The holiday season traditionally summons up the dual images of nostalgia and food. As a “Time Out,” from our recent spate of metaphysical, ethical, and analytic themes, we would choose, once again, to venture into the World of the 1940s-50’s Brooklyn, popularly requested by readers. In this context, we would recall, with a measure of nostalgia, a phenomenon, now extinct or reconfigured, of the exotic and delectable variety of peripatetic sidewalk food vendors. Their modern replication by food trucks, selling entire meals to the public, like chicken or lamb over rice and the like, may be of greater utility but at the same time are lacking in comparable nuance, color, and nostalgia.
In our childhood days, routinely following a softball or basketball game played in a New York City Public Park, we would, in a way, loosely analogous to the more elegant, “après ski” ritual, traditionally congregate, in front of the local candy store for our routine ceremony of two salty stick pretzels and a bottle of cold “Mission Orange” soda. We would especially note that the scene on so many neighborhood concrete sidewalks was significantly and markedly at variance with the present.
It was common to see peripatetic vendors, standing at their umbrella-advertised, pushcarts, selling eatables to the passerby public. Publically familiar varieties of traditional food products were predictable and selectively varied. In our recollection, the most delectable and noteworthy were the hot-baked potato knishes. The particular iteration of this classic food, sold by the street vendor, differed from those sold by neighborhood delicatessens. The latter was square-shaped and prepared with a light yellow coating enclosing an ample, mashed potato-tasting filler. The tasty and memorable version of the knish, sold by the sidewalk vendor, by contrast, was a truly delicious, oval-shaped, light brown, baked version with less potato filling, but a more savory taste. Inevitably, and usefully, a mug-shaped metal perforated container, situated on the lidded cover of the heated container, contained the accommodating salt. We later discovered, to our dismay, that, both the potato-knish street vendor and, sorrowfully, such iteration of the baked potato knish have become, irretrievably extinct.
Another iteration of the extinct sidewalk food vendor was the seller of baked sweet potatoes. Like the knish vendor, the baked sweet potato vendor operated from a closed, heated, push cart, selling his product, handed over to each purchaser in a piece of thick, temperature-protecting piece of paper. We had often eaten baked sweet potatoes at home but for some (possibly, romantic), reason, the hot baked sweet potato consumed outdoors, on the street, seemed especially and deliciously exciting.
Among our favorite, street-vendor-sold foods were “arbis” (Yiddish for chickpeas), sold warm, in a paper bag with a similar available metal salt shaker. To consume such soft, salted, chickpeas slowly and enjoyably out of the bag was a memorable experience; one, as recalled, perhaps exceeding the pleasure of today’s gourmet prepared “hummus.”
Another selection from our 1940s-50’s sidewalk menu was (in wintertime) roasted chestnuts. On cold winter days, these heated eatables were, in addition to their doughy-nutty tastiness, not part of the customary European-Ashkenazi menu, and, accordingly, an exotic item on the street (winter) menu. The chestnuts were sliced and roasted by the vendor, and, similarly delivered in small paper bags.
Today, we, fortunately, possess the ability to roast and enjoy seasonal chestnuts in our country home fireplace. However, the long-ago, limited experience of our unsophisticated, youth, yielded a special excitement.
Four items, on the traditional street sidewalk menu, it appears, have escaped extinction and are easily and contemporaneously available. These consist of twisted salt pretzels, frozen ices, the jelly apple (the latter two, in season), and ice cream, sold from a refrigerated, and, on occasion, music-playing truck. However, gone extinct, is an item of ice cream, existing in the earlier era cited, called the “Melloroll.”
Finally, in the interest of remaining compliant with our eternal and resolute determination to be unfailingly candid, the reader might entertain the cogent possibility that recollection of our youthful street menu was, indeed, as exotic and savory as recounted, but, nevertheless, possibly in need of some minor adjustment based upon our early, unsophisticated, state of inexperience and, as well, a present proclivity apparently, to romantic subjectivity concerning personal, long- past recollection.
-p.
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