to try the dessert, and so it was settled: dessert only. (I, on the other hand, remembered my last experience with durian, and wasn't that supportive; durian, a Southeast Asian fruit that smells very powerfully, and lastingly, of something like onions and/or freshly-paved parking lot, tastes surprisingly decent for how lingeringly terrible it smells, but my problem with it was that I kept tasting it the next day. Ugh.)
On our way to the dessert place, we took a quick tour of the local--and massive--Chinese grocery store, oddly named US Supermarket, where they had heaps of veggies I couldn't identify and more live sea creatures than I could have ever imagined in someplace outside of a zoo. Or an ocean.
Plus, every imaginable kind of fish ball for hot pot.
At US Supermarket, they keep their durian right next to the back door so it doesn't smell up the place. Sensible. (Esneider told us that the only recorded deaths caused by durian, despite its fearsome reputation as a food, were from the fruits falling on people. I get that now.)
More elaborate than I was expecting: coconut pudding on top of tapioca, topped with black rice and a little pile of durian at Kulu Desserts. (This place actually had a whole durian-dessert menu. I was told that it's trendy right now.)
And with that, we said goodbye to Esneider and his very quiet, but very pleasant, friend; bid adieu to wonderful, bustling, delicious Queens; and headed back into Manhattan for the one great disappointment of the trip:
Nooooooooooo! Yes, folks, that's FDNY Ladder 8, also known as the Ghostbusters' firehouse. Under scaffolding. New York City destination no. 1, ripped viciously away from me. It was so close I could almost taste it... (I mean, not literally, of course. Don't want you to think I go around licking firehouses.)
This was just down the street, though, so that brought me some solace.
Well, since we were in the neighborhood, and it was actually on my list of things to see (albeit lower than the Ghostbusters sites, I'm ashamed to admit), we strolled through lovely Tribeca to go visit the World Trade Center and 9/11 Memorial.
Tribeca is gorgeous. Could definitely live there.
I am enamored of the fire escapes. All of them.
Passed the wacky "New York by Gehry" building.
One World Trade Center is tall. Very tall.
One of the two one-acre pools where the towers used to stand. I remember very vividly where I was, what I was doing, and how I felt the day those towers came down, and Mike does as well. Thinking about the fear and pain those people and the first responders must have felt--and their friends and families obviously still do feel--is nearly unbearable. The magnitude of that loss of life, and the ripple effect that event has had on my country, fills me with grief and fury, and I don't like dwelling on that. So, we didn't go to the 9/11 museum. We paid our respects at the reflecting pools (where the names of all the victims are inscribed on the walls around them), walked through the memorial park, talked about it and shed a few tears, and moved on.
Looking across the second pool to the somewhat jarring World Trade Center transportation hub (that white wingy thing on the right).
On our way to our next destination, Battery Park, we accidentally wandered past this:
Newly fashionable thanks to one Mr. Lin-Manuel Miranda.
And this:
The fearless girl! Right in front of the Wall Street bull, of course, but that thing was so thronged with people that all you could see of it was its tail over the crowd. (It was a miracle I even got this shot; we had to wait for 10 minutes while a heinous group of obnoxious lady-tourists tried to make some poor little girl strike the same pose right next to the statue. She wasn't into it, and neither were we. [Ughhhhh. Take a freaking photo and move on.])
From Battery Park, this was as close to the green Lady as we got. Maybe next time we'll go out there and climb around, but with only 3 days in the city, there just wasn't time.
Heading back north at sunset. Manhattan is so. gorgeous.
I really like the way that New York City, like London, has has preserved the old while integrating the new. Sure, it doesn't appear that much care was given to scale, but this little old building is still there, nestled in against the ginormous new thing. (I like the juxtaposition.)
Caught a quick glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge in the cab on our way back to our neck of the woods. Meant to cross thing, too, but again, no time.**
We were in no way hungry, but as it was rather early in the evening to be calling it quits, we headed back towards our hotel and found ourselves in the Triple Crown Ale House, a nearby (and surprisingly lovely) Irish pub and grill, where my darling husband--who'd heard the desperation in my voice as I'd spoken longingly of nachos earlier in the trip--ordered us up some cheese sticks (because they're always good) and some good ol' American nachos. Hungry or no, we cleaned our plates.
The next morning was a bit of a later start, seeing as how we'd had to move the previous two mornings to make our tours. And, seeing as how it was Easter Sunday, Mike figured we could find food at Katz's Deli, another place I'd planned to avoid given its tourist-trappy nature, but in all fairness: the place is always full because it's great. We were lucky enough to beat a huge rush that came in just after us, and so Mike got through all the lines in a very timely manner while I held down our table.
Mosaics in the subway: I heart them.
Should have known we'd end up here; Mike talked about this pastrami for weeks before the trip.
Our Katz's feast: a potato and broccoli knish; blueberry cheesecake; a mountainous pastrami sandwich with plenty of mustard; chocolate and vanilla egg creams; and a plate of proper pickles.
The place is a madhouse, but they somehow manage to run a tight ship.
Poor Mike. When he asked with what I wanted to do with the rest of the day--my flight didn't leave until 9:00--I insisted that we go back to the Met. What else is a history major/archaeology buff going to do with a few hours of free time in this city?? Back we went, and found our way to the Asian arts sections. (Followed by American furniture; musical instruments [fascinating!!]; and a whole lot of random stuff in the Robert Lehman collection.)
Unbelievably intricately-decorated bronze ritual vessel, China, 5th or 4th century BC.
There are 432 tiny Buddhas carved into the side of this stele carved in China in the mid-6th century.
Teakwood dome, balconies, and supports from the Vadi Parshvanatha Jain temple in Gujarat, India, late 16th century.
Detail-ish of the temple ceiling. The intricacy here hurts my brain.
A Nepalese Buddhist priest's crown in gilt copper and semiprecious stones, made in the 14th century (!). Crowns like these--albeit probably not quite this old--are still worn during ritual ceremonies by Vajracharya priests, the highest-ranking in Newari Buddhism, which centers around the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal.
These ancient Indonesian halberds (13th century!) look like something out of a fantasy story.
So, take a look at this lovely little table...
...and then read the placard that goes with it, which made me laugh out loud. It's one of the snobbiest and most condescendingly-approving things I've ever read. ("altogether satisfying"! "poetry in wood!" "only John Goddard...could on occasion achieve"! I feel like the person who wrote this must own a monocle and top hat and mutton chops, and, perchance, his own John Goddard piece, which is clearly superior to this one, harrumph, harrumph.)
Piano from Florence, Italy, 1720, and claimed to be "the oldest surviving piano."
This wacky thing is a cornet-tromphe hunting horn from Paris, made around 1862. It was wound this way in order to be easier for the player to tuck under his arm.
Giant case of wacky musical instruments, only a handful of which I was actually able to fit into the frame, sadly.
Yeah, sure, we also saw some Rembrandts and Vermeers and Rubenses and Caravaggios, but this piece really caught my eye: "A Woman with a Dog" by Giacomo Ceruti, 1740s. (Clever title.) I like the informality and familiarity of this portrait; apparently, Ceruti was nicknamed "the little beggar" because his subjects generally came from the lower classes. No lace collars or knee breeches or pomp and general stuffiness here!
I post El Greco's "Saint Jerome as Scholar," from 1610, merely as one final opportunity to indulge in a little Ghostbusters nostalgia: "My uncle thought he was Saint Jerome...". I promise, that's it, I'm finished.***
Some really exquisite marquetry, Dutch, from about 1700. (There are over 200 flowers on this thing!)
I have no idea why, but I have a thing for faience and majolica apothecary jars. Those in the Lehman collection at the Met are, hands down, some of the most beautiful, ornate, and unique I've seen. (This one's from Castelli, Italy, from about 1520.)
In the "Public Parks, Private Gardens" exhibit, we found my sister's favorite Van Gogh, "Irises" from 1890.
And this, while not famous, per se, has a remarkable story: in 1874, Edouard Manet went to visit the Monet family, and painted this scene of them in their garden. Slightly later, Monet painted a picture of Manet painting them. And then Renoir showed up and painted "Madame Monet and her Son" at the same time. Extraordinary.
On our way out (through a section containing Medieval art and other very old things) passed these Celtic copper ornaments from between 100 and 300 AD. Love.
At this point, we had to hustle out of the museum (of which, at this point, we've probably seen maybe only a half to two thirds) and back to the hotel, which I think was near a police station, because in addition to several ridiculously tiny, three-wheeled "parking enforcement" trucks nearby, we passed this delightful sight several times:
A whole fleet of NYPD Smart Cars. Hee.
And with that, I packed up my stuff and hauled my cookies to the airport for my flight back to Zürich. (Mike stayed on for work events, hence the reason for this trip to begin with.) What a glorious, exhausting, action-packed, first real visit to this city. And, I can guarantee, it certainly not my last. I heart you, New York.
Next up: Mike's big surprise birthday trip to Naples and environs.
*Ugh, I know, my upper-class white liberalism and privilege is showing, but I can't help it. This kind of amazing neighborhood is the exact kind of place that's endangered by the whole "build the wall," "kill off immigration," "no asylum," "all brown and/or Muslim people are evil" bent of the current administration, and I hate the cruelty, racism, xenophobia, prejudice, and pure selfishness of it all. We should be celebrating and inviting this sort of diversity and intermingling of cultures because America was founded and built by, and continues to be populated by, immigrants and their offspring, of all colors, nations, backgrounds, heritages, cultures, and that's an awesome thing. End of story. (Oh yeah, and the Native Americans were there first, so isn't Whitey the real immigrant?? Guess the "America First" hate brigade forgot about that part.)
**Really, I don't get why the Brooklyn bridge has such cachet. I think the Queensboro bridge is way prettier! Sadly, I got zero photos of that bridge, but there are lovely photos here and here.
***Well, not quite. Full confession: when we were in Central Park, I may have told a passing horse carriage to wait for the sign, that all prisoners would be released, and that everyone would perish in flame...
