The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-01-10
In New York
By PAUL HARRISON

New York--In matters of diet. 1t seems to me that New Workers ate in sipidly stubborn. Here's a town in which are to be found practically all the worlds rare and ordinary comestibles, and the Luz cellan dishes of all the nations. Yet and die-probably of Indigestion without knowing how his foreign neighbors dine.
 Taken even such Q familiar do- nestle item as popcorn. For love, money or a doctors prescription you can't buy it in more than two places the length and breadth of Broadway. And 1t isn't unlikely that even those two places will have gone out of business before this paragraph sees print, because Manhattanites just won't eat pop corn.
 Chile con carne may be a lunch counter staple from Pittsburgh to Seattle, but you'll search long and pay a chefs ransom before find- ing any in New York. And then you1l find 1t as bland as dish of vanilla ice cream. Tamales are quite as rare, although occasional. ly in a night club one may buy two or three discouraged little ones out of a can for a couple of dollars.
 Southern Style.
 Ask a grocer for black-eyed peas and he'll think you're asking for special brand of canned green peas. Ask for them in restaur- ant which otherwise achieves some thing like real southern cooking and the proprietress will dab a nostalgia tear as she shakes her head. New Workers just don't eat blackeyed peas. she'll say. That isn't strictly true, however. because they usually can be had in Harlem. Even th,De, the supply was ex- hau.%6,d by the end of the holidays.
 Gotham's Aaglo-Saxon sections know nothing of garbanZosc. as the Spanish call them--or cece, as the Italians call tbem---or chick peas, as some Americans know them. GarbanZos are, after all, staple of the Latins and Orientals, and the American who looks down his nose at them just hasn't met any cece in their property glori- fled state.
 
 Not a Banana.
 It's the name with plantains.Strol- ling visitors in the foreign quar- ters assume that plantains are overgrown bananas, and likely will never be the wiser until they buy one and try to eat 1t raw. A plan- tain is just no good until 1t has been cooked--either French fried, baked in It's jacket, or boiled and mashed. You can do anything to a plantain that you can do to a potato, I'm told. And, indeed, they're as common as potatoes in the markets of the Central Amer ican quarters.
 Most of us could get along in- definitely without eggplant. Not so the Turks, Greeks and Syrians. Go into a real Greek restaurant and you'll find eggplant stuffed, fried and stewed. You'll find 1t with sauces, with spices and in soup. You'll eat 1t in forms that even defy any suggestion that It is eggplant, besides which 1t will be called melongena. aubcrginc, brinjal or mellanzano. Chances are you'll love it.
 Getting Oricntcd
 New Workers swarm into the chop suey palaces. and they're be- ginning to seek out the Japanese restaurants. They eat soy beans and bean cheese and bean curds and bean biscuits and soy sauce, yet 1t doesn't seem to occur to thefn that soy beans might go pret- ty we'll at their own home tables. Soy sauce Is the base of most of the spicy patented sauces Amcrf- cans have been using for a genera ton. Health food companies put soy bean flour into various forms for non-fattening and dyspeptic diets. But New Workers wouldn't think of serving them, fresh- cooked, in their homes
 They don't bother about discov- ering such lusty delicacies as chorizo and morciila sausages. They fuss around with patented beverages without trying south American mate. They gnaw moods ily on yellow gtore-chcese when they might be exploring the de- lights of the market cheese count CTS which hold a hundred new taste sensations.
 Your Anglo-Saxon shudders lat the Oriental's pickled fish, but takes pigs feet in his stride. He doesn't attempt green macaroni, or the red hot curries of India. Nor does he investigate the infin. itc variety of Swedish smorgas- bord.
 Waiter, gimme two pork chops. some French fried pottoes. and ,a at.s.,.e oAffaa atllt