Bear with me for a bit but de Certeau makes it a point to focus on our everyday actions as acts of consumption rather than just static notions of obtaining or buying or using things.  In other words, you can count, on one end, how many TV were sold in a month, or how many hours of TV were watch in a month on the other end, but it may be a lot more interesting to figure out exactly how that TV watching is being consumed.  In the author’s words, we need to ask “what the consumer makes of these of these [televised] images and during these hours.”

So, how fun is that for a nerd like me when it comes to food?  For many of us (probably not for you personally if you’re reading this blog) food is often served a role greater than something for mere sustanence.  It’s something of pleasure, but it’s also something to think about, something to ponder, something to explore, something to revel in.  I am not suggesting we should, you know, take notes with a pen and paper every time we have a double cheeseburger from McDonalds, but it is sometimes good to know that, quoting de Certeau from the Trubek, “the food that is reserved, authorized, and preferred is the place of a silent piling up of an entire satisfaction of orders and counterorders that stem at the same time from an ethnohistory, a biology, a climatology, and a regional economy, from a cultural invention and a personal experience.”

In other words, food is kind of complicated, and most of what we eat has a pretty long history to tell.  To quote Thomas Keller quoting his mentor Roland Henin in The French Laundry Cookbook, “If you’re a really good cook, you can go back in time.”  I am not a really good cook, but I am a pretty good eater, and I think the effect can be the same if you pay enough attention.

So after our long walk up the hill of Broad Street in New Britain, CT, we tucked into Staropolska and got that oh-so-humanistic of beverages, beer.  Talk about loaded with history, but I’m not really the one to write about the cultural implications of beer through the centuries.  I just know it’s ancient, and nearly universal as a drink across the globe, and in the case of my first EB, pretty tasty.

First on the table was the Viener Schnitzel, ordered mainly because fried animals chunks tend to be really tasty.  I’ve been to Europe once (I was in 8th grade) and I had schnitzel twice, mainly because back then I was a pleb and I recognized it on menus and I was fairly sure I wasn’t getting myself into anything scary.

The potatoes were just ok, sprinkled with dill, and there were also some sad looking diced veggies on the plate I ignored, but the main event was pretty good - tender, crispy, hot, and the runny egg added a nice, thick sauciness to the whole thing.  It was a bit thicker and less delicate than what I had in Europe but I’m not sure if I should attribute that to being in Staropolska in New Britain, CT, or this just being the way it is in Poland.

The Polish Platter was all around spectacular.  Starting from the bottom and going clockwise is stuffed cabbage, Bigos - a stew made with kraut and meat, 3 pierogis of varying fillings, kielbasa, and of course more mashed potatoes in the middle.  Standouts were the cabbage which had a very light, flavorful filling and a tangy/sweet tomato sauce, and the Bigos, which tasted like it had cook a long time which mellowed out the cabbage and gave it a rich, dark, meaty taste.  Of the three pierogies, the best was probably the cheese and potato, which was thick, creamy, and wonderfully chewy on the outside.

When in New Britain, CT Staropolska is a pretty good place to eat.  We were there in the middle of the afternoon on a rainy Saturday and still had to wait for a table, many of which were filled with large parties that seemed to be celebrating birthdays or special events.  The menu is quite extensive, and the next time I go I’d love to try out their Kielbasa grinder with sauerkraut which would make a nice lunch.  It will be food to think about.

In that (also a bit nebulous) world of Urban Studies, the idea is that landscapes are sometimes dotted with communities which are roughly self-contained islands of uniqueness. There’s the elite, wealthy, and powerful enclave of Boston’s Beacon Hill which maintains it’s colonial feel, and exclusivity, through a number of political and social means. Many major cities are dotted with Little Italys and Chinatowns and other concentrations of ethnic, racial, and cultural groups. Gay enclaves can be found in The Castro in San Fransisco, Boystown in Chicago, Key West, and West Hollywood.

Buried deep within New Britain, CT, one of the many towns that make up the Hartford metro area is a Polish enclave, famous enough to have earned the town the nickname of “New Britski.” What I found on New Britain’s Broad Street was a textbook example of an urban ethnic enclave, and the expression of all things Polish was bountiful and accessible to all who were local, or just visitors like me.

As a visitor to Broad Street, I didn’t necessarily feel like an “outsider,” per se, which seems to imply some sort of uncomfortable barrier between those who belong and those who don’t. But like any person entering a world which is not their own, walking through the stores of Broad Street I was at least aware that my perception of the “place” of Broad Street, and how I reacted to it would be very different from those who lived within it. What I did not anticipate was how much my personal physical appearance could change my experience. My ancestry is in Ireland and Finland, but my blond hair, blue eyes, and pallid complexion made me look Polish enough that I was greeted in Polish at least three times by shopkeepers, which was not the case for my foodie companions who did not look the part at all. I always replied with an American Midwest-accented “Hello” which instantly betrayed my non-Polishness, and instantly branded me as not who they thought I was. Or at least someone who wasn’t going to reply in Polish.

What couldn’t be communicated across Polish and English could easily be communicated through food.

I have a deep and passionate love for most all food items pickled, brined, doused with vinegar, preserved. Most Polish markets on Broad Street had this setup somewhere in their produce section - big fat plastic buckets filled with cucumber pickles, fish, and of course, that miraculous product that happens when salt and shredded cabbage collide. All the way across the world, the Koreans called it kimchi, but in Eastern Europe it was sauerkraut. If you’ve never had the real thing, made by real people, it is nothing like opening an acrid can of the stuff from your grocery store. The flavors are more complex, more smooth, more sweet, and less like salty sour cabbage and more like a real FOOD. It’s a dish, and it’s so much more than something to dump on a hot dog.

Every shop has signs in the window for local Polish entertainment, shows, and dances. There are job postings in Polish. There things to rent and buy in Polish. There are Polish-owned banks and social institutions. This is another sign of a true enclave. The insitutions of the neighborhood serve those who live there, and the local residents support the institutions. The signs tell me Broad Street is not merely a gathering of those within a common nationality, but an expression of a way of life.

This store was a great example of that. They had an entire wall of cassettes (I can’t remember the last time I saw music cassettes in a store) of Polish music, and CDs, and DVDs with both Polish films and English films with Polish dubbing, and walls and walls of Polish tchotchkes. Tchotchke is a Yiddish word but it’s another one that kind of sounds like what it means. Come to think of it sauerkraut sounds the way it tastes.

This was out last stop before having our full sit-down lunch (coming up in Pt. 2) but I just had to take a picture because the building total looks like some sort of temple to food with the outside courtyard, the long entrance way up to the porch, and then the deck up top. Inside they had cabbages bigger than basketballs.

Beer gets drank and keilbasa gets noshed in Pt. 2.

Blue Back Square, in West Hartford, CT is a bit of a controversy.  It’s a huge commercial development near West Hartford center which features several shops, offices, and lofts, all packaged into what feels and looks like an urban neighborhood.  The buildings are tall, the streets are pedestrian friendly, and the mixed use private spaces lend a bit of a cosmopolitan feel to the entire place.

Of course, it’s not an urban neighborhood, it’s a glorified shopping mall.  The entire development has essentially been invented, imposed into West Hartford, and the look and feel is similar to the large outdoor shoppertainment areas of Southern California.  The stores are exclusive, you have to pay to park on-site, and while you are short walk from the vibrant shopping and dining scene in West Hartford center, you feel a world away.  The (excellent) Whole Foods next door is listed on Blue Back’s website, but you can’t park at Whole Foods and walk over to Blue Back.  Parking at Blue Back, walking over to Whole Foods, buying groceries and walking across the street back to one of the parking garages at Blue Back is ten times the hassle of simply moving your car if you want to visit both.  There are aspects of Blue Back which are admirable, and the land could have certainly been used for less-worthy developments, but the sum effect is clear - this isn’t development in search of a community, this is development in search of a market.

The place still has it’s charms.  The West Hartford Public Library backs up against the development and you can enter from Main Street or the center of Blue Back itself.  There are trees.  There’s a movie theater back on Main Street, something you don’t see that often anymore.  You walk around, you sit on a bench, sometimes people talk to each other.  Once you step out of the dark parking garage, it is undeniably nice.  And the food, at least at one spot, is really good.

There is that bastion of tourist strips and mega-malls, The Cheesecake Factory.  The place caused a sensation across Central Connecticut when it opened, causing hours-long waits fueled by glowing praise and positive notes from local papers.  There’s also a Moe’s Southwest Grill (warning, obnoxious website), a coffee place, an Au Bon Pain, an expensive steakhouse chain with valet parking, and a Munson’s Chocolate.

The newest, and hottest, is The Counter, and considering the recent foodie crazes over upscale burger places, it seems like a perfect fit.

I’ll admit, I was skeptical.  The reviews were good, but I had a few hesitations, mostly because I love burgers, and I’m completely picky about them.  For one thing, I like little ones, or, maybe, I don’t like huge ones.  Five Guys is heaven for me.  Shake Shack deserves all the praise it gets.  There is a time and place, I suppose, for half pound burgers, but I am generally not a fan, as I find huge burgers are usually unruly and awkward to eat, and often just flavorless and bland.  At The Counter, they start at 1/3lb. and go up from there, so I had faith that I could deal with the smallest one as long as it was constructed properly.

In addition, I’m a purist.  Unusual burgers are fine on occasion, but judging a burger place based on something wild and unusual is impossible without going for a back-to-basics version first.  So I was a bit overwhelmed by this:

Black Olives.  Carrot Strings.  Dried Cranberries.  Hard Boiled Eggs.  Roasted Corn and Black Bean Salsa.  Sprouts.  Sun-Dried Tomatoes.  Apricot Sauce, Ginger Soy Glaze, Peanut Sauce, Fried Eggs, Black Forest Ham!  Do not want!  No!  I totally get that Peanut Sauce could be great on a burger but then I would have to go back and figure out the other 4 toppings that would make sense with Peanut Sauce.  More like a science project than a menu.

If it all seems like too much they have a small selection of pre-composed burgers to order, but I remained vigilant.  A 1/3lb. burger on a burger bun, with grilled onions, lettuce, tomato, pickle, blue cheese, and mayo.  Classic.  My eating partner gleefully got what I had feared most for myself - a burger with black bean salsa, olives, roasted red peppers, buttermilk ranch, and blue cheese.  A Frankenstein burger.  “Did you really just order that?” I had to ask.

Before the burgers, a good sign.  A really good sign.

The 50/50 order of onion rings and fries was excellent.  The fries were crispy and cruncy, with just a little hit of seasoning salt for flavor.  Very addictive, I had to force myself to slow down once they got to the table.  The onion ring portion was also a winner.  The batter to onion ratio was perfect, and they were just greasy enough to lick the salt off your fingers once you had plucked a few in your mouth.  They came with barbecue sauce and buttermilk dressing for dipping, both fine but ketchup or just plain was good, too.

Here’s the random-toppings burger:

It looked good but I couldn’t get over the topping combination my dining partner had ordered to ooh and aah over it.  I was pleased to see the toasted bun and reddish color in the middle of the beef.

Mine was a winner.  It was indeed a little too big to be perfect.  The blue cheese was very strong and very salty and there was plenty of it, so it was a little overpowering especially in combination with tangy pickles.  The tomato wasn’t much of a player overall.  Those are really my only complaints, otherwise the beef was flavorful and perfectly cooked.  The bun was soft and smooshy and toasted to a nice golden brown.  This was a remarkably well-crafted burger.

I will return.  Now that I know The Counter is the real deal, I will indeed branch out a bit for my next visit.  The bun my burger came on was pitch-perfect, but they also offer an English Muffin option, which is also a beautiful burger carrier.  The ingredients are top notch, so I may lay off the blue cheese next time in exchange for something less pungent, and more gooey.  I may go in for raw onion instead of grilled next time, because some of my favorite burgers include a sweet-ish sauce (and it looks like they offer a few) which contrast nicely with a spicy, crunchy slice of onion.

If you like burgers, this will be a very welcome addition to the Hartford dining scene.  Just make sure you bring money for parking.

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Collins Creamery is open Noon to 9pm this fall. It may be my favorite place to get ice cream in Hartford County.

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Parkville, a neighborhood of Hartford, CT, is a remarkable place, and a beautiful representation of some of the changes Hartford as a whole has experienced through history.  As late as the 1880’s, Parkville was still farm land located at the junction of the North and South branches of the Park River.  The Park River still flows today, but was buried underneath the city in the 1940s because of health and flooding concerns.  Today as you travel east on I-84 into downtown Hartford, you can catch a glimpse of where the river goes underground into a concrete tunnel to the right.  To the left are the remaining factory buildings of industrial Parkville, remnants of a time when Parkville was the manufacturing heart of Central Connecticut.  Some of those remaining industrial buildings have been converted into lofts, offices, and eateries.  Perhaps the most well-known is Real Art Ways, at 56 Arbor Street in what used to be a typewriter factory.

Park Street is the heart of Parkville.  The businesses and residencies on and around Parkville initially served the workers of the nearby factories.  Since the loss of manufacturing work in Hartford, the neighborhood has become home to thiving ethnic communities, most notably made up of people from Portugal, Brazil, and Asia.

I say “Asia” because there is remarkable blending of Asian cultures in some of the stores lining Park Street.

Kien Oriental Market is small, tightly packed, and truly “Oriental” in the sense that I found most of the stock to be very much not specifically Thai, or Chinese, or Vietnamese, for example.

Inside just one freezer case, Indian Paratha sat next to Spring Rolls, with packages of tropical fruit purees underneath.

Also, in stark contrast with the massive A Dong Grocery, the aisles were just barely wide enough for one person to walk through.  A counter up front had sandwiches (Banh Mi, perhaps?  Could’ve been) but there was so much to discover I moved on up the street.

Brazil Grill seems to be a very popular place, and their website lists their menu for the day I was passing by as “Oxtail stew, Fried yuca w/ Pork skin, Baked chicken, Chili w/ red beans, Salmon in oven.”  Ok, maybe I should have stopped!  Expect a review eventually, pork skin is something I take seriously.

Closer to Prospect Avenue, and the West Hartford town line is Leena’s First and Last Pizzeria and Sully’s Pub.  The place is known for live music and spotting local big-wigs and politicians.  I didn’t notice any local notables when I visited a few years ago but I also didn’t notice much in the way of tasty food, either.

This is the dining patio at Oporto, an upscale Portugese place, and another which I haven’t visited.  It looks fine if not a bit pricey based on their website, but I mostly just thought it was too bad they had outdoor, kinda-sidewalk dining, but not without a large fence with spikes and shrubs between pedestrians and eaters.

Bairrada Bakery & Pastry Shop is one of several Portugese bakeries in Parkville.  I entered and asked for something especially authentic and Portugese-y in nature, and from behind the counter I was given four small baked egg custards in pastry cups.  The custard was thick, almost like pastry cream and dark brown on top.  The pastry itself could have been a bit fresher.  By the time I ate one the puff pastry was a bit dry and stale but I am not the biggest fan of puff pastry-type deserts to begin with.

My last stop in Parkville for today was probably my most fruitful.

Street food!  In Hartford!  Yay!  I didn’t now exactly what “Pincho” is but Wikipedia does:

In Puerto Rico, a different type of pincho is served by street vendors with barbecues. Unlike the Basque pincho, usually only one or two slices of bread are in the pincho, while the rest is barbecued chicken, pork, shark, or other meat. The meats and the bread are skewered on a wooden stick, rather than served on a plate; the stick is grabbed from the bottom and the contents are eaten.

I got a pincho and soda for $2.50.  The vendor asked if I wanted mine spicy and I enthusiastically said “Yes!  Yes!”  The results:

The pork was tender, spicy, tangy, with just the right amount of fat and porky flavor.  Hartford could use a stand like this on every corner.

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This is the blueberry and peach.  The fruit flavors here were good but not as intense as I would have liked them to be.  It was the texture of this ice cream which really blew me away.  The butterfat content seemed quite high but the ice cream also had a lovely, soft, very rich airiness to it.  When you dipped your spoon in the ice cream pulled away and tore and twisted, almost like some sort of lovely dairy confection in a cup.  Things went to the next level when sundaes got involved:

On the bottom is one of Dr. Mike’s signature flavors, Chocolate Lace.  The base is sweet, white, and creamy.  The “lace” part is a revelation - sharp, crackly shards of chocolate candy that crisp and break and shatter in your mouth.  On top is Dr. Mike’s peanut butter sauce, which was very salty compared to other’s I’ve had.  I loved it but if you are not super-keen on salt you might want to pass on this one.  On top is a big fat cloud of real whipped cream.  Amazing.  Every single component in this sundae was phenomenal, with top-notch quality and freshness.  It tasted like real food someone real actually made and lends me to think Dr. Mike’s is easily my favorite of the New England ice cream joints I have tried so far.  Plan a trip!

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Strawberry milk from the Dairy Bar.  I think this used to be $1 but it’s more now.  Tasty, much better than the chocolate variety which tasted chalky and chemical-ish.  Over by the building with the sheep and cows.

Free samples at Emilee’s Italian Ice.  Good flavor on the mango but not mind-blowing.

This is where Pez comes after it is harvested.

Steamed burger at Rosco’s Big Dog.  My first experience with a steamed burger, but I liked it well enough.  We’ll be back to Rosco’s.

My favorite item at the Big E year after year.  Apple cider slush, intensely sweet, sour, and cold.  Like slurping on the most vibrant apple flavor you can imagine.  Very reasonable price for a small and a small is enough to split between two people easily.

Swedish pancake.  Tastes like rubbery, sweet, baked eggs, somewhere between scrambled and custard-y.  That sounds gross but it’s good, I get one every year.

Back to Rosco’s.  Dog with chili and cheese.  The hotdogs themselves are probably the best I’ve ever had, they are very firm with a distinct snap as you bite into them.  The cheese and sauce are fine but I’ve had better, next time I may just go for a plain dog with onion and relish.  Still probably my favorite hotdog joint in CT.

Fried cheese curds.  Ridiculous in simplicity and extravagance.  The curds are chewy and slightly melted, very salty.  Comes with a little saucer of ranch to dip them in, a substance usually a cause for revulsion but for some reason makes sense in this context.

A slice from American Flatbread.  Ok, but not remarkable.  I probably could have found something more typical on the midway for half the price which would have been just as satisfying.

I tend to think raspberries are pretty overrated as far as berries go but these were really nice, and the golden ones did have a pretty distinct flavor from the typical red ones.

Finally, an excellent representation of how you will probably feel after a day of eating at the Big E:

The Big E

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The treasures inside A Dong Grocery anchor a shopping center with many businesses which serve the Asian-American community.  Pho Boston (weirdly, not in Boston, still in West Hartford here) is an eatery dedicated to, among other things, Pho, the traditional Vietnamese soup of beef broth and noodles.

There’s also a video store, with signs and posters in the front window advertising the media of different Asian cultures inside.  This is next to Super Laundromat, advertised as the “Largest Coin-operated Laundry in CT!”

Next A Dong in the corner is wireless store and Thai Room.  The day I visited for these pictures I was looking for lunch, and deciding between Thai Room and Pho Boston was not too hard.  While some Thai noodles or curry sounded good, Thai Room was empty and Pho Boston had 5 or 6 tables full on a Thursday at 11:30.  I picked Pho Boston.

I sit down knowing two things.  One, I will order Pho, despite the pretty large menu full of other stuff.  Two, I don’t know anything about Pho.  Don’t get me wrong, I know the basics - it’s beef soup, it has noodles and meat and other stuff, but as far as procedure and custom and know-how goes, I am a novice.

On the table is a Lazy Susan-type rotating platform with several bottles and utensils.  I am presented with something I recognize, a glass of ice water, and something I don’t, but it’s in a glass, it’s steaming, and it’s yellow.  I sniff.  It’s tea, very floral, Jasmine or some other tea which smells very Jasmine-y to me.  My waiter appears and I order the Pho at the top of the Pho selections.  It’s at the top of the page and in big red letters, so it’s either really hot or really good or both, any of which are fine by me.  The description also includes ground peanuts (I think all food should have the option of coming with ground peanuts on top) and cucumber and tomato, which don’t sound traditional, but like I said, big red letters compel me.

Next comes a plate, mounded high with sprouts, fresh basil, some lime wedges, and a chili.  The sprouts are crisp and plump at the same time, just as they should be.  The chili pepper is small and green, probably very hot.  I’m suspecting this should go into my soup, but I nosh and nibble a little bit while I wait, and try to look around at what other people are doing with their plate of sprouts without looking like the Pho neophyte I am.

My bowl of steaming broth and beef and mystery arrives.

I take a taste and it’s really steaming hot.  I give my bowl a moment to rest while I remove a few small saucers from my Lazy Susan and I investigate my condiments.  The biggest bottle is also the most familiar, Sriracha, something that seems to have spread across the globe and has become ubiquitous across cultures when it comes to eating food that should have a hot, garlicky kick.  The next bottle is a chunkier version of the same idea, like Huy Fong Foods’s Chili Garlic Sauce in a squirt bottle.  Another squirt bottle holds a dark, thick, gooey substance.  I dip my thumb in and it tastes like hoisin.  Two more bottles, glass, with little metal lids like oil and vinegar shakers.  One is full of an intensely dark, rich, salty soy sauce.  The other is fish sauce, a bit salty like soy but also with that semi-fermented, semi-fishy funkiness of the sea.

Through some sort of cultural/food relativism, I come to understand what I’m looking at here with the bowl of steaming beef juice and plate of sprouts and collection of squirt bottles.  These are not exactly sides, or condiments.  Coming from the South, I know these are fixin’s.  Vietnamese fixin’s.

The soup is good.  The beef flavor is strong but not at all overpowering or artificial in flavor, and there are hints here and there of the warming spices typical in Pho, like star anise.  The meat is sliced very thin and cooked through.  It resembles gray shoe leather but it is sliced so thin it is still very tender.  The cucumber and tomato seem like weird additions to me but the ground peanuts are great, and add a lot in terms of flavor and texture.  The noodles hiding at the bottom of the huge bowl are plentiful but I do wish they were a bit more chewy.  By the end of the bowl I got a bit more brave, adding in fish sauce and the chili condiments to amp up the heat and salt levels to something a bit more intense.

By noon the room was half full.  A handful of tables looked like business people or workers meeting on lunch breaks.  There was also a steady stream of people who looked Asian, and sounded Asian when they spoke to their waiters.  It was clear many different kinds of people were at Pho Boston, and maybe for different reasons.  As an Urban Studies major at UConn, one of my main interests is “place,” not just in a semantic or common sense way, but as a concept and theory.  The idea seems deceptively simple but as I slurped on my Pho I was very mindful of the different ways a place as seemingly simple as Pho Boston could be percieved.

One way we could look at the “place” of Pho Boston is as a descriptivist.  Pho Boston is a restaurant, named for a large city in Massachusetts, in West Hartford, Connecticut.  It has certain dimensions and physical features along within its physical boundaries.  Inside people eat food with origins in Vietnam, a physical place, a politically formed nation-state, and a culture in and of itself.  A descriptive approach to Pho Boston might also include was is particular about it - what makes it unique, and distinct from other comparable places.

A social constructionist might look at Pho Boston within greater schemes of social process.  Is Pho Boston shaped by the capitalist economy in which it exists?  Are there social norms within typical Pho eateries which have been “Westernized” to appeal to more people in the surrounding market?  It may seem like a stretch to apply such highfalutin ideas to something as benign as a place which sells beef-noodle soup, but a look at the “place” of Pho Boston through the lens of social construction may reveal there are many things we assume about a place which we take for granted.  The assumptions or “rules” we have about place may really not be all that common sense, and they may actually be quite arbitrary.  Discovering the sources of these social norms may be quite enlightening and illustrative when it comes to understanding place.

Finally, a phenomenological approach will look at human experience in an effort to explain concepts of place and even being “in-place.”  Phenomenologists argue that knowledge of place is pre-scientific, and is really more just about the state of existing in a place than any complicated thesis about “place.”  So, with that metaphysical springboard in mind, what did my experience in Pho Boston say about the place Pho Boston?  I did indeed feel a bit awkward at first, and I think that says something about the place - when eating Pho at a Pho restaurant, there’s a certain order things are presented, and eaten, and mixed.  That is not to say I would have been kicked out if I just dumped everything together and asked for a fork for my noodles, but there is a certain method, and it helps to know that method before breaking the rules.

Sitting at a sushi bar is another eating event which assumes some knowledge of place and methodology, but that methodology may also be very different in the context of Masa, as compared to the context of a California Roll at the mall foodcourt.  Is there something about the “place” of a pizza parlour which says we must eat our slice from tip to crust, in that direction?  There is probably not something implicit in a pizza parlour’s physicality which prescribes that we eat pizza this way but again, part of my experience at Pho Boston was influenced by not knowing the social norms, and figuring out the rules myself.  I would argue that this sense of wariness in screwing my soup up very much influenced my own experience of the place I was in.

My experience at Pho Boston, I feel, I was an excellent introduction to the world of Pho and I’ll be back again.  I did notice other varieties included rare meats, ribs, and oh baby, tripe.  Maybe I’ll bring along some friends to check out some appetizers and spring rolls, too.  You’ll read about it here, but I think I will not warn them about the tripe before I order it.

Pho Boston

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Those are ducks at A Dong Grocery in West Hartford, CT.  For a very reasonable sum you can go up to the counter, profess your desire for either a half a duck or a whole duck, and what comes after is a bit of a mystery.  The woman pulls a duck down from its roost and takes it behind a low counter, with the action hidden away from customer view.  A cleaver is procured, and with nothing resembling delicacy or finesse,  she hacks the shit out of it.  It’s clear this is something which takes a lot of skill and probably years of experience to do properly, but it looks like a cross between some sort of violent stress relieving therapy and one of those movies involving a group of hapless teenagers, stranded in a town full of serial murdering rednecks.

Here’s what you get:

A tray full of perfectly butchered duck meat, every piece still on the bone.  The white and dark portions are artfully arranged in the tray so you know which bits are which as you nibble and gnaw, pulling the crispy, mahogany skin and meat from the bone.  Duck juices and fat run all over.  This is the sort of food, like good barbecue or anything that invites us to gnaw on bones and gristle, that takes us back to our caveman roots, and touches us right in what Mario Batali might call the primordial crocodile part of our brains.  I saved the neck for last.  It was cut into inch thick cylinders, and the meat pulled off in flavorful ribbons.

A Dong also offers Bánh mì at the counter, Vietnamese sandwiches stuffed with pickled veggies, cilantro, roast pork, and what I think, after some Googling, may have been thin slices of Ch? l?a.  The sandwich tasted very fresh and I found even half of it to be very filling but not heavy in the least.  This was my first experience with Bánh mì and I understand why those-in-the-know are so enamored with them.  I’m looking forward to trying more in different varieties.

A Dong also has a section of their prepared foods counter which is dedicated just to sweets and pastries.  I have saved everything displayed there for another trip, but A Dong’s shopping center has even more food to discover just a few steps down the strip mall.  Pt. 3 sees me fumbling through my first encounter with Ph?.