Sorry I haven’t written you in a while. I got tied up with the end of the job, apartment hunting, and the holidays. But there's tons of stuff I want to tell you. Let’s catch up.
Wrapping American Gangster took a while, but we also had some really fun days. Two highlights were the day Wilson’s Catering brought lunch in for the office and then when the prop master took the property department out for lunch.
Wilson was the craft service company for the shooting crew on American Gangster. Yes, craft service is that table of snacks under the pop up tent blocking the sidewalks of New York. Shooting crew gets a catered meal or a walk away lunch (every 6 hours according to union rules) depending on what’s cheaper or convenient but craft service is always provided, so Wilson’s staff was always working. As a thank you, one day during wrap, a couple of trays of sushi, dumplings, empanadas, tamales and cookies arrived.
My favorite items were the tamales. They were the type wrapped in banana leaves. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some corn husk tamales, but I dig the leaf type because they’re generally bigger and filled with more than just meat and sauce. You can see the carrot in the picture. The green olives are hidden in the corn masa, but they add a nice saltiness to the pork. I also love Puerto Rican & Dominican pasteles — tamales made with starchy roots like green banana instead of corn masa and then wrapped in banana leaves. A husband and wife team used to sell them at the Ave A flea market on Saturdays, but they haven’t been there in months. In fact, before I moved from the East Village to Harlem, I looked for them three weekends in a row. I even walked through Tompkins Square Park because one time I caught up with the husband walking his metal shopping cart with the big pastele pot in that direction. Now that I’m in Harlem, there are plenty of the Mexican tamale sellers, but one of my new missions is to find someone that sells the pasteles.
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