Championship Chow: Red Hook Soccer Tacos (New York)
Championship Chow: Red Hook Soccer Tacos (New York)
Our Championship Chow series has been dormant since last season’s appraisal of Peterborough Thai restaurant Yindee, but having branched out beyond the confines of the second echelon, I thought it wouldn’t be wholly inappropriate to make a short excursion across the Atlantic to assess mealtime options with a footballing twist in the Brooklyn borough of Red Hook, even if it’s doubtful that Nicky Southall or Andy Roberts have ever passed this way.
For it’s aside some typically skill laden grassroots footie of a Latin American flavour that a clutch of eateries inspired by that region have bubbled up like the pimples on a tortilla. For a time at risk from the zoning police, a vigorous campaign saved the tradition back in 2007, leaving the vendors – Chilean, Salvadoran, Honduran and Colombian (plus points in between) to peddle their pupusas and huaraches without intrusion.
I opted for the former – a thick patty stuffed with a cheese and pork mixture and accompanied by more pork (fried and optional), and day-glo pink cabbage. Supremely fresh, it’s enough to banish memories of that 10-1 defeat by Hungary in the 1982 World Cup and a super accompaniment to an afternoon of excellent soccer watching. Game over, a few hundred yards away, beside the docks that inspired On the Waterfront, one can enjoy key lime pie for dessert.
Rob Langham (pen name: Lanterne Rouge) is co-founder of the defiantly non-partisan football league blog, The Two Unfortunates, a website that occasionally strays into covering issues of wider importance. He's 47 and lives in Oxford while retaining his boyhood support of Reading FC. He tweets as @twounfortunates and has written for a number of websites and publications including The Football Attic, The Inside Left, When Saturday Comes, In Bed with Maradona, Futbolgrad and The Blizzard as well as being nominated for the Football Supporters' Federation Blogger of the Year Award in 2013.