Pan

I agree with you guys. Nessa is a cutie!

If you run out of high-end places and want to hit some medium-priced places, check out Il Bagatto, which has a good wine list and good mojitos, but arrive by 7 P.M. or so on a weekday to beat the crowds. Another nice bar scene is at Pylos, where the bar is really a communal table wine bar, at a usual table height, with a friendly vibe. Both are very good restaurants. Pylos is more relaxed, but both are probably best avoided on weekends.

I've seen it spelled "dough" and I get it fresh and uncarbonated in my favorite Afghan restaurant.

Lundy's in Sheepshead Bay closed? When?

Yup. Just pointing out you can't really call Hainanese chicken rice solely a Malaysian dish! regards, trillium Obviously not! It's of Hainanese origin, right? I suspect that if we tried to make a list of exclusively Malaysian dishes, we might well be left with only some regional dishes from the northeast and such-like.

I never meant to suggest they weren't, though. A lot of Malaysian dishes come from elsewhere or are also cooked elsewhere. We could make a very long list of those.

That picture of your cats is hilarious! The one on the right looks has such a deprived, piteous expression on his/her face. By the way, I had no idea what "adoxography" meant. A normal dictionary like www.m-w.com didn't have it, so I Googled. I was figuring it might be an astonomical term, but I was wrong. Dictionary of Difficult Words definition: What a cool site! I'll bookmark that dictionary...

Hang in there, Lucy! Perrier is an elegant ladies' drink? I tend to think of it as being a fairly ordinary and inexpensive carbonated drink in France, not shi-shi like in the U.S., where many people think anything French (including Evian water) must ipso facto be classy. But I guess I was wrong.

If you make an absolute statement like "You can't wade in the same river twice," that's just as applicable to two meals in Italy, and even meals of the same dishes at the same restaurant the next day, as to a comparison between Italian restaurant meals in Italy and New York. The reason why "You can't step in the same river twice" is a memorable philsophical statement in that it explains a fundamental truth, but the absolute uniqueness and unrepeatability of everything is only part of the story. You brought up differences between identical twins, but identical twins are a lot less unique than only children. Similarly, there's a pretty good chance that a meal in a good Italian restaurant in New York will be more similar to a meal in an Italian restaurant in Italy than either would be to a meal in a Chinese restaurant in Italy, though there will be certain commonalities between the New York Italian and Italian Chinese meals on the one hand and the Italian Italian meal on the other - though many of the commonalities won't be shared between the New York Italian meal and Italian Chinese meal. These facts are part of the context, too.

you don't here that around here, do you? i haven't seen much of that type of thing on egullet. everyone seems to pretty much accept others' dining habits, as all dining is good dining. But it wasn't always so, as we both remember.

Surely, you're being hyperbolic. You must have had ancestors who fought in wars or were otherwise in constant thread of being killed. And you surely know about people who survived attempts to wipe out their people and were so thankful for being able to survive on potato skins, rainwater, and so forth. Frankly, the very great majority of the human race does without expensive meals, and many of them are able to experience joy and appreciate life. So let's not get too carried away. I'm sure you wouldn't actually want to kill yourself if you could never eat an expensive meal again.

Thanks, lilac0485. That was very interesting.

Whoa, congratulations, Nessa!

That was fun to read for a week! Thank you!

In Flushing, I've seen a lot of couples share noodle soups by pouring the contents of the large bowl into smaller bowls or even teacups, on occasion. At the same time, they may or may not share their lo mein or over rice dishes.

Not all of it, but pretty damn close, with a few exceptions, and it really is pretty normal to get excellent food in Malaysia, so you wouldn't need for me to travel with you, though recommendations from some eGulleteers from the area or living in the area would be helpful (and were helpful to me). I was disappointed in the quality of Chinese food I ate during my trip to China in 1987, with the exception of Hangzhou generally and certain eateries specifically. People were generally poor, and ingredients weren't comparable in quality to those used for Chinese food I had previously had in the 70s in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, and at the beginning of the 1987 trip in Hong Kong. I'm going back to China this August and expect that the increased wealth in the cities may be reflected in improved food.

Thanks, Kristin.

I've enjoyed some soju.

Thanks for the report, Stone. What are the prices like?

I see you're using "family-style" differently from the way I'd think of the term - probably because the style of restaurant you're talking about may not have existed in my lifetime. To me, a "family-style" meal is one in which you are expected to share dishes, which is often the case in Chinese, Korean, and Indian restaurants, for example. But that is not what you described.

I don't like Wo Hop, but I recall that there was a string bean dish there that was good, and that's a memory from no more than 3 years ago.

Actually, food in the east coast state of Terengganu, Malaysia (especially in villages) is much improved, partly because of increased wealth among the population, but also partly because the country has been suffused with Thai influence in recent years. I also agree with you that well thought out substitutions of good local ingredients are fine. That topic puts me in mind of the asparagus dish contest Monica Bhide et al. set up on the India Forum. Asparagus isn't a traditional Indian vegetable, but it's a very good vegetable. In terms of Malaysian food, I prefer American hothouse cucumbers to the more bitter cucumbers I remember from my first trip to Malaysia (I don't remember the cucumbers being particularly bitter last August).

Fat Guy, I don't think we're fundamentally in disagreement. As I wrote: I also was careful to add: As I said, there are degrees of difference from the original taste and context, however one wishes to define and qualify those. I don't think that we should pretend that everything is equally similar to or different from the way one would expect it to taste in the place where the style originated - again, however you want to qualify that. But also, look at the context: Mags was saying that it's impossible to produce an authentic copy of something out of context. In that context, how can I be faulted for using the word "inauthentic" to describe anything and everything? Finally, I have to say that when I go to a Malaysian restaurant, I prefer to have food that is as similar to what I could eat in Malaysia as possible - again, because the less similar it is, I've found, the worse it is. If it were delicious, I wouldn't much care whether it tasted "truly" Malaysian or not. But the problem is that it's unavoidable for me to compare what I'm eating to Malaysian food in Malaysia, which is a high standard of comparison.

Mags, I care sometimes, but only because, to take one example, whatever inauthentic Malaysian food is served up in Malaysian restaurants in New York is nowhere near as good as real Malaysian food served in Malaysia. If it were equally good, I don't think I'd care. Also, while your points about authenticity are well taken - and poetically expressed, I'd say - I still think it's possible to talk about food as being more or less removed from its original taste and context, however one wishes to qualify that.

Cover charge for the live music? Do they have live music all the time? What style? Samba?