A good, if not exactly terroir-oriented, way to gauge the tastes of a place is through its sodas. These will generally provide you with a shorthand barometer of the national sweet tooth, and also a concise sampling of some of the fruits, flavors and spices favored by locals. Looking at soda, in the case of formerly colonized countries, can also be an inroad toward surmising the influence of the colonizer(s) upon those tastes. The most extensive example of this may be Vimto, the king of the colonial sodas, a nominally British beverage that now enjoys far greater popularity in Asia, the Caribbean and especially the Middle East. A similar situation occurs with the lingering specter of Peardrax, a drink which, although now discontinued in its country of origin, continues to enjoy robust popularity in Trinidad & Tobago, where it’s taken on status as a sort of national soda, a status it shares with its autumnal apple partner Cydrax. All this with names that sound like under-the-sink cleaning agents. Caribbean sodas often grow out of a prior traditional of fermented alcoholic and non-alcoholic brews, skewing toward approximations of juices from fruits (or roots) which, if not always native, at least have some entrenched history in the area. Pear and apple ciders, on the other hand, innately seem like cold-weather concoctions, which would explain why the 'Drax favored at Christmas, and enjoys a likely-related popularity as a toasting drink on special occasions. Both draxes were originally products of the now-defunct Whiteway Orchards (a fact still noted on the label), based in the bucolic southwestern English town of Whimple (a pleasant pastoral picture of the former orchard can be found here). As for the taste, despite the long distance from Devonshire, Peardrax definitely remains true to its cidery roots, with a slightly sweet flavor that’s redolent of hard cider stripped of alcohol. I’m not entirely clear, however, why the drink description on the bottle bears French text.
0 Comments
On the Taco Tuesdays of my youth, the menu was always the same: fat flour tortillas, stuffed with black olives, mild cheddar, lettuce, tomato and ground beef, sometimes seasoned with spiced tomato sauce to add a weird Italian-American flourish. As an adult, I’ve mostly abandoned this style in favor of less Americanized preparations, partially a consequence of living with a vegetarian with a highly specific cheese allergy (hint: it’s not lactose). It’s hard, however, not to look back fondly on the old yellow cheese standby, especially as a member of a generation in which the casual gringo taco was perhaps at its prime, dished out at community socials and high school proms (yes, I attended a prom with a “Make Your Own Taco” station).
While it may not exactly qualify as royalty, I’m more than willing to classify the Roast Beef and Mutz Sandwich at John’s Deli as the Dark Prince of Italian sandwiches. Ordering from a Brooklyn deli pretty much assures you’re about to face down a monstrosity of zeppelin proportions, but in addition to its essential heft, this one comes slicked with a jet-black gravy, the secret ingredient of which may very well be motor oil. It’s also piled with so many fried onions that I had to scrape some off, out of fear that my stomach would erupt in grease-fueled flames. John’s is an institution, founded in 1968, although from it’s name, neighborhood and the classic Boardwalk-style mural outside (more on this below) you’d guess it was far older. The title seems to stem from the existence of a second John’s spin-off down in Bath Beach (there’s also another in Staten Island, apparently), although the fact that the original location is under new ownership may have voided these associations. Circa 2016, the place seems to be in good hands, now run by a self-professed “kid from the neighborhood” who made the rounds with the locals while I dug into my sandwich. He also tried to sell me on the day’s special (Pulled Pork), which I’m sure is great, but had absolutely nothing to do with why I’d ventured out here.
I tend to consider the weekend food festivals which populate the outer boroughs with a bit of wariness, hoping for the best while expecting the worst. In worst-case scenarios, you end up with a fiasco like the recent opening night of the Queens Night Market, which approached Woodstock ‘99 levels of unpreparedness, the food concourse transformed into a hopelessly tangled knot of long lines wound through one another. Meanwhile (in another distinct form of Hell On Earth) the distant Porta-a-Potties had such extreme waiting times that beer-swollen men (and women) took to urinating en masse in the dark perimeter of trees that ringed the park. Yet even fiascoes can have an upside, and while I was nearly trampled on several occasions (and had to stoop to peeing in the trees) I did get to try Chimney Cake (aka Kürtőskalács), which was pleasant, if not quite substantial enough to merit a 50 minute wait. I also got to exercise some judgement, and, fleeing this waking nightmare, ferry my friends past the nearby hotspots (Tortilleria Nixtamal, where I’d stopped earlier in the day for some skate tacos and a pork tamal, was overflowing with desperate dinner seekers) and out into the safer reaches of Queens. The result was a nice, tranquil Indonesian meal of Rendang, Ketoprak, Perkedel and Rissoles at Elmhurst’s Upi Jaya.
|
The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
Archives
February 2022
Categories
All
|