Jackson Heights Walking Feast

My dear friend StB has had an exciting year.  Long time readers may recognize her as my former partner-in-eating-crime; we ate many many meals together (as that link will show you), but then she did something horrible and moved to Ohio.  But this year, she moved back!  She got engaged!  She turned 30!  And when I finally had a minute to breathe during this intense, scary, terrible, awesome, amazing summer, we took a jaunt around Jackson Heights for food – cheap.  We started off at Mira Cali II for pandebono…

This was $1.  We split one because we knew how much more food was coming.

The fluffy innards.  I liked this – it was airy, chewy, slightly sweet – but I don’t know that I’d go out of my way to get get it again.  I like pao de quiejo 😉

After we wandered up and down Roosevelt Avenue for a few minutes looking for a tamale lady said to sell out of a cooler under the train stairs (we saw no such person), we decided to pick a truck and order.  This looked a lot like any of the trucks I’d hit during my Oakland truck tour, so we stopped and quickly agreed upon…

Oreja, or pig ear. 

Slightly chewy in texture, the flavor wasn’t actually all that interesting.  We both agreed that at $2, this was a steal, and quite tasty but next time we’d both opt for a different “meat” (we split this, too). 

Our next stop turned out to be a taqueria/sit-down type of restaurant. 

As soon as we sat down, we were given menus to ponder and a basket of clearly housemade tortilla chips and salsa.  Not spicy, but a nice nibble for while we perused the offerings. 

We both ordered the horchata, but because I’m always thirsty lately, I got the supersized version.  I think this was $1.50 and $3. 

StB went with the cesina, or salted beef.  (We split both of these again.)  When they say salted beef, they mean salted.  I mean, it was really freakin’ salty.  Tasty, to be sure, but something both of us agreed that we couldn’t eat the entire taco because it was just too salty to comfortably consume.

I went with al pastor (pork) I believe, and this was really yummy.  I liked mine quite a lot, finding it super tasty and everything worked well together.

Also, before anyone gets upset at how the “guacamole” looks – I don’t think that’s guacamole.  I think that’s salsa de aguacate – a sauce made of avocado, and meant to be blended quite a bit more (and therefore “waterier”/more liquid-y than guacamole, not nearly as chunky or thick and creamy as many Americans are used to).  And it tastes good, as long as you know what to expect. 

Following that, we walked over to Seba Seba to look at antojitos. 

Small bites that range in price from $1 to a few dollars. 

And yet somehow, we were too full to consider picking and choosing from the cases displaying some really amazing bites. 

Yeah, we walked to East Elmhurst from Jackson Heights to find Cannelle… which was the lone patisserie that BeerBoor skipped during his Macaron Day trip.  I hadn’t even known that was where we were heading, but when we arrived, I excitedly asked the woman behind the counter if there were any macarons.  She looked at me as though I were a little nuts, and flatly informed me that no, there were no more macarons.  Hmm. 

We were there for a dessert that made some list in Time Out New York, though –

The Creole. 

Which, not being that into sweets, both StB and I found a little too rich for our tastes.  For some reason, we were both under the impression it would be lighter, airier, fluffier, but this was pretty heavy and we ate only a little more than half of the $3.50 individual cake before we had to dump it and walk back to the train station. 

What are friends for if not to walk around and eat for hours?  Welcome home, StB.  You were missed.

Yvo says: None of the places we visited were particularly expensive, and all had very many tasty treats to explore and discover.  I highly recommend taking a similar walk around (and if you know me, invite me along!) and checking out all the goodies, eating to your heart’s content, as we did.  The most expensive meal of the day was, of course, the one sit-down place we visited, where even that came to just around $10 before tip.  Everywhere we went, despite clearly not being locals, everyone was nice to us, and our food was yummy! 
recommended, every single place, explore your way through the menu!