Famous Ankles

Earlier today I decided that I had to get out and see something again. So, I went to the annual Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. I thought it was around this time of year and sure enough, it was. This weekend through about next weekend.

Little Italy continues to shrink, but it is still hanging in there. That’s good, but NYC is all about change and Little Italy is slowly going away.

I took some pictures with my iPhone, but when the light isn’t right it takes such poor pictures that I won’t even bother to post them here. Mulberry Street was blocked off and hundreds of concession stands were out in the street. It’s a pretty narrow street and the place gets very crowded. But that’s a good thing.

Two things I learned today. First, I was reminded that “Sausage and Peppers” really means sausage and onions with a very occasional (if you’re lucky) bit of green or red bell pepper. I didn’t try it, but it smells great.

Second, spumoni Italian ice is…wonderful. Wow. I was walking by a booth and they had these tiny paper cups (very small ones, not for drinking) with a price tag of $3 on it. It said “Italian Ice” on it and the concession owner saw me kind of smile at the absurdity of the price and said something like “Yeah, but you should see what they charge me for it, but it’s still worth it.” I laughed and decided I’d go ahead and try a bit. I noticed the spumoni was more than halfway gone and took that as a sign that it’s good. It looked a bit like Neopolitan ice cream, except the colors were white, brown, and green. It turns out that the flavor combination is pistachio, chocolate, and some sort of coffee (I think). In any case, the Italian Ice is very dense and the flavors were nearly overwhelming. Really good.

-H

This entry was posted on September 18, 2010 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Little Italy, Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.