Friday Food: Papaya King

On Christmas Eve I had some errands to run that landed me on the Upper East Side. The east side of Manhattan is generally a mystery to me, although I'm starting a new job at 92Y in a week so there is much lunchtime exploring to be done. As I was headed to the Lexington Ave Subway station on e. 86th, I passed by a Papaya King. I was hungry, had no more plans for the day and wooed by their wonderful signage, I decided to stop in.

There are a many hot-dog-and-papaya juice shops in New York (Gray's Papaya, Chelsea Papaya...) but Papaya King, in business since 1932, claims to be the original. There is also a location on St. Mark's Place, but the 86th street shop is where the merger of tropical juices and snappy hot dogs began. The place is teeny tiny, with only a few feet of counter space, so it's not built to linger.

I couldn't recall ever really trying anything papaya-flavored before, except maybe a few bland pieces mixed into canned fruit salad (ew) so I didn't really know what to expect. They have a few different flavors of tropical juice, but I ordered the regular papaya, along with one hot dog with sauerkraut and mustard. My total came to $4.90, and according to the menu board I could have gotten two hot dogs and a juice for just $5, but I've never really eaten two hot dogs in one sitting, so it would have been too much.

I tried the papaya juice first and I discovered that I don't really care for it. It's not that it's bad, but it was kind of bland? I've actually been trying to think of how I can describe the taste, but I'm kind of at a loss. It didn't really taste like anything I'd ever had before, but it kind of grew on me the more I drank. The hot dog was delicious, but — no disrespect to Julia Child who apparently called it the best hot dog in New York — I think I liked Nathan's better. It wasn't a stand-out in my hot-dog-eating adventures thus far, but it's certainly a step above anything you could ever get from a sidewalk cart. Especially since the last time I went to a hot dog cart in Central Park, I asked for one with only mustard and the vendor started to apply ketchup anyway. When I very quickly said "No - I just wanted mustard," he put the ketchup-ed dog BACK into the water with all of the other dogs, and pulled me out a "fresh" one. As far as I could tell, Papaya King doesn't do anything nearly as gross with their dogs, so that's reason enough to stop in if you're ever in the neighborhood(s).