A visit to Guatemala

In August I spent almost a week in Antigua, Guatemala, where I aimed, among other things, to get to know about Guatemalan food. Antigua was an ideal destination in many ways. It's an historic city - one of Unesco's World Heritage Sites - and although you'll see fast food restaurants there, there's a deliberate (and, in fact, mandated) effort to preserve architectural integrity and the essential culture of the city. I really loved exploring the many ruins as well as the markets. ("Antigua" means ancient).

On my first day, I stumbled, somewhat by accident, on the Antigua Cooking School, which I should have already noted, because it was in my guidebook, but I'd missed it in my prerations. Fortunately, however, I was able to register on the spot for a class the next day. Combining that cooking experience with many hours wandering through the local market as well as the local supermarket gave me a good handle - at least an introduction - the Guatemalan food. Obviously, a week is barely enough to get a sense of a place, but at least I got the sense!

The class is taught by Militza De Leon, whose Seattle-based aunt founded the school about three years ago. Each class is four hours long and the fee is US$65 - cash only, please! (I paid $50, but just checked the Web site, and apparently the costs have gone up!) When you sign up, you can choose by the menus available on the days it's offered. I went on a Thursday, when the main dishes being taught were chiles rellenos and a Guatemalan dessert called Mole, which involves cooking sweet plantains in a sauce that includes chocolate, spices and tomatoes. We also made a simple salad, a rice dish and learned how to form and cook tortillas correctly. (Could I replicate this on my own? I'm not sure!) We were given utterly thorough instructions, well-written in English. It was definitely worthwhile. The Web site, www.antiguacookingschool.com, mentions a cooking class in Queretero, Mexico, and I'm definitely tempted to look into it!

I also spent hours in the local market, wandering through its seemingly endless aisles and paths of local produce.



The market was a constant temptation, combining food and dry goods and some surprises: a huge kiosk with bras amidst all the food, and, as in other urban markets that I've seen in Central and South America and, in particular, one in Ghana, it seemed just endless. I'm sure there was an order to it, but it eluded me.

Although I had access to a kitchen at Dos Loros Inn, where I was staying, I would have needed more time to actually tackle some of the dishes I'd learned to make, and I would have loved to try using some of the new ingredients I saw - the variations of peppers and a green called loroco, which I've tasted in pupusas in Salvadoran restaurants here in NYC. I finally had a chance to see loroco (see photo below), and I bought a half-pound of it, thinking I could sneak it back to the US, but thought better of it, and tossed it before boarding the plane. I did take a couple of loroco shoots (visually it resembles tiny scallion bulbs, but the aroma is totally different).
Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of or at Bodegadon, the lone large supermarket in Antigua. It was fascinating to see Guatemalan versions of global products (I was able to get Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi; here, the Coke was cheaper than Pepsi.) I bought a box of frozen pupusas, which I'd never seen before, and saved the box to see if I could find this product in NYC. I'm pretty sure I'd find them in Washington, DC, or California, where the Salvadoran communities are much larger, but I'm going to snoop around in Jamaica, Queens, next time I'm there to see if I can find them.
On that note, I should mention that I had pupusas two times in Guatemala, at a restaurant, where each pupusa was 15 quetzales (about $2.25) and were served with a bland sauce and guacamole, and at a street stand near the market, where they were 6 quetzales and were served with the hot sauces and spicy slaw (curtido) that I'm most used to getting. I think the first pupusa targeted the ignorant gringo consumer; the market pupusas were so much better! (The second picture isn't very good - I later realized that instead of photographing the pupusas and the woman who made them, I mostly took pictures of the little boys hanging around there - her son and his friends.)

Kvetching about Markets

Most foodies talk about restaurants and cafes; most NY food guides focus on eateries, not markets. But Noshnews and Noshwalks - and my book, Nosh New York, puts emphasis on both. If anything, I prefer the markets because I get a close up look at many more ingredients than I can taste in one place... (and I can't tell you how much odd stuff clogs my shelves at home). The pictures shows Ariana Afghan market on Main Street in Flushing. Those dour merchants don't own it anymore, but I think they're photogenic in a kind of ironic way and I love this picture!

Anyway, just a few thoughts : Truly the best food markets are in the boroughs or far from central Manhattan. Yes, of course, Zabar's and Fairway and Whole Foods are great, and, yes, I go to all of them. But when I REALLY want interesting food, I'd rather go to Sunnyside or Elmhurst or Astoria or Flushing or Richmond Hill or Brighton Beach... and Belmont for great bread, cheese and pasta. I even like to go to El Pais on St. Nicholas and 184th Street for certain things, but it's a MESS inside.

Harlem has NO good markets. (Young Spring on West 125th Street just east of Malcolm X Boulevard is OK, and the Sea & Sea My favorite African market closed a few years ago (the best are in the Bronx), although you can find ingredients for African cuisine in the neighborhood. (But I noticed huge jars of Skippy peanut butter in one place, presumably used for the mafe - peanut butter stew).

Forgive me - a few exceptions: International Market on 9th Ave, & 40th St.; Pars Persian market on West 30th just east of 7th Avenue (north side of the street), Kalustyan on Lex between 29th and 30th... and I'm a big fan of West Side Supermarket, but especially enjoy its lower-cost Bronx counterpart known as Garden Gourmet, on Broadway and 234th Street.

Do I sound like I'm kvetching? Maybe it's just that in its vast and rapid gentrification, Harlem is welcoming too many generic places, and I far this will happen in other neighborhoods.

Comments?

The multiple personalities of Sunset Park

This picture shows my very first tour group in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, all the way back in 2000, during my first tour season! I guess I was on to something....

And today I led the Sunset Park tour again, lucky to have the type of idyllic spring weather that sometimes blesses us in May! I had 10 heimische folks, including several members of a family from Montana. (They found me on the Internet.) They ooh'ed and ah'ed at all the exotica we saw on Eighth Avenue, the heart of Chinese Sunset Park. It was busy indeed, but nothing co,pared to the frantic crowds of the Chinatowns of Flushing and Manhattan - much more manageable for folks from out of town. It doesn't seem to have grown so much in the past year. In fact, the most significant change to me was that the old Edward Halvorsen Funeral Home near 53rd Street is now a Chinese funeral home, so the last vestige of the Norwegians of Sunset Park is all but gone. The changeover seems very recent: the canopy had just been covered with Chinese characters, but a plaque from the earlier home is still up. I wonder whether that will stay.

Just before we started, I ran into Hong Kong Supermarket and bought a package of chopsticks that people can keep. Then we bought some noodles at a sidewalk stand - chow fun with pork and beef. It was a tasty and spicy start. The Montanans were practicing holding the chopsticks and an elderly Chinese woman stood by watching us and smiling. We asked her to help, and she obliged. (Ach, no camera today!) It was a lovely moment, though.

As always, we visited the Birlik Market near 59th Street. That whole block of stores (and a restaurant around the corner) is owned by Turks, but I don't know if it's one family or an investment consortium. The building also houses a mosque, which opened in 1980. The folks there have always been friendly and have welcomed us inside - we've been allowed to visit the huge prayer area as well. It's spectacular, with original tiles from Turkey, a plush new carpet and a space that is truly mystical and sacred. Today I noticed that the balcony area, where women sit, had two flat-screen TVs on either end. This same space was once an Irish-Norwegian dance hall, I learned during a previous visit. (I always take my Sunset Park tours to see the mosque.) Sometimes I try to imagine the neighborhoods in their earlier incarnations, and I tried to picture the couples coming here to dance in the 1950s. It's somewhat easier in Sunset Park to have these reveries than in other neighborhoods because the architecture hasn't changed much, even if the retail facades have.

At 48th Street, we made our usual turn-off to see a house whose Guatemalan owner has a installed a wonderful birdhouse that he constantly rebuilds and remodels. It's quite large and is set at eye-level beside the stoop. One year I knocked on the door and he answered and explained that he uses architectural catalogs for inspiration and remodels the house each year. One year it even had its own satellite dish and a miniature birdhouse. This year it looked more like a split-level Levittown house - not satellite dish - but lots of miniature dogs and cats walking around it. (Wait - did Levittown have split-level houses, or did that come later?) I wonder if any birds actually use the birdhouse, or are the common charges too high?

Sunset Park itself is more beautiful than ever. I noticed a lot more gardening within the park, including, now, a small Chinese-inspired garden, with a miniature bridge and pagoda that reminds me of Suzhou, where my daughter was born. The day was crystal-clear, and the bview of the Harbor and Manhattan was spectacular. I still remember being able to see the Twin Towers from this location, and a photo I took for Issue #2 of NoshNews (1999) has an image of the towers in it. We had a picnic of dishes we bought at Nyonya, a Malaysian restaurant on 8th Ave. and 54th St. It's been there for years, and is dependable and reasonable. We'd bought beverages from Podlasie, one of two Polish markets on 8th Ave.

After the picnic, we visited Gran Via Bakery on 5th Ave. near 46th St.. It's noisy and friendly and always crowded. One man helped translate our orders without being asked. Others were curious about who we were. The owner's daughter, who manages it now, remembered me from two or three years ago, when I visited with another group, including Davia Nelson of the Kitchen Sisters. They were celebrating their 25th anniversary at the time and serving free cake on the sidewalk. I got two Gran Via T-shirts which I wear from time to time. You can get a strong shot of espresso for just 75 Cents or a "cortadito" - a small cafe con leche - for 85 cents. I'm temporarily swearing off pastries and other sweets (trying to lose weight slowly for my daughter's Bat Mitzvah in December 2008), but the folks on my tour indulged in flan, bread pudding, guava pastries and other wonderful goodies. I learned that the owner (whose name I plan to get next time) also owns the building the bakery occupies, so tenancy is not a problem. But Gran Via needs more space: It's the type of place where folks should be able to sit down, but I bet if the doubled the space, they'd just have double the customers and be as busy as ever. The daughter told me that the tenants on either side of the bakery (which occupy two different, small buildings) don't want to move because this section of Fifth Avenue is very desirable. At the corner, Pollo Compero (or something like that), a Guatemalan chicken chain, lasted less than a year - they couldn't pay the rent. But Tacos Matamoros, which used to be across the street, has moved into a larger, more attractive space. (But watch out: the woman at Gran Via says that the new space is "jinxed" - no one seems to be able to last there! We'll see.)

I regret that my Sunset Park tour just touches on the Latin American area of Sunset Park, so I'm going to return and explore Fifth Avenue some more - and Fourth and Sixth - and consider creating a Sunset Park tour that will focus just on that area, just as I've split my Astoria and Jackson Heights tours into two sections. I would start up at 60th Street, as I do with the current tour, and include Generoso's Italian bakery (yummy pignoli cookies) and the possibly a visit to the church on 6th Avenue, and we would weave our way through the stores and have a Mexican/Peruvian/Ecuadorian picnic in the park. What fun!

Reflections on overgrowth...

In the past couple of weeks I've led tours in Woodside, Queens; Borough Park and Brighton Beach, Brooklyn; the western Bronx (Morris Heights - West African, Mexican, Dominican); Irish Woodlawn; and a section of Astoria that tourists don't generally get to. My heart was broken in Brighton Beach to see that some of the old bungalows are being knocked down and replaced with hideous apartment buildings that not only ruin the visual context of the area but also erase its history and tradition. The architecture doesn't even try to blend in. Within a few years, I suppose more of the blocks between Neptune Avenue and Brighton Beach Avenue will be similarly transformed. So it goes throughout many neighborhoods like this.

Anyway, foodwise here are a few observations:

Mrs. Stahl's Knishes closed a couple of years ago after failed attempts to revive it, but, alas, the location is now a Subway fast food outlet. Yuch. But, truthfully, I never found the knishes especially good, particularly when they were over microwaved. (Does anyone have information on the original Mrs. Stahl?) But I had really good kebabs next door at Eastern Feast, an Uzbek place. I had thought Eastern Feast was Muslim-owned and served a halal menu, but this time I saw pork listed and the owner said his customers want pork, so he serves pork.
Eastern Feast served great kebabs for years, but I gather the high rentals this neighborhood now commands forced it out. Alas, the next-door replacement for Mrs. Stahl's is a Subway fast-food franchise.

Gourmet Plaza, the market at Brighton Beach Avenue and Coney Island Avenue across the street from the Washington Mutual Bank, has transformed yet again since I was there last summer. They've absorbed a produce market on the corner and now occupy almost all the retail space. It's ramped, has more cash registers, and is a much better shopping experience because a lot more of it is self-serve and you can get in and out faster. (I found Lionni's mozzarella cheese for $3.99/lb. - about half its price most other places.) Interestingly, M&I International on Brighton Beach Ave. by Brighton 2nd Street, remains packed with folks willing to wait on line for their favorites... no self-serve here. I remember over 20 years ago when M&I occupied 1/3 of the space they have no - no upstairs, no sit-down cafe, no outdoor patio. It's wonderful to see how it's grown, and the owner, Sophia Vinokur, has been very kind to me when I've brought groups there. She is a plain-looking, unassuming woman - and brilliant. Her operation also owns the National Night Club one block over.

The owners of Cafe Gleichik on Coney Island Avenue just off Brighton Beach Avenue opened their restaurant within months of arriving in the US, and quickly turned a profit. It's always busy, with really great food. I sometimes wonder at how much Russians can take in, when I see the crowds in the restaurants and markets!

My one M&I story: In the 1980s, I was leading Hungry Pedalers Gourmet Bicycle Tours to Brighton Beach, and one year I'd seen a tea cannister of "Royal Wedding Tea" with images of newlyweds Princess Di and Prince Charles. I'm not a huge tea drinker and didn't buy it, but had second thoughts when I visited the next year. Alas, there was none. I asked the counterwoman if they had it somewhere, and she looked at me and shrugged. Her response: "No vedding, no tea!"

What will happen with Coney Island in the next few years as a new developer has "plans" for condos and hotels? Actually, I'd love to see Bed & Breakfasts in Brighton Beach; not so sure I'd want to stay overnight at Coney Island, though! It would be cool to hop on the Q train, have a great meal (shrimp kebabs and pilaf would be just fine!), stroll on the boardwalk, and then plop down in a cute little room overlooking the ocean and then have breakfast there the next morning. I've been to Brighton Beach early on a Sunday when it's quiet and utterly gorgeous.



Oh yes - Melrose Caterers, the last kosher market on Brighton Beach Avenue, has closed! So it goes with the old Jewish community of Brighton Beach. Of course, there are plenty of synagogues in the area still, but I believe the congregations are aging, and it will be interesting to see what happens in the next few years... Will the beachfront apartments start to attract a new wave of yuppies with kids???

...and speaking of new waves, this last visit was the first time that I can say something good about the Oceana Condominiums that replaced the old Brighton Baths about a decade or so ago. (The baths themselves had been closed for years, and developers had to overcome litigation to build.) For a long time, I felt that the buildings were hostile to the community, gated in and facing away from the avenue. But now the "back yards" of the condominia have opened as public green spaces, and they're attractive and popular. It was refreshing to see people of many generations enjoying the space, and it positively complemented the activity on the avenue. Meanwhile, my favorite building in all of NYC (and I'm NOT prone to exaggerating!) is an Art Deco place next to Oceana, with the most beautiful facade and a gorgeous lobby that someone is clearly taking care of with great love. If it weren't 1:53 AM I'd go to my AIA guide immediately to see if it's there, or, at least, give the address.

Borough Park now has a Starbucks-like (kosher, of course) cafe-restaurant called Spoons on 50th St. & 13th Avenue. Zion Deli, the Yemeni market I love, has moved to 38th St. and 13th Ave. I was leading a custom group on Sunday and couldn't get to the new location, alas. I hope it's bigger - it's one of my favorite places in the neighborhood but has always been crowded, with aisles made for skinny people. (Fortunately, though I'm not skinny, I can negotiate the store with no problem.) The new address is two blocks further away from the Yemeni synagogue on 44th St. and 12th Ave.

BTW, we noticed that the branches of a small tree in front of an apartment building on 48th Street were full of dozens of pacifiers - a "binky tree," as a neighborhood woman told us. She said these were binkies that had been found on the street, and I guess one binky led to another. It was original and colorful. I took a picture and should certainly add it to this blog. (I'm still new to blogging...) The branches had little buds and I suppose the binkies will be hidden by the leaves in another couple of weeks. But I guess this is the Chassidic counterpart to Christmas ornaments.

Speaking of Borough Park (but not of food just now), I took a double-take when I realized that the beautiful Temple Beth-El on 14th Avenue had been demolished by its new owners - a Chassidic group (I don't know what sect) who replaced it with a more modern structure. Actually, this change was brought to my attention by a local guy; I had realized something seemed "wrong" in my orientation as I took folks around. The earlier temple was a classic 1920s structure, and I knew that it had been sold, because Borough Park no longer has a Conservative Jewish community, and even the modern Orthodox shuls have dwindling, aging memberships and are being replaced by Chassidic communities. But this was somewhat shocking - that an entire particular Jewish heritage was erase. Ironically, the tiny Borough Park Progressive congregation on 46th Street manages to hold on somehow; the average member's age is something like 75, but I gather survival has to do with merging with a similar congregation in Flatbush, and they chose to come to Borough Park.

Gotta go...

Odds & ends...

Manna's, the soul food buffet place with three long-time outlets in Harlem and one in Brooklyn, has just opened another on 125th Street between Lenox Ave. (Malcolm X Blvd.) and Fifth Ave. Is it a coincidence that it's across the street from the office building where Bill Clinton sometimes hangs out? I love their collards cooked with turkey. Interestingly, Manna's was founded by a Korean family - the Parks. I don't know if it started as a produce market or was always a salad bar. Evelyn Park (who I met once - she also owns Pier 2112, a restaurant on Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. just north of 125th St.) is very smart and has hired wonderful cooks for Manna's' branches.

I made reference to my favorite African restaurant in an earlier post but didn't name it. It's Sokobolie on Frederick Douglass Blvd. - west side of the street - just north of 135th St. If you didn't already know about it, you'd probably just walk by. It's the only self-service African restaurant I know, and its stews are amazing. Just GO there and let me know what you think! They often also have home made ginger beer, guaranteed to clear sinuses, even if they're not stuffed! The food is priced by weight, which makes a lot of sense. The people there are great.



In my own neighborhood of Washington Heights, a new Argentinian parrilla, Don Ricardo, has opened on Broadway and 190th Street. I wonder what this area will look like in five years - the owner's wife has her own great place, a sit-down bakery called Dona Carmen, where she also now has a liquor license. It's a half-block north of Don Ricardo and across the street from a former gas station that has closed. Rumor has it that condos will be built there.

Belmont, Bronx - Little Italy - is becoming ever more crowded as even more cafes and restaurants open in the compact stretches of 187th Street and Arthur Ave. Best time to come is during the week, when the tourists aren't there. It's still great for shopping. I used to avoid the Modern Foods supermarket on Arthur Ave. because, well, it looked too much like a supermarket. But it has a lot of the Italian imports you'll find in the Arthur Ave. retail market (indoor stalls dating to the LaGuardia era) but often for much less. For instance, liter-sized bottles of Manhattan Special, the fabulous espresso soda from Brooklyn (the name is for Manhattan Avenue in Williamsburg, where the Passaro family started the company about 100 years ago, I think) are $2.49 - a tiny 10 oz. bottle in the Retail market is $1.50.

Quinoa - selling for high prices in health food stores - is just $1.59 in El Pais, a supermarket on St. Nicholas Ave. at 183rd Street. I've become a recent quinoa convert and will be making a quinoa dish for Passover tomorrow night after making sure that quinoa (which appears to be a seed related to a type of spinach plant) is kosher for Passover. I also saw quinoa for sale last week at Sunflower Market, a Persian-Jewish market on Queens Boulevard in Rego Park!

More to come soon!