Spotted at the Jackson Heights location of Patel Brothers: a uniquely American pepper product (with an assist from Middle Eastern cuisine), known primarily for its status as a pizzeria staple, enters the Indian market. "Pizza Chill," meanwhile, whether a fortuitous spelling error or a mere consequence of an improperly snipped label, has permanently entered my personal food lexicon.
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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 have a distinct memory of attending a church youth group event, sometime around 1996, a pot-luck affair to which everyone brought soda or snacks. My father, who possessed (and still does) a seemingly inexhaustible trove of carbonated beverages purchased at steep discount prices, all of them stored in an expansive basement closet overstocked with expired items, saw this as an opportunity. He sent me off with two bottles of Pennsylvania Dutch brand birch beer, scooped up at some previous sale, then deemed unfit for offering to company (the only time soda was served at our house). The stuff sat on the communal snack table, among the more fashionable Mountain Dews and Cherry Cokes, while other kids poked fun at its weird yellow label and the liquid’s sharp violet tinge. I shrunk away, denying my relationship with the Birch by omission (perhaps three times?) and gulped down the vile Mountain Dew instead.
On a recent trip to Target’s Atlantic Center location, I wandered into the dollar deals section, the best place to find such delicacies as slightly battered Charleston Chews and Whales crackers, a snack that far outshines its more-famous Goldfish competitors. On this occasion another option presented itself, with the unexpected appearance of this imported Israeli snack, in a bag illustrated with two vaguely sinister, presumably pizza loving youths. Despite the label, these Bissli bites have no real hint of pizza flavor - closer to a thin, wheaty crouton with a vegetal aftertaste - likely owing to the classic cheapo ingredient trinity of corn starch, MSG and dehydrated onion and garlic, various configurations of which assure that nothing ‘Pizza-Flavored’ ever tastes anything like pizza. Of course Bissli isn’t just in the pizza business, they also deal in taco, falafel, ‘grill’ and other varieties, which pleasantly enough all come in different shapes, a choice which at least conceivably suggests that each configuration was chosen to perfectly match its corresponding flavor profile. The vague taste of these gently palatable, grid-shaped wheat snacks also brought me to another, bigger question. What is the inspiration here? To wit, what is pizza like in Israel?
Slices of pizza can be found just about anywhere in New York City, and while a fair share serve at least passable product, there’s also a sinister undercurrent of Very Bad Pizza capitalizing on the city’s good name, ranging from the flatly mediocre to the criminally despicable. None of this enters into the equation here. The concept of a Laundromat / Pizzeria is such a perfect fusion of terrible and fantastic ideas - the desire to eat pizza while you wait for your laundry pushed into strange battle with the instinctual need to not get grease stains on your newly washed clothing - that the quality of the food within doesn’t even begin to matter. It’s for this reason that I will never taste Famous Sam’s pizza, content to know that such a combination exists. Further information of interest: the business is abutted to the right by a Puerto Rican restaurant named ‘Shalon’, which Google seems to believe is a misspelling of Shalom. In either case, the place has no qualms about serving a menu healthily apportioned with pork dishes.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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