Pan

I'm familiar with the dish you're describing. I think I had it at Chao Thai at some point, or if not, somewhere else.

Melissa, some products from that company are available on Amazon, but not all of them.

Thanks, Cronker. Those products look very interesting. Do you have favorites from among them?

I did some quick checking on Clemente Jacques. Clemente Jacques seems to be a pretty widely available brand, though the Chipotles Dulces are not for sale on either Walmart or Amazon, so the variety of products that are easy to obtain throughout the U.S. seems to be limited.

Cronker, do you have any favorite makers for these items? I'd be quite interested.

Thanks, and it's great to have someone in this thread who lives part of the time in Mexico! I'll look into it. kayb, we're eager to get this business started, too. We're still in the research and planning stage and will keep everyone abreast of our progress.

Hi, everyone! I went to the 6th Annual NYC Hot Sauce Expo in Greenpoint, Brooklyn today with my girlfriend. It was a way different experience from the Fancy Food Show I had attended in San Francisco in January. The Fancy Food Show is an industry event to which the general public are pretty much excluded and people are looking to do a lot of wholesale business. The Hot Sauce Expo, which will continue in my absence tomorrow (technically later today, Sunday), is a public event that requires only $12 and change for tickets (and I believe $10 if paid in cash at the venue). It's also specifically devoted to hot sauce (some alcoholic drinks, milk and bottled water are also available, as are barbecue, hot dogs and a couple of other food items, but they are sidelines), and loud though not ear-splitting heavy metal music plays from the "Stage of Doom" for most of the day. More importantly, for my purposes, there was one absolutely phenomenal vendor, at least one other terrific one and several very good ones, among the larger number of ordinary ones and a few downright bad ones (if you're going on the last day, please trust me and do not try the crab salsa!). The mix of vendors was quite interesting, with a good representation from New York and nearby states from Massachusetts to New Jersey, others from the South (one great one is from Florida and was in the far side of the room) and West and some international ones from Australia (who had a good gingery sauce) and England. My girlfriend also enjoyed the expo as a retail customer who tried most of the same sauces I tried and a few others and bought 3 sauces. I'm still writing up my notes about the vendors, but definitely plan to use some products from some of the best ones who exhibited today. At the end of the show, both of us had some beer from Lagunitas, one of the exhibitors, and a blessedly non-spicy Polish meal at a food store with tables called Polka Dot (my girlfriend also bought several items to go for her 2nd-generation Polish-American mother) and then walked down to Williamsburg to have some good hot chocolate and chamomile tea at Martha's Country Bakery. I plan to lay off the spice tomorrow, too, but it was certainly a good afternoon and a very worthwhile trip to the expo.

I don't really like raw shrimp, but I know it's traditional.

Hi, everybody. I have friends who are getting married on a Friday in June. They want a Manhattan location with a separate room or area where they could have the ceremony and might hire a keyboard player. They might have around 30 people and might want the room for about 3 hrs. Bonus for a liquor license, though as long as they can have some bubbly poured, they’re cool with bringing it themselves. I should say they’re not definitely set on Cantonese, but they want a cuisine that’s not primarily spicy, so I think Cantonese (or Shanghainese, if there were any really good Shanghainese banquet places in Manhattan, but I don’t know of any) would work well. Italian would undoubtedly please them, too, but I know it’s more expensive. The groom doesn’t love seafood, but he’s not too particular, otherwise, and I believe the bride does like seafood. So I think anyplace that’s primarily non-spicy, serves good food (even if he’s not particular, some of his guests will be) and serves a good variety of items will do nicely, providing their other criteria are met. Unfortunately, they’re not very familiar with private room costs, and I don’t have a clear idea of what their budget is, but money might be somewhat of an object.

Looks like a good value. I've passed by the place and picked up their takeout menu. It looks like they actually have several specifically Balinese dishes on their menu, which is unusual in New York. Too bad they have no babi guling, though. :-)

I really have no idea. Boon Chu was totally unexceptional.

Looks like we've settled on Boon Chu. One of my friends says he got raw food at Ayada. Probably a freak occurrence, but I can understand how that could be off-putting.

I don't think I've ever been to Ayada before. Do you have some favorite dishes there?

Good thought, thanks.

Understood.

Hi, everyone. A couple of friends of mine want to have dinner in Elmhurst on Monday. One of them goes to Coco all the time but wants to go to another place, and the other one proposed Eim Khao Mun Kai, but they serve only Hainanese chicken rice and I'm on a low-carb diet, so though I could cheat a little, a specifically rice dinner is a little much for me right now. Do you have any favorite places in Elmhurst, with a preference for places that have some good vegetable dishes or sides, among other dishes?

My girlfriend and I love Cull & Pistol, the Lobster Place's restaurant in Chelsea Market: https://lobsterplace.com/pages/restaurant-welcome Wonderful fresh fish and seafood and delicious dishes. If you decide to go, I could give you some recommendations, though their menu changes. The way my girlfriend and I dine there is to share a small item (a "snack" or something like a single uni), an app, a main and a side. The restaurant is a bit at close quarters, but that's really the only down side. Going in a different direction, if you like yakitori, you can go to Yakitori Totto: http://www.tottonyc.com/ Get there just before opening time, so you won't have much of a wait, or show up when you like, give them your cellphone number and have some drinks at the Irish bar across the street while you're waiting. If you avoid sake at Yakitori Totto, you will be very easily under $75/person and might pay that amount or less for both of you. If you do go, I can give you recommendations - lots of them. Most items are excellent, but not everything, and some are particularly good.

How many are in your party, and do you care what neighborhood or type of cuisine you'll have? What day, too?

Unbalanced in what way?

Definitely. Shipping will cost more.

We could always increase our scope some time later.

The best palm sugar that I know is Malaysian, but I don't know who in particular makes it. Maple syrup is widely available and I wouldn't think of carrying it. I don't know how easy it is to find coconut sugar, nationwide.

I don't think we're going to be carrying either. Old Bay seasoning is surely extremely well distributed, and so is Alaga Syrup, which I hadn't heard of but which is sold by both Amazon and Walmart and has the following ingredients: Corn Syrup, Cane Syrup, Water, Potassium Sorbate. Not a fascinating product to me.

Yes, exactly. Our own curated selection. Interesting about Williams-Sonoma.

kayb, thanks for your comments. We definitely have no plans to carry every variety of spicy condiment, only products we've tried and consider especially tasty and interesting. So that's another argument to simply sell both spicy and non-spicy condiments and sauces that are especially good.