When I arrived in New York, September 1970, coming up to 50 years ago, I felt fairly globally savvy. Thanks to working in the airline business, I had already traveled a lot and lived in Tunisia, for a couple of years. Now I had to learn some local lingo.
The first lunchtime, one of my co-workers announced that he would do the food run to the deli and asked what I wanted. I had no clue what he was talking about. To avoid a real answer, I did a kind of Gallic shrug and turned it around to find out what he was having? The usual, he said ‘a bee el tea on wheat toast’. Well I thought that sounded pretty good, but had zero idea of just what would arrive. Bees along with this mysterious ‘el’ and tea was certainly intriguing. And somehow there was toast, something that I only ate at breakfast. Another came up with an order for ‘eggplant parm’. What in the name of heaven was that? Plants that grew eggs and would be married up with something called ‘parm’. Where had I been living that I knew nothing about these apparently normal foods?
What did surprise me was that no one was ordering Indian food. Where I had lived, the local Indian take-away was The Delhi. Now I was coming up to speed, fast.
timothyvalentinestravels 