2010 Roosevelt Avenue Street Crawl

We began at 74th Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, and ended in William Moore (Spaghetti) Park in Corona. The 2010 crawl, organized by Jeffrey Orlick, brought at least 100 hungry people together to roam Roosevelt Avenue for the best street food on the last Sunday in June, with a great map and some key phrases for ordering from street carts.
It was hot, really hot, and my camera stopped taking pictures somewhere in the middle. I got it to work again but missed some good shots. Aside from the technical difficulties, I must say walking down my favorite avenue with a bunch of people and eating lots of food is really, really fun. I'm usually by myself when I do my Roos Ave adventuring, so it was a nice change. Our smaller group broke off from the crowds and took our time walking, making many stops for liquids and ices along the way.

First stop: El Guayaquileño. I didn't get anything there, I was holding out for tacos. But I took some pictures of my fellow crawlers' food. The Mexico vs. Argentina game was playing on the flat screen tv, so I watched while they ate.


I didn't eat, and I didn't order, so I don't want to mislabel anything. But that salad topping the fish looks delicious.


Stopped for raspados on 80th Street. The first of many breaks for a little something cold.

Mango (I think?)

Coco and Piña.

Next stop was Mexico Lindo.
Perhaps a bad choice, since it seemed like everyone else on the tour stopped here too at the exact same time. There was a very long line and lots of confusion. But we got our order in the end. Four of us split three items: Tacos de lengua (tongue), tacos de cecina (dried, salted beef) and sopes de chorizo. It isn't easy to split a taco four ways, but somehow we managed.

Cutting up a taco on a mail box...

on the trunk of a car (thanks, Stella), and even with kitchen shears (courtesy of Judy).

This was the lengua, after a slice had been taken out. The tongue was crisp on the outside, beefy and soft on the inside.

Moving right along, we stopped at another Mexican cart, a few blocks down and across the street. The sign says Gorditas, so that's what we got, along with a tlacoyo.

The gordita de chicharron was not the most flavorful I'd ever tried, but then again, we split it between four people, and there might have been better bites than the one I tasted.
The tlacoyo was good. Corn masa stuffed with a bean mixture, then topped with lettuce, cream, and cheese. The beans were smooth and creamy, with a distinct flavor of epazote, which was a nice surprise.

Another stop for shaved ice, this time at a Chinese/Colombian bakery selling Hawaiian shave ice called Vanilla Cafe. Sort of cheating by going inside a bakery, but have I mentioned that it was hot?
Mango and passionfruit. Just like Maui! Icy and sweet.


Tia Julia's. This is where my camera stopped working for a bit, I almost gave up and went home to charge it for a while. We ordered here: tacos de barbacoa (goat meat) and tacos de carnitas (pork). The goat was chewy, as goat usually is, and not too gamey. I honestly don't remember if I even tried the carnitas, I was sort of stuck on my camera. I do remember that I ordered an agua de jamaica (hibiscus) and that they gave me a whole quart container full of the dark red liquid.

By the time we made it to Warren Street with its variety of Ecuadorian delights, we were already full and tired. Crawls are all about pacing, and we did not pace well.

We did manage to get more liquids in though.

Orange Drink.
Fruit cocktail drink. The juice was refreshing, and filled with chopped fruit. The bananas were my favorite part.

We walked and walked, but after the food and all of the drinks, didn't make any more stops on Roosevelt. Once we hit 104th street, we turned off, and headed to Timmy O's for some frozen custard.

Banana custard, chocolate custard, marshmallow sauce and some whipped cream. The banana really tasted like banana.

The last stop was the Lemon Ice King of Corona. I was still eating my custard, so I sat in Spaghetti Park and waited.

The Crawl was great. I drank more than I ate, and had more sweets than savory. But it's ok. I live here, I eat here, I crawl down Roosevelt Avenue every day. The best part was crawling with others.

Mini Picanteria El Guayaquileño
80th Street and Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights

Raspado Lady
In front of 80-02 Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights

Mexico Lindo Cart
Corner of Gleane Street and Roosevelt Avenue, Elmhurst

Gordita Cart
85th Street and Roosevelt Avenue, Elmhurst

Vanilla Cafe
8701 Roosevelt Avenue, Elmhurst

Tia Julia Taco Truck
Benham Street & Roosevelt Ave, Elmhurst

Picaditas La Cacerita Cuenca Ecuador
Corner of Warren Street and Roosevelt Avenue, Corona

Timmy O's Frozen Custard
49-07 104th Street, Corona

Lemon Ice King of Corona
52-02 108th Street, Corona

William Moore Park
108th Street, 51st Avenue, Corona

Tropical in Woodside

Lunch Special! I walked into Tropical, not knowing much about it except that it might be Ecuadorian. Turns out it was. Tropical is a mini-chain with 4 locations throughout Queens, but there is not much written about it. Not sure why. It's a very spacious corner restaurant, full of natural light. There were three tables full of other people enjoying their meals when I gave my order to the waitress. I am assuming that the lunch specials change daily, and yesterday the two options for the first course and two for the second were: Sopa de vegetales (vegetable soup) and caldo de pata (cow feet soup is their own translation and I like it), and then cazuela de marisccos (seafood casserole) or pollo a la parilla (grilled chicken). I chose the caldo and the chicken, but if I were a seafood lover, obviously the cazuela would be the way to go. I noticed that the next few people who ordered lunch specials (and I was the only non-Ecuadorian in there) all went for the caldo and the chicken, so I felt good about that. The waitress immediately brought out a small plate with lime slices, a little container of green sauce (yay!) and a small glass of orange colored juice. I wasn't expecting the juice so that made me very happy, and once I tasted it, even happier. It was passion fruit!

My soup came out quickly.
The milky-looking broth was mild, with the light flavor and full-bodied texture from the gelatinous pata. The caldo was full of mote (pozole) and chickpeas, and garnished with cilantro and green onions. A squeeze of lime brightened it all up. Really filling.

Grilled chicken breast. Yellow. Grilled tasting. A little stringy but had good flavor. It was served with a cucumber salad, light and refreshing. Cukes, chopped tomatoes, green peppers, sliced red onions with citrus. And then long grain white rice. I ate the chicken with the green sauce, which was super-garlicky and actually even a little spicy. Green sauce, I will one day know your secrets! The total for my entire meal, drink and all, was $6.99.
Lunch specials are the best.

Tropical Restaurant
67-22 Roosevelt Ave
Woodside

Ecuadorian Introduction

I have a new favorite snack. What is it, you ask? Potato cakes! Not potato pancakes, but potato cakes. Don't worry, latkes, you will always be my first love. But these particular potato cakes are not from the old country, they're from the new world of Ecuador. Soft, yellow tinged mashed potatoes, fried crisp on both sides. Like a big, round french fry.
Monday night was dinner at Hornado Ecuatoriano, on 76th and Roosevelt. Although I am supposed to start with Woodside this week, I made plans with Rebecca, a fellow blogger, at this restaurant since it worked for both of our projects. For me, it's on my route, even if I haven't made it to Jackson Heights yet, and for Rebecca, of Fabulously Unforeign, a stop on her world tour. A world tour of New York, since she is "trying to eat the world in one year - without leaving New York City. . . attempting to eat at restaurants from 155 different countries / territories." Of course many of the countries on her list are best represented in Queens, and Ecuador is one of them. So we met for dinner, shared a few plates, and traded blogging stories.

Our meal began with drinks. Jugos naturales, fresh juices made with either water or milk. We both chose milk. I got the mora, a type of blackberry, as suggested by our very helpful waitress, and Rebecca got pineapple. Mine was good. A very light, not too sweet, frothy milkshake. Of course I drank mine too fast, but at $4.00 each I was not planning on ordering another.
For an appetizer we split a quimbolito. It wasn't our first choice, but they were out of humitas.
Quimbolitos, as prepared at this restaurant, are much like a sweet tamal, but made with a coarser meal than Mexican masa. Imagine a softer, more pudding-like corn bread, with a few raisins tossed in.

I was very excited when the waitress placed this on the table:
which looked very similar to my very very favorite Peruvian green sauce. I tasted it, and yes! Thicker, and garlickier than the Pollo Peruano version, but green sauce all the same. Oh, that sauce. On a side note, it is particularly delicious on fried rice.

After much deliberation and many questions to our very patient server, we decided to get a bandera, which has smaller portions of 3 different entrees, along with rice, hominy, salad, and the aforementioned potato cake. I knew I wanted the hornado (lechon), since it seemed advisable to order the namesake dish of the restaurant. That was a given, as was the ceviche. But then the difficult choice between seco de chivo or guatita. We learned that guatita is tripe and seco de chivo is not dry goat, as the name might suggest to us non-Ecuadorians, but more stew-like. For some reason or other we settled on the goat. Here is La Bandera from a few different angles.
Seco de chivo. Very tender pieces of mild goat meat, falling off the bone, simmered in a reddish, tomato-based sauce. It was quite delicious, and the meat was meltingly soft. It reminded me of brisket, and not for the first time on this tour. Remember the Nepali soup? All roads lead back to Jewish holiday food. For me, anyway.

The famous hornado, lying on a bed of hominy. The skin was crackly and crisp, but the meat was sort of tough, and I was very disappointed. I chalked it up to Monday night, and am assuming that on the weekends it is the best lechon ever. Right? I hope so. The hominy, or mote, soaked up all of the flavors on the plate. Fluffy and tasty.
Ceviche consisted of 3 shrimp, some red onions, and lime juice. I ate one, it was fine.
I was much more excited about the avocado, and that beautiful yellow potato cake perched so regally upon its rice throne. I always assumed, when I passed them on the street vendor's grills, that they were corn cakes or plantain. How wrong I was. The waitress told me that they were called tortilla de papa, but I am going to investigate further. And soon. It was a pleasant meal, filled with food that was unfamiliar yet comforting, a Telemundo novela on the screen above, and good conversation. There will be many more restaurants and carts from this interesting country in my future, so I'm glad that Ecuador and I have been formally introduced. It was nice to meet you, and your potato cakes.

Hornado Ecuatoriano
76-18 Roosevelt Ave
Jackson Heights