Sorrel Lemonade
Labor Day: though it comes about three weeks before the end of the season, it feels like summer’s summation. It’s one last day of long stretches spent in the blazing sun, and beaches massed with people seeking . . . relief, sure, but also the feeling that summer could go on.
This year in New York, Labor Day also marked the 40th anniversary of the West-Indian Day Parade. So, after a ritualistic, pleasantly languid visit to Fort Tilden Beach, my girlfriend and I got off the 2 train at Grand Army Plaza, in Brooklyn. The parade ran along Eastern Parkway, ending at the cluster of roads between the Brooklyn Public Library and Grand Army Plaza. Stepping from the subway station into daylight, our senses flooded with stimuli — women in extravagant, golden outfits, their exposed skin alight with glitter; concussive music booming from mobile soundsystems: mountains of speaker stacks piled high atop flatbed trucks; and the waft of grilling meats, their juices cooking in complex spices.
But the smells, at least, were misleading. We were searching for roti, that curried Caribbean delicacy of South Asian origin. What we came across, as we walked uphill toward the procession’s northern limit, were halal street meat vendors, who were largely ignored by the parade-goers.
We moved past them, toward the parade and its crowds, watching people walk the other way bearing Styrofoam containers overloaded (we had no doubt) with West-Indian food. We knew we were getting close, but each potential roti stand that we sighted through the throng turned out, upon closer scrutiny, to be a mirage: a water ice stand, or a tent offering photos. We pressed onward, deeper into the sea of people.
Along Eastern Parkway itself the air was electric, and thick with revelers sporting the colors of their national flags: bandanas, hats, pristine sneakers, whole outfits flashing Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, others. We spotted a West-Indian food stand at last — a table heavy with aluminum pans, a very long line ranged out before it. That was the first one. Beyond it, in the thickening crowd, we saw many more tables, each one swamped, each one offering the cuisine of another island country.
We flitted from table to table — this one? this one? — each with aluminum pans offering up grilled meats, fried chicken, escoveitched fish, tostones, rice, platanos, beans. Riotous sounds and colors shook at the periphery of our senses, but we were concentrating on the food. Six or seven stands in we found roti at last. My girlfriend got in line and I doubled back, bopping along Eastern Parkway’s service road — more room to walk here, behind the tables and massed people watching the parade and waiting for food — to a drink stand we had passed earlier.
I had hoped for fresh pineapple juice. Though a copse of pineapples separated the woman who ran the stand from her customers, the sign hanging in front of her table offered only sorrel and lemonade. One pitcher before her was yellow, the other a dark, near root-like color that recalled Chinese medicine. Just to make sure, when my turn came I asked about the pineapples. She replied that the lemonade had some pineapple juice in it; the sign stretched behind her added that it was made with brown sugar. Then she asked me if I wanted a combination of sorrel and lemonade. What an idea. Of course I wanted a combination of sorrel and lemonade, if only I’d thought of it.
The drinks came in two sizes: small and, well, massive — not quite film concession-sized, maybe, but definitely more than enough for two people. It was so large, in fact, that the lid that came with it wasn’t perforated for a straw, possibly because the container and lid had been designed for soups and sauces, not beverages. She added just enough ice to a large cup, and topped one-third of a cup of lemonade with two-third’s cup of sorrel.
I hauled the sorrel-lemonade potion back along the service road, behind the crowds and tables once more, to our meeting place right behind the roti stand. My girlfriend was already there, sitting curbside, away from the crowds, a Styrofoam tray in her lap loaded down with roti, chicken, beans, and plantains.
The roti itself was a little disappointing — the bread wasn’t fresh (most likely it was pre-made), and the curry flavors weren’t quite soaked through — but satisfying enough. It suited the occasion. And the combination of sorrel and lemonade — ! Perfectly refreshing: like an Arnold Palmer, only far better. It was hard to tell where the lemonade’s flavor ended and the sorrel’s began. The sweetness and tartness could have belonged to either one, though the fruity hint of pineapple and the gingery kick came from the lemonade.
We sat, watching the parade-watchers, feeling the parade itself roll by in a slow, steady movement, its bass frequencies hitting us in the sternum as the sound trucks passed, and ate, enjoying the “summerness” of it all and the food and drink. It was far too heavy for summer, but fall was coming quickly, not quite in the air but definitely behind it.