PNK Surinamese Cuisine

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Occupying a tiny corner of northeast South America, Suriname was settled by the British but taken over by the Dutch (it’s the official language) in the 17th century. Demographically diverse, its cuisine embraces influences from indigenous peoples, East Indians, West Africans, Javanese, Chinese, Brazilians, Portuguese, and Jews, not to mention the Dutch; and since for all intents and purposes it is culturally Caribbean, you can expect a serious geographical culinary contribution as well.

I know of only one Surinamese restaurant in NYC and that’s PNK Surinamese Cuisine located at 128-12 Liberty Ave in South Richmond Hill. Here’s what we ordered on a weekday visit; more options are available on weekends.

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For starters, six appetizers – clockwise from upper left:
• Bitterbal: Crispy outside with a yielding center.
• Kippen Worst: Chicken sausage. Kip is Dutch for chicken, the most common meat found here.
• Bakabana: Baked ripe plantain – short for Baka Babana. Sate (grilled kabob) sharing the spotlight.
• Loempia: Fried chicken and vegetable roll.
• Kroket: Chicken & potato croquette.


Saoto (soup) with add ins: bean sprouts, shredded chicken, crispy fried vermicelli, boiled egg.


Teloh (fried cassava) and Bakkeljaw (salt cod – think bacalao) – called Teloh met Bakk.


Packed up and ready to travel, from left to right: Bakkeljaw, Indonesian fried rice, Sweet Soy Chicken.


Bakkeljaw, Bami (Indonesian wheat noodles, typically yellow in color), Sweet Soy Chicken.

The only other location I’m aware of in which you can find the real deal is at the Suriname Day festival (Sranan Dey) held annually in Roy Wilkins park in St. Albans, Queens. I’ve seen it celebrated on the first Sunday in July or August, so you may need to do a little sleuthing to determine when this year’s festivities will take place – unless one of you knows for certain: please comment! But if this year is like those in the past, it’s worth the trip!
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes! ❤
 
 

Chinatown Storefront Vendors

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Chinatown restaurants are typically superb and I practically live in Chinatown food courts, but don’t overlook the storefront vendors that pepper the landscape. You’ll discover a tempting array of snacks that are reasonably priced, served up in a matter of seconds, and decidedly tasty. The offerings vary from time to time – extra credit to unique comfort foods cohabiting with trays of reliable standbys.

Two such spots are Old Street Pan Fried Dumpling, 135-45 Roosevelt Ave in Flushing, and Jojo Duck, 131 Walker St in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Incidentally, Jojo Duck (九九鸭) is so named because 九九, 9–9, symbolizing long-lasting togetherness in Chinese numerology, is pronounced jiu jiu.

Here are a few selections:
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Pan Fried Leek Dumpling – Leeks, eggs, and cellophane noodles (made from mung bean starch, not cellophane!). A solid choice for my vegetarian friends.


Chili Lamb Burger – Pro tip: examine one first for juiciness.


Pan-fried Crabmeat & Pork Buns (Sheng Jian Bao, 生煎包), always a hit!

Looking forward to warmer and drier weather when we can sample these treats on my Not Your Ordinary Chinatown Tour and Snacking in Flushing ethnojunkets. See you soon!
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes! ❤
 
 

Lunar New Year 4723 (2025)

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The two-week long Chinese celebration of the Lunar New Year begins on Wednesday, January 29 – it’s 4723, the Year of the Snake.

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This year’s celebratory feast featured a whole steamed fish stuffed with ginger, scallions, and onions, bedecked with pea shoot sprouts, chives, and cilantro as the centerpiece.


Accompanying the star of the show was char siu chow fun…


…and an experiment involving a stir-fry of shiitake mushrooms and onions cradled in bok choy, both side dishes boasting a host of traditional ingredients.

The snake is known for a myriad of characteristics depending upon where you do your research: it is associated with transformation (snakes shed their skins), charm, elegance, sensitivity, effectiveness, adaptability, intelligence, determination, and resourcefulness.

One of the traditions that make this holiday so extraordinary is the way in which wordplay and homophones factor into the selection of dishes specially prepared to mark the occasion. For example, at festive gatherings a whole fish will be served, because the word for fish (yu) is a homophone for surpluses.

And speaking of determination and resourcefulness, there was a time a few zodiac signs ago that it looked like my Lunar New Year luck had run out in terms of another one of its traditional foods. It was a mystery involving a particular nian gao (the traditional sweet rice cake and a homophone for high year) that resonates to this day.

Want to know what happened? Please read my tradition-packed short story, “The Case of the Uncrackable Case!”
 
 
新年快乐! Xīnnián kuàilè!
恭喜发财! Gong hei fat choy!
 
 

Burmese Harp

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Decades ago when I lived in Greenwich Village, I was a rabid fan of Village Mingala restaurant, so much so that I tried every item on the menu – multiple times. It was probably my first exposure to Burmese cooking, so my expectations going forward were based around their endeavors as a baseline.

Since then, I’ve ferreted out any Burmese cuisine I could find at food fairs and festivals, the occasional outstanding and now extinct stalls in food courts, and restaurants in state and out. I became so enamored of the fare that I even became proficient at preparing it at home. And yes, photographic evidence of my passion abounds here.

So some months ago, I enthusiastically visited Burmese Harp (8510 4th Ave in Brooklyn) which was barely a few days old. Their take on the cuisine was a bit different from my past experiences. I know that there’s a regional element that accounts for diverse differences in its execution: Shan style, for example, is more herbaceous and aggressive in my opinion. These dishes were significantly more gentle than what I was accustomed to.

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Lahpet Thoke appeared on the menu as Pickled Tea Leaf Salad (lahpet is the Burmese word for pickled or fermented tea leaves; thoke means salad): fermented tea leaf, shredded cabbage, fried garlic, sesame seeds, tomato and assorted peas and peanuts.


Mohinga: rice noodles with fish soup, ginger, lemongrass, garlic, onion, peppers, and rice powder.


Assorted vegetable fritters: tempura style vegetables and tofu.


Coconut Noodle: egg noodles, chicken, coconut milk, chickpea flour, tofu, fish balls, and chicken broth.


Myeik Noodle garnered best of show that day: tender squid and bean sprouts, served over flat rice noodles.


Kyae Ohh Garlic Noodle: rice vermicelli, minced chicken, bok choy, garlic, tofu, fish balls, and garlic oil.


Desserts included coconut jelly, coconut sago cake, and Burmese layer cake.

Whether you’re an aficionado or a tyro, give them a try and let me know in the comments what you think.

(For the record, this meal was comped.)
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes! ❤
 
 

Pomo FOMO

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We had just emerged from the east side of Prospect Park and hunger beckoned. Wandering around the neighborhood in search of something perhaps a bit unusual, we stumbled upon Pomo, a Mexican-inspired bar and pizzeria located at 2122 Beekman Place. Mexican pizza is certainly not unheard of but it was at least a little different. It sounded tempting but we kept walking.

But wait. This is Brooklyn. What if they’re not here in a minute? Oh no! FOMO! So we turned around and got this Pastor pizza: marinated pork in pastor sauce, fresh mozzarella, red onions, cilantro and avocado tomatillo sauce.

Glad we did!
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes! ❤
 
 

Fujianese Red Bean Glutinous Rice Cake

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One more instapost: Previously, I’ve written about the some of the unique treats we’ve enjoyed in Little Fuzhou along East Broadway in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Here’s another – and this one comes with an air of mystery. I can say with certainty that they are Fujianese, that they are made from glutinous rice and filled with beans (probably adzuki), and that they are “not too sweet” (as seems to be the mantra for Chinese snacks 😉).

Beyond that, I’d suggest that you sign up for my “Not Your Ordinary Chinatown Tour” when the weather gets a little warmer and drier and we can sample these – and lots more – together. (Bonus points if you speak Fujianese!)
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes! ❤
 
 

“Thai” Red Vegetable Curry

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Another instapost since we’re on the subject of curries.

This one was reasonably Thai. Oyster mushrooms, pea shoots, green beans, red onion and cilantro elevated with a packet of Thai red curry paste I had in the freezer, served over Shanxi planed noodles which is when it stopped being “Thai.”
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes! ❤
 
 

Curry Cauliflower

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This is an instapost. An instapost is what happens when I make something tasty that was effortless to prepare and reasonably photogenic but there’s no overarching storyline associated with it because, well, time.

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Curry cauliflower served with basmati rice and paratha.


Reheated leftovers, having consumed all of the paneer and polished off the paratha on the previous day.
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes! ❤
 
 

Seeing is Deceiving

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How do you follow two months of indulgent Thanksgiving and Christmas feasting accompanied by a generous complement of seductive leftovers plus a procession of hypercaloric desserts without incurring post-holiday anticlimax?

Should you simply resign yourself to the prosaic with a homespun brunch like eggs and sausage, home fries and an English muffin?

Fat chance. And I use the word ”fat” advisedly. Because what you’re seeing here is more than meets the eye.

Those are sunny side up fresh duck eggs and the sausages are Chinese lap cheong made with duck liver; the home fries are anointed with white truffle oil and the English muffins are slathered with my homemade trifoliate orange and cranberry marmalade.


Oh, and a side of homemade johnnycakes.

So thanks to Santa’s sleight of hand I was able to cobble together this antidote to post-holiday culinary blues!
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes! ❤
 
 

A Christmas Minute

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The sun was setting on one of those rare snow globe days that would have sent Currier and Ives back to the drawing board.

My daughter Alex and I were fulfilling our annual Macy’s pilgrimage to see Santa. Our mission accomplished, we paused for a long moment to have one last look at the sparkling snowy spectacle that was Santaland.

Perhaps we appeared lost amid the throng of milling, squealing children. A young woman dressed in a green and red velvet elf costume came up to us. It had to be near the end of what was surely an exhausting work day; nevertheless, she approached us gamely.

“Did you come here to see Santa?” she asked, poised to once again point out the line.

“We came here to see his elves, and you are one of Santa’s elves. We came here to see you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You work as hard and give your time and your attention and your patience and your love to these children every bit as much as the jolly gents wearing overstuffed red suits who sit in those cozy little houses do. So we came here to say thank you to you, Caitlyn.”

She regarded us for a second and wiping a tear from her eye leaned in and gave us both a hug. I whispered “Merry Christmas,” and my daughter and I continued on our way.

Alex looked up at me. “What just happened?”

“We just spent one minute of our time giving her something that she might actually remember for years. The most noble thing anyone can do is to help someone, even a total stranger, feel appreciated, feel somehow special, even for a minute.”

As we threaded our way out of Macy’s, Alex took my hand.

“She gets it,” I thought.