During a stroll through Black Rock City, the flaneur encounters a mind-boggling variety of experiences, drenching the senses of sight, sound, and touch. However, the senses of smell and taste can feel diminished by the alkaline dust. The heat makes it more difficult to taste subtle flavors, so people crave more salt and spice. Pungent and refined smells are rare, save for the portable toilets or an occasional whiff of massage oil.
When walking through the Big Apple, the flaneur has unlimited opportunities to smell and taste. An intrepid gourmand can march through an alphabet of local and global cuisines, or assemble ingredients for a memorable meal. A phalanx of food carts and trucks, stalls at flea markets, farmers’ markets, and odd nooks, and restaurants offer the following wares:
– Apples, sold at the local park from a New York farm
– Bagels, the real boiled kind, not the faux, fluffy ones, and Banh mi
– Custard, frozen, in odd flavors
– Doughnuts, coated with a seasonal glaze
– Egg cream
– Falafel
– Girly cocktails and green-tea cake roll
– Hamburgers and hot dogs
– Ice cream, in exotic flavors like green tea, sesame, and wasabi
– Jerk chicken
– Knish
– Lox
– Mozzarella, smoked
– Nuggets, fake chicken
– Organic [insert your fave fruit/veg here]
– Pizza bianca
– Quirky cuisine combos, such as Jamaican-Japanese sushi; see also Shopsins
– Ramen noodles
– Steamed pork buns
– Tea, with bubbles
– Ukrainian borsht and U-Bet
– Vendy-award-winning foods
– Wagyu beef
– Xi’an cuisine: lamb burgers
– Yakitori
– Zabar’s