On Saturday November 5, I visited Smorgasburg. A place full of tourist and all kind of different food sold from vendors. The trip took me about an hour to get there, but it was worth it getting to taste the food there and comparing it to regular food that I buy outside. I brought an original jianbing, watching as the vendor prepare it was the best part but then there is the taste, in one bit you can taste the eggs and scallions along the cracker which is cover in a sweet a savory Sause and with their homemade chili Sause which I think gave it that extra taste all rap in a batter for only $8. It was one of the most amazing dish I ate I brought 2 of them and took one home for my mom to try and she was amaze with it just like I was. To know that all this kind of food is only an hour away and didn’t know about it made me a little angry but it was a trip worth going and I will be going back with my friend in the future to share my experience with them.

On Saturday November 5 I visited the smorgasbord with my brother. it was an awesome temperature, the sky was clear at one point and we enjoyed walking around and eating at the smorgasbord. there was a small amount of people per vendor roughly 12 individuals occupied a vendor at different times as well as the others. Most of the vendors sold the healthier version of what my brother and I eat around Brooklyn, others sold dishes that I preferred not to put in my mouth one being fish tacos. Its exactly like the name describes fish taco I wouldn’t eat it because they drenched a fish in avocado and I strongly dislike avocado. Anyone ever heard of lobster mac n’ cheese for some reason that sounded funny to me. The way the menus were set up at each vendor had me using my imagination to guess what the dish would look like so even though I had to try something different I also had to be careful of what I picked.

The vendor we decided to try was called lumpia shack it had something familiar about it so we tried it out. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough money to buy multiple dishes to try so we were restricted to one dish. The food was a little more expense compared to what we are use to. So the dish we tried was one we could customize with the ingredients they provided. Its a build your own BBQ bowl. We picked cold rice noodles, no spice, fried farm egg, and free ranged  chicken. The dish looked like a vegan noodle bowl with meat and fried egg. The chicken was cooked with a blowtorch along with the fried egg, it was funny and a weird cooking style that most of the vendors used.  The chicken was juicy, chewy, with sweet chilly sauce, white meat well done, the noodles were cold and tasteless but the sweet sauce they added to it made it taste good and were limp but firm. The salad was soft, healthy lime green, chewy and accompanied with a sweet sauce as well. the kale however was terrible hard to chew was drenched in a funny tasting oil and taste bad I couldn’t eat it. One addition to the bowl looked like pale beets, small circles, and tasted like a lighter version of the Mac Donald’s sweet chilly sauce. It didn’t taste bad but I wouldn’t eat it often. There was a small amount of gravy at the bottom of the bowl probably the run off of all the sauce they put on the salad. The dish was accompanied by lemonade from another vendor called red hook lobster pound lobster rolls which had a lemony taste and had a decent amount of sugar. The bowl looked similar to a Japanese dish called Naruto ramen which I love to eat.

The dish was 18$ in a medium size bowl with a diameter of 7 1/2 inches across the top and a height of about 3 1/2 inches, But it wasn’t big enough to be 18$. The most unusual vendor was fish taco because I never thought you could combine fish and tacos and mac n’ cheese lobster. The people my brother and I saw were Caucasian mostly, Chinese, Indian. Some were with family consisting of the parents children and elderly others were couples and one other black person besides me and my brother which was a chef. The employees at lumpia shack had a neat organized station everything was clear and tidy when not preparing orders, the ingredients were kept in separate containers and when they were cooking or handled the food they wore gloves. There was not must of a difference between how the vendors handled their food, it was like they worked under one manager that applied the same policies. Lumpia shack just like all the other vendors and crazy expensive prices on their dishes.

My brother and I enjoyed the experience at smorgasbord. Weather as perfect and couldn’t have wished for it to be any better. The employee that served us was nice and was very interested in my assignment and wish me luck. What would have made the experience better would be if I didn’t have a stomach ache headache and my eyes weren’t hurting.

When I plan on eating outside its usually the same meal or something close to it. So when I went to the Smorgasburg in Williamsburg, Brooklyn my choice where limited. It was a windy day and a bit cold and because of that there was only two vendors that day. My only choices where C Bao Asian Buns & Bubble Tea and Duck Season. I picked Duck Season.

Duck season was a stand in which they sold duck with there meals. I picked their Season fries which had duck fat fries with duck confit and Demi-Glace. It had a salty but sweet flavor to it, I’m not sure what was in it that made it taste sweet but it was something new for me because I have never tried duck before. After a couple of minutes later I got tired of the flavor because it became to much for me the flavor of one moment its a bit sweet then salty then sweet again and in the end I didn’t finish it. The price for it was $10 at first I though it was worth the money but as the taste became too much for me I regretted buying it and I only ate like half of what they served which was a decent amount for all the things it had in it. I was tempted at first to try the C Bao but what they had was something I am kind of familiar with like the Korean Bulgogi Beef, Grilled Pork, and Grilled chicken. They had a better price but the portions didn’t seem enough.

Even though that day wasn’t the best considering the temperature and winds there where people mostly they were people who didn’t mind wasting a bit of money on the amount of food they were getting and lines were average not to long and the waiting time to get your order was also average from 3-5 minutes on both vendors. The set up the vendors had were all in containers and had garbage bins near them. Would I try the duck fries again probably not ill try something else but not from the same vendor.

On Sunday, October sixteenth I went to the Smorgasburg (Brooklyn). The weather was not that bad, a little chilly, but Smorgasburg still had a lot of people there. I saw around eight to ten vendors selling their food. I did a little research and found out that a lot of people go to Smorgasburg to promote their food at Smorgasburg. That’s basically the starting of a new restaurant or even a food chain. There was a lot of interesting food that I have never seen anyone make before, like the ramen burgers.  One of the few things that I noticed when I got close to the Smorsburg was the smell, that got me excited because I thought that Smorgasburg was like a restaurant area. Almost all the food was cooked in front of you. The prices weren’t very high, they ranged from $1-$15 depending on what you got. There was a big variety of food to choose from, starting from breakfast to desserts. One of the breakfast items that was sold is sausage egg and cheese wrapped in crepes. The desert item that looked very interesting was a jelly bubble covered in a syrup called “Raindrop”.
I really wanted to try one of the brisket sandwiches that were sold at one of the vendors, but ones I saw the chicken wings I couldn’t hold myself from trying them. I wasn’t blown away with the taste as much as I was with the way it looked. The color of the sauce the wings were covered in was a very bright orange color that just made want to eat it. When I tasted the wings they felt like they needed to be cooked longer, it was very hard to chew them. The sauce that they were covered in tasted very similar to the sweet and sour sauce, but at the same time a little spicy. Because of the bright orange color, I expected them to taste like the orange chicken sauce. People around me were talking about how this sauce had a secret recipe. Everyone was going crazy about those wings. I didn’t find it very special because they just tasted like typical buffalo wings covered in sweet and sour with a little spice. The portion that those wings were sold in was six and the price was around six dollars. The guy that served me the wings just took them out of the oven and put them on a plate with some salary and blue cheese. Overall I really like the atmosphere and the fact that everything that I looked at made me hungry. I will definitely come back to try that brisket wrap.

Jianbing, Shanghai-Inspired Street Food

The day I went to Smorgasburg the food choices were minimal. Due to the bad weather many vendors decided not to go and those who were there were having a hard time cooking and serving the food, because of the wind and rain that flew all over the place. From those few places one that caught my attention was jianbing which is original from China. The best way to describe it is as a savory crepe. The flour mixture is spread through a big circular pan where the pancake immediately starts to form, then he added eggs on top of the flour mixture and started to mix the egg with the flour cooking it simultaneously. Next, he added chopped scallions, coriander, mustard pickles, and chicken to the middle of the pancake. After, he folded one side of the pancake to add hoisin sauce, followed by baocui which is a thin and crisp deep-fried pancake. Finally, he folded the rest of the pancake multiply times, and finished by cutting it in half.

The taste of the jianbing was pretty interesting. The fluor of the pancake was thin and delicate as well as the crispy deep-fried pancake that they added. The flavor of the chicken was mild and felt almost unseasoned. What gave the overall taste in the jianbing was the hoisin sauce which had a sweet and salty taste, and the chopped mustard pickles with a bittersweet taste. You could taste the sweetness in every bite but it wasn’t very pungent. Is not something I would like to eat for breakfast, but it can be great for lunch or as a snack.

Due to the bad weather there were few people and almost no lines at all. From ordering to getting served it took about five minutes which was fast. The portion size was about a foot long in total. I payed $15 dollars which I do not think it was worth it since a jianbing is considered to be a “street” food which is sold at a low price due to the affordable cost of ingredients that requires to make it.  My overall experience was not as pleasant as how I expect it. The location of the place was difficult to find, the cold-rainy weather made it worse, and the food sold was not as flavorful and tasty as it looked.

        Smorgasburg “Brooklyn Flea market” is a group of purveyors that introduces culinary tourism in Brooklyn. They are open at Williamsburg by the seaport on Saturday and at Prospect Park on Sunday. They offer variety of different cuisines from different countries, which is why they attract many people including tourist and locals. The class assignment was to visit the place, eat a food, and criticize it in detail.

        On Sunday, October 9, I went to Smorgasburg at Prospect Park. The weather was horrible it was breezy, very cold and drizzling. The only two branches open are the Ramen burger and the Maria’s authentic taco. The rest of the purveyors was packing and leaving the place because of the stormy weather. Thus, with shortage of option I tried the regular portion of ramen burger, pretty small for 10 bucks. I thought that the ramen would be a little crispier since it is put on the hamburger fryer, but it was not. However, there was a purpose as to why it is served like that. It is for the customers to eat the burger without making a mess since the ramen is sticking together. The smell of the Japanese sauce left a strong fishy smell in my hands, making me wonder whether they put oil or powder of fish in the sauce.

        On Saturday, October 15, I went to Williamsburg to recover my experience. I tried the Korean Bulgogi from “C Bao”, Mango lassi from “Dosa Royale”, and Bisska Corn from “Bisska NYC.” I was very disappointed with the korean bulgogi and I will never try it again. The korean beef was not cut properly, it was put in a bun as a cluster of uncut beef. The white onions with the beef were cut in big chunks which would cause a person to choke. I then lose my appetite and throw half of the food. I drank the mango lassi to make me feel better however, it made my throat dry that I started coughing and needed a water. After a while, I tried the Bisska corn and it would have been good if the corn was served a little bit hard. I also saw many people from the “Wow Fulls”, which makes me want to try the egg waffles, but the line is very long, about 20-30 people. One of the food from a purveyors was very surprising. It is fried anchovies in a small cup that is served as a snack which is not common in a market such as that.

        Overall, the food at Smorgasburg food market did not leave a great impression on me however, I fell in love with the neighborhood. With it’s graffiti, vintage, antique, jewelry and the street market.