Recently, I went on another of the great NY Transit Museum eating tours, led by the always informative and adventurous Todd Coleman, of Saveur magazine. Using the subway 7 line as our backbone, we went from Grand Central, stopping at local eateries, both the popular and the populist, from the humble tamale cart under the LIRR tracks, to the end of the line in Flushing. We went into places that ranged from hole in the wall storefronts I normally wouldn’t even notice, to the giant branch of the Patel Brothers grocery store chain, where you can buy 50 pound bags of basmati rice, ponder achar masala or just inhale in a wall of incense, while you discretely look at the colorful saris & turbans worn by some of your fellow shoppers.
I sampled tacos at the Scandinavian sounding Tacolandia, tried a selection of incredibly different India sweets & chat (my first time enjoying these popular Indian snack- which are like a mixture of desert, crispy noodles & spicy tofu- and all vegetarian), slurped a mango lassi, ate pork sate, nibbled on fresh baked fenugreek paratha, sipped hand made Colombian hot chocolate, and watched and sampled hand pulled and hand cut noodles in a mall restaurant in Flushing. Wow!
At one point, we all crowded into a local Filipino grocery store, where among the homemade stews, cans of soy squid and packaged shrimp chips I scored what looks to be the perfect snack, Crisp Porky! I haven’t opened it, instead putting it in a place of honor in my office, awaiting a sign form above to know when to open it....It is worth becoming a member of the museum just to get advance notice of these tours, which sell out fast. For $40, I spent the afternoon touring the world from Columbia to India, the Philippines to China; this is a far more affordable alternative, with none of the jet lag.
Posts
