Thursday, September 18, 2008

Little Italy

This week is the Feast of San Gennaro, so we ventured down to Little Italy where a massive street fair was taking place.
The whole way there, we joked that we were going to walk along the rooftops and "follow the black hand." The Little Italy of 2008 however, is much different than the Little Italy of the early 1900s portrayed by Scorsese.This being a street fair, there were the usual stalls - carnie-types at the game stalls, stalls selling trinkets and cheap t-shirts and lots of deep fried food. The place was crawling with Italian-Americans - wise-guy types and women dripping with cheap costume jewelery.

Lots of stalls were selling zeppole - deep-fried balls of dough covered in powdered sugar and sometimes filled with custard or jelly (think mini donuts). They were also selling funnel cakes, which I don't think are particularly Italian (in fact, where did they come from?!). I suppose the logic is that if you have a vat of hot oil, you might as well fry up a bunch of other shit too. Every one of these stalls were selling deep-fried Oreos too. I walked past probably a dozen of these before I couldn't take it anymore. I had to try one. It was equally disturbing and delicious. The batter softened the cookie and the hot oil warmed the entire thing and made for a crispy exterior.
A lot of stands were selling "Sausage & Peppers" too. These looked - and smelled - great. We had out heart set on more pizza however, so that is exactly what we had. More on that...later.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you investigated the fried Oreos. So, did you see anyone get the sausage and peppers? Just wondering if they hand you that whole big coil or sausage or what.