Californians Have All the Luck!
Posted by Christiane Lauterbach | May 12th, 2010 | Filed under Objects of Desire
[Photograph: Esther Hahn]
Look closely at the picture and you’ll recognize the landscape: Los Angeles (perhaps Santa Monica) rather than Buford Highway…
We, too, would love access to roasted Peking duck tacos and shrimp dumplings!
Times Square Savior: The Link Between Street Vending and Public Safety
Posted by Christiane Lauterbach | May 11th, 2010 | Filed under Carts
The modest hero in New York’s latest bomb scare, a T-shirt vendor with sharp eyes who alerted the police after noticing the smoke billowing from the rear of an S.U.V. packed with explosives, is a Vietnam veteran who has been selling stuff on the street for the last 20 years.
“I don’t have too much of a choice, nobody’s giving me a job,” he said to reporters. Asked if he had a word of advice for his fellow New Yorkers, he used the familiar ”See something, say something,” motto.
Atlanta’s Mike Luckovich pays homage to the street vendors, including a burly fellow with a pretzel in his hand, whom he lines up with the FBI and the New York City Police right behind a pleased-looking Mayor Bloomberg giving credit to the forces of safety!
Vendor Gallery: Matt Hinton of West End Burritos
Posted by Christiane Lauterbach | May 10th, 2010 | Filed under Carts
In the last ten years, Matt Hinton has been a theology professor, a dealer in architectural antiques, a pressman for his wife’s letterpress print shop, a carpenter, a photographer, a guitar player, a video editor, a guy who drove the carts that go “beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep” at the airport, and, most recently, a filmmaker and a record producer/label owner.
Hinton went to Tortillas for the first time when he was a student at Georgia State University, sometime in the early 1990s. “It and Frijoleros were the first burritos of their kind that I ever had,” Hinton writes, “though I had always loved Mexican food (one of my earliest gustatorial memories, apart from huge meals at my grandmothers’ houses, was the El Toro in the very seedy Georgian Motel on Buford highway, which was established in the same year that I was: 1974).The blend of tastiness and seediness of Tortillas was deeply fulfilling to me from the outset. It was a DIY operation–like the Little Rascals had opened a restaurant, and if you went in the back room, you were liable to see Pete the dog powering the whole ramshackle affair by chasing a rabbit while on a treadmill. Or maybe the Bad News Bears. Anyway, theirs were clearly the best burritos that have ever been sold in Atlanta.”
Last year, when Morehouse College reduced the hours of adjunct professors, his included, Hinton set himself a goal: he would recreate the menu of Tortillas, the famous restaurant on Ponce de Leon whose burritos still loomed big in his mind, and start a delivery business. “First, it was just friends, ” he says, “then friends of friends.” Now, he has no idea who his customers are.
By trial and error, he was able to reproduce the exact same product we all loved. The big flour tortillas contain the right amount of cheese, beans, and seasonings. The two salsas are completely convincing. The burrito is insanely juicy yet doesn’t leak. Perfect digestion ensues. Eaten the next day, the burrito is still magnificent, in a denser way.
Screening his documentary about Sacred Harp singing (recently aired around the country on PBS) in such cities as New York, Chicago, Portland, Louisville, and Los Angeles, Hinton discovered food-truck culture. His participation in the latest Sweet Auburn Curb Market Urban Picnic, where he steamed his tortillas on racks balanced on big pots of boiling water, showed what a man can do in a brilliantly improvised set-up.
You will find Matt Hinton and his delivery schedule on Facebook. If you live within a couple of miles of his weekly trajectory between West End and Decatur, you can order enough burritos on Monday to last you through the week and live another day to hope for his next appearance on the street.
[photos by Vené Franco]
Pozole + Funk
Posted by Christiane Lauterbach | May 7th, 2010 | Filed under Carts
Also from Hector Santiago, this slow-cooked pozole with onion, garlic, aromatics, and epazote took the cake (so to speak) at the James Brown celebration and street food festival last weekend. Santiago filled each glass with pozole, radishes, cilantro and onions, and covered the whole thing with the juice left from steaming the chicken for burritos, adding a final flourish of pickled bird chiles on top of the whole glorious thing.
Notice the turntable in the picture? There it is…with the food next to it!
Vendor Gallery: Hector Santiago
Posted by Christiane Lauterbach | May 6th, 2010 | Filed under Carts
During last Sunday’s James Brown Bash in the Old Fourth Ward, one of Atlanta’s greatest chefs dished out freshly cooked burritos wrapped in newspapers.
Hector Santiago of Pura Vida on Highland Avenue is that rare chef who can go high and low with the same passion, talent, and energy. His joining the street food movement is wonderful news!
“El Burropollo is inspired by the burritos I used to eat in my uncle’s restaurant, Burritos Robles in El Paso,” Santiago told us. “Yes…my uncle is a Puerto Rican cooking burritos (he’s been married to my Mexican aunt for as long as I can remember)….He first started Burritos Robles about 40 years ago in Ciudad Juarez., then moved his business to El Paso.”
“They were the hottest burritos I had ever eaten,” Santiago remembers, “and what I love about them is that it was 95% meat and a little garnish. I serve mine with sauces to tame it down but in El Paso they do the contrary…they are truly Chile Heads! ”
Vowing to keep the menu simple, with the addition of a fried item so he can recycle his oil into diesel to help keep his cost down, Santiago is deadset on going mobile.
Gracias to Hector and pura vida, y’all!
[photos by Karl Injex]
