Greenpoint, October, 2015

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Bridge and Mustard Crowd

Place of honor (Zum Stammtisch Pork Store)
It's well known that Polish generals Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Casimir Pulaski were both on the side of the upstart colonists in the American Revolution. Not only that, both have bridges spanning the Newtown Creek between Queens and Brooklyn. So where will you find them going head to head? At the World-Wide Mustard Competition at the National Mustard Museum in Middletown, Wisconsin. In the 2011 face-off, Pulaski Polish Style Mustard (from Chicago) took the Gold and Kosciuszko Spicy Brown Mustard took the Silver in the Deli/Brown Mustards category (one of 18 categories). Congratulations to both winners!

Pulaski Bridge (Courtesy Wired New York)
The Kosciuszko Bridge, of course, has gotten a lot of attention on this blog. The Pulaski Bridge less so. Like its high-flying compatriot, it also carries six lanes of traffic over the Newtown Creek, connecting McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint with Long Island City on the other side. It was opened in 1954, 16 years after the Kosciuszko, and reconstructed in 1994.

What is it about Poles and bridges and mustard? The French love mustard, too, and even have a Revolutionary War hero or two to boast about, but where's the Lafayette Bridge or Rochambeau Moutarde de Dijon? I guess those French names are just too hard to pronounce.

This post goes out to Chef Pierre, Connoisseur de Moutarde d'Omaha.

3 comments:

  1. Lafayette might not have a single bridge, but every borough in NYC has a street (or avenue, or something) named for him...
    at one point there were some doubles (a Lafayette Avenue, and a Lafayette Place for example, in the bronx) but the post office sort of insisted on changing things so there is only one Lafayette (Street, Road, Avenue, Lane, Blvd, etc) per borough.
    --i think a bridge (or a street) is a better tribue than mustard!

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  2. Must respectfully disagree with Helen. A bridge may fall, a street be re-routed, but mustard lives on!

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  3. How appropriate that the Romans gave us the prototypes for our roads, bridges (viaducts), and mustard. If only they'd had the foresight to create the toasted bun.

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