Cart Attack

Leticia Ochoa walked around Queens’ Corona Plaza, her young son in tow, chatting with each of the food cart vendors clustered around the corner of National and Roosevelt. It was a Sunday morning in February, and the sun was shining. Ochoa works as a community organizer and had helped broker an agreement between the 110 police precinct and the local vendors: if they didn’t block walkways, the police wouldn’t bother them. As far as Ochoa could tell, the peace seemed to be holding. People flowed in and out of the plaza, stopping by the carts to buy aluminum containers laden with morcilla (blood sausage), salchipapa (salty, fatty sausages and French fries) and papa con cuero (pork skin boiled in savory broth with potatoes). No one seemed to be in a rush.

Corn Fed

Underneath the rumble of the 7 train in Corona, Tortilleria Nixtamal turns about 5,000 pounds of corn masa into 50,000 tortillas every single day. Stacks of them fill all the available shelf space in the unassuming storefront, as a lone conveyer belt spits out a continuous single-file row of perfect tortillas. Unlike mass-produced supermarket flour tortillas, or even the average corn tortilla at your local bodega, these are all made from real corn – no preservatives added – and they’re always fresh. Anything over a day or two old is turned into chips. When Tortilleria Nixtamal opened 10 years ago, real-deal fresh corn tortillas were impossible to find in New York, and stores had only recently begun to stock Mexican goods aside from the odd can of Ortega chiles.