Despite the name, Turkish Taffy wasn’t always directly interactive, since it was originally stored behind Woolworth’s store counters in giant sheets. The helpful attendant would help you size out the piece you wanted, then would shatter it with a ball peen hammer, packaging up the resultant shards. The candy also isn’t Turkish, invented in the United States by the son of a Sephardic immigrant from the country. Albert Bonomo emigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and took up a trade as a candy maker in Coney Island, a business into which his son Victor followed him, developing this candy in the 1940s after a string of moderate successes ripping off more popular brands. Known as a ‘soft' or 'short nougat,’ similar to Italian torrone, it results from a mold-set mixture of egg whites and corn syrup. Victor Bonomo died in 1999 at the age of 100, but his company lives on, solely dedicated to the production of taffy bars and smaller ‘taffy nibbles.’ Also purchased on this same trip: a Zagnut, the odd coconut-covered peanut brittle bar whose 1960s TV ad campaign was even more memorable than the ones for Turkish Taffy.
Invented in 1912, Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy bar is billed as the ‘first interactive candy.’ A bit of a stretch, perhaps, considering the extent of the ‘interactivity’ here is bashing the extremely chewy candy against a surface hard enough to shatter it into a million pieces. If you miss this step, as I did after purchasing the bar from the Lower East Side’s always amazing Economy Candy, you may find yourself hopelessly gnawing at a series of too-large chunks, which remain totally resistant to stretching/bending. They can be cracked with teeth, but one attempt at this put such stress on my molars that I was afraid trying again would cost me a few fillings.
Despite the name, Turkish Taffy wasn’t always directly interactive, since it was originally stored behind Woolworth’s store counters in giant sheets. The helpful attendant would help you size out the piece you wanted, then would shatter it with a ball peen hammer, packaging up the resultant shards. The candy also isn’t Turkish, invented in the United States by the son of a Sephardic immigrant from the country. Albert Bonomo emigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and took up a trade as a candy maker in Coney Island, a business into which his son Victor followed him, developing this candy in the 1940s after a string of moderate successes ripping off more popular brands. Known as a ‘soft' or 'short nougat,’ similar to Italian torrone, it results from a mold-set mixture of egg whites and corn syrup. Victor Bonomo died in 1999 at the age of 100, but his company lives on, solely dedicated to the production of taffy bars and smaller ‘taffy nibbles.’ Also purchased on this same trip: a Zagnut, the odd coconut-covered peanut brittle bar whose 1960s TV ad campaign was even more memorable than the ones for Turkish Taffy.
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The origins of marzipan are hazy, involving the amorphous circuitry of medieval Middle Eastern trade routes and Hanseatic League-affiliated ports, but the candy’s history has at least some connection to medieval Italy. It was here that it may have gotten its modern name - derived from the term ‘March Bread’ (Marza Pane) - although this is only one of several competing claims. Whatever the case, marzipan's unique moldability has always allowed it to change with the times, and it reaches new heights of expressions at Brooklyn’s Fortunato Brothers café. Here, two proud Italian traditions merge, with the almond-based confection taking on the shape of a plate of spaghetti, a Margherita pizza, and perhaps most puzzlingly, an unadorned turkey sandwich.
I’ve been meaning for years to visit Pirosmani, long considered one of the jewels of South Brooklyn’s Caucasian belt, ensconced in an out-of-the way corner of Gravesend that’s accessible only by car (or bus). Circumstances recently aligned to grant me the use of a vehicle for the weekend, and so I set off with a group to check out a wide assortment of Georgian feast foods. Surrounding a pivotal stretch of the Silk Road, with a spice-speckled cuisine that gloriously combines Eastern-European and Asian styles, Georgia has been getting a lot of attention lately, even expanding into Lower Manhattan via a few new venues (Oda House, Old Tblisi Garden and Tone Café). Pirosmani, on the other hand, isn’t aiming for modern bistro cool, with a truncated banquet hall full of rustic folk-art murals (reproductions of work by the restaurant's artist namesake), tulle wall draperies, thick white tablecloths and seasonal ceiling decorations. On Friday nights it also offers live music from a singing keyboardist, who backed up his spirited performance with a series of Youtube nature videos. The wide spread of kebabs, khachapuri and roasted poultry were immensely satisfying, but others have already better summed up the broad outlines of the country’s cooking. What instead caught my attention were two unusual herbal preparations, one pickled, another in soft drink form.
As a committed lunatic, I spend an undue amount of time trawling Yelp pages and MenuPages listings, seeking out the strange and the unique amid the torrents of food selfies and vaguely described menu items. Last Thursday, while immersed in a messy spread of browser tabs on local Caribbean restaurants, I stumbled upon what seemed like an ordinary French bakery, clicking through to the listing mostly to keep up my frenzied momentum. Amid the croissants and omelets listed on Richol’s menu I noticed a strange item, simply labeled ‘agoulou,’ which neither I nor any internet content written in English seemed to recognize.
New York may lag far behind L.A. as a Mexican food metropolis, and Angelinos may still have license to mock our nascent, bodega-rooted taco culture, but I find hope in the idea of humble corner shops turning gradually into restaurants. All five boroughs are dotted with small delis in the process of shifting their primary business model, the stocks of everyday staples vanishing, replaced by stretches of tables and chairs anchored to a food-dispensing back counter. Such eateries usually serve rudimentary, rib-sticking fare, but they’re a starting point, providing the seeds for innovation and opportunity to expand. New York may not be able to match L.A.’s produce or tortilla culture (or the breadth of its Mexican diaspora), but it has potential to grow and improve. In terms of innovation, I have very high hopes for the imminent rebirth of Atoradero, the home-style Bronx restaurant which recently closed due to an egregious rent hike, and is now relocating in dangerous proximity to my apartment. Most bodega-based spots are content to use the same fossilized bagged herbs they sell in dwindling quantities by the counter, keeping the recipes simple, the portions large, and the prices low; Atoradero’s Denisse Chavez, on the other hand, made regular (often life-threatening trips back to her native Puebla for fresh herbs. This isn’t to shortchange a place like Chinantla, which does a few things and does them well. An exemplar of the expanded-bodega tradition, it serves up monstrous cemitas whose diverse layers of ingredients slosh together without becoming indistinguishable. The effect is several sandwiches in one, eggs and avocado and beans and chorizo piled together in a teetering mound. The effect is similar to the clamorous aesthetic of the store itself, which is constructed on a series of stylistic divisions, between canteen and grocery, neighborhood clubhouse and exotic hang-out for young gentrifiers, with Corona décor and colorful sombreros sharing decorative significance with traditional Mexican symbols, right down to the dualistic Aztec-inspired sun-and-moon symbol. Pinned behind a small freezer, there’s even the ultimate syncretic symbol - a bloody-faced Jesus icon pinned with roses and dollar bills - his pain gently soothed by the cool glow of the drinks cooler.
Located about 20 blocks north of Sunset Park’s Mexican district, El Tenampa feels like an outpost of south-of-the-border culture, an impression accentuated by its stockade-style exterior. Stretched across two storefronts and bedecked by one of the neighborhood’s more majestic (and puzzling) signs, it maintains a cluttered general store ambiance, with shelves spanning chilied garbanzo beans (in the lime-tinged style I encountered in Mexico) to mysterious dried herbs (most of them medicinal) and containers of frozen tejocote. Behind these rows of items, across a wide stretch of white tiled, folding-table filled dining room reminiscent of a VFW hall, lies Tenampa’s biggest draw, the hot foods counter. This area dishes out an impressive array of tortas, cemitas, soups and tacos which come in both large and small varieties. In the midst of an ambitious food crawl, I wasn’t in any state to consume most of these things, and so opted for a humble sope, which turned out to be much larger and heartier than expected, a bargain at four dollars.
Always on the hunt for new fillings, I opted for the unfamiliar goat panza (stomach), not even realizing at the time that I was ordering offal. I’ve eaten goat stomach once before, in little tripe-like strips nestled amid the hand-pulled noodles at Sheng Wang, which while delicious and surprisingly approachable, could not have passed as ordinary flesh. The panza, on the other hand, was much sneakier, diced and seasoned to the point where it’s rubbery qualities melted away entirely. It’s hard to say if this is a special preparation or the standard for goat panza, but other Mexican stomach applications seem more standardized. Most famous among them is probably pancita (a.k.a menudo), the hearty soup that doubles as the name of the sadly now defunct Puerto Rican boy band. Enjoying the sope (also stacked with refried beans, lettuce and cotija) on the peaceful grounds of nearby Greenwood Cemetery, there was plenty of time to reflect upon the impermanence of all things, bovid and otherwise. For many Americans, weaned on the mild black variety, sliced into rounds or served floating in slightly salty, ferrous-sulfate tinged liquid, the astringent taste of genuine olives is one of those things you grow into, as the palate matures and heaping bowls of Waffle Crisp fall by the wayside. The next stage of tastebud evolution, for those who’ve grown acclimated to Kalamatas, Cerignolas and Niçoise, would appear to be the Chinese olive, which seems to resemble a tiny, mutated egg more than anything else. Sourced from an entirely different branch of botany (the Canarium genus of the Burseraceae family, as opposed to Olea Oleaceae), subject to an entirely different prep process (candied, rather than cured), they’re a definite shock to the Western palate, with mottled, reptilian skin and a salty licorice taste redolent of those shocking Finnish candies. I of course can’t even begin to detail the variety of culinary applications possessed by these things (more here), but in terms of the snacking variety, I was quickly overwhelmed by the variety sourced from Fei Long supermarket in Dyker Heights, where they’re sold by the pound amid a healthy assortment of dried fruits and nuts. Candied lemon slices seemed mild by comparison. Hawaiians, on the other hand, have developed a serious taste for these things, which are classed in the expansive crackseed family of snacks. They’re known there as footballs, a name which originates not from the fact that these olives resemble sporting goods, but vice versa; the Mandarin word for the American football comes from the pigskin’s close resemblance to the olive.
Underhill Avenue, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn: A vertically-stretched tableau of fancy foods decorates the exterior of this organic-food-themed deli, ghostly snack apparitions layered over the landscape of an old neighborhood.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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