Pan

Glad to help.

Yeah, I figured that out. Good one. Between you and Tepee, the photos in this foodblog are among the best of any. Yet the proprietors are almost always sourpusses about taking photos? Why do you suppose that is?

Krupuk (keropok in Malay).

Kew, a lot of southern Indian dishes use coconut. If you've never had a Tamil meal on a banana leaf, you've missed out!

Look here, here, and if you like, surf your way through these results of searching for threads with "Hong Kong" in the title in this forum. You'll also want to look at the Melkors' foodblog, starting here.

Here follows a translation into American English. Brinjals=eggplant (aubergine in England, France, et al.); lady's fingers=okra.

Anyone want to take a stab at what some of those fruits below are? Do I recognize unripe papaya on the left second from the top? Are some of the greenish ones cucumber or some kind of melon or squash? But what I'm most curious about is, what's in the lower right-hand corner? I can't figure it out. I'm think rambutan, langsat, duku, but probably none of the above.

Great stuff, Tepee! Where's the pasar?

Does Gramercy Cafe sell the muffins to go, and is it more of a takeout place or a restaurant?

My guess is that after that conversation, the answer is that you didn't want him to come. Some server lucked out whan he rang off.[...] ← I would agree. He sounds like just the kind of jerk you don't want around.

Who are you calling weird? Actually I want both dill and cilantro in my borsht. ← Sue-On, that might well be tasty, but I think you get my point about the expectations of Northern Europeans. I think the main reason my parents tend to dislike cilantro is that they grew up with dill as the aromatic fresh green herb in their food (plus parsley, but that's not so aromatic). Chicken soup with dill, matzo ball soup with dill, flanken soup with dill, borsht with dill, etc. My father even said something to that effect to me.

Probably either a convenience store or something that would call itself "Mart" in these parts (i.e., a sort of mini-supermarket). Of course, food shops and convenience stores can be mom and pops, if they're family owned, but that expression can be used for many other types of establishments. Oh, and your daughters are so cute!

If that was her point, I definitely see what she means. I don't complain if my chicken stew isn't exactly the same every time at my local Polish diner, Teresa's. On the other hand, I did complain when the water (and everything else served in glasses) tasted of dishwashing detergent perfume (no doubt in part a reflection on what detergent they were using then). I think that's the last thing I complained about there, and that was probably a year and a half ago, and I'm a regular customer. But they are very dependable for their price point.

At this point, it seems proper to quote a popular Malay peribahasa (saying): Which means: But seriously, I didn't have a chance to try cempedak and nangka as an adult on my last trip to Malaysia. Since I used to hate durian, too, when I was living in Terengganu as a 10-12-year-old, and now, I can really appreciate a top-quality durian in moderation, who knows whether I might not like cempedak now. But man did I hate it when I was 10-12! I didn't love nangka either in those days but did tolerate lepeng and jeput nangka (as we pronounced it in Terengganu) and could even eat some of the fruit, though I disliked a sort of off-taste I perceived it had and its getah (sap), which can get all over your hands when you eat it. I much preferred to have my lempeng and jemput with nyior (coconut) or pisang (bananas), though.

There are a fair number of Chinese restaurants in New York that are owned by Taiwanese people, but only a few of them feature Taiwanese food specifically. I like Taiwanese food. Fuzhounese food has been getting increasing representation in New York, but seemingly, only as very inexpensive little shops and restaraurants that cater to an almost exclusively Chinese clientele. There's a little Fuzhounese eatery in New York's biggest Chinatown -- Flushing, Queens -- that I go to every Thursday before work to get fried sesame buns for lunch, and I'm not sure I've ever seen another non-Chinese person in there other than me.

I take your point, Steven.

"consistently as possible", being the key... ← Has anyone been asking for impossible consistency?

You undoubtedly mean that you don't think it's unreasonable to say that, and I certainly agree with you. Some customers are such buttheads that they deserve to be or even have to be thrown out of a restaurant. To me, what you've just written exemplifies a professional attitude.

Indeed, all of these things and more could have happened, but that's not the customer's problem. The customer is there to enjoy the food, not to say "Well, the food wasn't as good as I expected, but that's OK because I suppose the line chefs got fender benders, the supplies didn't come on time, etc., etc." When your car is in the shop, does it bother you a little when repairs aren't done well or/and in a timely fashion, or is your main feeling one of compassion toward the mechanics, who have all kinds of things happening in their lives? The fact is, all kinds of shit can happen to professionals. As a professional, I know that. But taking those things as excuses is the wrong way to go. And I find it somewhat annoying that you associate consistency only with crap, not with high-level professionals. If you think consistency is monotony, don't have a set menu, and appeal to a clientele that likes having the "dishes of the day," which are based on what did arrive and is in good condition. That's a good solution, but only to those who choose to take that route.

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Perhaps it's because I'm from New York, but my attitude is, if you don't want my opinion, don't ask for it. If someone asks "Is everything alright?", there's something not entirely satisfactory, and I think it might possibly be worth being honest, I'll tell them. (If I've determined that the place is totally hopeless, I may just give up and say "Fine.") If they then demonstrate that they were insincere in asking the question, whoops -- there goes that good tip I might have given them, if it's a waiter/waitress. If it's someone higher up in management, so long and bad luck to your business. I should add that I eat out really frequently and seldom complain, and that my most common answer to "How is everything" is "Fine." But probably 99% of the time, it's a sincere answer to what I hope was a sincere question.

A story I like to tell is the time I stayed in a dormitory of a hotel just south of West Lake (Xi Hu) in Hangzhou for three nights in the summer of 1987. One of the people I was travelling with was on a macrobiotic diet, so one of the dishes we ordered for dinner each night was Buddha's Delight. It was terrific, like most other food I had in Hangzhou, but it was different each time, and I thought that was wonderful and showed creativity on the part of an inspired chef. Considering that the dish was probably equally excellent every time, it would have been really absurd if I had found fault with the chef's using a different combination of vegetables, resulting in a different combination of tastes and textures each night. But that's the point, isn't it? First of all, he was making a dish that by its nature consists of a combination of vegetables, and presumably using the best vegetables he had available each day. Secondly, it was just as good each time, and I have no doubt that had I stayed another week and ordered the dish seven more times, it would have been different and equally great each time. I tend to think that crab cakes are not like that. They use a recognized set of ingredients much less free than "bunch of assorted vegetables," which is essentially what Buddha's Delight is. If you're as flexible as you sound, I think that's a very good thing for you, because it increases the chances that you'll enjoy your meal. But I don't think that's the only reasonable way to approach things. And different is not always equally good, which is the point here.

I don't think there's any special English name for cempedak, which I figure those in the know consider to be just a particular variety of jackfruit. And I'd use the word "stinky" rather than the more decorous "more intense smelling." In Terengganu, they used to dry roast cempedak, nangka, and durian seeds much the same way they dry roasted cashew nuts and wild chestnuts. I always hated cempedak, but I liked the seeds and felt they were a poor man's chestnuts. (Those wild chestnuts were a real treat!)

That looks like a soup I'd like. So why is it "soup for girls"? Just because you made it for them, or are some of the ingredients supposed to be particularly good for girls' health?