Came across this, wondering about the favorite foods of the Avengers, and started thinking about the foods our group would prefer. Never got beyond street food, but thought it was fun so decided to post anyway.
Cassie: Georgia peach and walnut salad.
Street food to Cassie basically just means food. Growing up at the court of a vampire, and then being on the run from said vamp most of her life, she never had a chance to learn to how to cook. She kept buying cookbooks in the three years she lived in Atlanta, until she had a whole row of them, teetering on a wonky shelf above the rusty white stove her landlord was always promising to replace but never did. But holding down two jobs takes a lot of time, and somehow, the most she ever learned how to make was crock pot chili and brownies-in-a-box. So she became a street food connoisseur. And fortunately for her, Atlanta had plenty of it.
Her favorite was from a couple of trucks that hung out in front of a small park not far from the travel agency where she worked. She often thought of them in the form of an angel and a devil sitting on her shoulders, giving her two diametrically opposite options. She had just returned from making her selection the night Tony’s thugs caught up with her, but didn’t have time to eat, running for her life taking precedence. So she’d always been glad that she’d listened to the angel that night, and it had been the Georgia peach and walnut salad that had been left to slowly wilt on her desk. If it had been the slow cooked barbeque ribs with black eyed peas, pimento cheese grits and coleslaw . . . well, now that would have been a tragedy.
Pritkin: Fish and chips in greasy newspaper with a side of mushy peas.
Pritkin doesn’t indulge very often, since street food is not the healthiest. But whenever he’s in London, he can’t resist dropping by a little hole in the wall in Blackfriars, with a massive glass counter in front because the place used to be a bakery. These days, the case sits empty, other than for smears of grease from the always busy fryer, since there’s only one thing on the menu. And only one question: with vinegar or without?
Pritkin thinks this is a stupid question. He just looks at the cook—no chefs here—when he’s asked. And after a moment, he gets a slight nod of approval in return, along with an extra dash of vinegar and salt.
The woman at the register has an additional question: eat in or takeaway? Technically, there are two tiny tables, squashed in between the wall and the case. But nobody ever uses them, since the only view would be the queue of local arses waiting on nirvana. Pritkin eats his guilty pleasure down by the river, ever wondering at how clear the water is these days. Sometimes, he’ll throw a chip to the fish, and watch the mad scramble that ensues. He wouldn’t like anyone to know, but he often cheats, tossing a small bit to distract the larger fish, and then letting the rest of his offering be devoured by the smaller ones on the sidelines.
He’d been a small fish among a swarm of predators once himself. He knows what it’s like. And then he’s off again, because he’s not prey these days, and he has work to do.
Mircea: Honeycomb.
Mircea doesn’t do street food, or much of any other kind, since vampires don’t have to eat. But when he was a boy, his favorite guilty pleasure was a piece of fresh honeycomb from the market in Sighişoara. He’d get out of stuffy lectures from men in dour black gowns, dart through rooms and hallways reeking of incense, and then out into the narrow, dusty, winding streets, hoping, hoping, hoping. If he wasn’t in time, if one of those old priests had droned on for too long, he’d have to go away empty handed. But some days, some glorious days, he would be in time to catch her, old Irina with her face of a thousand lines and rough, farmer’s hands, and the bright slabs of honeycomb she was on her way to sell to the local baker.
The baker used it to make the pies and sweetened breads that he sent his lunkish assistant off to hawk from a cart. Sometimes, cook would buy some of these for the table, but Mircea never got more than a few bites. Mother didn’t think too many sweets were good for children. But after dinner, his father would silently slip him a coin, and the next day the race was on again.
Memory of that rare sweetness lingered, even after the change. The smell of it, wild and musky, with hints of the wildflowers the bees collected. The feel of it, the comb bursting on his tongue, which was thereafter tasked with extracting every wonderful drop from the tiny chambers. The taste of it, bright and syrupy, like distilled sunshine . . . . Until one day, watching his young daughter wolf down the sweets she also loved, he’d realized that he couldn’t recall the flavor anymore. Try as he might, it eluded him, finally faded, like so much else, into darkness.
The day he became a master, the first thing he did was to go find some honeycomb, and eat it like a beggar in the street. And laugh like a madman as it ran down his arm, sticky and gooey and overwhelmingly sweet—sweet like victory.
Jonas: Bangers and mash.
Jonas doesn’t do street food, exactly, but he was always very fond of the pub grub available in a little place a few blocks from his office. It was slightly embarrassing, being one of the tourist spots popular for the ambiance—by which they meant an old black and white timber structure from the 1400s that might come crashing down on all their heads at any moment. But it made the best bangers and mash in town, with succulent pork sausages, fluffy mashed potatoes and grilled onions, the whole covered in a rich brown gravy. He’d get a double order once a week and take it back to his office, where a certain someone would shortly thereafter pop in to join him.
He’d braved the crowds one day in early June, returning to his office with greasy bags of plunder. Which he transferred to the old porcelain plates he kept in a cabinet, because one did not entertain the pythia on paper. Not that he was sure she’d come. She’d rung up to cancel the week before, and had looked pale, almost to the point of translucency, the week before that. Stomach upset, she’d said; something hadn’t agreed with her, and she’d eaten almost nothing. But he hadn’t received a phone call today, and was whistling whilst he made preparations.
He’d been leaning out the window, trying to snare an early summer rose for his makeshift table, when his secretary came in. He had a message from the Pythian Court, short and terse. As if they assumed he would have been expecting it, and needed few details.
He hadn’t been expecting it.
He’d sat at his desk afterward, staring at the slowly congealing meal until his secretary came rushing back in. It had somehow ended up splattered on the wall, a brown mass sliming down the paneling, studded by bright green peas and broken china. It took them some time to clean up, and afterward, Jonas went home for the day, to a house that seemed darker and a world that seemed so much grayer.
He never ate it again.
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