Mama’s Kitchen

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Instagram Post 7/9/2019

Two treats from Mama’s Kitchen, Stall 28 at Elmhurst’s HK Food Court, 82-02 45th Ave in Queens. They continue to hone their menu and it keeps getting better with each iteration.

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I’ve written poignantly about my fondness for this dish, the epitome of the homiest of Chinese home cooking, tomatoes and eggs. I give Mama much credit, for this is possibly the boldest version I’ve tasted in a long time. It’s all about their take on the seasoning; whoever is in the kitchen has a style of their own. All I know is, my mama could never cook this way!


This is their spin on the Southeast Asian classic, Roti Canai. It’s usually served with a chicken curry sauce, but this version is rather different from any I’ve experienced; its seasoning had overtones of Thai herbs and spices but still wasn’t something one would immediately identify as Thai. In order to more firmly establish its culinary character, I’ll return to have another go at it. This task will be a breeze since Mama’s Kitchen is one of the stops on my new Elementary Elmhurst Ethnojunket (Shameless Self-Promotion Department 😉). Visit my Ethnojunkets page to learn more. Hope to see you soon!
 
 

XinJiang House

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Instagram Post 7/8/2019

As I sift my way through the stalls and their respective menus at Elmhurst’s HK Food Court, 82-02 45th Ave, some gems have begun to emerge; XinJiang House, number 17, is assuredly one of them. They offer the Halal cuisine of Xinjiang, the Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China near Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Because of the political conflict there, the public at large is becoming more aware of the plight of the Uyghurs who are in essence being persecuted for aspiring to pursue their lives and their culture in a homeland of their own, an “Eastern Turkestan”. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to learn about these people and their cuisine.

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This is Spicy Lamb Chop with Noodles (also available with rice). Succulent lamb riblets (on the bone where the meat is sweetest) accompanied by chunks of potato and intensified with green and red chilies plus palpable nubs of ginger and garlic. Gilding the lily, this all goes over a bed of wide, thick, chewy, hand pulled noodles to soak up the juices – not visible in this photo, but you’ll dream about them later.

I was curious about the dish that’s probably the least accessible on their menu, Spicy Lamb Feet. There’s precious little meat on these, but that’s to be expected; you’ll be consuming skin for the most part, but the heady broth (too trivial a word) that’s the consummation of this preparation is just remarkable. Pour it over the accompanying rice and prepare to be amazed.
 
 

Muzzles’ Muzzlebag Burger

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Instagram Post 7/6/2019

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🎶 Ist das nicht ein Schnitzelbank? 🎶 Nein, das ist ein Muzzlebag. Or more specifically, Muzzles’ Muzzlebag Burger, a dumpling on a sandwich. Let’s unpack this bag starting with the main component, an elongated German dumpling (think ravioli on steroids) known as a maultasche (maul means meal, tasche means pocket), here filled with ham, pork, beef, eggs, spinach and onions. It’s placed on a pretzel bun, slathered with a generous helping of caramelized onions and topped with parsley, chips on the side.


A closer look at a bisected naked maultasche. Muzzles turned up last weekend at a stall at LIC Flea & Food and can be found at Smorgasburg as well. Check their schedule @muzzlesofficial on Instagram.
 
 

New York Indonesian Food Bazaar

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Instagram Post 7/5/2019

Ever tried Indonesian cuisine? It’s one of my absolute favorites and I always recommend this event not only for the innumerable possibilities, but for the quality of the cooking. Whether you know and love the food or you’re a first-timer, I urge you to head out to Elmhurst, Queens on Saturday, July 6th, for the New York Indonesian Food Bazaar, an event that’s held monthly at the parish hall of St. James Episcopal Church, 84-07 Broadway. I suggest that you arrive close to the starting time, 11am, to catch the greatest variety of options. From two of my favorite vendors:

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Kantin Rica Rica’s Ayam Rica Bumbu Manado, a signature dish from Manado, North Sulawesi: chicken with chilies, scallions, shallots, lemongrass and turmeric was delicious.

If you like your pork on the sweet side, try their Sate Garo with peanut sauce: pork shoulder, peanuts, chilies, scallions, shallots, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, galangal, and ketjap manis (sweet soy sauce).

Three treats provided by my friend (full disclosure) Fefe at Taste of Surabaya. From the top, clockwise: Dadar Gulung, a sweet coconut kue (snack) that gets its green color from pandan; Wingko Babat a Javanese coconut pancake; and a savory corn fritter – each was wonderful. Hope to see you there!
 
 

Lamoon

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When I write about restaurants on Instagram, they’re usually brief takes accompanied by a photo or two. (You can see my feed right here on ethnojunkie.com, updated almost daily, by selecting the “Instagram” category from my home page – no signup required.) But because of Instagram’s character count limitations, it’s often necessary to break up a review into several parts. This one originally appeared as four posts, published on 4/24, 4/27, and 5/19/2018, and 7/4/2019.

Northern Thai food is staking a claim in NYC and Lamoon at 81-40 Broadway in Elmhurst, Queens is the latest leader in the Chiang Mai charge. Don’t confuse Bangkok Thai and Isaan Thai (Northeast Thailand) cuisines with that of Northern Thailand; it’s spicy for sure, but it tends to be more herbal and less sweet. The word “lamoon” carries the connotations of delicate, mild, tender, or taking care, and there’s no doubt that they pamper their guests with flavorful dishes prepared with tender loving care, but they’re not shy about presenting authentically spicy food to which the words delicate or mild would never apply. Try powerful, intense, exhilarating, or just plain amazing. If Otto is there, let him be your guide; he’s extremely helpful.

(Click any photo to view in glorious high resolution.)From the appetizer section: Kung Pare, Crispy Baby Shrimp Cloud. Crispy indeed and especially tasty dipped in the accompanying sweet sauce – I’d say you’ll be on Cloud 9 with this one, but I give it a 10 for sure.

Khao Kun Jin – Jasmine Rice and Ground Pork Marinated in Pork Blood. Don’t let the pork blood put you off; it provides color and a depth of flavor that makes this one something special. Once again, don’t neglect the sauce (this one is different) – it uplifts the dish and will do the same for your spirits!

Also from the appetizers section of the menu, fried fermented pork ribs, garlicky and distinctive.

Kanom Jeen Nam Ngeau. Kanom Jeen (you may have seen it as khanom chin) are the familiar rice noodles that are wallowing unseen at the bottom of this bowl; Nam Ngeau (aka nam ngiao) is the soup in which they are luxuriating. Spicy, replete with pork, pork ribs, cubes of pork blood (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it), and tomatoes, there’s a separate side dish of crisp, cool bean sprouts, scallions, and pickled veggies (it keeps the cool side cool and the hot side hot) for mixing in.

Fried Rice Nam Prik Noom. We ordered this one with chicken but only because we were already committed to consuming a pigful of pork. Delicious to be sure, but the addition of their homemade nam prik noom (roasted green chili paste) pitched it over the top. When you visit Lamoon, make sure you try this amazing smoky, spicy condiment. (I wonder if I can get a portion of it to go; it’s that good.)

Tum Kanoon – crafted from shredded green jackfruit, ground pork, homemade shrimp paste, tomato, makrut lime leaves, cilantro and scallion. Served with sticky rice (always eaten with the fingers in Thailand) and some crispy pork rinds (think chicharrones but Thai) on the side. From the Main Course section of the menu, and another winner!

Sai Aua – you might have seen it as Sai Oua – is classic Northern Thai ground pork sausage made with chili paste, makrut lime leaves, lemongrass, cilantro, and pork ear and served up with contrasting cooling cucumber. My only complaint is that I should have ordered more! A signature dish at Lamoon.

Thai Tea Pad Thai, a new member of the family. The noodles are prepared with Thai tea, a universal favorite, along with a palette of ingredients that results in a dish that doesn’t taste like you’d expect it to from its name – certainly not seasoned like the Pad Thai you’re accustomed to – and those shrimp were perfect.
 
 
Lamoon is located at at 81-40 Broadway in Elmhurst, Queens.
 
 

Al-Sham Restaurant

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Instagram Post 7/3/2019

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One of the newer establishments in Brooklyn’s Middle Eastern neighborhood (which I still think should be called “Little Levant”) is Al-Sham Restaurant at 7701 5th Ave in Bay Ridge. On its compact menu, you’ll find the usual suspects like hummus, baba ganoush, and falafel, but their emphasis seems to be the chicken shawarma, available on a platter with fries or as a “sandwich” (their word) since it’s really shaved into a piece of laffa (flatbread), rolled up with pickles and toum, and grilled. Toum is a sauce made primarily of olive oil and garlic that’s whipped into a fluffy, snow white blizzard of a condiment; you’ll receive a hefty dollop of it on the side if you order fries. Think of it as the Levantine answer to Mediterranean aioli.


Strategically positioned by the window, the chicken shawarma is gargantuan compared to others along the strip. Foodies fond of photographing favorite finds frequently position a quarter or a spoon beside the food for the purpose of demonstrating relative size. Here, we’ve situated a human to serve the same purpose. Kidding. But seriously, that’s one big honkin’ shawarma. As he rotated the shawarma, shaving it down, he repeatedly slathered it with a substance I couldn’t quite make out, but I’m guessing it was toum, glorious toum.

There was something undefinably fresh about this chicken shawarma (the only kind they offer, BTW); I don’t know if it was because it was a new batch or because of the continual application of toum, but here’s hoping they maintain that same quality as they whittle it down. And yes, it’s a stop along my Middle Eastern Bay Ridge food tour; to learn more, check out my Ethnojunkets page. Hope to see you!
 
 

Indonesian Bazaar at Masjid al-Hikmah

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Instagram Post 7/2/2019

You can always find something delicious at the (approximately) monthly Indonesian Bazaar at Masjid al-Hikmah, 48-01 31st Ave, in Astoria; the first bazaar since the conclusion of Ramadan was held this past weekend.

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This is Batagor Bandung. The word batagor is actually a portmanteau of Bakso (a meatball or fishball, in this case a paste of kingfish) Tahu (tofu) and Goreng (fried); Bandung is the capital of West Java in Indonesia. It’s deep fried (the second photo shows why I was attracted to it) and doused in a sweet peanut sauce.


On the left, sweet Pisang Goreng (fried banana), on the right, savory Bala-Bala (deep fried vegetable fritters). Both were certainly delicious, but I wish they had just emerged from the deep fryer like the batagor.


Lontong Sayur with crispy pink Krupuk (deep fried crackers); green jackfruit, bamboo shoots, and lontong (compressed rice cubes) in perfectly seasoned coconut milk. And a hard-boiled egg.

Check @masjid__al_hikmah_ny on Instagram or their Facebook page, Masjid Al-Hikmah New York / Indonesian Muslim Community inc, for an announcement about their next scheduled event.
 
 

Mercado Little Spain

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Instagram Post 7/1/2019

I recall the days when Little Spain was an area on the west side of 14th Street in Manhattan; anybody here remember Casa Moneo? Just as Times Square rose from the ashes like a phoenix (or arguably so – we won’t go there just now) there’s a shiny new Little Spain tucked away at 10 Hudson Yards in NYC whose goal is to bring the cuisine and spirit of the enchanting country to our fair city. Unlike some of the schmancier restaurants and boîtes elsewhere in the megamall, the atmosphere of Mercado Little Spain is casual, comprising three restaurants, a few retail stalls, and the Mercado which consists of 14 kiosks and three bars. Our objective on the day we visited was to poke around the kiosks.

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Often topping the Top 10 list of tapas are Patatas Bravas, classic Spanish fried potatoes, served here at Bravas kiosk with salsa brava, a mildly spicy tomato sauce, and aioli. An eponymous-t do.


This treat from Helados is Leche Merengada, made from milk, sugar, cinnamon, lemon zest, and beaten egg whites, then frozen. It’s a bit more fluid than a semifrío (more familiarly, semifreddo in Italian), almost the texture of a smoothie.


Granja reflects the tone of a Catalan café, featuring coffees, hot chocolate, light snacks and desserts like this Crema Catalana, caramelized custard infused with lemon. Like crème brûlée, it’s a dessert that comes with its own toy: cr-a-a-ck!
 
 

Antepli Baklava

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Instagram Post 6/27/2019

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A favorite stop along my Middle Eastern Bay Ridge food tour is Antepli Baklava at 7216 5th Ave, Brooklyn. They offer an assortment of savory Turkish dishes as well as desserts including baklava, künefe, and dondurma, the dense, chewy ice cream crafted from cream, salep, mastic, and sugar; you may have seen my past post about booza, a similar treat that hails from Syria. But lately, I just can’t get past the chocolate baklava.

Now, despite my sweet tooth, I’ve never been a fan of standard issue, regulation, honey drenched baklava, but this chocolate version is a cut above. Sweet but not cloying, chocolate forward, the upper flaky layers provide the crunch while the compressed substratum is the repository for restrained syrupy goodness, the two interspaced by a thin barrier of finely chopped nuts. Droolworthy.

When I was told it’s imported from Turkey, then baked on the premises, I remembered a post (and a sample too 😋) from my Instagram friend @gustasian not long ago about the same item with the same appearance and the same taste and the same story that she found in Sunnyside. I’m willing to bet they came from the same distributor too.
 
 

Hang

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Instagram Post 6/29/2019

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In Elmhurst’s new HK Food Court at 82-02 45th Ave, the Chinese characters on Stall 15’s marquee translate to “Hang”. More to the point, on the left it reads “Taipei”, on the right, “snacks”, and therefore likely a potential stop on my Elmhurst food tour, but taste testing always comes first. (Well, right after the photos, I guess.) Taiwanese style popcorn chicken and its marine mate, squid, are hallmarks of the cuisine around these parts; crispy yet juicy and traditionally topped with a bit of fried basil, they’re easy to track down and everyone has their favorites.

Shown here, serviceable fried [1] Salt & Pepper Chicken and [2] Salt & Pepper Squid; the chicken was marginally better, the squid more attractive by the same degree. A few more decisions to make before the Elmhurst ethnojunket goes live – but we’re close!