The Atomic Squid, avid reader of the Brooklyn blogs, discovered a Hispanic market in Williamsburg that is sadly slated to close, so before it could, we wanted to sneak out there and sample the wares.
We hopped on a G and soon emerged into a bustling area where Spanish was being spoken everywhere. We wended our way along to a small closed market area, similar to the Essex St Market we stumbled into a week before, only quite a bit smaller. There were a lot of empty stalls; either Sunday is not a big day or people have already started to close down. Still it was interesting to see what supplies there were, and what was there was SO CHEAP! At one stall we got a big bag of garlic, a big bag of achiote, a bit container of homemade sofrito, and two gooey coconut sweets, for a total of $5!! From what I could tell the stalls were mostly Puerto Rican and Dominican owned.
Then we perused the snack counters considering having some fried yuca or other comida típica, but settled in the end on a batido, for it was sunny and who can resist a batido? We even learned a dialect word - parcha is apparently the same as maracuya, otherwise known as passionfruit. We shared a parcha batido and a papaya one, both delicious. The parcha was tangy and the papaya sweet and creamy and we both preferred it, though the parcha was also delicious. And I got to order them in Spanish!
After that we wandered north on Avenida de Puerto Rico to Grand St and considered late brunch options, despite being fairly full of batido at this point. I had to cower in fear in front of one place, which had a billboard out front declaiming: "Wombat! We want YOU for brunch!"
Of course, the place was called Wombat.
Anyway despite the excitement there, we decided to go to Bahía, a Salvadoran resto also on Grand St. So of course we had to have pupusas - a bean one, and this delicious one with Loroco, the flower of a salvadoran plant that tasted vaguely like broccoli. As usual this was served with pickled cabbage, and a delicious thin, mild tomato salsa. The texture of the pupusas was a little less crisp than some I had had but the flavours were nice. We also had a side of casamiento, or rice and beans, and a little condiment-salad called chirmol, with chopped tomatoes and radishes etc. And I finally tried a tamal de elote, or sweet corn tamale. It was perhaps a little sweet - not that different to a steamed cornbread - but it was nice to try it eventually.
By this time the Williamsburg adventure was winding down, but on the way to the subway we stopped at the landmark Gimme Coffee! which is supposed to be Brooklyn's best. Certainly the coffee was good and the descriptive labels on the (expensive!) beans amusingly hipsterish. But as with so many cafés in this country - only disposal cups! For shame.
There were more wonders to be revealed in this tour of Williamsburg, but for now this shall suffice. It's a nice place to visit, but I'm happy enough to return to my little corner of South Brooklyn. To do laundry...
We hopped on a G and soon emerged into a bustling area where Spanish was being spoken everywhere. We wended our way along to a small closed market area, similar to the Essex St Market we stumbled into a week before, only quite a bit smaller. There were a lot of empty stalls; either Sunday is not a big day or people have already started to close down. Still it was interesting to see what supplies there were, and what was there was SO CHEAP! At one stall we got a big bag of garlic, a big bag of achiote, a bit container of homemade sofrito, and two gooey coconut sweets, for a total of $5!! From what I could tell the stalls were mostly Puerto Rican and Dominican owned.
Then we perused the snack counters considering having some fried yuca or other comida típica, but settled in the end on a batido, for it was sunny and who can resist a batido? We even learned a dialect word - parcha is apparently the same as maracuya, otherwise known as passionfruit. We shared a parcha batido and a papaya one, both delicious. The parcha was tangy and the papaya sweet and creamy and we both preferred it, though the parcha was also delicious. And I got to order them in Spanish!
After that we wandered north on Avenida de Puerto Rico to Grand St and considered late brunch options, despite being fairly full of batido at this point. I had to cower in fear in front of one place, which had a billboard out front declaiming: "Wombat! We want YOU for brunch!"
Of course, the place was called Wombat.
Anyway despite the excitement there, we decided to go to Bahía, a Salvadoran resto also on Grand St. So of course we had to have pupusas - a bean one, and this delicious one with Loroco, the flower of a salvadoran plant that tasted vaguely like broccoli. As usual this was served with pickled cabbage, and a delicious thin, mild tomato salsa. The texture of the pupusas was a little less crisp than some I had had but the flavours were nice. We also had a side of casamiento, or rice and beans, and a little condiment-salad called chirmol, with chopped tomatoes and radishes etc. And I finally tried a tamal de elote, or sweet corn tamale. It was perhaps a little sweet - not that different to a steamed cornbread - but it was nice to try it eventually.
By this time the Williamsburg adventure was winding down, but on the way to the subway we stopped at the landmark Gimme Coffee! which is supposed to be Brooklyn's best. Certainly the coffee was good and the descriptive labels on the (expensive!) beans amusingly hipsterish. But as with so many cafés in this country - only disposal cups! For shame.
There were more wonders to be revealed in this tour of Williamsburg, but for now this shall suffice. It's a nice place to visit, but I'm happy enough to return to my little corner of South Brooklyn. To do laundry...
No comments:
Post a Comment