Edible is best known as a champion of local foods, and rightly so. We’re farmers market addicts, altogether obsessed with meeting the people who catch our fish, pick our pears, churn our butter and boil our bagels. But in this issue, we take a literal departure from our DIY doctrine, break our hardcore locavore diet and look at the foods that are connected to Brooklyn — but not actually grown here. And I for one am now yearning to go on every trip described herein.
It happens to me with each issue — as I shepherd a story from concept to layout I inevitably fall in love with the subject, vowing to set up a rooftop beehive or track down the best tamales in Sunset Park. But this time my resolutions involve getting out of town. The Campfire Cookery photos inspired me to plan dinner outdoors. Saskia Cornes’s story about picking avocados on the California Coast had me looking up airfares late at night. Caroline Pam’s guide to the real-food scene in Western Mass made me long to live there. And St. John Frizell’s story on visiting Brooklyn’s official sister city in Austria left me so envious of the Viennese that I broke out the schnapps to ease the pain. At the next day’s editorial meeting, I was hungover.
But when the fog cleared I realized one needn’t leave New York to live out these tales, at least for an hour. The world is here for the tasting: you can find Filipino fare at Purple Yam in Ditmas Park, savor South African flavors in Fort Greene, forage for wild mushrooms in Prospect Park, and enjoy cocoa beans brought to Brooklyn by the boatload and hand-crafted into world-class chocolate in Williamsburg.
Or, if you don’t have an unlimited Metrocard, take a tastebud tour at our official Travel Issue “Edible Escape” bash on Wednesday, October 19. Tickets are just $40 at ediblebrooklyn.com — no passport needed.
See you there, traveler.
The Mast Brothers brought a cocoa from the Dominican Republic to Red Hook, using only wind power.
Photo credit: E. Conor Hagen.
