Category Archives: Restaurants & Food Courts

Khawachen

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Instagram Post 6/17/2019

My quest to eat my way through the new HK Food Court in Elmhurst, Queens at 82-02 45th Ave continues. It’s not born of gluttony, I assure you. One of the goals of my food tours is to present guests with unusual and delicious examples of international treats from the neighborhood, and the only way I can do that authoritatively is to experience a wide variety of what’s available myself. Hey, it’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it! 🐷

Khawachen presents the cuisine of Tibet, certainly a welcome change of pace in any food court. If the video tout heralding the stall looks familiar, I believe it hails from the original Lhasa Fast Food in Jackson Heights – you know, Queens’ worst kept food secret – because of the ownership link between the two.

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Lamb Thenthuk Fried. Hand-pulled thumb-sized wheat noodles (also available in soup), sautéed with peppers and onions. The accompanying condiments were a good idea. If you like thick, chewy noodles, you’ll be happy with these. If you don’t…really?


[1] Fried Beef Momos were distinguished and tasty.

[2] The obligatory peek-a-boo shot.

More to come from HK Food Court soon.
 
 

Mr. Liu Henan Wide Ramen – Big Squid

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Instagram Post 6/15/2019

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Remember the Vincent Price movie “The Tingler”?

So anyway, I’ve been prowling around Elmhurst, Queens lately doing reconnaissance for my new ethnojunket and eating my way through the new HK Food Court at 82-02 45th Ave as part of the syllabus. Among other offerings, the eye-catching signage announcing stall #25, Mr. Liu Henan Wide Ramen, featured a photo captioned Big Squid on a stick with the hand-written exhortation “Try it!”. Always a fan of grilled cephalopod, that sounded like a plan; I opted for spicy. I had my kitchen scissors in tow (semper paratus – you know a better way to disarticulate a squid?) so I was able to make some judicious editorial cuts. You might consider asking for it extra spicy if you like special effects.

More to come from HK Food Court soon.
 
 

Chinese-Korean Dumplings & Noodle

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Instagram Post 6/10/2019

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An irresistible presentation of lacy pan-fried dumplings from Chinese-Korean Dumplings & Noodle (aka Joong Han Boon Sik), stall number 30 in the New World Mall Food Court, 136-20 Roosevelt Ave, one of the stops on my Flushing food court ethnojunket. Choose from among thirteen varieties including pork & fennel as well as pork, shrimp, sea cucumber, cabbage & crabmeat (which I need to return for). These were lamb and luscious; even the side of cabbage was tasty. Too pretty to eat – but somehow that didn’t stop me! 😉

Want a taste? Check out my ethnic neighborhood food tours! Click here to learn more.
 
 

Doshirak Box

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Instagram Post 6/9/2019

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Dosirak (도시락), in Korea, denotes a lunchbox kind of meal, packed up and ready to travel, their often compartmentalized grab-n-go version of Japanese bento boxes. Doshirak Box, in Flushing, is the name of a shiny new Korean place at 136-31 Roosevelt Ave suitable for a quick snack or takeout. (The syllable “si 시” is pronounced “shi” in Korean.) I landed there on the first day of their soft opening – that’s code for they didn’t yet have everything on their incredibly extensive menu of about 75 items. After striking out a couple of times, I went for the kimbap (김밥), Korea’s version of Japanese maki; kim (you might see gim) refers to the nori wrapper and bap means cooked rice.

I’ve always been a fan of kimbap – to my mind there’s something picnicky and informal about it. I chose the Spicy Tuna with Perilla Leaves: pickled daikon, carrots, perilla leaves (akin to shiso leaves popular in Japanese cuisine), and spicy tuna salad. In my experience, tuna kimbap is always made with canned tuna, not the raw, chopped, kicked-up tuna you may know from similar Japanese rolls, and this one is true to form. Maybe that’s why it seems picnicky and informal to me.
 
 

Brooklyn Suya

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Instagram Post 6/6/2019

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[1] Suya is a popular street food in Nigeria (and elsewhere in West Africa) and there’s little doubt as to why. Sliced beef and other meats are marinated, skewered, grilled, liberally peppered with a spicy, peanutty, powdery seasoning blend and generally accompanied by slices of raw onion. Brooklyn Suya maintains the tradition at 717 Franklin Ave in Crown Heights with its Suya Bowls: choose steak, chicken, or shrimp and two of kale, plantain, egg, or avocado, all over rice. Or, you can order suya solo, sans all those healthy accoutrements; that’s what you see here.

[2] Extreme close-up of chicken, steak, and shrimp – just to get the juices flowing. It’s a tiny space, with a few window perches and a counter, so you might consider take-out, but that didn’t deter us. Incidentally, they sell their custom blends of seasoning/marinade if you want to try your hand at making suya – but if you enjoy cooking, I suspect you’ll find dozens of other uses in the kitchen for their piquant spice blends.
 
 

Kashkar Cafe

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Instagram Post 5/29/2019

While fine tuning my ethnojunket through Little Odessa, I visited Kashkar Café, 1141 Brighton Beach Avenue in Brooklyn. Kashkar serves the food of the Uyghur people, a primarily Muslim ethnic group who live in the Xinjiang region of northwest China near Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan; as you’d expect, the fare is a comingling of Chinese and Central Asian cuisines and definitely worth getting to know.

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Ashlangfu (ашлангфу) salad, aka lang-foo noodles. If you’ve enjoyed Chinese mung bean jelly noodle, you’ll recognize these slippery slices as their cognate, liangfen. The dish included bits of lamb and chopped vegetables in a light, tangy sauce, but lurking unexpectedly beneath the pile was lagman, Uyghur’s claim to noodle fame (Chinese cognate: lo mein).

Kazi (you might see qazı) was described as “pickled sausage from the beef meat in home styles”; in Central Asia, kazi is made from horsemeat, so the annotation was reassuring. This isn’t a ground meat type of sausage, rather it’s dry cured rib meat in a natural casing, served cold. Not particularly pickled in flavor, it was dense and earthy and the vegetables plus a squeeze of lemon were a welcome accompaniment. A little goes a long way with these slices, but it’s worth doing once.

This was a winner. Tsomyan (цомян), cognate with chow mein, was described as sliced fried dough and lamb meat with vegetables. When you see “dough” on the menu, it refers to a thick doughy noodle that’s a little reminiscent of Xi’an hand pulled noodles if a bit drier; the term distinguishes it from lagman noodles. Splendid char on those chewy noodles; really excellent.

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AND speaking of Little Odessa, there are some slots open for Tuesday, June 4th’s ethnojunket along Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach Avenue! Simply click here to find out how to join in the fun!
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Dolma House Restaurant

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Instagram Post 5/27/2019

The Southern Caucasus lies between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and comprises Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. The three states have diverse cultures and cuisines and happily we are privileged to partake in all of them right here in New York City.

The word dolma and its many linguistic cognates refers to any of a vast number of stuffed vegetable dishes prepared across the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, Central and Western Asia, the Middle East, and our current focus, the Southern Caucasus, specifically Azerbaijan. The eponymous Dolma House is located at 311 Avenue X in Gravesend, Brooklyn.

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A mix and match lunch special featured one such dish, Kalam Dolma, (cabbage stuffed with lamb), plus Harcho (spicy lamb soup), and Lobio Salad (red kidney beans with chopped walnuts), all of which were good for sure (lunch specials anywhere being what they are) but I urge you, as I always do, to forego the prosaic in favor of the distinctive.

Turshi Plov – rice topped with lamb and dried fruits. Plov is another of those words with cognates that spread across half the planet: pilaf, pulau, etc. The topping, in this case, featured preserved chestnuts, apricots, plums, and raisins along with unctuous, tender lamb. But the rice was the star: cooked with lamb fat that was so delicious we sopped up the residue with our lepeshka, bread fresh from the tandir.

Chigirtma – chicken, eggs, and tomatoes cooked together with onions and served up in a cast iron pan. For starters, just the union of eggs and onions is pretty magical; eggs and tomatoes are besties as well. Combine the three and you’ve got a ménage that guarantees a happy ending. (I have it on good authority that the word chigirtma means “screaming”. Just sayin’.) The chicken, taken alone, is a little dry but this is one of those dishes where you need to get a bit of everything in each mouthful to reveal its awesomeness. Good stuff.
 
 

Eat Gai

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Instagram Post 5/20/2019

Gai is Thai for chicken, and if you want to eat gai, Eat Gai is the place to do it. But it’s not just random chicken; there are two specialties and both are exemplary.

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Khao Man Gai is Thailand’s answer to Hainanese Chicken, but the exquisitely tender, poached chicken is only part of the story; the rice, the broth, and the sauce are where the chef’s talents can shine – and here they do just that. Khao means rice and Man means oily or fatty so the name is approximately oily rice chicken; but notice that rice – oh, that chickeny, gingery rice – comes first. A cup of chicken broth is traditionally served alongside (not shown here) but it’s not your everyday, thin, afterthought of a chicken broth; one sip unleashes a rich, collagen laden stock shock, pointed up by a float of cilantro. Three custom sauces are raveworthy as well: spicy green chili sauce, amazing brown ginger sauce, and black sweet soy sauce round out the dish along with fresh cilantro and cucumber. Check out the bits of chicken gizzard and liver that are neatly tucked away as well.

Southern Thai Fried Chicken Wings. If you’re a fan of jumbo, crispy, meaty fried chicken wings, you’ve found a home. Coated with Thai inflected seasonings, lightly pickled veggies on the side and that spicy sweet sauce that’s the perfect complement for Thai chicken, you might not want to share. Just sayin’.

Eat Gai is in booth 46 at the new Essex Market, 88 Essex Street (crossing Delancey from the old Essex Street Market) in Manhattan.
 
 

Hills Kitchen

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Instagram Post 5/13/2019

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Given what I do, people often ask me what my favorite restaurant is; the answer is “any place where the food was so good that I need to go back and try everything else on the menu.” That was the case with Hills Kitchen in Bushwick. My dining buddy contacted me a few days ago and we met at their location, 252 Knickerbocker Ave in Brooklyn. We shared only two dishes that day but I can recommend both enthusiastically.

Keep in mind that in West African cuisine, the words soup, stew, and sauce are often used interchangeably. This one is Banga, also known as Ofe Akwu, based on the palm nut/palm fruit, a tasty ingredient that figures into a number of Nigerian sauces. We ordered ours with fish, specifically croaker, which was excellent. West African stews are incomplete without some kind of starch, sometimes called a “swallow”; that’s what turns these sauces, soups and stews into a meal. You pinch off a bit, dip it into the delectable soup, and enjoy – really hands-on cuisine! Our choice for this dish was identified only as “wheat” and it was a perfect complement.

Next up was White Soup, also known as Nsala, which was tender, flavorful goat meat in an accessible, lightly seasoned, thin sauce. My understanding is that this is one of the few Nigerian soups made without palm oil so it was distinct from our Banga; we chose pounded yam for our swallow, itself a gentle, comforting accompaniment, hence another good match.

Hills Kitchen has been open for a little over two months. I intend to go back soon – hope to see you there!
 
 

Little Egypt Restaurant

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Instagram Post 5/12/2019

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Little Egypt Restaurant, 66-28 Fresh Pond Road, Ridgewood, featured a special dessert coinciding with Mother’s Day: Om Ali (you might see umm ali), أم على. The phrase translates as “Ali’s mother” and of course, fables abound as to its name. Essentially Egypt’s answer to bread pudding (only better if you ask me), it’s made with phyllo dough, milk (and occasionally, richer dairy considerations) and sugar, sometimes elevated by raisins, nuts, and cinnamon. There are legions of recipes for this traditional Ramadan treat; that day, our delightful version came with sour cream and ground nuts on the side for garnish, ad libitum.