I’m pretty clumsy, so I’m really not a fan of fine china, crystal glassware, or fancy silverware. I’m also half-Greek: when we’re really happy about something, we smash plates and glasses on the floor.

big, buttery, and beautifully bloated... I mean the tamale, not me

So if you pull my food out of a Tupperware and stick it on a paper plate, I’m pretty stoked. If you serve it on a stick, that’s perfectly cool, especially if the stick has some deep-fried butter on it. And if you serve me meat out of a garbage bag… I guess that’s cool too, as long as the meat is served with tasty refried beans.

Heh, you think I’m making this up? No way: I ate grilled steak from a garbage bag. With tasty refried beans. And fresh tortillas. And some lard and sour cream and cheese.

The Central American Parade and Festival in Crotona Park was a fun scene: several hundred Garifuna women (the Garifuna are descendants of African slaves who shipwrecked in St. Vincent in 1675; most Garifuna migrated to the Honduran coast a century or two later) in beautiful blue and white dresses; a few friendly gangs of Garifuna dancers; a Guatemalan marching band, complete with silly white tassels on their hats; and plenty of happy, mellow, non-violent Central Americans, flanked by far more cops than were necessary. (Unfortunately, the Caribbean Day Parade in Crown Heights turned into a bloodbath during Labor Day weekend, and the NYPD was being slightly paranoid… and that’s probably better than being not paranoid enough. Thank you, NYPD!)

outside of a tamale, a dog is a man's best friend; inside a tamale, there are sometimes bones and flecks of rice

At the end of the parade route, about a dozen vendors had set up tables, most of which were adorned with Honduran flags and handwritten signs made with paper plates. It was beautifully non-professional, homemade street-festival food at its finest.

We started with Honduran tamales (beef, pork, or chicken, $3 each), which were much larger and lighter than their Mexican counterparts. Often, tamales are packed incredibly tightly; the Honduran/Garifuna versions were large and loose, with a chaotic mix of meat, bone, and vegetable wedged inside the cornmeal. The tamales had a beautifully buttery finish, and the flavor of the grilled meat was stellar. I’ll never object to tamales in any form, but these were as good as any you’ll find.

also big and bloated... I mean the boiled corn, not the dude holding it

As a second appetizer, one of my companions snagged some boiled corn on the cob ($3). And that sounds pretty boring, except that the corn was white hominy, featuring much larger, coarser kernels than a standard ear of corn. I love the stuff in posole (Mexican stew) or alongside a nice Peruvian ceviche, but it’s a little bit bland by itself; we shoulda added lime, chile, and/or salt, as recommended by the vendor. Oops, our bad.

For our main courses, we ordered baleadas ($4 each), the national dish of Honduras. Nearly every vendor offered baleadas, but I was drawn to a tent with two grills: on one, a man was grilling large chunks of cow. In front of the other, an elderly woman was hand-pressing balls of dough into flat pancakes, and then grilling them. Awesome.

best thing I've ever eaten from a garbage bag

I asked for a carne asada (grilled cow) baleada, and was transfixed by the woman making fresh the fresh flour tortillas—she would pull balls of dough from a lard-smeared bowl, press them into flat pancakes, throw them on the grill, pull them off with her bare hands and flip them over to finish cooking them. She would then pass the tortilla over to a younger woman, who would slather the baleada with refried beans, meat, sour cream, and something resembling parmesan cheese.

In my excitement over the freshly grilled tortilla and meat, I failed to notice where the grilled meat was stored after it came off the grill. As the three of us munched our baleadas, my friend wiped some of the creamy beans off of his face and said, “Damn, that meat is awfully good for something that came out of a trash bag.”

Trash bag meat? Sure, why not? It tasted amazing, and I was one happy half-Greek. And I think the vendors were probably pretty happy that they gave me a paper plate and served me from a trash bag… otherwise, I might have smashed something on the sidewalk in a fit of baleada-induced joy.

looks kinda smashed inside, huh?

Central American Day Parade and Festival
Crotona Park, Bronx
Subway: 174th Street (2, 5 trains)

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you know, fried dead pig really doesn't look anywhere near as good as it tastes

You really only need to know two things about Le Soleil Restaurant in the gentrified neighborhood formerly known as Hell’s Kitchen: 1) Wyclef Jean is supposedly a regular customer, and 2) they specialize in fried pork. Fried pork and Wyclef? What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing, really, unless you count the (thoroughly non-Wyclefian) music—we heard the same elevator-music cover of Stevie Wonder’s I Just Called to Say I Love You three times during the course of our meal. Totally excruciating. But the food? Not excruciating.

Le Soleil’s menu is interesting: each day of the week features a different menu, consisting of roughly a dozen items. I think that’s pretty cool—the wise chefs of Le Soleil clearly have some range. But griot (loose translation: “small fried pork”) is always on the menu, every day of the week. I think that means that they want us to eat fried pork.

sometimes, you just gotta have some fried dead plantains with your fried dead pig

So we ate fried pork. For a mere $10, we stuffed our faces with fried pork, fried plantains (your choice of sweet or green), rice and kidney beans, and a small salad. (Amusingly, the waitress plunked two bottles of Hidden Valley Ranch brand dressing on the table. Hidden Valley was in Haiti? It didn’t look like Haiti on the commercials… WTF?) And the fried pork was absolutely amazing—appropriately dry, fatty, and tender, all at the same time. The griot was served with a light dipping sauce that seemed to be sweetened with tomato paste—but the pork itself was so good, that we pretty much ignored the dipping sauce.

For our other entrée, we ordered shrimp ($11, also served with a mountain of fried plantains, rice and beans, and salad), which was recommended by the waitress after we discovered that they were out of okra (waaaaaaaa!). The shrimp was swimming in a light brine of tomatoes and onions, not dissimilar to the dipping sauce accompanying the griot. It was a reasonably appealing dish, undermined only by a mild iodine undertaste… and the fact that shrimp can never really taste as awesome as fried pig.

shrimp is great when served with a side of fried dead pig

Le Soleil’s bizarre hot sauce deserves a special mention. At first, I thought that the little bowl on the table contained a fairly standard mix of onions and hot peppers in a vinegary brine. Nope—there were bits of cabbage in there. And after searing my fried pork with a few scoops of the stuff, I realized that there were also bits of corn and green beans in the hot sauce. It woulda been a delicious, feisty condiment without the vegetables… but with the vegetables, the stuff was delicious, feisty, and downright bizarre. I liked it.

So yeah, I’m a fan of anyplace where you can stuff your face with fried pork, fried plantains, and veggie-laced hot sauce for $10. That’s awesome, especially for Midtown Manhattan. Now if they could just do something about the music, Hell’s Kitchen would be a better place. Any chance we could talk Wyclef into a private show on our next visit?

who knew that peas, green beans, cabbage, and corn could make your mouth burn?

Le Soleil Restaurant
877 10th Avenue, Manhattan
Subway: 59th Street-Columbus Circle (1, 2 trains)

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eff you, pigeon

I’m not usually a hateful guy, but I pretty much hate pigeons. When I lived in Chicago sometime last century, I spent an entire summer getting woken up every morning by a nest of pigeons on my tiny windowsill. That’s OK and everything, but the fatass pigeons had a massive nest that seemed to be built entirely of pigeon shit, and that’s gross. By the end of the summer, I was convinced that pigeons were at least as disgusting as flying cockroaches.

Years later, when my then-girlfriend was disturbingly ill from hemorrhagic dengue fever in Brazil, I walked out of the hospital… and a pigeon dropped a huge, epic bird deuce all over my neck and shoulders. I was already in a bad mood, and that flying cockroach pigeon really chapped my hide.

But now, I’ve gotten my revenge. I ate one of the bastards, stuffed with a delicious Egyptian barley pilaf. Take that, you flying cockroach pigeon bastards!

pre-revenge roughage

When we first opened the menus at El Karnak, an Egyptian restaurant in Astoria, I was pretty disappointed: the food appeared to be generically Middle Eastern, with a standard array of kabobs, falafel, and appetizers. Not interesting at all. Luckily, there was a single, dog-eared sheet of paper wedged into the menu, and it had about ten lines of Arabic on it. After asking the friendly servers for a translation, I realized that we’d hit the Egyptian food jackpot: they had stuffed cabbage, stuffed intestines, stuffed grape leaves, koshari, couscous, and stuffed pigeon. Revenge would be mine at last!

And I got some really tasty Egyptian food with my revenge, and that’s pretty cool, too.

revenge always tastes better with a large, accidental side of couscous

After some endearing miscommunications, we accidentally ended up with a pair of appetizers: a fattoush salad ($7) and a monstrous bowl of Moroccan couscous ($10). We only intended to order the salad, but we weren’t about to whine, since both dishes turned out to be absolutely phenomenal. In the spirit of El Karnak’s Palestinian neighbors at Duzan, the fattoush salad was a ridiculously fresh mix of cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and toasted pita bread, tossed with lemon, olive oil, and parsley. Simple, but excellent.

The Moroccan couscous, despite being of thoroughly non-Egyptian origin, was also outstanding. The dish featured chickpeas, insanely tender lamb, extra bits of thoroughly awesome lamb fat, roasted carrots and yams and onions, and some bizarrely delicious pieces of roasted cabbage, all on a mountain of perfectly cooked couscous. For a restaurant run by non-Moroccans, that Moroccan food was pretty rad… and a hell of a deal for $10.

not as meaty as revenge, but cheap and tasty enough

Out of obligation, we also ordered a mountain of koshari (sometimes spelled koshary, kushari, or kosheri), which is arguably Egypt’s national dish. As much as anything, koshari is a form of fast food in Cairo, seemingly found on every street corner. It’s a hearty, simple, cheap dish, made from macaroni, rice, spaghetti, lentils, chickpeas, tomato sauce, fried onions, and a side of hot sauce. I’m not sure that koshari can ever be all that amazing, but it’s usually pretty good. And blissfully cheap.

The real highlight was biting the hell out of that frickin’ flying cockroach pigeon bastard, though. He tasted like chicken. Dark meat, if we’re being specific. And he was nicely garnished. I guess he wasn’t all that meaty, but the meat that was there was damned satisfying, thanks in large part to the barley pilaf—seasoned with a hint of cardamom—stuffed inside the pigeon’s body cavity.

Now that dirty bastard is in my belly. Thank you, El Karnak, for making my revenge possible.

oh crap... you mean that was a penguin, not a pigeon?!?!?

El Karnak Luxor
24-42 Steinway Ave., Astoria, Queens
Subway: Astoria Blvd. (N, Q trains)

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In my food-obsessed little head, Grenadian oildown is absolutely legendary. The dish is made from breadfruit, meat, and vegetables, simmered in coconut milk until the liquid evaporates and nothing remains besides a coating of coconut oil on the meat and vegetables. Sounds insanely delicious, right? Maybe even delicious enough to fill me with joy and make me cry like a little girl.

never trust a smiling punch can

A year or two ago, a Grenadian friend told me about a bakery called Pop’s that serves oildown on the weekends. Supposedly, the place was located at the corner of Montgomery and Utica in Brooklyn. Trouble is, I googled every possible permutation of “Pop’s” and “Grenadian food,” and came up completely empty. A street-level look at Google maps reveals no Grenadian restaurants anywhere near the corner of Montgomery and Utica. Pop’s was a ghost.

So a few months ago, I decided to just show up on the corner of Montgomery and Utica. Yup, there was indeed a Grenadian bakery there, called Pop Master Delight. Google barely knows that it ever existed, but it was there a few months ago, offering oildown on the weekends. I vowed to return on a weekend, so that I could finally taste the holy grail oildown.

And last weekend, I returned, but Pop’s was closed. The neighbors said they hadn’t seen any signs of Grenadian food in a few weeks. RIP, Pop Master Delight. I really wanted some oildown, but failed. It made me want to cry like a little girl.

Fried stuff! My pain is eased already.

To ease my pain, I decided that I should eat large quantities of fried food and coconut oil from another island nation. Luckily, there was a Bahamian festival going on at The Frying Pan, a bar on a boat docked near Chelsea Piers. And they had fried fish. And something called Goombay Punch.  And they also had the national dish of The Bahamas, cracked conch (pronounced “cracked conk”), which sounds like an new variation on an illicit drug, or maybe an unpleasant injury. (Ow! I cracked my conk!) I have no idea why “conch” is pronounced “conk,” but at least cracked conch tastes better than it sounds.

For $15, the friendly Bahamians fed me a giant combo plate of Bahamian standards: cracked conch, fried grouper, rice and peas, more rice, and some corn. For an extra $2, I picked up a can of Goombay Punch, just because I liked the name.

fried grouper on the left, cracked conch on the right

Conch, in case you’ve never tried it, refers to a number of species of high-spired snails… whatever the hell “high-spired” means. Cracked conch is batter-dipped, deep-fried conch. I can see how it might be awesome if you’re into that sort of thing, but it just reminded me of a rubbery, deep-fried calamari steak. Not bad, but not really my thing. The fried grouper, on the other hand, was ridiculously good, thanks largely to the bits of hot pepper in the wonderfully salty batter.

The rice and peas—arguably the other national dish of The Bahamas—were also phenomenal. The dish consists of rice, pigeon peas (small, roundish black beans), and bits of pork, cooked in coconut milk until the liquid evaporates. Ridiculously tasty stuff… and perhaps not too dissimilar to the mythical Grenadian oildown that made me cry like a little girl earlier in the day.

The Goombay Punch? Not so amazing. I figured that a Caribbean punch would contain lots of fruit. Like, you know, tropical fruits. Nope: Goombay Punch is just water, sugar, yellow food coloring, and chemicals. Delicious!

But the name is awesome, and the dude on the can is pretty cute. And hey, I ate cracked conk and Goombay punch! And that’s awfully fun to say, even if it’s only somewhat inspiring to eat.

mmm... tropical sodium benzoate!

Bahamas Culture Day, held every September
Frying Pan at Pier 66
26th Street & 12th Avenue, Manhattan
Subway: 23rd Street (A, C, E trains) or Penn Station (1, 2, 3, A, C, E, PATH, LIRR, etc.)

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For most residents of the other four New York boroughs, Staten Island might as well be the moon or Mars or the Midwest, whichever you think is farther. I invited pretty much everybody I know in NYC to join me for Sri Lankan food in Staten Island. All but one of them just laughed in my face.

Why the long face? (I'm talking to the menu, not the woman.)

I think my Manhattanite friends were being a little bit unreasonable: it’s not all that hard to get to Lakruwana, one of Staten Island’s many Sri Lankan restaurants. I just had to walk to the subway station on a steamy afternoon, spend 30 minutes on the subway, walk a block or two from Bowling Green to the ferry terminal, stand in a big smelly mob of people in front of the ferry gates, ride the ferry for 25 minutes, take the Long Island Railroad a couple of more stops, and then walk another block or two. The whole thing only took about an hour and a half. But there was beer on the Staten Island ferry, which makes it all worthwhile.

And then we had pretty damned good food at Lakruwana, which made it even more worthwhile.

looks like that tasty fishy springroll is happy to see you

Lakruwana might deserve a prize for being the most interestingly decorated restaurant I’ve visited in NYC thus far. Nearly every inch of the place is covered with artwork, photos, carvings, and tapestries. Even the bathroom is covered in wise, pithy Sri Lankan proverbs (“associate not with mean men”, “there is no fire like lust”) and clay masks. (One of the clay masks was clearly trying to sneak a peek at my willy while I peed. Um, creepy.) The menu is taped to the inside of a two-foot-long wooden carving of an elongated face. The dining room was random, interesting, tasteful, and comfortable, all at once… and that’s a compliment, especially in the world of inexpensive international food.

The food was pretty damned tasty, too. We started with an appetizer sampler ($6.95), which included an artfully plated array of fried goodies: a fish cutlet, a vegetable cutlet, and masala wade (fritter made from crushed lentils, onions, and green chiles). My personal favorite was the Lakruwana spring roll, a deliciously mushy blend of crumb-fried fish and mashed potatoes, rolled in a thin roti shell and deep-fried with a blend of what the menu called “exotic Sri Lankan spices.” Great stuff.

mmm, carbfest

For her entrée, my (non-longfaced) companion ordered godamba roti ($11.95), a carbfest that included a light, puffy rendition of roti stuffed with onions and spices. It was accompanied by several flatter, non-stuffed, roti-like pancakes, just in case there weren’t enough carbs on the plate. On the side, she received an absolutely gorgeous bowl of curry vegetables, which included chickpeas, corn, onions, sweet potato, peas, potatoes, and one of the tastiest yellow curry sauces in New York.

who doesn't love pyramid-shaped food?

But I won the prize with my kottu roti ($12.95), an epic pyramid of sauteed beef, carrots, cabbage, egg, onions, scallions, and ribbons of roti, accompanied by a side of the most ridiculously tasty brown beef curries I’ve ever tasted. The contents of the pyramid reminded me of an unusually flavorful rendition of pad thai, but with a little bit more spice, a lot more beef and vegetables, and shredded bits of roti instead of noodles. I asked for extra spice in the beef curry sauce, and the good people at Lakruwana didn’t hold back—and I loved them for it.

There was only one unnerving thing about Lakruwana: the restaurant was almost completely empty on a Friday night. We lounged around for nearly two hours, and only saw one other couple in the restaurant. Maybe all of Staten Island leaves town on Fridays in the summer. Or maybe Staten Islanders save their Sri Lankan food binges for Sundays, when Lakruwana serves a brunch buffet.

Or maybe people just don’t realize how great Sri Lankan food is. It was worth every minute of the trip to Staten Island, no matter how smelly the ferry-riding mobs may be.

Lakruwana Restaurant
668 Bay Street, Staten Island
Subway: Stapleton (Staten Island Railroad)

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