ghostrider

Flavors schmavors. Back in the days when they had only the basic 4, I used to make outrageously good HD milkshakes. 1 pint vanilla + 1 pint chocolate + a dollop of chocolate syrup (Hershey's - yes, I know, gauche, but this was 30 years ago) + milk to taste = nirvana. Didn't have any sort of mixer, just kind of beat it all up with a fork till it got to the right consistency. Yummmmmmmm.........

This place is perplexing to me, it's so close to being really good, but doesn't always hit the mark... We've eaten there 2 or 3 times since I last posted about it, & went back again tonight. Started with the Fresh Spring Roll, which was everything it should be, nicely sauced, well presented with a julienne carrot garnish, & almost too much for 2 people to share. Sheila has become fond of the Evil Jungle Thai Noodle Steak Salad as an entree, and I don't blame her. It is good, but I keep searching for something else since that seems more of a summertime dish to me. Tonight I had the Tiger shrimp with avocado, cashew in a Mussamun curry coconut sauce. It almost worked. Ingredients were good. Sauce tasted delicious, a good curry flavor, touch of sweetness & some heat from the spices, but it was a bit richer than I like. Onions in the sauce weren't completely cooked. Result: indigestion. Last time there, I had what's listed as Rice Noodle - Sauteed chicken, Chinese broccoli and Chow Fun noodle in yellow bean sauce. It was quite fine, I really like the fact that they have the Chinese broccoli. Had started with the green Papaya salad, which was tasty but not as fiery as the version I'd had shortly after they opened. We've eaten at Thai Chef in Montclair a couple of times and in my mind these places are pretty similar - some upscale atmosphere & presentation, & Thai cooking with a touch of French and pan-Asian influence. My personal taste inclines me more towards Wondee's down-home approach, where they seem to have a bit of a lighter touch with the curries, and offer a wider variety of choices on their menu. But it's still nice to know that I can get a really good chow fun with Chinese broccoli right here in town.

Only child. Eat best bite last, but adjust for climate - i.e., if the air is cold such that that last bite of perfectly charred steak next to the bone is going to be cold if I leave it till last, then I'll move it up in the sequence. Cake - eat both together, but in such a way that the proportion of frosting to cake increases as I work my way through it.

Glad to hear that Melt is up & running. Sounds exciting. Hope to get into JC one of these days.

The entire Village in NYC - East, Central, West. Portland Maine's Old Port - compact, but charming. The Loop in St. Louis - a revitalized funky area, a Midwestern East Village. But the ultimate walking neighborhood? Pick any one that you happen to find in Venice.

Ah. Gotcha. You're looking at it from a weight-control diet perspective & I'm from a cardiac-friendly diet (at least as I currently understand it). I assumed you were ordering the Egg Foo Young w/o that gravy. The General Tso's Diet - I like the sound of that!

I have been wondering about this piece of the discussion and I just have to ask. In my experience, Egg Foo Young is generally a greasy deep-fried fat-&-cholesterol bomb. How can that possibly be healthier than a couple teaspoons of cornstarch in a sauce? I have no doubt that, taste-wise, it's the best choice at many a Chinese takeoutery, that's been my experience often enough & I've made that choice for that reason alone. Granted, a lot of Chinese sauces are also loaded with fat, not to mention sodium. But can the Egg Foo Young really be healthier? I see the choice more as a matter of choosing one's poison.

Yup...it's: "In Seach Of" ← Various online dictionaries agree with you & none of them agrees with me. I bow to your wisdom & stand corrected.

The chicken wings are ubiquitous in this part of Jersey, but the hot sauce comes on the side in those little plastic envelopes. You'd have to order the fried rice separately & do your own assembly to construct what Soba describes up top. Which would never have occurred to me as being even close to a good idea. I sometimes order a bag of wings & the cold noodles w sesame sauce (spicy), tho I eat them separately. Makes a nice & cheap summertime meal.

As I understand it, ISO = I Seek Only. It's derived from the abbreviations used in those newspaper personal ads, where someone is seeking someone else with specific kinks. The implication is no one else need apply. E.g:, "ISO SWF 43-52 NS DF Vegan for long walks to gather roots & greens." Kind of ironic to see its use here, considering how the whole thing evolved. But I still think the mechanism is a good idea. Probably shouldn't be saying this since it's not strictly on topic. Oh well, delete if you must.

Does Jersey count? 1. Do you eat brown rice or regular rice, or do you have no rice? Regular. When I want brown rice, which is usually twice a week, I cook my own. It's better. 2. Do you put the rice into a bowl or plate and then top it with your entree? Or do you alternate bites of rice and dish? Rice in bowl, entree on top. 3. Are you a chopstick user or a fork and spoon user? Chopsticks. 4. Do you eat everything, all the vegetables but not the ________, or only meat? I eat everything. SO won't eat cabbage or onions. 5. Are you one of these people who think that fried chicken wings covered in hot sauce on top of pork fried rice constitutes proper Chinese takeout? No. 6. When ordering takeout, do you always get the same thing or do you try out different things? I've tried everything at my local Chinese parlor & settled on the few things that they do tolerably well. I've had to cut out 75% of those things that they do tolerably well since I went on a low-sodium (= no soy sauce) diet. 7. What's your favorite place and your least favorite place, and could you please describe them? Favorite place is the closest, because it's the closest. They're principally a takeout business tho they have a small separate diining room which attracts a few customers. It's not particularly better or worse than any other Chinese place in town, it's just close. The people who run it are very nice & friendly, & they take my requests for no salt seriously. If that last sentence weren't true, I'd go further afield. 8. Do you have a best takeout experience? Let's hear it. 9. Do you have a worst takeout experience? Let's hear that as well. All my best takeout experiences are behind me, I fear, since we moved out of NYC 14 years ago. Now it's just convenience & sustenance.

The Rasta Gourmet, on the other hand, is still an inspiration to me all these years later.

I thought that was the case (next door) but wasn't certain after all of these years. I'd posted upthread about the "red" hot & sour soup. Addictive! Kam Bo had the same version? I always wondered if some of those kitchens were connected. Has anyone encountered that variety of hot & sour anywhere in recent years?

THanks. Bookmarking it now. One of my goals for this year to get out there for a dinner. Occurs to me now I should have thought to google on "anamericangrill" instead of "'an american grill'". Brain not function well too dinner before.

Didn't there used to be a website for An American Grill? Maybe there is still? I've just spent 20 minutes running various searches both in eG and the Web at large, came up with zilch. I'm tired. If the website still exists & anyone has the link, please post. Thanks.

Kam Bo, yes. I think we tried them once or twice. As I remember it they were very similar to Lin's Garden. In the end, we stuck with Lin's, no particular reason other than it was OUR first intro to Chinatown, & with that came a certain sense of loyalty. Lin's also had damn fine snails with black bean sauce, now that you've mentioned Kam Bo's clams. That was one garlicky black bean sauce, I loved that stuff. We'd found Lin's via The Underground Gourmet, a kind of predecessor to Zagat's. I wonder how many other tastes that little yellow book shaped.

As a member of the human race, I've had enough of Caprial & John. Saw Colameco's segment on 9th Ave (NYC) last night. He is slowly winning me over....

Point taken; it never hurts to try.

Who is this Colameco guy? Well I see he's been around on TV for several years but I just discovered him thanx to NJ Channel 50 reruns. I can't quite pin him down. He goes some interesting places & does some good profiles - his visit to Harlem in quest of fried chicken was a blast - but I like his testosterone-charged kitchen antics less. He's always hitting stuff - "now I'm gonna hit this with the glaze" - actually he's not, that's the problem, he talks the talk but doesn't hit the hits. Now if he literally did all the things he says he's doing, he'd have a heck of a good comedy act. Hmm......

Ah, you'd probably left by the time we got there (around 9:10). We sat in back too & we were the only ones in that part of the restaurant; the section to the left of the front door as you walk in was full up at that point. We have leftovers too. Wondee's food is a great value on top of being so good. I am very bad at planning ahead - I generally don't know what I want for dinner on any given day until I wake up - but it's time that I got better at it! Next time I'll try to look a few days into the future. I urge other interested folks to post there too, it won't be hard to get us back up there.

Thanks to another session with MSN MapPoint, navigated our way to & from Polifly Ave with no hitches this time. Wondee's was only half as crowded (a bit less than half full) tonight as it was exactly one week ago. How does one explain that? We shared a Som Thum, the classic green papaya salad, thick shreds, ground peanuts & dried shrimp, chopped green beans, a few cherry tomatoes for contrast, a sweet-hot dressing. Crunchy, fiery, refreshing. Sheila had their version of Singapore Chow Mei Fun - sorry, I've lost the Thai name. Absolutely delicious. I'd gone there intending to have the Moo Ping, but, as happened last week, the menu & my appetite of the moment overruled my initial plans. I went for the Pad Khing w pork - mushrooms, black fungus, onions, green & red pepper, some cabbage & celery, a black bean sauce, & most important, lots of SHREDDED GINGER ROOT. I have been searching for a place that uses sufficient ginger in dishes like this since we moved to Jersey 14 years ago. Usually I have to go back to NYC or cook my own when I need a serious ginger fix. No more. Wondee's does it right. I am ecstatic. Heartfelt thanks to Jason & everyone else who championed Wondee's here, & to all those who made eGullet a reality. I'd never have gotten connected to Wondee's without all of you. Wondee's is one of North Jersey's treasures, no question about it. It's worth the drive time to get there. And there's so much more of that menu to go through....

The hot & sour soup that we used to get at Lin's Garden had a tomato-based broth. It was delicious. This was my first exposure to hot & sour soup, & we had it so many times there that when we finally tried the "usual" kind of hot & sour at another restaurant, it seemed weird: good, but strange. It took me a year or two to figure out that Lin's was the place serving the unusual variety. Lin's wasn't overpoweringly spicy, but had a marvelous combination of flavors. I have a recipe for a similar version in one of my original Chinese cookbooks.

Fabulous reporting! Marilyn Lash is from Friendship? We have a cousin & his family there. We drive out there every year. He is a former violin maker who found there was no money in it & moved back to Maine & became a lobsterman. Yes, he's got stories! I guess I've cooked many an "H" fish (halibut/haddock & the occasional piece of hake) that's come through the Exchange. This is all fascinating.

Enjoying the front-line reports!

Ha! Until your post in General Food Topics about WE's handling practices, it simply didn't register on me that this means the little buggers are available in NYC. I wonder if Grand Central Station is as far south as the fresh ones get. I wonder how well they'd survie the trip back to Jersey. Food for thought here......