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.
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The international fad for chips that taste like prepared dishes has never really caught on in the US, let alone ones that simulate entire meals. The exception proving this rule of late has been the growing fascination with Doritos, specifically their secondary career as the load-bearing frame for ever-more fanciful Taco Bell constructions, which has yielded the surreal spectacle of the Doritos Locos Tacos flavored Dorito, perhaps the first instance of a snack food attempting to replicate the taste of a repurposed version of itself.
Less a neighborhood than a fossilized, fantastical curiosity, Little Italy clings to its exaggerated Paisan image as a charm against the turmoil at its borders, embodied by ever-increasing Chinatown sprawl and encroaching Nolita/SoHo development. In constant danger of erasure, its immigrant population base long since fled to the suburbs, the area’s lingering Italian-American heritage has inflated to accommodate this vacuum, plying tourists with a cartoonish approximation of vintage New York City, via a showy spread of ‘old-fashioned’ red sauce and clam joints. All this straining for authenticity climaxes with a burst of cannoli cream and scalding fry oil during San Gennaro, the two week festival ostensibly dedicated to the patron saint of Naples, who each September 19th gets marched down Mulberry and pinned with dollar bills, a fitting ritual for a festival that seems designed to promote its accompanying neighborhood by turning its proud history into a lumbering commodity.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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