Time-Travel Tamale
When La Vecina opened in Astoria about a year and a half ago, I was intrigued, not just because the place specializes in arepas, a favorite food of mine, but because of the name.
Vecina is Spanish for neighbor. I love the imagery it conjures: a warm invitation from a new friend. From my first meal there, I was hooked. The new friend quickly became a favorite spot. I’ve since brought friends and family, celebrated a birthday there, found myself buzzed on their frozen sangria more than a few times. One of the best things about living (and eating) in Queens is the endless opportunity for new experiences like this, the chance to add to an evolving list of new places to feel happy.
Recently, I met some friends at La Vecina for an impromptu dinner. Walking from my apartment, I anticipated exactly what I would order: the fried artichoke arepa. I could practically taste its sharp parmesan cheese, mixed with the satisfying crunch of kale, and I would pair it with an order of the golden, crispy yucca croquettes and garlic dipping sauce. But as I ambled up to the counter to order, one word on the sign displaying the special of the day caught my eye. Tamale. It was strange to see that dish offered at a time nowhere near the holidays or New Year’s Eve, the context I was accustomed to. Stranger still, my brain seemed to act on autopilot as I ordered one without a second thought.
As I sat at the table with my friends, awaiting our meal, I felt nervous that I’d made the wrong choice, that no matter what, I would expect too much from it. After all, there was no way this could be as good as a Honduran tamale, made with love by Marina Castro, my grandmother. Eating a tamale outside of her kitchen felt rebellious and, up until that very moment, unthinkable.
But at that point, she’d been gone for three years, taking her recipes with her. Her absence still lurked around the corners of my life, unseen but always felt. I was still looking for her everywhere and was excited at the possibility of finding her here in my new favorite place.
When the food finally arrived and I saw the open banana leaves cradling the soft pillow of masa and vegetables on the plate before me, I understood what Marcel Proust felt when he famously took a bite of a madeleine cookie dipped in tea and was prompted to tumble down a memory lane, seven volumes long. As the first bite of La Vecina’s tamale settled gently into my taste buds, I left Astoria and was instantly standing outside the linoleum kitchen of my grandparents’ Long Island suburban home, where I lived for five years as a teenager.
Food can be a time machine.
I could see my grandmother, along with my Tia Tina and Tia Linda, gathered in the kitchen on a Sunday afternoon just before Christmas and after church, dressed in slippers and housecoats, the pungent, overwhelming smell of boiling banana leaves filling every room in the house. Oh, how I hated that smell (though the resulting treasure was worth the price).
Their happy chatter was muffled, their hands busy in graceful and deliberate movements, like orchestra conductors guiding their instruments in beautiful harmony: the sizzle of sautéed pork, the soft thump of pimento olives falling into a bowl, the quick chop of roasted red peppers on a thick wooden cutting board, the light, low grumble of water boiling in a big stainless steel pot. The bouquet of flavors swirled in the air around their strong bodies. I watched them season and hand-mix and slice and assemble each compact packet of tamale, wrapped in wax paper and string, knowing that I’d soon be sitting happily at the table alongside them, my belly full and my body sleepy and safe.
As I finished the last bite, 25 years after that scene, I felt grounded back in the present. I felt grateful for the lifetime of meals I got to share with my grandmother and grateful to live in a place like Queens, a beautiful amalgam of cultures and traditions where it is infinitely possible to find a taste of home somewhere inside, waiting for you to visit.
