{"id":1720,"date":"2005-09-16T05:33:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-16T05:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elitemporaryblog.wordpress.com\/2005\/09\/16\/street-sweets-or-things-best-eaten-on-two-feet"},"modified":"2015-09-24T03:54:17","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T03:54:17","slug":"street-sweets-or-things-best-eaten-on-two-feet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2005\/09\/street-sweets-or-things-best-eaten-on-two-feet\/","title":{"rendered":"Street sweets, or things best eaten on two feet"},"content":{"rendered":"

At some point in my impressionable youth, I was told that one should never<\/em> eat while standing up. This well-meaning killjoy of a tip was probably given to me during one of my mother\u2019s various dieting phases, the idea being that one can\u2019t be fully mindful of what crosses one\u2019s lips unless one is seated, preferably with a knife, fork, and a napkin. There\u2019s a good degree of truth to this, certainly, and I\u2019ll almost always take a civilized sit-down over a standing scarf-down, but honestly, some things just taste better when taken on two feet<\/strong>. Take, for example, the drippy peach eaten over the kitchen sink, or the tip of the baguette torn off outside the boulangerie: really, sometimes sitting is superfluous.<\/p>\n

If you’d like further proof, look no further than New York<\/a>, America\u2019s street food capital<\/strong>. There are carts for nearly everything capable of being eaten out of hand: hot dogs, coffee, deliciously salty soft pretzels, ice cream concoctions in colorful paper, doughnuts, muffins, and, as Brandon and I discovered one nibbly afternoon in Chinatown, a little creation called \u201chot mini cakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>You\u2019d miss them if you weren\u2019t careful, or if you happened to arrive too late in the day, after the last of the batter is gone. But if your timing is just right and your stars are in alignment, as ours were one sunny afternoon, \"\"<\/a>you\u2019ll find at the corner of Grand and Bowery a rickety-looking cart, half wrapped in a blue tarp and parked under a red-and-white striped umbrella. Behind its glass front window, an elderly man<\/a> in white gloves gracefully turns out pan after pan of \u201call natural hot mini cakes,\u201d <\/strong>\"\"<\/a>twenty for a dollar. <\/strong>
<\/strong>Alternately known as \u201cegg cakes,\u201d \u201cHong Kong cakes,\u201d \u201ceggettes<\/a>,\u201d or \u201cgai daan jai,\u201d these sweet, quarter-sized orbs are made in a two-sided, hinged cast iron pan covered with tiny round wells, something across between a waffle iron, a pancake pan, and a sandwich press. When a customer steps up to his cart, the mini-cake man quietly springs into action, greasing the pan with a wooden-handled brush and filling it with a thin stream of the batter. He carefully closes the hinge and holds the pan over a propane flame, turning it a time or two to evenly brown the cakes. Then, scraping any excess batter from the rim, he turns the finished cakes into a bowl and delivers them to his waiting customer, still hot, in a little waxed-paper bag.<\/strong>
<\/strong>
\"\"<\/a>
We stood on the corner and popped them one by one into our mouths, the two-tone cakes speckled with pin-sized holes and trimmed with lacy edges that flipped like tiny, soft skirts. Eggy and light, their flavor was unassuming, familiar, and completely delicious<\/strong>\u2014the scent and sweetness of a white-flour crepe melded with the texture of an airy, fine-crumbed cake.<\/p>\n

Now, being so tasty\u2014and so mini\u2014these cakes tend to disappear at an alarming rate. In fact, you may find, as we did, that they fall just shy of the afternoon sidewalk-snack quota for two. But you\u2019ll be pleased to note, dear reader, that there\u2019s another street-side treat to be had only a few blocks away.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m certainly not<\/a> the<\/a> first<\/a> to sample the delights at Il Laboratorio del Gelato<\/strong><\/a>, but I can\u2019t resist adding my voice to the chorus. I hate to think of anyone missing a bite of this fine stuff, or the chance to stroll the Lower East Side with a scoop or two<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Il Laboratorio del Gelato is a skinny storefront at 95 Orchard Street, a sterile white-walled space with a modest display case near the front window and a very big list of flavors. We sampled a few before settling on two small cups with two scoops each: chocolate sorbet and fresh mint gelato <\/strong>for Brandon, and milk chocolate and strawberry gelatos for me. Though lacking the soft, famously elastic texture of Italy\u2019s classic gelatos, these New York-style offerings were enough to send us into small raptures on the street outside. The sorbet was dark with cocoa and impossibly smooth<\/strong>, without an ice crystal to be found\u2014an ideal match for the mint gelato, which tasted like spearmint leaves steeped in fresh, lightly sweetened cream. My milk chocolate gelato made some of the finest chocolate ice cream I\u2019ve ever eaten, and the strawberry was bright and true, finishing with a rush of rich cream<\/strong>. I tried to savor it slowly\u2014a sort of milk-based meditation, if you will\u2014but between the warm street, the softly melting scoops, and my deliciously distracting gelato-eating partner,<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
I was a lost cause. Really, sometimes mindfulness is overrated. I\u2019ll settle for taste buds, two feet, and the teeming street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At some point in my impressionable youth, I was told that one should never eat while standing up. This well-meaning killjoy of a tip was probably given to me during one of my mother\u2019s various dieting phases, the idea being that one can\u2019t be fully mindful of what crosses one\u2019s lips unless one is seated, preferably with a knife, fork, and a napkin. There\u2019s a good degree of truth to this, certainly, and I\u2019ll almost always take a civilized sit-down over a standing scarf-down, but honestly, some things just taste better when taken on two feet. Take, for example, the drippy peach eaten over the kitchen sink, or the tip of the baguette torn off outside the boulangerie: really, sometimes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStreet sweets, or things best eaten on two feet | Orangette<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2005\/09\/street-sweets-or-things-best-eaten-on-two-feet\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Street sweets, or things best eaten on two feet | Orangette\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At some point in my impressionable youth, I was told that one should never eat while standing up. This well-meaning killjoy of a tip was probably given to me during one of my mother\u2019s various dieting phases, the idea being that one can\u2019t be fully mindful of what crosses one\u2019s lips unless one is seated, preferably with a knife, fork, and a napkin. There\u2019s a good degree of truth to this, certainly, and I\u2019ll almost always take a civilized sit-down over a standing scarf-down, but honestly, some things just taste better when taken on two feet. 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