The forced variety of my meals resolution obscures the fact that one of my favorite food groups is Latin American, usually Mexican. Also, I just don't eat a lot of it because the real deal is tough to find in New York. That changed today when I stopped by Red Hook Park to enjoy lunch from the Latin American food vendors there. Bienvenidos Red Hook!
Man, what a find. The vendors began ostensibly, about 10 years ago, I’m told, to feed the soccer players and fans at the adjacent field. These days (roughly May through September, on the weekends) most people show up for the food. Flanking the southeast entrance to the park are about a dozen vendors—Mexican, Ecuadoran, Salvadoran, Chilean—each set up under a makeshift tent, usually a temporary aluminum frame propping up a tarp or plastic roof, under which the food is prepared and distributed from long folding tables. Adjacent most tents are communal tables and chairs; upon placing an order, you’re asked, as you are in restaurants here, “to stay or to go?”
Selecting a vendor to patronize wasn’t difficult. I don't know if it's because I hail from a corn-intensive part of the country, but whenever I catch that robust aroma of a foodstuff featuring fresh-cooked corn, whether corn on the cob, cornbread or cornmeal mush, I get a little slobbery. That’s what drew me to one of the Salvadoran pupusa tents, which had its own array of aluminum foil-skirted griddles lined up on a folding table. The saucer-shaped treats of masa (corn dough) tortillas sandwich a selection of toppings, including beans, white cheese, a variety of meats, and unexpected vegetables, such as zucchini and loroco flowers. Each is made to order, so it takes shape slowly.
It was worth the wait for the nicely browned, bean and white cheese variety I ordered, crispy, delicious and filling, with the cheesy-beany guts creeping out the sides of the squashed disk. The elder woman of the tent who scooped the dough from a large bowl, rolled it into a ball, and passed it to the ladies on the grill to flatten, fill and fry. She formed the doughballs rapidly, without even looking at her hands or the bowl, while carrying on conversation with customers in both Spanish and English.
You could call this street food (and it’s certainly cheap and filling like street food), but the atmosphere is accommodating and communal like a picnic, and not just because it’s in a park and there’s some dudes playing soccer right over there. The spicy purple-cabbage slaw was resting in one of those 20-gallon plastic utility tubs with rope handles and my tangy-sweet cashew fruit drink was dispensed from a large picnic-style beverage dispenser.
If the vendors of Red Hook Park sound appealing to you and you are a New York local, I urge you to go while you still can. I’ve since read a Grub Street article from earlier this summer that reports the Department of Parks and Recreation will not renew the vendors’ permit because it would rather ferment a bidding war among commercial concessionaires, presumably the ones that serve the same food and drink at seemingly every street fair in New York. As it stands, September 8th will be the final day for the current vendors. This angers me and I am interested in expressing my displeasure to Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Julius Spiegel, ideally by punching him directly in the cock.
Red Hook Park
- corner of Clinton and Bay Streets, Red Hook, Brooklyn
- Meal 27 of 52: two bean-and-cheese pupusas, a side of purple-cabbage slaw and a cashew fruit drink ($5.50).