Posts from the ‘Queens’ Category

Jan 16

Engeline’s

Filipino food is a tough sell in America, though there’s no good reason why. I have a disproportionate fondness for it, which is probably due to my exposure to it during my formative teen years and natural underdoggy bent. I was thrilled when Memories of Philippine Kitchens, a hefty, memoir-ish cookbook came out late 2006. I read a bit every night before bed (yet I’m having trouble soldering through Secret Ingredients—I’m really trying to overcome my New Yorker aversion). Maybe this weekend I'll actually tackle a few recipes.

I think the cuisine lacks the immediate punchiness of Thai food or the perceived lightness of Vietnamese. It’s kind of a Chinese-Spanish-Malay mishmash that doesn’t taste exactly like any of those three. You could even count a Mexican influence (by way of Spain) when you consider Filipino versions of menudo, flan, empanadas and tamales. I don't know who turned them on to Edam cheese, however, but it's totally a Pinoy Christmas thing.

The hot and sweet flavors that I truly love aren’t so prominent. Filipino fare plays with the bitter, sour and salty ends of the spectrum and many dishes are stewed to mellowness. Yet, I still really enjoy the food, so much so that a classic problem arose. Our two top could not support everything we ordered and we ended up having to move to a more accommodating table. I should just warn waiters upon being seated that we order for four. Unlike most fussy New Yorkers I've encountered, I like leftovers so it’s almost always planned into the equation.

Only a hater could have a problem with lechon's crispy skin and chewy flesh. This is the perfect pork preparation. I swear I’m going to attempt it one of these days. I would kind of be an awesome Super Bowl snack. But what sets the meat apart is the dipping sauce. I realize that vinegar, breadcrumbs and liver sounds disgusting, and I had no idea until fairly recently that those were the backbone of lechon sauce because the condiment just tastes wonderfully savory with a touch of sweetness. There must be umami at play because I want to put it on everything.

I usually avoid chicken adobo because I’m afraid it’ll be boring. How exciting can soy sauce, vinegar, garlic and bay leaf be? Pretty good, it turns out. Maybe my one attempt was just uninspiring because I used boneless, skinless chunks instead of chicken parts. The magic is in the skin and bones, I think.

Pinakbet is essentially vegetables like green beans, pumpkin, okra and bitter melon boiled to softness, but the flavor is robust. I only ordered this out of vegetable duty but was kind of blown away by the non-blandness. Ok, it doesn’t hurt that nuggets of lechon are hiding out in nooks and crannies.

Kare kare can be overwhelming with its peanut buttery sauce; I only picked out a few bites of oxtail before falling victim to too much richness. It’s not a bad idea to add dabs of bagoong, fermented shrimp paste served alongside (I didn’t capture the condiment in any photos). Salty and pungent for sure, but the creamy dish can take the shock.

I’m a sucker for crazily hued chiffon cake. I think this ube had some help from artificial dye, but purple is pretty. I'll try anything unusually blue, purple or green. And after staring at the front bakery case throughout our lunch I had to take something to go. The insides were a little mangled, though.

I keep it to one tight paragraph for a Nymag.com review.

Engeline’s * 58-28 Roosevelt Ave., Woodside, NY

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Dec 10

Om Tibet

Om Tibet is no more. 9/08

I think I must be desensitized to little nuisances, which is hard to believe since I’m irked on at least an hourly basis. But Om Tibet seemed to push the limits of visiting family. I don’t think they were keen on trying Tibetan food in the first place. To be honest, I wasn’t sure that I was either. I imagined it would be bland and dull. And it really wasn’t.

I became a little nervous when a craggy customer who looked like a Korean war vet came over to take our order because the waitress had gone out and he wasn’t sure when she’d get back. I’m still not sure what his connection to the restaurant was, but he was sitting with some Asian men who seemed to be staff.

He was gung ho on the momos, steamed dumplings, and I thought they were a must too. These beef filled ones were very much like pot stickers minus the browned bottoms.

Thenthuk, a simple beef noodle soup with daikon and spinach caused a mild stir because it came in one bowl. I didn’t expect it to be served individually and assumed it was meant for one, but whatever. I was the only one who touched it and ended up bringing most of it home for later. I did appreciate the hand pulled noodles, but it didn’t quell my fears about bland food.

Shamdae doesn’t look like much but the chicken curry spiced similarly to Indian food was a hit.

The “shapta special beef chilly” was the stand out dish for me. The strips of beef were coated in a fiery, dry cumin spiked sauce and stir fried with onions, tomatoes and jalapenos. It felt more Chinese than Indian and wasn’t really either. Maybe that’s Tibetan?

Minor Trouble also erupted when we were told they didn’t have coffee. Because I’m opinionated and judgmental about things that don’t matter, I’ve come to believe that drinking coffee with dinner is the province of alcoholics and/or Denny’s patrons. Maybe I’m sensitive to this practice because I was called on it many years ago by a smart assy boss.

But they did have bocha, a tea rendered salty and creamy by yak butter. Ok, gross. I was the only taker, and it really wasn’t as unappealing as it sounds. I seemed like less of a beverage and more of a fortifying broth.

I don’t see what’s wrong with taking parents to hole-in-the-walls. The only uh-oh moment came when a roach ran over the bill as I opened holder. Strangely, vermin bothers me less when it’s not in my house. James warned against going, but when he brings his mom to a typically upscale yet cramped Manhattan restaurant she’ll just embarrass him anyway by barking at the host, “I’m from Virginia; I’m used to space.”

It sounds like I’m being negative, which wasn’t the overall impression at all. I thought Om Tibet was likeable and it’s definitely worth a visit if you’re on the Jackson Heights/Elmhurst border (to confuse further, the zipcode is Woodside) and don’t feel like Thai, Indian or Latin American food. Burmese Café, a block from Om Tibet, used to fill this niche but they seem to have closed for good.

Read my whine-free review on nymag.com

Om Tibet * 40-05 73rd St., Woodside, NY

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Dec 3

La Casa del Pollo Peruano

1/2 Not too long ago I was craving South American pollo a la brasa of any type. I ended up at one of the numerous Marios because it was on the later side and they were open. But slightly preferring Peruvian over Colombian, my original intention was nearby La Casa del Pollo. Now, I’ve had a chance to try both.

Awkward looking yet delicious half chicken

What I didn’t know was that this bustling restaurant was nearly half-Chinese. Sure, rotisserie chicken meals with rice and beans sit at the top of the oversized paper menu, but if you look at the combo options pork fried rice appears. Then, as you skim downward, chop suey, lo mein and sweet and sour pork appear too.

At least I was able to finally try lomo saltado, a true fusion dish of stir-fried beef, onions and tomatoes that I’m pretty sure contains soy sauce. It’s the neither Peruvian nor Chinese addition of french fries that’s kind of strange and compelling (I’m fascinated by non-American recipes, or heck American ones too, that call for fries. Maltese Bacon has a Vietnamese rendition that actually sounds edible).

Cheap and simple, Casa del Pollo is totally the kind of thing lacking in my immediate neighborhood. As much as people think Smith St. is the shit (culinarily speaking), that’s not really true and doesn’t help those in the hinterlands. I would gladly take roast chicken and soy sauced french fries over bad Chinese and mediocre pizza.

Read my nymag.com review.

La Casa del Pollo * Roosevelt Ave., Jackson Heights, NY

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Nov 17

Spicy & Tasty

Apparently, I didn’t get my fill of Sichuan food in China because last weekend I couldn’t stop thinking about tracking more down. Little Pepper was my first choice, but it was full at 8:30 on a Saturday. We could’ve waited but it was a good opportunity to give Spicy & Tasty, just around the corner, a re-visit.

I think some prefer Little Pepper because it’s grittier and less English-friendly. Somehow that implies authentic. But still in a fluorescent and formica vein, S&T is hardly upscale. I find the food comparable, if slightly pricier. We scored the only open table for two.

I settled on beef tendons from the long list of cold appetizers. It turned out that they had exhausted their supply, but in a way I lucked out because they topped off the plate with tripe. Double whammy. And to their credit, they did ask first before substituting. I know not all Americans are as tripe-crazed as I am.

Cold dishes are made on demand at a bar in the front of the restaurant. And the balance of chiles and peppercorns is right on. You feel the heat and the numbing tingle, but it’s not so overwhelming that you lose flavor. And the fresh crunch of cilantro stems enlivens the thinly sliced meat.

Next time I’ll branch out and try fish but I wasn’t in the mood for the unknown. I knew that enhanced pork was up my alley and similar to a dish I’d recently eaten in Beijing. Essentially, it’s a stir-fry of fresh pork, leeks and chiles. Everything gets a caramely sear; the vegetables turn sweet and play off the chile hotness.

The translations explain little and make it difficult to know what you’re going to get. For instance, there’s lamb with red chile sauce, lamb with chile pepper and sliced lamb in sliced fresh hot pepper on the menu. I have no freaking idea how any of those differ. In fact, I can’t remember which one the above photo is though I suspect it’s lamb with chile pepper. The chile used was dried and ground and seemed to only show up in random bites of food. This was wonderfully gamey and oily, but I actually prefer a less saucy lamb like the cumin dusted version at Little Pepper.

I’ve tried making dry-cooked string beans before but they never quite turn out like this. These taste almost meaty and chopped preserved vegetables scattered throughout was an unexpected touch.

Lord, I can't believe my last visit was four years ago, and almost to the day. Is this what aging feels like? (11/17/07)

Heading through Flushing on the way back from a tough afternoon IKEA shopping on Long Island, I knew it was the perfect time to check out this restaurant I'd been hearing about. Since the car was literally bursting at the seams with enough cheap furniture to add up to $475, James was hesitant to park on the street. A parking garage was requisite or he said we couldn't stop for dinner. That was like a mean dad thing to say, and I wasn't so sure they would have indoor parking nearby. I was nervous. But luck was shining on us because there was a Sheraton on the same block as Spicy & Tasty with a parking garage. And this hotel experience was almost equal to the food.

I love hotels. Or more properly I love being in foreign cities, and as I recently discovered, Asian ones. It's so not "Lost in Translation." I mean mid-range hotels with stores and services in them, travel agents, random clothing stores, and the like. Our last day, a rainy Sunday in Singapore we strolled around the food court in the basement of the Meridian hotel. The food stalls were open, but there were also quiet halls on other levels with glass facades, darkened rooms and closed doors. Boutiques, graphic design firms, the only life being a room filled with teenage boys playing computer video games. It was fun and felt like you shouldn't be there since we weren't hotel guests (though it was all public space). The Sheraton LaGuardia (as it was called, though not all that near the airport) had the same feel, levels and stairs and businesses on the perimeter and a fancy, near deserted Japanese restaurant you look down on from above. It was like a mini-vacation wandering around, and accidental. We were just trying to figure out how to get from the basement garage to the main exit but went too high on the elevator and had to saunter down oddly positioned stairs, accompanied by the strains of soft music.

Spicy & Tasty continued the feel. I've never been to China, but I like to believe it felt very Chinese. Or Sichuan at least, as that is their thing. I wasn't blown away by the peppercorns as I expected to be. Maybe I was thinking Thai heat, not subtle buzzy Sichuan spicy, or maybe the food wasn't heavily spiced. It was certainly good, though. I go nuts for bamboo shoots in chile oil, and they were made all the more attractive by being prepared up front by a cold dish guy. There were all sorts of appetizers, jellyfish, sliced tendon, eggplant and more that I would've liked to try, but you can only eat so much with two people. I had to order the enhanced pork, if not for the name alone. I'm not sure what the enhancement was referring to–there was a copious amount of leek greens in the dish, which could be construed as enhancement (a few days later that green onion hepatitis outbreak began and like a good hypochondriac began wondering if leek greens were also a danger). James got the Szechuan lamb, which was like a rich, almost Indian spiced stew that came in a metal dish over a flame.

I left feeling uncharacteristically upbeat and actually looked forward to walking through the hotel lobby back to the car just for shits and giggles. The odd thing was that the elevator places you right inside the office where you pay and no one was around, but you could hear footsteps and clear-as-a-bell voices from the garage where the cars initially drive in. The place was miked, for what reason I'm not sure, but it was kind of creepy. We were quiet as mice when we got back into the car just to be safe. Of course all they'd hear us saying was how great the food at Spicy & Tasty was. (11/14/03)

Spicy & Tasty * 39-07 Prince St., Flushing, NY

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Nov 9

Brasil Coffee House

1/2 So, I grew up in the freaking coffee capital of the US (or is that Seattle? I get confused. Maybe Portland is the nation’s microbrew capital, though I swear on some horrible Food Network show I was trying not to pay attention to said that Denver had that honor) but all I drink is black drip coffee. Even though I choose to drink sucky coffee cart coffee, I can tell when coffee doesn’t suck.

I wouldn’t be opposed to drinking Brasil Coffee House’s product if one existed anywhere near me. And almost more importantly, their yuca cakes, croquettes and cheesey pan de queijo are way more exciting than muffins (but then, I’m muffin averse). By the way, that's not a muffin on the right–it's a springy, coconut-topped yuca cake that just happens to be in a muffin wrapper.

Read my review on Nymag.com

Brasil Coffee House * 48-19 Vernon Blvd., Long Island City, NY

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Sep 6

Sripraphai

I don’t usually mention Sripraphai re-visits because they’re frequent and my ordering style is repetitive. I’m only bringing this meal up because I’d never attempted take out before and was highly impressed by the thoughtful packaging.

I always come back from vacation dying for whatever food wasn’t where I just was, even if the cuisine I did eat was remarkable and even if I was only away for a few days. It’s not even like there’s tons of “real” Cuban food in NYC anyway. But the first business-lined intersection we hit after exiting the BQE from the airport en route to Sripraphai was Roosevelt and 69th, with El Sitio staring right at us across the road. No! No more Cuban food.

On Monday, our last night in Miami, I gave in decided to visit the pool. (Said pool at left, and don't worry, there's no way in hell I'm exposing myself online in a bathing suit.) At 4:30, it was well-past prime tanning time and the area wasn’t overwhelmingly crowded. Based on their reading material, a majority of the bathers and layabouts remaining were German and Eastern European. As the sun was about to set, an Asian couple showed up. The female, kind of plain and in a Louis Vuitton logoed bikini and khaki fishing hat that she kept on even in the water, her male counterpart, slightly sourpussy and portly. I knew I wasn’t in Brooklyn or else he would’ve been a skinny white dude with glasses. I enjoyed their conversation.

Hat girl: I want Cuban food for dinner.
Portly guy: No more Cuban food, it’s not good for you.
Hat girl: [sulking] I’m going to eat Cuban food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Portly guy: No.
Hat girl: Now I want ice cream.

And she got it, too. No one else in the pool area looked like food had touched their lips all afternoon. But leave it to an Asian girl to bring a substantial bowl of ice cream into the pool, squat on the shallow end stairs and chow down. Meanwhile, the only other person eating anything in the vicinity was a black woman with a bizarrely ample backside and thighs thicker than this girl’s waist, eating an apple.

That’s what’s wrong with this world. Skinny girls gobbling ice cream with abandon and hefty gals nibbling fruit. I want to know what goes on behind closed doors, you know, food anthropology. Would the ice cream eater really go on to polish off a massive plate of rice, beans and lechon? Would the fruit snacker eat salad with dressing on the side for dinner? Is there such a thing as a “good” metabolism or is a calorie a calorie? In some ways I’m hoping the former because maybe this essence could be captured and manufactured. Why are we wasting time on cancer and AIDS research when it could be medically possible to eat like a pig and remain lithe as a gazelle? Now I sound like a Cathy. Ack.

crispy watercress salad, dry and wet

So, I went overboard with my ordering at Sripraphai and got drunken noodles with chicken, crispy pork with chile and basil, duck curry with eggplant and bamboo shoots, and the crispy watercress salad that I had originally decided against because I figured the crispy bits would rapidly turn to sog by the time we got around to eating them (we’d recently eaten lunch and were picking up dinner to eat like five hours into the future). But I love the salad so much that I ran the risk. However, they package up the wet parts separately from the crunchy stuff. So smart, like a McDLT yet successful.

crispy watercress salad united as one

While waiting, I had time to peruse the shelves and refrigerated cases unimpeded because the restaurant was nearly empty, which is a rare thing. I decided on a container of four rectangular rice-based sweets that I don’t recall being combined together before, and num prek ta deng (their spelling, I always want to say nam prik). They have a slew of nam priks to choose from. I picked this one because it contained shrimp and sugar and I like my searing heat with a touch of sweetness and fishiness.

(My latest short-lived regimen has been the nam prik diet where I bring a cup of jasmine rice to work topped with a generous blob of chile paste. This lunch yesterday nearly killed me. I love insanely hot food but the proportion of paste to rice was askew and I literally burned my tongue and roof of my mouth. Of course, that didn’t stop me from finishing my painful meal.)

I was trying to think of an excuse for brining home enough food for three meals (other than sheer gluttony, of course). Well, September 4 is kind of my anniversary and that’s a good enough reason as any. Kind of, because dating anniversaries don’t seem to count and kind of because James barely acknowledges it anyway and insists that it’s somewhere in October. Yet since eight years is more substantial than many marriages (at least any that I’m acquainted with) and I’m not terribly marriage minded, it counts. (9/4/07)

Aug 30

Pollos a la Brasa Mario

Rotisserie chicken can go in so many directions. And frequently that direction is boring (don’t even get me started on recipes that require a store-bought chicken, have you use the meat and throw away the skin). Yet, somehow on Saturday night it was decided that Latin-style chicken should be dinner.

I’m kind of partial to Peruvian renditions mainly because I like the punchy green sauce that often accompanies it. But maybe I’m just thinking of Pio Pio (I don’t think Pardo’s has it). The September Latino Gourmet has a recipe for Peruvian but they don’t make any mention of an aji salsa on the side (I’m so not crazy about the Epicurious re-design. The new recipes haven’t even been put online yet). The soy sauce in the marinade is an interesting cross-cultural addition, though. Fried rice, a.k.a. chaufa, is also a regional anomaly.

Due to a series of uninteresting circumstances, we ended up on a Jackson Heights block with three options: Casa de Pollo Peruano (too packed), Gusty Chicken (closed) and Pollos a la Brasa Mario. I’d been by the multi-level 24-hour Colombian joint with a bird mascot (maybe they all have bird mascots) a million times and had never stopped in. It was the perfect occasion.

I was always under the impression that Mario was kind of fast foodish and chicken heavy (perhaps, that’s more Frisby, the new game in town.). The formica booths and laminated picture menus imply so, but many of the entrees are substantial and over $20 (in my experience, Colombian portions are intimidatingly huge).

Sure, Rayuela has a live olive tree, but Mario has a sprawling fake orange tree and framed posters of cartoon animals eating the cuisine. My favorite was the Sylvester the Cat rip-off with an arepa and strip of chicharon. There was also a horse grilling something indiscernible.

It was Saturday night and crocks of seafood stew and teeming multi-meat platters graced many a table. But we came with a simple mission and stuck by it. Whole chicken. I wanted yuca frita, James ordered frijoles grande, which were way too grande and studded with a few bones so you knew you were in for ham-hockiness. White rice is standard but I prefer my Latin starches rooty and fried.

Marioyuca As accompaniments, you’re given a puree of green chile, thick and more scoopable than a usual salsa verde and a squirt bottle of what seemed like Thousand Island dressing minus the relish chunks. The two mixed together made a nice, visually repulsive dipping sauce for the yuca.

Mario is as good as a brightly lit rotisserie chicken restaurant might be, though it’ll likely be some time before I ever get around to a re-visit. There are so many contenders (what with all those Korean fried chickens crying for my attention) in the global poultry game that it’s impossible to stick with any one eatery or style.

Pollos a la Brasa Mario * 81-01 Roosevelt Ave., Jackson Heights, NY

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Jun 7

Happy Family

1/2 I’d never partaken in steamboat, shabu shabu, hot pot, Chinese fondue, whatever you want to call it, until recently (though I’ve broth-swirled a little Canadian horsemeat). Flushing’s Happy Family a.k.a. Little Lamb (a cartoon sheep with a shirt collar appears on various signage) proved to be a great jumping off point. Actually, it’s a little more advanced than amateur; we had some procedural ordering confusion.

In my day, Mongolian was simply suburban code for a pile of stuff cooked before your eyes. Here it’s all d.i.y. You pick your broth from red, white or green. The latter is herbal and I wasn’t feeling the urge. But you can also go yin-yang and choose two broths kept separate in a huge metal pot inset in your table. White=creamy soymilk. Red=hot as hell. There are all sorts of oddities floating in the liquids like a whole nutmeg kernel, jujubes (Asian dates) and a metal tea bobber filled with mystery herbs and chiles (opening it would’ve solved the mystery but I didn’t want to unleash any unnecessary fury).

The tricky part was how to acquire dipping material because you pick the hot pot by meat i.e. lamb hot pot or fish head hot pot, but there are also pages and pages of a la carte items like chicken, taro, and innards. We picked beef hot pot because it seemed neutral and it came with a plate of bean curd, greens, rice vermicelli, dried mushrooms, hard-boiled egg, bean sprouts and lots of other crunchy things. We eventually got our waiter to bring shrimp and pork-stuffed fish balls to supplement our thinly sliced beef. Practically anything could be improved by the hot pot treatment, but whatever you do abide the menu’s plea “please don’t bring other products into the store to cook (including beverages and liquors).”

Because we’re gluttons, we also got grilled lamb skewers to start. Cumin was definitely present but I was surprised at the chile level of the spice rub. This was my kind of food. I have a high tolerance for heat (though I’m not sure when I acquired this. I’ve always liked spicy food but I was just thinking about a birthday dinner in my early twenties where my mom took me out to Bangkok Kitchen in Portland and the tom kha gai was so punishingly hot that we couldn’t slog through it. Now, wiser and older, Portland Thai food seems pretty tame though I’ve never returned to Bangkok Kitchen for comparison. Were we NW wusses and I’ve toughened up or have my taste buds dulled from years of smoking? I only sparingly indulge anymore, f.y.i.) and even so there was a tongue-burning that persisted throughout the meal. Combined with the heat and steam emanating from the hot pot itself (and a few drinks—though no soju for me), sweating was nearly unavoidable. And as you might imagine, as the broth bubbles and cooks down the resulting concentrated soup is intense. It was nice to be able to alternate between the fiery and sweet chambers of stock.

Even though the hot-potted treats don’t really require them, there is an eighteen-slot condiment bar in the back of the long room that’s just kind of fun to poke around. Black beans, chopped garlic, sugar and soy sauce all kind of make sense, but if you’re feeling wild you can also take a scoop of pure MSG. Ah…sweet, sweet glutimates.

My “real” review for nymag.com

Almost completely irrelevant asides (you have been warned):

Hot-potting has become a euphemism in my household for what gastro-intestinal unpleasantness occurs about twelve hours later. There was a lot of hot-potting going on last week in Mexico City that has yet to cease. But I never realized how funny hot-potting was until I heard it referred to by someone who had no idea what hot pot was.

I met up with a former coworker a few weeks ago to get the dirt on who’d been fired, humiliated and so on. But I became intrigued when she started describing my replacement, a young Chinese-born go-getter with an apparent penchant for hot-potting. It seems that the girl whoops it up all over Flushing, indulging in hot pot with wild abandon, comes into work late, and then complains, “I have terrible cramp…very strong period” as an excuse. No one seems to think that these cramps are liquor induced except for my friend who now refers to binge drinking as hot-potting. But she’s suspicious, mean-spirited and astute like me so I’m inclined to believe the hangover theory.

Once the former coworker walked into the women’s bathroom to find the new me laying on the ratty entryway couch moaning in pain with her boyfriend at her side rubbing her head. Frightening (though not so much as the pair of abandoned shit and blood stained panties once left in front of a sink on the floor by god only knows. P.R. is a classy profession).

Hot-potting has become a great catch all phrase for everything unseemly. This former coworker (and no-nonsense dyke) also shared my love of the word hot pad, the self-given nickname of my butch Girl Scout camp counselor who resembled an obese John Denver. I don’t even want to imagine what hot-padding is.

Happy Family * 36-35 Main St., Flushing, NY

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Jun 4

A Fan Ti

One of our waitresses matter-of-factly asking James “Is she your wife?” baffled me all evening. I’ve learned that there’s a certain ESL bluntness that seems particularly acute with Chinese to English and it doesn’t bother me. I’m never sure if lack of subtlety is a translation thing or if it’s cultural. It was easier to shake our heads and say yes rather than explain, “Well, actually it’s kind of complicated. We’re actually just dating but we’ve been together for nearly eight years which is longer than anyone I know has been married, but we’re just boyfriend and girlfriend.” We were the only ones speaking English so maybe she was attempting to chitchat to make us feel welcome? Or was it that I didn’t seem like his wife, and we make an odd couple? I like James’s version, that it was her way of asking if he was available.

The other waitress didn’t speak English at all and I do appreciate that she brought us Chinese menus, though I think it was more a case of her not really thinking it through as opposed to concerted non-pandering. After a few seconds she was mildly scolded by the lady boss and made to bring us English menus without our saying anything.

At least the English menu wasn’t lacking any of the oddities that we didn’t order anyway. I have no fear of offal but it’s no fun eating it alone. The first thing listed is lamb testicles and a bowl of eyeballs bobbing around in liquid is also for the taking. We compromised and stayed on the tame side.

Despite sounding like an American bastardization, I had to order the kung pao, which is called simply lamb in hot pepper sauce. It’s peanut crazy and full of startling ma la sensations. Going double lamby, we also had the salt and pepper lamb, which comes spice-crusted (cumin-heavy) on the bone with a little saucer of crushed Sichuan peppercorns and salt for dipping. We barely used half and our mouths were numb by the end of the meal.

This is the type of place where it’s not like you’re blending in anyway so why bother trying. I was initially afraid of looking barbaric by using my fingers to pick at the bits left on the bone of our salt and pepper lamb. I then noticed others were flat out gnawing on the thing. I should be so shameless.

I would’ve ordered something with bean curd but soybeans and well as organs don’t fare well with this not-my-husband dining companion. To squeeze a vegetable in, I tried the eggplant, which I’m sure was oil laden to make the flesh so silky. It was nothing like you’d get from corner takeout (last night I ordered pork with eggplant from our local not-so-great place Ting Hua [not to be confused with Wing Hua a few blocks up and definitely not to be mixed up with Me and My Eggroll in between the two] and I was given pork egg foo young instead. Bizarre, I haven’t had that since I was a kid) there’s a sweetness and also a chile spiciness, not just garlic, and somehow it stayed steaming hot for a full twenty minutes.

I love places like this, i.e. Little Pepper and Happy Family, which I haven't posted yet. Maybe it’s all the chiles and peppercorns but I always end up with a good feeling, even a sense of well being (seriously) when I eat Northern Chinese food.

My nymag.com review (nitpickers, it contains a to-be-corrected inaccuracy not of my doing)

A Fan Ti * 136-80 41st Ave., Flushing, NY

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May 23

King 5 Noodle House

1/2 You might think noodles were the main attraction, based on King 5’s name but I’m not sure that that’s the case. Taiwanese breakfast (sweet or salty soymilk and doughy things like you tiao and those bings that seemed to have taken Manhattan last year) is a draw but getting to Flushing in the a.m. is just not happening for me.

Instead, I stopped in for takeout spicy beef noodle soup and then got stymied by their three entrees for $19.95 special because there were so many choices. The heaving bag I ultimately took to go had to have weighed over ten pounds. The beef noodle soup didn’t suffer too much from the journey home because they package the noodles and broth separately, a nice touch. I was thinking along pho lines but the stock is deep brown and much richer. Completely un-delicate, spicy and stew-y like cold weather fare.

I had been looking for something called three cup chicken but didn’t see it on the menu, though it’s possible that it went by another name. Chicken with chestnuts sufficed. That sounds potentially bland but was anything but. I forget how good hacked up skin-on, bone-in chicken can be because I never cook it at home (where there’s just a sad bag of Costco chicken breasts in the freezer). This was my favorite of the three dishes I tried. I find that Taiwanese food is strong in the right ways: pungent, oily, salty and spicy but not so much as Sichuan.

I had to try intestines because they popped up in more than one place on the menu. The ma la rendition wasn’t Sichuan peppercorny in the least. In fact, they were totally done E3 style (shorthand in my household for Thai stir fry with chile and basil). Another surprise was the form. I imagined thin, lengthy organs like I’d recently eaten with Argentinean parrillada but they were girthy and sliced lengthwise and had more of a tripe quality. I like innards so all was well, but I hate to admit that I don’t know what animal they came from.

Beef with green chiles were totally green chiles with beef, in a good way. This would be a great lunch with a big bowl of rice. I’d certainly rather have this dish over sushi or Subway sandwiches.

Refrigerated takeout containers aren't the most appetizing but I’m just not motivated to set up elaborate shots. Even though my words are no great shakes, I'm even shakier when it comes to stellar photo snapping. I admire, yet am stymied by food blogs with over the top photography. I was just going to stereotype and say that it seems to be an Asian thing but thought better of it (I don’t want to get the reputation for culture generalizing—I’ve already pointed out that macaron mania also seems to be Asian-centric) then was like how can something be a stereotype if it’s true and are stereotypes so bad if the attributes are positive?

There’s just a different aesthetic going on. Seriously, so not my realm: Chez Pim, Chubby Hubby, Kuidaore, Nordljus. And those are just ones that immediately sprang to mind. Of course, I’m sure I could easily find four Asian-run food blogs with horrific photography if I tried but I don’t want to cause any trouble (at least publicly—I’m going to go look for some ugly pictures this very second and keep them all to myself).

My succinct and objective take on King 5 for nymag.com

King 5 Noodle House * 39-07 Prince St., Flushing, NY

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