Putting the fizz in an afternoon walk

South Broadway in Yonkers is an interesting mix of old and new. The signs pictured here, rusting Pepsi on a shuttered deli and fading Coca-Cola on a still operating luncheonette, are ties to a past that still peeks through a wide-ranging menu of Chinese, Portuguese, Cuban, Mexican, Italian and other restaurants.

In addition, there's an eclectic hardware store with uneven floors and haphazardly stocked shelves you'd wish your neighborhood had after it gentrified. Also open for business: a silversmith and a piano store.

There's a storefront called Triple Magnet that offers haircuts, a photo studio and games. A small thrift shop (open when it has volunteers, according to the sign, and those volunteers were so ready to leave when I stepped inside they almost locked me in) had a surprisingly unworn but unsurprisingly pulpy best-seller pile of books.

Fall color

The first hints of red, yellow and brown are peeking into the trees around the city as the weather gets cooler. Fall colors, driven in from upstate and farms inland predominate at the farmers' markets. Apples, squash, gourds, peppers, pumpkins and corn display the full spectrum of autumn taste and tint. Here's a glimpse from the Thursday market in Yonkers.

Full list of farmers' markets in Westchester County.

Yonkers tacos redux

I mentioned that Tacos El Poblano had a bar for topping tacos. Feast your eyes on the spread of chopped cilantro, tomatoes, onions, peppers, radishes lime, salsa verde and salsa rojo.

The service is friendly and speedy, and the carnitas are crunchy on the ends leading to soft strands of meat that is heaped on the hot tortillas.

The toppings bar

The finished taco. It was tasty.

Tacos downtown Yonkers

I haven't had a specific taco craving, but I had been eyeing the signs for Mexican food downtown Yonkers for some time when I finally had the chance to sample a couple of weeks ago.

Getty Square Luncheonette has a wide-ranging menu including traditional breakfast platters (the hashbrowns looked tempting). The beef taco was incredible, a browned heaping of meat on two steaming tortillas topped with freshly chopped cilantro, onions, guacamole. It comes with lime slices for squeezing over the awesome pile, as well as crispy radish slices and red and green hot sauces.

Emboldened by my find, I also tried Tacos El Poblano, a brightly painted shack nearby with a solely Mexican menu. The carnitas and steak tacos came on similarly steaming tortillas, but with no veggies. Those choices are left to the eater, who has an entire salad bar of chopped cilantro, onions, pickled peppers and more to top off the tacos. The carnitas were brown and crispy. The beef not as good as Getty Square (I later tried Getty Square's carnitas -- not as good at Tacos el Poblano) but not bad.

For less than three bucks a taco, you can't go wrong at either place.

Getty Square: 2 Main Street, Yonkers NY

Tacos El Poblano: On the Southeast corner of the intersection of New Main Street and Nepperhan Avenue, Yonkers, NY

Johnny's

Plain pie from a visit in July.

Worth noting: one man's quest to make the perfect New York pizza in Atlanta.

Cooking credentials

I'd be less shameless in my first post, but I need to go get pictures and names to give you the lowdown on two great taco places downtown Yonkers. Get your appetite ready for that one.

While you're salivating over the thought of crispy carnitas and a bar with chopped veggies for topping piping hot tortillas and meat, here's a nod to Liz's taste and cooking.

She prepared an awesome roast chicken (who wants to see her post the recipe, raise your fork), skin-on mashed potatoes and green beens tonight. Feast your eyes on one fowl dish.

I'm sure the birds roasting as you walk into Malecon, 390 South Broadway in Yonkers, are almost as tasty. We ordered other dishes, which were great, although they took longer than the chicken, which arrived almost as fast as the people at the neighboring table ordered. The mojito was tasty, mint and sugar crushed with a pestal and a twig of sugar cane sticking out of the glass. The avacodo salad was overkill (I'm not sure I can eat a whole avacado in a sitting even if it's guacamole) given that there was avacado on the regular salad. Definitely worth trying. Everything was well-prepared and tasty with moderate pricing, although drinks can add up quickly.

When is barbecue not barbecue?

Fleetwood had a street fair last weekend. Street fairs mean one very important thing to me: street food! This one was about 70 percent Italian restaurants, making savory sausage sandwiches with peppers and onions, 30 percent soul food, with lots of fried goodies and giant pans of creamy macaroni and cheese, and one swirling cotton candy machine to top it all off.

I picked up an order of six fried shrimp that stayed hot, crispy and decadent even though I savored them slowly. I had to ask the cook where to find the hot sauce; it was in the yellow mustard bottles, of course! I squeezed generously, and the shrimp transformed from decadent morsels into completely addictive decadent morsels. What can't a good hot sauce improve?

You're wondering about the barbecue ... There's a shop on Gramatan Avenue that looked really promising, but it didn't have a booth on the street. I went inside with my sister and her husband, Matt, who is from Kansas and is such a fan of Arthur Bryant's that the last time I was in KC, Mo., I brought him back an order of ribs wrapped in butcher paper. The menu at this place was straightforward, the tables were clean -- so far, so good. He ordered a platter of ribs and chicken. I was still sated from the shrimp, so I sat back and watched the proceedings.

Matt is unfailingly gracious, but he doesn't like to lie, either. (He's from the Midwest, remember?) So when I asked him what he thought, he was ... diplomatic. "This is backyard barbecue," he explained. You know, you put the meat on the grill, wait til it's cooked, then slather it with sauce before serving. There's no slow-cook pit here, no pit master tending the meat at all hours.

So it's not barbecue. It's grilled meat. But the ribs were tender, the chicken plump and nicely charred. The sauce itself was tangy and sweet, with a taste that reminded me of nutmeg. Not bad, but not the vinegary, peppery bite I was hoping for.

The fries, however, were amazing. AMAZING. They were fresh cut, with the skin still on. Crisp, salty, hot. The. Best. Fries. Ever. If you don't feel like lighting up the grill, you can pick up dinner here. But eat the fries right on the spot.

Crispy, crunchy, melty, yum: Johnny's Pizzeria

I met up with a new friend for dinner this week after teaching my class, which ends at 7. By the time I got back to Westchester it was after 8, pretty late for us suburban types -- we were both starving by the time we got to Johnny's Pizzeria in Mount Vernon. But the late hour helped us out. The place is usually so packed at dinnertime you have to stand in line outside, but at 8:30, it's almost empty. No waiting for us.

The back dining room was closed for the night, so we took a roomy four-top up front, within view of the ovens. Cold root beer in a can, with a straw, for each of us. It took only about 15 or 20 minutes for the pie to appear, and when it did ... bliss. A thin, blistery crust, charred and dusty, topped with melty mozzarella and slices of sausage. Just enough sausage, and not too much, my friend noted approvingly. He's a lifelong New Yorker, so the man knows his pizza.

The tomato sauce at Johnny's is the tiniest bit too mild for me, even with sausage on top, so I found myself adding a sprinkle of salt to each slice. Still, I was very happy. We ate and chatted our way through three crisp slices each, then talked some more -- and found ourselves eyeing the last two pieces. "One more slice. You can do it," I said, teasing. He grinned. "You know, I think I could." I checked in with my tummy. "You know what? Me too."

We left a clean table and two empty root beer cans, very satisfied customers. Take that, city pizza.

Johnny's Pizzeria
30 W. Lincoln Ave.
Mount Vernon, NY

Every delicious corner

After five years in the SF Bay Area and three years in Brooklyn, I moved to the New York suburbs -- Westchester County -- to be close to family and to buy a cheap(ish) piece of real estate. Well, I've got my co-op, I've got a 30-minute commute to Midtown, and I've got a brand-new nephew just up the road. The one thing I don't have is a sense of what's good to eat around here. The NY Times and various local food blogs get hot and bothered over the city but stick up their noses at Westchester. But I know there's good and interesting food in every corner of the world, even suburbia, so I'm going to find it: What are the neighborhood specialities? Where's the best jerk chicken? Who serves the tastiest burger? pizza? pad Thai? And how does one get good food in the burbs without a car?

So, in the do-it-yourself spirit of bloggers and citizen journalists everywhere, I'm going to taste and write my way through my neighborhood and surrounding ones, keeping track on this blog so other Westchester-ites can benefit. I'm a freelancer and I love getting a deal, so I'll focus mostly on low-budget tasties, but if I get a fat paycheck here and there, I'll splurge on something fancy and let you know whether it was worth it. Here's to deliciousness, wherever you're living.