Pan

I'm pretty sure that the 7 train is not going to be running at all for the next few weeks (months?), so that could be a problem. ← The problem is only on weekends: http://mta.info/nyct/service/subsrvn7.htm Karen, 6th St. is much more diverse than it was in the 80s. And we also now have some decent Indian restaurants, such as Madras Cafe on 2nd Av. between 4th ands 5th (if you like spicy food, ask for extra little green chilis in your utthapam or masala dosa). And Zabars, no contest. (Where is the new Balducci's again?)

Soupe au pistou doesn't have any basil in it?

Considering that the phrase "ethnic restaurant" seems to be widely used on these boards without much controversy (see these site-wide search results for threads with "ethnic" in the title), I thought that I would resurrect this thread and link to an active discussion of "Ethnic Dining" on Chowhound, in which it has emerged both that those who use the term disagree on what it means and what it encompasses or/and excludes, and that there is a much greater degree of exception taken to the expression among Chowhounds than among eGulleters. I'm guessing that's because Chowhounds tend to focus more on low- and medium-end dining and less on high-end dining than eGullet members, as well as because Chowhound has traditionally pushed an ethos of celebrating deliciousness regardless of location, price, and surroundings, rather than celebrating elite dining in any other sense of the expression (e.g., expensive luxurious dining 'a la russe). Because when 90% of what you eat is encompassed by what most folks here seem to mean when they use the term "ethnic," you don't use that word and instead refer to Chinese (or, indeed, Sichuan, Shanghainese, etc.) restaurants, Malaysian restaurants, South Indian restaurants, Italian restaurants, Thai restaurants, etc., etc. I still find the word "ethnic" both useless and misleading when used in a restrictive sense where only SOME foods or cuisines are "ethnic" and others ostensibly are not. Everything is ethnic, everything is cultural, everything is human. But many of you obviously still find the term "ethnic restaurant" useful for your purposes.

A welcome rest for you! What's ang koo kuih, and what's ice cream potong (I know potong means cut, but I still don't know what that phrase means).

Ah Leung, you're around the same age as my brother. His first job was working on a Vax. Do you remember those? Although you may not like Dr. Pepper (I don't, but then again, I hate all cola drinks -- sorry), you might find it interesting that there's a place in Black Mountain in the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains called Pepper's Deli, which has an extensive and fun collection of Dr. Pepper memorabilia. I'd call it a place worth stopping at if you're driving in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are lovely (though of course much lower than the Rockies!).

I did, too, though probably not more than two at a time (from what I can remember, anyway -- my memory on that may not be accurate). My mother complained if I had more than one. I preferred the brown sugar ones.

They weren't refining sugar yet in those days?

When you go to Franny's, I'd recommend that you have more than pizza and make a full meal out of it.

Dryden, you might find something useful in the following threads: Downtown Restaurants near the World Financial Center Restaurants in South Street Seaport and vicinity

Maybe this should be in the Middle East and Africa forum? I'd like to visit South Africa someday. My grandmother was born in Malmesbury, not that far from the Cape, and liked to tell stories about her childhood there and the difficult passage to New York in the class just above steerage (she left when she was 7). One thing I'd be curious about is whether you have a chance to sample Cape Malay food.

If they got their license by claiming to be a restaurant and are actually a bar, I, as an East Village resident, am not sympathetic. There is a problem with noise related to bars in this neighborhood, and bait and switch tactics are not acceptable. I say all of this irrespective of the situation with this particular bar, because why should it be an exception?

Well, durian is not for everybody. I used to hate it when I was a kid, so I can well understand someone spitting it out, although I like it OK now. (I still think lychee is the real King of the Fruits, though, and prefer a bunch of other Malaysian fruits like rambutan, local tree-ripened bananas, and jambu air to durian.)

It's very rich. How much had he eaten before vomiting? ← he put one section, pod, seed, or however you call it in his mouth for about 5 seconds and immediately spit it out ← And then he vomited?

Yeah, I think there should have been more questions, are at least more answers. For what it's worth, they rated me between supertaster and normal taster, but based on their descriptions of what supertasters and normal tasters are like, it seems to me that I am much more of a normal than a supertaster.

As a lover of bread pudding, that looks like a delicious, rich one to me. Except that I know that it must have corn (polenta) in it, too. Beautiful!

Is beef tendon a kind of offal? If so, the beef tendon dishes at Spicy & Tasty, Grand Sichuan, and (New) Yeah Shanghai are excellent. Spicy & Tasty is probably the best of the three. I also used to enjoy the pigfoot noodle soup at Chao Zhou in Flushing. I haven't been there for a while, but for a cheap, working person's offal dish, that's a good one.

It's very rich. How much had he eaten before vomiting?

Madhur Jaffrey's Asian Vegetarian cookbook has good recipes and is well worth looking at and cooking from.

Yes, and I mentioned that above.

Using the entire animal that's been killed for food (well, except for shark fins) is one of the things I respect most about Chinese people. If we make the choice to kill members of the Animal Kingdom for food, using every edible part of the carcass is the most respectful, responsible, and honorable thing to do, in my opinion.

Shrimps and crabs taste wonderful during the season when the female ones (obviously ) have eggs. I'm not sure whether there are recipes using the eggs specifically -- anyone know? As for turtle eggs, the huge leatherback turtles (locally called penyu) that used to teem on the shores of Terengganu, Malaysia (on the East Coast of the Peninsula) have become virtually extinct in large part because the locals ate the eggs (but also due to development, etc.). Interestingly enough, the locals, who are generally quite devout Muslims, are forbidden by their religion to eat reptiles, but managed to reason that while turtle meat is haram, turtle eggs are somehow halal. When I was living in a coastal village in Terengganu in the mid 70s, I tasted a penyu egg. The large white was very phlegmy and the small yolk was intensely salty. I was never tempted to try another.

Big deal! Maybe most of them don't eat things like that, but they're hardly "bizarre"!

I'd like to know what the point of this thread is. I've had some disappointing experiences in restaurants, but I don't tend to go back after one disappointing experience -- unless it's a cheap restaurant I used to get dragged to, like Veselka (talk about an annoying experience) or even worse, Odessa. But frankly, I'm finding this thread very annoying and rather pointless. It would make more sense to just have a thread about disappointing experiences in New York restaurants or disappointing restaurants than to make annoying and useless generalizations. But even then, I'm not sure that a "Griping Thread" is really all that interesting or useful. These types of remarks are probably most appropriate in threads about the specific restaurants that have been mentioned, because in those threads, the "annoyingness" of the restaurants could be more fairly and interestingly debated.

That's been a chronic problem for years at my parents' place on West End Avenue, after some of the co-opers violated the supposed terms of their membership by installing their own washing machines and not using the ones in the basement. The clean dishes in the drying rack would become all sudsy.

I enjoyed that report, too. Interestingly enough, the last time I was at Patsy's (last summer), I found the regular pizza better than the fresh mozzarella one.