Pan

"Teh" is borrowed from Malay to Minnanese??? Who'da thunk it?

Mongo, it could be logically argued that Alsatian and Provencal food are radically different from one another, as well. Many countries have highly divergent regional styles. Perhaps we could discuss this in another thread. It might be an interesting discussion.

Of course you're right, FistFullaRoux. Similarly, it is criminal to shoot the DJ. As long as people are kidding about these things, it's OK, but if anyone actually does them...

What struck me most about Hesser's review is that she described a bunch of things that sounded like stuff I've had in inexpensive Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. restaurants, but she never seemed to explain what was so special about them at Spice Market and I almost felt like she was asking her readers to accept the truth of the assertion that they were special on faith. Granted that it's hard to describe what it is that makes a dish great, but it would be wonderful if a food critic did that for us. Do any of you find my reaction unjustified by the language in the review?

That's a weird one. Feel kind of bad for her. Why do you feel bad for her?

Impressive stuff, Katie! Mazel tov!

I'd love some more comments about the Dosa Hutt in Flushing. I pass it all the time on the Q27 bus but have yet to get out and have a meal there, because then I have to wait for another bus instead of just catching the 7 train right away. Also, there's a Singh's Pizza on Kissena Blvd. north of Holly Av. I guess that's unrelated to Singa's Pizza (which also has a branch further down Kissena Blvd.).

How about Ribollita?

Either that, or you were never "with it," like me. Remember the "Disco sucks!/Rock sucks!" wars? For the most part, I thought they both sucked and went right on listening to classical music... Overly loud music is a pet peeve of mine, as is excessive darkness.

Thanks, Jason. That was really funny!

Selamat malam, runninwithscissors. An old girlfriend of mine and I made some excellent lumpia out of a Taiwanese dim sum cookbook that was in Chinese (which neither of us could read - she was Swedish) and English, using ingredients purchased at a huge Asian grocery store in Edison, New Jersey.

I went back tonight. I got cold dishes of eggplant in garlic sauce and stomach (cow stomach, I think?) with very thin yellow mushrooms, and an order of dumplings (6) in hot oil. The eggplant was a knockout! Long, fairly thin and moderately deep slices of eggplant in a wonderful red sauce that included lots of minced garlic, hot oil, and some other ingredients I couldn't identify (some tomato puree, I think). The dumplings were pork dumplings and were quite good, but the order was small enough (just a small bowl) for me to get the other cold dish. The stomach - really a kind of tripe - was very chewy and not for everybody, but I liked the taste and combination of textures. I also took home an order of the cold dish of seaweed with garlic and couldn't wait until tomorrow's lunch but had it as a late 3rd meal (lunch, dinner, seaweed takeout). It was nice. This place is packed at peak hours, but not too many people were there at 5 P.M., so a word to the wise is show up off-peak or get reservations. I'd really like to meet a bunch of people for a banquet there one of these days, so I can sample a bunch of cold and hot dishes. Perhaps some of you would like to meet me there on a Thursday night around 7:30ish in late April or early May? If so, let me know.

Do you suppose cocktail-matching could become a new craze in bar/restaurants?

Rhea, it's funny to see those Tagalog words. They look familiar but their meanings are totally unlike what they look like to a Malay-speaker. In Malay, pulut is glutinous rice, and burung is bird! Oh, and selamat is safe, not thank you... I guess I'd better make a comment about Filipino food, though I'm afraid from a standpoint of little knowledge of it (OK, I've gone out with two Filipinas and with one on and off long enough to have had some home cooking, but still). I've been to a local steam-table place in the East Village called Angie's Turo-Turo, though not recently. Aside from the use of pork and the sausage (which I like), it's got a lot of similarities to some dishes I remember from the East Coast of the Malay Peninsula (the state of Terengganu) in the 70s. (Note: These are not similar to what you get in any Malaysian restaurant I've been to in New York, where only food found on the West Coast of Malaysia - the coast further from the Philippines - is served.) I seem to remember a dish of a bunch of vegetables with little dried shrimps, for example. This is a type of dish that probably used to be served more often in Terengganu in the 1970s than it is now, but it was one of the dishes that made me feel somewhat like I was "home" in my Malaysian second home again. Of course you can go home again, but you find that it's changed. [smiling because in many ways, it's changed for the better, including in terms of the quality of the food served in roadside shops in the villages. Still, sentimental attachment to the homestyle food of one's childhood does count for something.]

Thanks for your input, everyone.

I think the spiciest thing I ever tasted was when I went to a wedding (?) feast (called a kenduri) in a village in Malaysia that was a short walk from where I was living in those days (mid 70s). It was a goat curry into which they had put a huge amount of dried hot pepper, because the pepper was a lot cheaper than the goat and also cut down on how much of the lauk (which means "stuff to put on rice," essentially) people ate. My parents and I stayed for a decent interval and then left. While we were on the doorstep, one of the other residents of this all-Malay grouping of villages asked us whether we liked the curry. Being polite, we said we had. His reply? "You liked that?! That was so hot it almost blew the roof off my mouth!" Yep, when a Malay says that, it's really hot! My classmates often stopped at the coffee shop owned by one of my classmate's parents to get long hot green peppers stuffed with fish and seasonings. It was good, but it was too hot for me to eat. Yet they loved it. Malay food can be very spicy.

Thanks for the report, Fred! I presume the hoagie was called a hero.

I don't know what it is, but hearts of palm are literally hearts of a palm tree, and they aren't woody.

Thanks for the link, Moopheus. Which places do you think this $18.98 menu will be the best value? (I ask that partly in view of the likelihood that many places on the list are fairly cheap without going for the special price.)

I would have suggested Dowel, too. You'll find betel leaves, fresh (refrigerated) curry leaves, and some of the other ingredients there. You can get lotus roots all over Flushing and Chinatown. Try the Hong Kong Supermarket branch at Pike St. and East Broadway. For the lime leaves, try Udon's Thai-Indonesian store on Bayard St. between Mott and Mulberry in Chinatown. If they are out, try the Thai store on Mosco St., about a block south of Udon's.

Admin: threads merged. A search produced no results for this restaurant (I'm guessing that "@" and "." don't count as characters for a search). So I'm starting a new thread. Tonight, I was out with an old friend who lives on W. 68 St. We didn't decide in advance where to have dinner, with the result that we lacked reservations on the Upper West Side on a Saturday night. My friend mentioned that she prefers less "exotic" food, and I know she has an appreciation for classy things. While walking toward Artepasta, I noticed @SQC. and remembered that it has gotten good mentions here, so I suggested we go there. My friend was happy with that idea, and they did have room for us. Turns out, she's a regular there and friends with Chef Campbell, who came by and talked to us before we had ordered. He was nice, and I mentioned that I was kind of excited to be there because his restaurant had gotten good press on eGullet.com. He wasn't familiar with eGullet, and I suggested that if he has time, he might like to check it out. (My friend is also a natural for eGullet when she gets her computer running properly, as she is a wine connoiseur and loves to cook, too. We had an interesting discussion about the difference between tasting bottles of wine for cork only and being given a taste of an already-open bottle to choose whether or not you want to purchase a glass.) My friend likes spare ribs a lot, so we started off sharing an "Intermediaire" of spare ribs with chocolate sauce. These were three nicely barbecued spare ribs with some chocolate in the barbecue sauce. A couple of pralines were a nice touch. For "Grandes," my friend got chicken with puree of some kind of orange squash with pine nuts. It was nice, but both of us liked my dish better: Duck breast with blackberries (or something related), which I got sort of rare. It came with a side of bok choy that had been steamed and then I think flash-sauteed with garlic. All of this was very pleasant, so I ordered dessert: a pecan tart with Vermont maple ice cream, which came in a cup with some good strong mint leaves (I think my friend ordered a decaf cappucino). We were comped some of their excellent hot chocolate and shots of liqueur - pineapple for her and cherry for me. With the meal, we had two glasses of red wine apiece, Cabernet and Syrah, of which each of us had one of each. The Syrah was a simple but good table wine and the Cabernet was a little more complex and interesting, or so I thought at first, anyway. Both went fine with the food. Overall - and N.B. that this is only a very preliminary remark based on just this one meal - my feeling is that the food at @SQC. is really solid, but with some little extra twists that delight. If you're looking for one firework after another, you might not be satisfied, but if you're looking for pleasant food that has just enough complexity to tickle your brain, you'll enjoy yourself. The bill came to around $112 plus tip. I am still very full!

Thanks, Brooks. I recall reading that Harding, the first U.S. president during Prohibition, was in fact a big drinker. Anyone know what he ate with his beers?

Babbo is another place I haven't been to...

Thanks, Brooks. It would be interesting to see those menus.

Don't worry, we'll wait.