Saturday in Little Guyana

The day started off rough. Staying up till dawn tends to put a fuzzy edge to when you wake up, maybe not technically in the morning anymore. I did get up before noon, though, and really needed some swill to push the poisons out. To that end, very little makes me happier than eggs, starch and lots of butter. I made two burritos, making sure to butter the tortillas before heating them in the griddle to get them brown and crispy. Inside was just eggs, no meats, no cheeses, but a wonderful blend of sage, tarragon and adobo. I threw more butter than I needed into the pan when I cooked them and took them off the heat just at that magic moment that the protein bonds start to consolidate their forces, but before that sad stage where their partnerships lead to stagnant bickering and in-fighting. They were wonderful, and then I passed out again.

When I came to again, I had to hurry off to meet a friend for a 5:20PM screening of "Happiness." This is not the 90's indie flick with Philip Seymour Hoffman doing nasty things to postcards. This was a newer Korean film about terminally ill patients at a health farm falling in love; much less disturbing than the earlier film, much more gut wrenchingly depressing. The gut wrenching was made all the more real by my stomach's very painful protests of the slice of pizza I'd snagged before leaving the apartment. Most weekends my roommate will order this terrible pizza delivery and go through the large pie over the course of several "meals." I'd had it before and I didn't like it then. I have no idea why he would choose to order this pizza repeatedly. There have to be better delivery options, even in El Barrio. I needed simple food fast, though so I decided to give it a shot. Bad idea. I had to run into the bathroom before the film and try to sort things out. Luckily it passed without much more fervor than your average demonic possession.

After the movie we went to Reservoir, a few blocks south of Union Square on University Pl. The food was decent, and in the $7-10 range for most of their entrees. The beer selection wasn't expansive but had a pretty broad selection of US/UK crowd-pleasers from Budwiser to Bass to Killian's to Magner's. I had the fish and chips sandwich. The waffle fries were great, and the fish itself was up to par, if not a bit small for the enormous roll it was served on. As it was a sandwich and in the absence of any cold mashed peas, I think "Fish Sandwich" would have been a more honest menu title than "Fish and Chips." If you put the chips on the sandwich with the cole slaw and the tartar sauce and a liberal squeeze of lemon, more to soften the roll than anything, you had yourself a pretty sturdy heaping of bar food.

I thought I'd be done eating for the day, but after an epic subway and bus adventure deep into Queens, I arrived at a club in Little Guyana for a friend's graduation party. I was not expecting food, but I got it anyway.

Here you can see the chicken wings and a piece of jerk chicken. I wasn't planning on eating at first, so I took this photo after most of it had been destroyed. The jerk chicken was fantastic, very spicy and the chicken was timed very well. The chicken wings were in some kind of wet sauce, not so much hot wings as stewed wings. They weren't bad, but they certainly weren't the main event. That title goes to:


Shark bites! No, not the chewy fruit snack of my childhood, these were "popper" sized cuts of shark, breaded and deep fried. You can see on the side the ketchup, lime and hot sauce provided as condiments. I really wish I'd been hungrier and not actively dancing, because I would have eaten a lot more of these little gems. You couldn't really call them "poppers," though, because, like so much other West Indies cooking, they like to leave the "bones" in. Aside from navigating the occasional chunk of cartilage, it was very easy to put these away. If you're not familiar with shark, these had a fishy edge similar to catfish but with a much more dense, juicy texture. They were an unexpected yet very welcome capstone to a day of culinary meandering.