Goodies First

Aug 15

S.E. Asia or Bust

Santas
I don't know why Santa hawks burgers in Bangkok

Rendang
How cool is a rendang burger?

Beergarden
One of the first indications that Hua Hin was an odd place. Thai workers in drindls and lederhosen were quite a surprise.

Buffalo
"Buffalo wings" from the Hua Hin Hilton. Don't forget that traditional marinara for dipping. After eating Thai pizza, it only seemed fitting.

No, it's not Mulberry St. When you think of Thai beaches, don't pizza pies come to mind?

Little
I don't recall palm trees in Little Italy.

Ignore James's big head. I'm a very bad photographer and was trying to capture the Filipino Tom Petty in the background.

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Aug 15

Chili crabs in Singapore? Of course it must be done (despite pepper crabs
seeming tastier in appearance and by description). We decided to head out to
the East Coast Seafood complex on a Friday night. I'd actually made
reservations, but it didn't really matter because you were still given a
number scrawled on a yellow plastic square (which I still have) and made to
wait like everyone else. They just kept adding more tables and chairs as
more people showed up. We were practically at the water's edge, the furthest
table, until a group of Germans (I don't actually know that they were
Germans, but I like to scapegoat them for all the annoying tourist behavior
in S.E. Asia) insisted on having their table put between ours and the river.
Whatever.

The funniest part was how immediately a woman came up and asked if we
wanted satay with our meal. James was irked, thinking it was a pushy
waitress and said he wanted to look at the menu first, which we hadn't
received yet. I didn't think they even served satay, and it turned out they
didn't. She was just a renegade satay hawker, which seemed way more like a
Thailand move than a Singapore one where everything's so darn orderly and
regulated. Being semi-clueless we ordered a large chili crab for the two of
us and were told that we really wanted a medium one. Ok, fine enough. And we
ordered a female because I think the roe is supposed to a selling point. We
also got a side of green vegetable (Chinese broccoli, I think). Yes, the
crab was big and swimming in sauce. A huge red, sticky, eggy mess, in the
best way possible, of course. Yes, I know that's how chili crab is, but I'm
weird about getting my hands dirty so had to just dig in and worry about
napkins later (they give handy wipes, but you burn through them in no time
flat). I did know enough that you're supposed to order mantou, little fried
buns to daub up the sauce, which we did. But apparently not to our
waitresses liking who told us we needed to eat the sauce (I was totally
bursting at the seams by this point) and that she'd bring out mantou (she
didn't realized we'd already gone the mantou dipping route). After the
second bun sopping routine there was still tons of sauce, so we tried to
scoop it into a pool and hide it under the crab shell. I've never had to do
something like that before, but I don't think I could stomach another course
of fried buns, and I love fried buns. Next time I'll try the pepper crab
(it's not so saucy).

Jumbo * East Coast
Seafood Centre, Singapore

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Aug 15

Katong Laksa

My first Singpore laksa in Singapore. So not like the crazy
Portland-style I initially got hooked on. Though Taste of Bali (clearly
wrong by using a touristy Indonesian city in their name) prepared the dish
non-traditionally, they did set my preference for the rich, coconut milk
based Singapore style. I'm totally ruined for the sour assam version you'll
find in Malaysia. My laksa love started as a near novelty, who knew that
half a decade later I'd have a full blown Malaysian/Singaporean food
addiction.

I heard talk of, or at least had read of the "laksa wars of 1999."
Seriously. They're serious about this stuff and I don't blame them. And East
Coast Rd. is home to a row of laksa shops. But that's not where I went.
Accompanied by someone in the know, James's coworker Alvin, and short on
time (though he was low on workload due to the NYC blackout and subsequent
shortage of email directives) we tried the Katong Laksa, not in Katong, but
in cute, suburbanesque Holland Village. Alvin claimed it reminded him of New
Jersey where he grew up. If only I could just skip across the Hudson for
food like this.

Overly-vigilant, Alvin ordered the soup without the cockles. My stomach
could've handled it, I swear. The laksa "gravy" (it weirds me out that they
call the broth gravy) is thick, curryish, spicy, yellow, with rice noodles,
hard-boiled egg, bean sprouts, shrimp and bean curd. I was told this stall's
trademark was that the noodles are cut up for easy eating. For a chopstick
bungler, that was a selling point. We also had otak otak, and fresh lime
juice, most likely from those adorable mini limes everyone seems to use over
there.

The nice thing about Singapore stalls is that almost always you can
choose from a variety of sizes. Unlike NYC where everything is huge and you
want more for your money, in Singapore it's actually wise to order small
(which are never actually small) to save room for "second lunch" or "second
dinner" (as James and I took to calling our many food courses that didn't
fit into a traditional three square meals) This isn't an actual tradition
(that I'm aware of), we just invented the double meal on the fly.

Katong Laksa * Holland Village, Singapore

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Aug 14

Coriander Leaf

Honest to goodness I can barely remember the food. And oddly enough, James
claims it was one of the highest credit card charges from our two-week S.E.
Asian excursion. It wasn't that the food was unremarkable, we were just
overwhelmed and tired. It was our first proper, sit-down meal on the
continent. I recall there being some naan and some prawns…heck, the
restaurant was in our hotel and we were beat. I started to feel
self-conscious when we asked for a shared dessert, neglected the two extra
plates provided and shared the treat on the plate it came on. Perhaps that's
not the thing to do? It was the first, though hardly the last, time we'd get
odd stares for eating off the same plate. Are these folks germ freaks or
just plain particular?

CorianderLeaf * 76
Robertson Quay, Singapore

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Aug 14

Killiney Kopitiam

My first meal in Asia, and appropriately traditional. Coffee filled with
condensed milk, kaya toast and soft-boiled eggs, of course. It was one of
those protocol experiences, like how do you eat the eggs without making a
mess (it seemed like everyone else was eating them from a bowl with soy
sauce)? Do you dip the toast in the eggs? Do you sit and wait for service or
order at the counter-and when do you pay? I was quickly initiated into the
fact that napkins are not provided at most restaurants in Singapore. Mini
tissue packs were purchased rapidly thereafter. The toasted bread filled
with thick, melting butter and coconut jam was a near obscene treat. I've
since taken to eating kaya and peanut butter sandwiches.

Killiney Kopitiam * 67 Killiney Road, Singapore

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Aug 2

Nar

I'm always wary of those little restaurant write-ups in Time Out NY
or New York Magazine. Not of their validity–whatever–they're trend
fueled, but that they'll create artificially huge crowds the week they
appear. Such was my fear at Nar. Showing up prime-time on a Friday night
posed little problem, however. The place was empty. Absolutely patronless.
That makes me even more wary. No matter how much one hates crowds, facing an
empty restaurant is even more unnerving.

We only ordered a couple things, an eggplant puree not unlike baba
ganouj, fried calamari and a special of meat dumplings in a sour cream-esque
sauce. Nothing was hideous, nothing was amazing either. I like Allioli and
it's the same owners, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I was heartened by little touches like how they used a Turkish(?)
newspaper to serve the calamari in, fish and chips style. That's the sort of
tiny flourish I'd employ at a party, and no one would notice, and I'd come
away feeling like I'd really, really wasted my time. (8/2/03)

* Swiftly gone and probably already forgotten. Now it's Zipe Zape.
(8/23/04)

Nar * 152 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, NY

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Aug 2

Goody’s

I knew the name, I was aware of the place, but I'd never been inspired to
pay a visit. But for some reason James was bitten by the Goody's bug (it's
one of those deals where he reads about or sees something on TV about a
restaurant and freaks me out by out of the blue telling me that's where
we're going). He'd heard about some Sichuan shrimp dish. I thought they were
known for soup dumplings. To cover all bases we ordered both. The garlic
might have been a bit charred on the shrimp, though I still liked them (they
were sort of orangey, clovey and spicy). The dumplings were properly soupy,
and an impulse order of sesame noodles was the perfect antidote to the
sub-tropical NYC summer heat.

Goody's * 1 E. Broadway, New York, NY

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Jul 19

Gabriela’s

The Upper West Side scares me. It always weirded me out how Seinfeld
made it seem like the UWS (ew, look at me making gross acronyms) was the NYC
norm, when that's so not true. I only know one person (and I don't mean out
of friend friends, I mean acquaintances, coworkers, friends of
friends, etc.) who lives up there. Amusingly, that one person would probably
love Gabriela's, as she will only eat things like Italian or Mexican (pretty
much a middle-American palate circa 1976) and likes blender drinks.

Gabriela's was fine. The portions were huge, the drinks were strong, the
tortillas even seemed homemade. We just needed someplace to eat near James's
parking lot that was open past 10:30pm. No easy feat, and Gabriela's fit the
bill. If I ever find myself on the UWS after 10:30 I might consider a return
visit. Maybe. (7/19/03)

Maybe the UWS tired of mediocre Mexican–Gabriela's is a goner. (2005)

Gabriela's * 685 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY

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Jul 11

All Dressed Up

After hearing how Heinz’s sky blue and chocolate flavored Funky Fries were being discontinued, I was upset to say the least. For one, I was never able to even find them here in NYC, and two, I feared the public had had enough with the abnormally colored food. Not true, thankfully. Naturally Fresh renewed my faith in the grotesque by creating ranch dressing (which is kind of just freaky on its own) in bright orange and purple. I don’t know what “natural” has to do with garish colored dressing, but I’ll allow them a little misrepresentation.

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Jul 6

Big Eat

The most direct route from James's to my place involves a straight, but
treacherous shot down Bowery to the Manhattan Bridge. It's a total obstacle
course, but at least mini traffic jams allow me to take note of new
restaurants like Big Eat. The name alone sold me. Big Eats would've been ho
hum, but Big Eat…now that's got flair. I vowed to check it out the
very next day, and for once, I actually did what I said I was going to.

It was a big, flashy, two-level, Hong Kong-style (not that I've ever
been to HK, but it's the look that I imagine they're going for) affair. We
were the only non-Asians in the place (which could be good or bad, who's to
say) which proved to be a tiny problem when it became apparent that the
waiter couldn't really understand or read English (though he seemed able to
speak it). Not a big deal, after I figured out that pointing to the Chinese
(Sorry, I don't know my Cantonese from Mandarin, though I will start a
Mandarin class next month) characters worked like a charm.

We ordered crazy east-west things like crab wrapped in Canadian bacon
(it was fake crab and regular bacon) and honey-garlic chicken. There was
also a scallop in XO sauce dish in there somewhere. The overall impression
was that Big Eat was akin to Sweet and Tart in mood, though in menu less dim
sum-y. I'd go back.

Big Eat * 97 Bowery, New York, NY

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S.E. Asia or Bust

Jumbo

Katong Laksa

Coriander Leaf

Killiney Kopitiam

Nar

Goody’s

Gabriela’s

All Dressed Up

Big Eat

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