Before 7 a.m. on most weekdays, when Evelia’s Tamales in North Corona, Queens, during the morning rush, there is a high probability that all tables will be empty.
The dining room is inviting enough for about two dozen diners. Papel picado flags engraved with the restaurant’s name and logo – a pot of steaming tamales – hang from the ceiling. At the front door, the script is written in neon LED lights on an array of man-made greenery that reads “living love eats tamales”.
However, almost all of Evelia’s customers at that hour went straight to the snack bar, as they more or less did it as soon as the doors opened at 5 a.m. Many of them were men wearing protective clothing and steel boots covered with construction dust. They arrived in the pickups and trailers they parked outside on Northern Avenue, dodging the dented cars that crept in and out of the body shop bays across the street for a while. crumpled metal ballet. Within minutes, they were climbing back into their cars carrying bags of breakfast and most likely lunch.
They stock turtles, both full-sized sandwiches filled with fillings as well as half-sized sandwiches that carry a more manageable volume: soft mashed potatoes with pink chorizo crumbs, for example, or a piece small chicken. They break the refrigerator box for aguas Freshcas of hibiscus or tamarind. They buy coffee, of course, and even in the summer they ask for a cup of Evelia’s steamed atole de masa or its hot chocolate variant, champurrado, sweet and fragrant with cinnamon.
More than any other commodity, however, the bags carried by the morning crowds were laden with tama seeds, plucked at knuckle-heat from massive stockpils, where they steamed inside corn husks. roll tight.
Evelia’s Tamales was the first store run by Evelia Coyotzi, who had been operating for many years, about half a mile south on Roosevelt Avenue, downtown. most memorable tamal car. Trolleys start the workday seven mornings a week at exactly 4 a.m., a more normal schedule than the 7th train slams along the elevated tracks, and many of Ms. Coyotzi’s clients ride to work. work after they arrive. fully armed with tamales.
The base model, wrapped in rice husks, costs a dollar a piece until December, when it rises to $1.50. (The prices on the trolley and the restaurant are the same, both owned by Ms. Coyotzi and her husband, Delfino García.) Are they the best bakers in town? When a business focuses on a specific and local audience like Evelia’s, the question may not be paramount. But they are very good tamales, especially by New York standards. The dough is firm and creamy, and Evelia’s employs a formidable team of kitchen helpers to create a multitude of doughs that few sidewalk competitors can match.
Several new varieties have been created with attention to the current food scene and the price of each is slightly higher at $2.00. One portion filled with flavorful beef birria pieces. An inedible fake meat dish also existed, although it wasn’t available when I wanted to try it. Vegetarians will want to know that Evelia recently started mixing masa harina for tamales with vegetable oil instead of lard. As far as I can tell, the taste is not affected.
Of course, there are more traditional tamales. The pork stew is memorable with the addition of adobo made with guajillo and pulla peppers, which are smoky and have a hint of cherry tartness. There are chicken-filled tamales: One is steamed with salsa verde; another is dotted with salsa roja dots and strips of jalapeño rajas; a third is wrapped in its wrapper with enough mole poblano that it is almost black from shell to core.
One of those sweet, raisin-encrusted tamales dyed red with maraschino cherries. Another variety, filled with chopped pineapple, is the color of Mountain Dew. Either would be suitable for breakfast or a birthday party.
However, I think the most fun you can have at Evelia’s is eating one or more Oaxaqueños. The dough to make these is piled into small lumps around the filling and then wrapped in banana leaves, loosely, so that the masa stays soft; Then the little green packages are tied with a string, like a box from an old-fashioned pastry shop. Evelia’s uses a spicy smoky chile morita salsa to moisten large chunks of stewed pork chops or chicken wings. The meat is left on the bones, so eating these two dishes requires more care than you need to do with the husked tamal. No extra care is needed to know what might be the best of Oaxacan tamales, which contain strips of fried pork skin that are soft and sticky after they’ve been steamed in a tomatillo salsa.
Evelia’s cart had long since sold her father and his three children. These things have made the move to the restaurant; Some people enthusiastically use cold sausages that have been skinned, split in half, and one is the Supreme, combined with a layer of Flamin’s hot Cheetos. They’re not quite as interesting as they sound.
But the kitchen space at the restaurant gives Coyotzi and her cooks the chance to travel on new roads, many paved with masa bought from a nearby bakery. Shaped into small, bordered ovals, masa makes for a simple snack known as picadita. In its purest form, picadita is just garnished with salsa, raw onion crema, and warm cheese. On request, the kitchen can also equip you with carne asada, chicken or chorizo.
Evelia’s tortillas have a bold corn flavor that lets you know they’re freshly made. The smaller ones are for banh tet. The larger ones are deep-fried on a griddle to make folded quesadillas over fresh zucchini flowers or squid huitlacoche.
These dishes make a case to stay in the dining room for a while. (None of the quesadillas improved after being wrapped for takeaway.) And if you arrive at Evelia’s after the morning rush, you can find tables with Torta Supreme close-up couples, groups of friends breaking Canceled a few pounds of barbacoa, maybe a family dressed up to church with bowls of spicy pancita, three-way soup, on a Sunday afternoon. None of this would have happened without Evelia’s larger menu.
Still, it’s hard to imagine you could go back to North Avenue without eating tamales, or at least stack some away for later.
