She Ate the Hole Thing

One of my first memories of New York was eating a hot cinnamon raisin bagel from H&H. I’d never had one fresh out of the oven before. In fact, until confronted with the whole proccess face to face, I’d never really thought about how they were made. For most of my life, bagels were the round things in the bread isle of the supermarket, or, worse yet, the freezer section.

So, it is not physically possible for me to walk by H&H without going inside. Like today. On my way in I decided to ask which kind had just come out of the oven, but when I saw how full the cinnamon raisin bin was, I went straight for it.

My freshly baked bagel was just as I remembered – springy on the inside and chewy on the outside, not too sweet, and a true five finger feast @ $1.20. The steam inside it made the raisins so plump and flavorful. After two bites, I came to the realization that raisins are fruit. And half way through, I had to remind myself that what I had in my hand was a bagel. It was like when you go see a movie and the lights come on at the end and you have to take a moment to return to reality because the movie was just that good.

 

At H&H, you can’t get your bagel toasted with butter, or spread with cream cheese. You can’t get it sliced open and piled high with lox and lettuce. And you can’t even get a cup of coffee to go with it. All you can get here is bagels – but isn’t that the point? I like that they keep it simple. They know what they do well and don’t waste any effort on anything else. And then they kick you out (there’s no seating).

On a related note, I am all about New York’s eat-on-the-go culture. In most other parts of the world, eating and walking is a ludicrous, unhealthy, and even obscene gesture. Here, it is encouraged. The Greek key design coffee cup is a ubiquitous symbol of our city, and it is a to-go cup. Sandwiches, sushi, even steak, all come shrink-wrapped, pre-packaged, or threaded onto a stick for easy, in-transit hand-to-mouth transfer.

I will never forget the time I was in Santo Domingo looking for a late night snack. The only thing my local friends could find for me was a Taco Bell. The 7-layer burrito I ordered was served with a dinner napkin and flatware, which I ignored. Right there at the counter, I picked it up, peeled away some of the paper, and said “vamonos.” They looked at me like I had just shoved the thing up my nose, and said “don’t you want to sit down?” The idea of eating with your hands, let alone standing up, was unknown to them. To me, it just seemed like the efficient and polite thing to do. Why should they have to wait for me? They talked with wonderment about the event for days.

On the other hand, there is something lost in all our hustle and bustle. In Puerto Rico, I never had a bad cup of coffee because every cup was brewed just for me, and served in a real cup, on a little plate with a little spoon next to it. There were times I had to grit my teeth because it took so long, but in the end, there was always a friend to be made, a story to be exchanged, or a song to hum along to.

But on my first day back in NY, as I observed a mailman half-running down the block with a chicken salad sandwich in his mouth and a package in hand, I sighed and thought, “there’s no place like home!”

H&H Bagels
2239 Broadway
@ 80th Street

Food Crush Rekindled!

When it comes to food, I was a weird kid. As soon as I had teeth, my parents found me knawing on a radish I’d fished out of the vegetable drawer. My favorite sandwich, mustard and raw onion on a baguette, elicited giggles around the Girl Scout fire circle. My bowl of triscuit crackers in milk was met with sideways glances at the breakfast table.

I lived for family road trips and the adventures in vending machine fare that went with them. Things like crab flavored potato chips (I grew up in Maryland) or instant coffee machines that dispensed cups of hot chicken broth fascinated me. We would all be piled back into the car, pulling onto the highway, when someone would sniff me out and ask, disgustedly, “what is that?”

At the motel, under the guise of filling the plastic ice bucket (what would a seven year old need that for?), I would sneak away to the vending machine, to see if they had my favorite thing; the jerky and cheese stick twin pack. The more backcountry the place, the better my chances. I would feast in secret, since nobody from suburban Washington, DC would be caught dead eating meat in tubular form with a side of un-refrigerated cheese. Other kids would get Ho-hos or Doritos. I would wait until they were gone to satisfy my salty vice.

Eventually, I grew out of it, but that’s what beef jerky was to me, until I read this a few weeks ago.

The problem is that in an urban setting, it is not easy to find good jerky. The kind that looks more like leather and less like shoelaces. I mean home made, from actual meat – like the kind I used to see at country gas stations on my way home from college in Upstate NY (though I never built up the courage to fish one out of those big glass jars).

More recently, I’ve had to appease my craving with the mass-produced, plastic-looking scraps in a bag from the local deli, which are more like licorice with a hint of meat.

Then, last night, when I was walking toward the Chinese supermarket on Elizabeth and Grand, this awning caught my eye.

I rushed inside and came face to face with jerky heaven! Malaysia BJ has pork, chicken and beef varieties, for around $17 per pound (one 4×4″ piece is more or less $1).

The spicy beef jerky won my heart. It was not spicy, but it was very flavorful, satisfying, and delicious – the best jerky I’ve ever tasted. It was served warm and juicy in a little wax paper pocket, labeled with a red and yellow sticker (in Chinese and English) to remind you which one you’re eating.

Another favorite was the sliced beef. It had an aromatic char-grilled BBQ flavor like that last piece of forgotten churrasco on the back of the grill that you snag while everyone else is busy swigging beers and has twice the flavor of the other ones! One bite and I was transported to a lazy August afternoon in the park with salsa music and curls of smoke mingling on the breeze.

There are no preservatives, but supposedly they will last up to four days out of the refrigerator…I didn’t get to find out because my five pieces didn’t last more than four minutes. PS- five pieces is not normal for one snack. Don’t get that many. Or do. If you are a jerky crazy fool.

Maylasia Beef Jerky
95 Elizabeth Street
between Grand and Hester

More Cheese, Please

Happy 2008 and welcome friends, snack addicts, finger-lickers, sleep-eaters, and crumb catchers!

I am now into my second month in Brooklyn, and barely remember Soho…

Have you been to East Williamsburg? It is a concrete cornucopia. My favorite vegetable stand has the sour oranges I coveted so much in Puerto Rico. The local bakery has barley rusks like the ones I smuggled home from Athens.

Stepping into the butcher shop down Graham Avenue is like stepping back 50 years. There is no rushing in and out of this place. You come, you chat, you joke, you get teased. Then you gather your meat and go, giddy from the insane deal you’ve just scored ($3.50 for a whole chicken?!).

The local flora is what inspired my New Year’s pizza party. See my Google map to find out where I got everything to make them, including fresh Neapolitan-style pizza dough (1$ per pound= 1$ per pizza), cheap baby bella mushrooms, hand made smoked mozarella ($5), and fresh shrimp (1/2 pound $3.50, enough for 1 pizza) – all within 5 blocks!

I served the pizza on a table covered with brown package paper to avoid dishes or disposables. At the end of the night, just fold up the mess inside the paper and toss it. (Or rip out the greasy bits and recycle, which, er, I, um…) Then you can wake up new year’s morning to a nice, fresh table. Just don’t look at the floors.