Last Thing I Ate: Burek

Karry Lu  

Slovenia…shit. I’m still only in Slovenia. Every time I close my eyes, try to catch a bit of shuteye, I’m still in the forest, the endless forest. It was very pretty when I first got on the 6am to Budapest, when the sun was first starting to break over the trees. I remember thinking that Ljubljana Railway Station was the nicest, most modern one I’d seen since I landed on the continent, German-engineered steel beasts with their sleek, silver lines humming along high-speed rails (Deutsche Bahn is somehow involved with Slovenia’s train system). But it’s still 500 kilometers to the end of the road.

I spent around a total of 30 days in the Balkans, and for about 25 of them I ate burek, sometimes twice a day. Of originally Ottoman extraction, burek is essentially a flaky handheld pastry made with phyllo dough and some kind of savory filling. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes and could easily be mistaken for some of the more familiar “meat-wrapped-in-carbs” foodstuffs enjoyed by Americans on a regular basis: croissants, knishes, pierogis, 3am taquitos from 7-11. In a land of unfamiliar histories and impenetrable Cyrillic script, burek is extremely comforting for the averaged cosseted Westerner.

The first time I had burek was in Sarajevo. In second grade I used to play this weird Risk-like game using our geography workbooks, with this kid named Tommy Schnurr; coincidentally the Yugoslav Wars (i.e. the Siege of Sarajevo, the Srebrenica massacre) were raging at the very moment two dumb schoolkids were blithely moving imaginary armies across the face of war-torn Central Europe to commit imaginary atrocities. Almost two decades later, I suppose you could say I was back among my former stomping grounds. In an effort to hide my gaping ignorance, I had read most of the Wikipedia entries on the subject during the short ride into town from Croatia. But obviously, the first thing I did was duck into a bakery and look for something greasy and salty to fill my maw.

“You should get that,” a man loitering by the counter said, in perfect, Midwestern English.

“What’s that?”

“It’s good. Burek. That one has potato in it,” he replied, pointing at a seemingly arbitrary tray of specimens. “I teach English here. Everyone eats this stuff.”

It’s hard to go wrong with anything involving spiced potatoes, and this one was particularly satisfying in the way that unhealthy, heavily seasoned street food typically is. Eventually I would try feta cheese and spinach (marginally better for you), unidentified ground meat (lamb, I think), apple (a step above McDonald’s apple pies), and even sour cherry burek fillings (actually really good), but I think potato is still my favorite. Different countries, primarily around the Balkans, have their own preferences, but the common theme is that burek is sold everywhere, in a manner that rivals the way that pizza and bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches are sold in New York. At every hour, at any time, perfect for those leisurely walks through twisting alleys and hawker bazaars, in dingy apartments camped around a bottle of homemade rakia, before or during train journeys snaking across the Balkans.

On the train from Sarajevo to Zagreb I had spent my last remaining konvertible marks on train station burek and shots of dark Turkish coffee at the nearby cafe. Old Bosniaks sitting next to open windows and “No Smoking” signs quietly inhaled unfiltered knockoff Camels in between scanning their newspapers and sneaking bemused looks at the random Asian kid with the lime green board shorts. A few meters from my seat, tacked prominently on the wall, was a plaque that read, “Gift from the Swedish Government, 1972.”

Outside the world seemed condensed, untouched. Verdant valleys followed winding rivers and mountain tracks as we plunged into the bush. Every so often the train compartment would descend into darkness as we hit one of the tunnels scattered throughout the Bosnian countryside, the ones that the Serbs used to occupy during the war. No one spoke. The three spinach and cheese bureks I had bought earlier went quickly, only to be washed down by a few helpings of warm Sarajevsko beer.

About a week later, the RailJet I took from Ljubljana to Budapest happened to cross some of the more heat-wavey stretches of Central Europe. Once we emerged from the woodlands, the temperatures spiked. I walked into the aisle and stuck my head out the window for several minutes at a time, canine-style, in a desperate grasp at relief from the sweltering temperatures. Acres of nondescript, yellowed grassland rushed by without much comment, punctuated every so often by an isolated barn or cottage or nameless, sad-looking rail station. Bushes and small trees along the side of the tracks came perilously close to smacking me in the face. Somewhere between Maribor and Nagykanizsa, people started moving around the cars to ward off boredom and prevent heat stroke.

In order of appearance, here were the people I met and would never see again: the British teachers, the Norwegian DJ, the Swedish mother/daughter duo, the shirtless French bros, the Hungarian clown/guy who worked at a non-profit. Down the hall, an unseen twenty-something Belgian girl recounted tales of all-night bar crawls and extended hostel stays to another group of bemused travelers. Peals of laughter echoed through the car. The Norwegian dude and I smirked to each other and killed half a bottle of vodka while eating various store-bought shortbreads.

There was a dining car on board, and we decided to go pay it a visit. Various sandwiches, soft drinks and alcoholic beverages were for sale. I switched to Lasko, a light yet slightly bitter lager, to ease me into Budapest.

“So where are you headed afterwards?” I had forgotten his name already.

“I’m visiting a friend in Budapest, then flying back to Trondheim,” he replied.

“Oh cool,” I nodded. “Back home, huh?”

He shrugged. “It was nice, having this break. I went to see my family in Turkey.”

“You’re Turkish?” He certainly seemed a bit browner than the average Norwegian.

“I was born in Ankara, but moved to Norway when I was very young.”

“Cool. Do you visit Turkey often?”

He frowned. “When I can. I travel a lot for work anyway. But I don’t get the chance to play very often in Turkey.” He swiftly polished off the rest of his sandwich. I checked my watch. 7pm, and the sun still stood strong over the horizon.

“I wish I had a burek right now,” he mused.

“For sure. Would really hit the spot,” I agreed.

“I love that stuff. You know burek came from Turkey originally? Unfortunately they don’t really have it in Norway.” He looked out the window and watched the land recede steadily before him.

When we pulled into Budapest station he gave me his business card, a simple, worn one with a MySpace and cool graphic design. I ran into the clown a few minutes later, and he helped me buy a city metro pass, before hauling his bags up and wandering off into the night.

Adventures in New York

Karry Lu  

Source: Flickr

Adventures in New York: Eating Tacos for 48 Hours, Plus Some Drinking

Last weekend I had the opportunity to go back home for the fall break. Naturally, my first order of business was to take the first 7 train out of Queens and embark on a two day taco binge. In the interest of science, here are a few tasting notes.

Reyes Deli & Grocery, Gowanus

Wedged between Boerum Hill and Park Slope is Gowanus, which is the area surrounding the eponymous canal that used to be both cargo route and sewage line for the tonier inland neighborhoods that border it. Fortunately, it’s managed to eclipse its shit-ridden past and like so many other previously undesirable areas before it, has kickstarted the gentrification process in earnest (yes, there will be a Whole Foods soon, and yes there will be a bar, restaurant AND commercial vegetable garden on the roof). But in the quiet moments before the inevitable waves of boozy brunches and bars with bocce ball, we can patronize places like Reyes Deli & Grocery on 4th Ave and 14th, which is basically what it sounds like: a deli that serves tacos, tortas and quesadillas, and also a grocery that sells bodega staples, BIMBO-brand Mexican snacks, and Lindens Oatmeal and Chocolate Chip cookies, which I used to eat a lot of when I was nine but haven’t seen in over a decade. It’s another entry in the long, proud lineage of deli-cum-taco-joints that are scattered across New York, and I came in with high expectations, given that some of the best meals of my life have come surrounded by random Catholic paraphernalia and the constant hum of Spanish soap operas.

Tacos are $2.25 each here, so get any and everything. Upon receiving your order a guy next to the cashier, face partially hidden by a rack of Cheetos, will start working on your food on the flattop. In the meantime you can stake a claim to one of the five stools provided, read an article or two in a copy of Mexican Maxim, maybe overhear the cashier and the 13 year old shelf stocker gossip about you in Spanish. Takes about 10 minutes but eventually the tacos will come, served on pliant, supple steamed tortillas and with the standard onion, cilantro and lime wedge. The salsa verde is on point, spicy with sharp tangy bursts of tomatillo goodness, and absolutely mandatory. Carnitas, beef, and cecina (salted beef) are juicy, well-seasoned and generously supplied. Wash it all down with a bottle of neon-orange Jarritos. Everything just works together. This sort of meal is the platonic ideal of “satisfying”, like scratching a deep itch, or completing a particularly difficult problem set. Would’ve liked a bit more variety on the menu (some goat or chicharrones would’ve been sick) but otherwise, no complaints at all.

Recommend if: you just moved to Brooklyn from the Midwest and need to rack up some street cred, you are okay with the idea of spending anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours on public transportation to buy a $7 lunch.

Calexico Cart, Flatiron

I try not to think too hard about “authenticity” in food. Fuzzy concepts like “tradition” and “cooking with love” are really just lazy synonyms for “having lots of practice.” It doesn’t take Pierre from Gascony to make coq au vin or an Italian nonna to crank out the perfect orecchiette, it just takes some work and experience (which explains why half of all professional kitchens are staffed with Mexican immigrants). But I may need to revise that opinion for white people, specifically white people who open up food carts for ethnic cuisine. I get that it’s hip and cool now to sling fancy, spruced up street food out the back of a truck like some tattooed James Dean/James Beard motherfucker, but it wouldn’t hurt to spend a few minutes on Google researching the basics before crumbling some bacon on that shit, charging a 50% premium and calling it a day.

Calexico was started by brothers from California who seemed unmoved by the Mexican food already on offer in New York (and who apparently never ventured west of 9th Ave or into any part of Queens) and eventually started up their own cart/restaurant with locations in Lower Manhattan and (obviously) Brooklyn. While I applaud their perhaps uniquely American entrepreneurial spirit, I remain less than impressed with their (also maybe uniquely American) failure to understand the cuisine they are getting involved in. Tacos, and food in general, are all about maintaining balance: each element (tortilla, meats, onion/cilantro, sauce) complements and accentuates the others in an intricate choreography of flavors, textures, and temperatures. This seems intuitive; indeed, Thomas Keller knows this, McDonalds knows this, and Miguel from Oaxaca knows this. The brothers Calexico do not.

This much was clear from the two tacos I purchased from the new Calexico cart next to Madison Square Park. Perhaps even more alarming was the casual disregard for the laws of physics; turns out that wrapping steaming hot tacos in tin foil causes them to become extremely soggy due to the trapped moisture, a lesson that was borne out when the first taco completely split apart at the seams. Then again, that could’ve also just been a failure to Wikipedia the right way to prepare a tortilla. The structural integrity wasn’t helped much by overloading with too much crap: warmed-over shredded chicken, cheese, pico de gallo, ambiguously-labeled “crack sauce.” I ordered both the pollo tocino and the chipotle pork, but it didn’t matter much in the end because they both tasted like indiscriminate meat product with some tomatoes and lettuce chucked in. At some point I switched to a fork and spoon to finish the job because I lost faith in the second taco to hold up much better, which while not a tragedy like global warming, is still a pretty sad way to go. On my way back past the cart I spotted an increasingly long line forming up. New York, I love you but you’re bringing me down.

Recommend if: you live in Murray Hill and think venturing into Greenpoint counts as edgy, you are bored of Chipotle but still want your server to speak English. But seriously, fuck these guys.

Nightcap: Dutch Kills, Long Island City

One day I’ll know that Queens is officially hip when Lena Dunham films herself smoking crack out in Jackson Heights in front of bemused Indian grocers, but until then, I can always head over to Dutch Kills. Incidentally, I should note that LIC is home to the Queensbridge housing projects, which, according to its Wikipedia entry, produces at least 70% of the city’s rappers (Capone-N-Noreaga representing Queens to the fullest).

The neighborhood is kind of an interesting one: it’s directly across the water from some of the swankier parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, it’s where the 7 train coming from Flushing intersects with about six other lines and the Long Island Expressway, it’s where yuppie-approved date spots like PS1 and Socrates Sculpture Park sit on the same block as boarded-up warehouses and autobody garages. Around the way at Hunter’s Point, a bomb-ass mural of the Notorious B.I.G. scowls disapprovingly at all that he surveys, the corner where he used to sling rock now sporting a boutique organic pharmacy. Back in the day, I used to wait tables in nearby Astoria, and it is genuinely surprising how fast the luxury condominiums and starry-eyed twenty-something transplants showed up in the area, lured by a breathtaking city view and the promise of $2700 apartments that are actually nice.

Luckily, what’s not yet crossed the East River are the alcohol prices. You can expect to routinely pay upwards of $16 per drink, not including tax and tip, in some of the frillier temples of mixology in Manhattan, but thanks to a combination of cheaper rent and a clientele that can’t yet afford to stand for that nonsense, Dutch Kills manages to offer basically the same quality of booze for $11 a pop, $8 during happy hour, which is basically unheard of anywhere that invests in its own custom ice cubes. The vibe is “industrial speakeasy”, the lighting is dark and blemish-hiding, the bartenders rock the vest and mustache look, and it’s almost always packed with the young and flippant, as these types of places generally are.

I got there early, spent a few minutes hovering awkwardly near the bar eavesdropping on at least three first dates, but the waitress was kind enough to eventually find me a seat. Over the course of four hours my fashionably late lawyer friend (who also just happened to move into the neighborhood) and I held court at a booth, sipping whiskey-based beverages and periodically entertaining our female callers. The drink list isn’t huge, but I wouldn’t hesitate in going off-menu, since the bartenders certainly seem to know their Fernet Branca from their Lillet Blanc. The cocktails themselves are fairly straightforward, and lean towards well-executed variations on the classics, which honestly, I am okay with, because sometimes you just want to unrepentantly drink nothing but Old-Fashioneds (or Old-Fashioneds made with Islay scotch and maple syrup) for the entire evening, and if you are that kind of guy, Dutch Kills is here for you.

Recommended if: you’re a first year associate at a law firm but want to meet some hipsters, you’re dating a first year associate at a law firm but are basically a hipster.

What I Ate On My Summer Vacation: Kokoreç

Karry Lu  

At midnight they woke us up for border crossing; when it was my turn in line I paid for the visa with the 15 euro I had carefully stored between the pages of a Bosnian novel entitled “Love and Obstacles.” Back on the bus I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the weird angle my neck was bent at. When I woke up I was in Turkey; Turkey the gateway to Asia, straddler of the Black Sea. Turkey the mysterious, the last of the great empires broken in the last of the great wars. Miles of sun-parched wheat emerged against the half-stolen light of morning. A few scattered trees perched aloof and hazy on the horizon. I blinked, yawned, and fell back asleep.

In Istanbul, I ate a lot of kebabs, because that’s practically unavoidable, but I also ate a lot of kokoreç. Kokoreç while I dodged and weaved past impenetrable traffic in impenetrable humidity; kokoreç under the waning afternoon shadows of Besiktas Stadium; kokoreç washed down with a half-liter of Efes and the gentle lapping of the Bosphorus. I ate some other things too, tantuni and midye dolma and even had some Shake Shack on Istiklal Road, past the Urban Outfitters and a McCafe where the hip local kids lined up for soft-serve ice cream at 2 AM and to freeload wi-fi and to be seen and heard.

When I was in Vienna I met a Turkish lawyer who told me to eat kokoreç, and because I crave hipster bragging rights, I had to track it down. After a bit of the typical confused-foreigner routine, I eventually found a stall that sold something that looked like what I found on Google image search: a long, glistening log of fat.

Which is not too far from the truth. Kokoreç is offal (hearts, lungs and kidneys) wrapped in lamb or goat intestines and then slowly roasted on a rotisserie. When it’s turning on the spit it looks vaguely like a giant sausage, wrapped tightly in twine and smoked lightly with off-brand Turkish cigarettes. When you order, the guy slices off a round, minces it, seasons with oregano and red chili pepper, and serves it in a half-baguette. Might set you back $3. Istanbul has no shortage of meats stuffed inside or served on top of a payload of carbs, but kokoreç is a standout, partly because it’s endemic to this part of the world, something that hasn’t yet been packaged and sold by the Western gaze. I imagine it’s the culinary equivalent of the classic foreign romance: unexpected, fiery, slightly questionable and liable to leave a tingling numbness in your mouth. The first taste is always a revelation; supremely savory but with proper heat, the chewy spring of the intestine countered by the comforting softness of the bread. Sometimes they’ll add chopped tomatoes and bell peppers for a hit of lightness. Sometimes you’ve just gotta man up and chow down some tripe-wrapped thymus. You can ask for a squeeze of lemon juice. I remember the first time, that texture, the smell wafting from the charcoal grill and the warm juice running between my fingers, motorbikes honking and roaring straight past the wide-eyed Chinese tourists in visors snapping pictures of Suleymaniye Mosque in the distance. Later on, in the afternoons when I sipped black tea in outdoor cafes and read longform journalism about teenage bullying on my Android because I didn’t have anyone to talk to, I thought about eating more kokoreç. Getting a beer, and maybe some kokoreç. I remember the last time, on my last night, at the end of another winding alleyway choked with exhaust and vapors from sweating humans and panting dogs, a couple of old Turks with graying mustaches and dusty brows running a stand next to a bus stop. Afterwards I sat along the river, chewing slowly with every bite burning away into nothing, observing the lights of Kadikoy, shutting off and going dark in this sprawling, unperturbed city. At the airport I spent my last few lira on local anise liquor and crepes, which weren’t great. When I passed through security there was a group of British kids arriving with their suitcases in tow, wheels rattling over the automated walkway. In town for holiday, for a lark, to find themselves in others, their lilting voices echoing far away as they fired up their Instagram feeds. Outside, the temperature dipped, and the moon hung low over Istanbul.