Tag Archives: Malaysian

Little House Cafe – Golden Pillow

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Instagram Post 6/9/2018

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If having fun with food is for kids, then set your inner child free on this one:

Here is the bread,
…
Sliced without worry.
…
Open the doors
…
And see all the curry!

Curry Chicken with Potatoes, that is. This is the mammoth curry chicken bun, identified as Golden Pillow on the menu, that you may have heard about and it’s as tasty as it is fun; remember that you need to order it a day in advance. (Note: we removed the curry chicken from the plastic and foil cooking pouch for the final photo; it made for easier dipping!) Little House Café at 90-19 Corona Ave in Elmhurst, Queens is an Asian fusion venue with a few tables and a delicious way with Malaysian food; I’ve raved about their Curry Mee with Young Tao Fu as well as their colorful multi-layered taro cake previously. When you go, don’t neglect their great baked goods and desserts to round out your meal or to take home for a midnight snack.
 
 

Let’s Makan

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Instagram Post 5/29/2018

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Let’s Makan (“makan” = “eat” in Malay), a newcomer to Manhattan’s Chinatown at 64A Bayard St, proves the adage that good things come in small packages. Every foodie I know is buzzing about this little snack shop’s Apam Balik, a Malaysian crêpe (available in traditional, pandan, ube, or chocolate), folded around a filling (your choice of butter, ube, Nutella, pumpkin, taro, or kaya), with toppings like peanuts, corn, toasted coconut flakes, cornflakes, or seasonal fruit. And if the decision sounds overwhelming, they have some tried and true suggestions for you like “Auntie’s Favorite”.

1) Open wide! Here’s a peek inside my pandan apam balik with kaya (a jam made from coconut, eggs, and sugar), peanuts, and corn.
2) …in progress…
3) …lined up and ready to rock.

Sweet and so delicious! Speaking with the enterprising owner, Michelle Lam, I was impressed with how passionate they are about bringing unique and authentic Malaysian flavors here; I’ll return soon to try their savory dishes too, like Pan Mee, Curry Chicken Rice, Nasi Lemak, and Flat Rice Noodle with a variety of delectable additions – more decisions! I highly recommend that you check out Let’s Makan as soon as you can; bring your appetite and don’t forget your sweet tooth!
 
 

Little House Cafe – Taro Cake

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Instagram Post 5/24/2018

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A place of many delicious wonders, I am compelled to return to Little House Café, 90-19 Corona Ave in Elmhurst, Queens as soon as possible. It’s an Asian fusion counter service venue with a few tables and remarkable food; in addition to having the best Curry Mee with Young Tao Fu I’ve ever tasted, the sweets and desserts were a cut above as well. One of the most dramatic was this layered taro cake: gelatin, custard, taro, cake. Each layer brought something unique to the party: sweet, creamy, textured, fluffy. Remarkably, I was able to polish off the whole thing in one sitting because it wasn’t too sweet.

Yeah, that must’ve been why. 🐷

…and the cutaway stepped view.
 
 

Little House Cafe – Curry Mee with Young Tao Fu

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Instagram Post 4/26/2018

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Most folks like soup well enough. As a matter of fact, there are those who can’t get through a cold, rainy day without an ample, piping hot bowl of it. But for me, no soup ever seemed to ascend to the droolworthy, shout-it-from-the-rooftops level of recommendation. Until now. Go to Little House Café, 90-19 Corona Ave in Elmhurst, Queens, and get the Curry Mee with Young Tao Fu, N4 on the menu. Described as “yellow noodles served in a spicy lemongrass coconut curry with vegetables and tofu stuffed with minced fish,” their version has a deeper, richer flavor profile than many of the variations I’ve sampled elsewhere.

Little House Café is an Asian fusion counter service venue with a few tables and a sizable array of baked goods (more on that aspect in a future post) all of which were top notch – and all of which point to a return visit before long!

h/t Joe DiStefano, Chopsticks and Marrow
 
 

Durian Pizza at C Fruitlife

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Instagram Post 10/18/2017

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You know the old adage about durian, right? “Smells like hell, tastes like heaven!” Well, this may be the gateway drug for durian novitiates: Durian Pizza at C Fruitlife, 135-29 Roosevelt Ave, Flushing, Queens. For those of you who are curious about the flavor of durian, this offering is very mild and may well ease you into some comfy durian love; and for those of us who are hardcore durianheads, we wouldn’t mind if this were even a little more, um, pungent! They offer two versions, Musang King, the Malaysian variety, and the less expensive Monthong from Thailand. Lots of other Hong Kong style desserts as well as snacks to be found, some with a more salubrious bent, some just for fruity sweetness.
 
 

You Say Gnetum, I Say Gnemon – Let’s Call the Whole Thing Oats

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Gnetum GnemonMy interminable quest to discover the ultimate ethnic crunchy snack led me to Top Line Supermarket at 81-37 Broadway in Elmhurst, Queens. (Interminable, by the way, because there are so many outrageously good ethnic crunchies out there that there will clearly never be Just One Ultimate, thus making it a delightfully sisyphean task.) Indonesian ingredients are not that easy to come by around these parts, but Top Line arguably offers the best concentration of Indonesian and Malaysian items in NYC. (Got a better one, ethnofoodies? Let me know!)

Quick vocabulary lesson:

  • Gnetum gnemon — a plant (actually a tree) native to southeast Asia, known in Indonesian as melinjo or belinjo, and in English as padi oats or paddy oats. The seeds are ground into flour and used to make:
  • Emping — chips that are very popular in Indonesia (along with many other varieties of crackers generically called krupuk). They are available in a number of varieties including:
  • Manis — sweet; Pedas — spicy; and Madu — honey.

There. Now you can translate the packages as well as I can.

What are they like? Wonderful, obviously, or I wouldn’t be telling you about them. More crunchy than crispy, a little sticky right out of the package. Of the two varieties I found available under the Kukagumi brand, I like the sweet/spicy combo a little better than the honey version, but I do tend to favor spicy in general. The heat level of the pedas was within the bounds of my co-conspirators that day (some of whom draw the line at wasabi peas to give you a comparative frame of reference). Padi oats have a slight bitter, but not at all unpleasant, aftertaste. They’re not really “oatey” in the Cheerios sense since they’re another species, but they’re more like oats than corn or wheat since there’s a satisfying nuttiness to them. The Rotary brand offers larger pieces that are seasoned less heavy-handedly – a little less spicy and a little less sweet than Kukagumi. Perhaps even a little more sophisticated than Kukagumi, it allowed the flavor of the padi oats to come through with more definition. And I recently discovered Zona brand emping pedas camouflaged in loopy, orange and red Western style packaging. Crisper than Kukagumi and Rotary, their sweet spiciness is akin to Shark brand Sriracha (the Thai Sriracha). All three brands are excellent choices.

These are ready-to-eat, but a version that requires deep frying first is also available.

Gnetum gnemon — Eat ’em: get ’em!