hatless's Profile
Lucali is a Tourist Trap.
I've only been to Lucali's once, but I thought it was very good, not great. It probably would have been better if I'd asked for the pie well done. After all the talk of the craftsmanship and perfectionism and the place's mystique, I figured it shouldn't be necessary to ask that the pie stay in the oven until the crust got crisp and some good char developed. I spoke to the maestro briefly before leaving and asked whether it was okay (and necessary) to request a well-done pie and he said yes on both counts.
Though I suspect that if the OP had gotten a well-done pie s/he'd have sent it back. I guess you just have to request a pizza be done right at any coal-oven place these days.
Burgers in Astoria
I like Cronin and Phelan's, a good honest pub, good prices, nice staff, food above average, but the burger is just okay. Big, fresh, flavorful? Yup. Cooked to order properly? Yeah. Good bun? Check.
Charred? Not at all.
Donovan's generally falls down in that regard, too, IMO. Nothing to see there.
PJ Horgan's in Sunnyside, now that's a good pub burger and some very good pub food. Not gonna change the world, but they know from good burger. Same goes for their fish and chips, bangers and mash et al.
Where do you go for Malaysian cuisine?
Which one do you like better than Taste Good? Malaysia Restaurant or Curry Leaf?
('cos I looooove Taste Good)
Zabb Thai - first time visit
I've been to Zabb Astoria once. The quality was there, but the menu was much shorter and lacked the exotic stuff.
food near Elmhurst Hospital - recommendations?
I wish the Viet places were good enough to be so-so. IMO, Thai Son in JH is so-so and sometimes manages to be a notch or two better than that. The two in Elmhurst aren't even that. With so much great food within 200 yards I can't bring myself to eat at either one anymore.
food near Elmhurst Hospital - recommendations?
There's Korean but it's not the neighborhood's strength.
Oh! For Malaysian, Taste Good, between the two supermarkets off Broadway, can be insanely good. Haven't had a dud dish yet.
food near Elmhurst Hospital - recommendations?
The King 5 Noodle space seems to be in some sort of transition -- they now have bagels, egg sandwiches and fake Pinkberry-style frozen yogurt. The latter is on the sweet and creamy side -- definitely not just nonfat yogurt with some sugar -- but it's nice to have around anyway. Cheap, too.
Astoria Suggestions for Group
The beer garden's food served outside is pretty gross. The regular menu inside is good enough, but I think Zlata Praha is better and from what I understand, Koliba is much better than both.
A group of 12 might be tough anyplace good on a weekend without a reservation, nu? Maybe at least call an hour or two ahead.
Greek might be a really good way to go for a group like that in any case; you could order a bunch of meze and maybe a couple of whole grilled fish and just graze without worrying about whether the kitchen can bring out twelve entrees at the same time, which would be likely to end in disaster at all but the biggest places.
Oh! And Pasha, the very good 3-month-old Bosnian place related to Bosna Express in Ridgewood, just moved into the larger space that was a coffee shop on the same block. IMO a strong second-best Bosnian in the neighborhood and the closest to the beer garden-- it's on 31st St. a block above 30th Ave. Since they apparently inherited some diner cooking implements along with the space, they've also added some nice healthy sandwiches on their excellent, chewy lepinje; we tried one involving olives, eggs and veggies that reminded me of some Israeli sandwiches I've had. ordering a bunch of dishes for the table and grazing would work pretty well here too.
Not sure what a vegan would eat there, but looser varieties of vegetarian (lacto-, ovo- et al) will find surprising choices compared to the other Bosnian places in the area.
If it turns out they don't serve any beer or wine (I'm not sure), it's just a few doors up from Grand Ave. Liquor, the best such shop in the nabe.
Oh.. because you mention the rather far-from-the-beer-garden Malagueta, what about calling ahead at Il Bambino? It's smallish but roomy; depending on the hour if you call ahead they may be able to pull a few tables together. Order a bunch of things, have 'em cut the panini into 4-6 pieces, and enjoy. I'm pretty sure it's still BYO, which they accomodate well.
And only because (1) it's big, (2) it's never busy and (3) I'd be completely bereft if it were to close or even compromise its menu, I've gotta plug Poodam's, the Isaan Thai place way out on Broadway in the mid-40s. It's nowhere near the beer garden, but as long as its open you can be sure they can handle a large group without a reservation, and the food (apart from the likes of pad thai) is wondrous.
How long will a new user tolerate all of these problems?
You'd think that when some substantial subset of users (or is it all of us?) gets a 500 error every single time they click their username in the upper right corner of a page, it would be a priority to fix it, especially because it's probably just one freaking line in the routes.rb file that needs to be fixed in the wake of the domain name switch of a few weeks ago.
Good grief, do they have any full-time developers on this anymore? Even one? Does anyone look at the error logs? Or at least at the top 5 recurring error messages?
I've pretty much stopped visiting, frankly, not because of some fit of pique or a sense of betrayal over the switch to a "chow.com" domain for the boards, but because whenever I try to go to my own "hot posts" page or click between boards I get a freaking 500 error.
Don't the developers run any of the thousands of tests that were written into the code anymore?
Add Indonesian to Burmese Food Fest
The gado-gado was super saltyfishyfierypeanuttycrunchycoolcrispsoftchewysweet. If there weren't so much more to try, I could have eaten a gallon tub of it.
A similar peanut-chili-shrimp paste was spooned onto another stall's steamed fish cakes three ways: wrapped like a dumpling, stuffed into soft tofu, and stuffed into slices of bitter melon. With some molasses and hot sauce drizzled on top of all that, even the bitter melon was reet tasty.
Asunin? (Shoulda written it down) was a refreshing cabbage slaw strewn with bits of yellow marinated tofu. Liked that along with a couple of items from the same table's rice plate: a hypersweet, butter-soft beef redang and a sort of quasi-cassoulet featuring red beans and bits of what I took to be tripe or maybe tendon.
Less thrilling was a big deep-fried triangle of what seemed like taro (or tapioca?) starch stuffed with hard-cooked egg and deposited in a puddle of a sweet soy sauce.
Of the desserts I tried, I thought the oddly donut-hole-like glazed fritters of red rice were all right but a little firm and dry for me; better were a refreshingly thin durian milkshake -- you could taste the creamy whole milk as much as the durian -- and best of all given the rising afternoon heat, a coconut-pandan "popsicle" in a knotted plastic bag. Mmmmm.
That night, still smitten, I improvised a gado-gado-like salad for dinner.
Best Thai in Queens?
For Issaan right now, I'd say Poodam's. If you go there and order something like pad thai, you'll come away thinking the place is mediocre. It ain't.
food near Elmhurst Hospital - recommendations?
Another good breakfast option would be the Chinese/Korean/etc. bakeries scattered along Broadway heading East as well as the one next door to Taste Good, between the two big Asian supermarkets by the park. What better way to start the day than a hunk of angel food cake (or, um, an egg custard tart, or a pork fu bun, or...) and a cup of Ovaltine?
Well, I suppose some fresh fruit would be a smarter choice, and that can be satisfied very well indeed from the bins on the sidewalk in front of the markets. (The melons they're getting in right now are wonderful, f'rinstance...)
Thai Crispy Chicken Basil
Zabb Queens (in JH) and Poodam's both do very good crispy pork basil (not to be confused with the regular pork), and if you look sincere when you ask for stuff Thai-hot at Poodam's, it's downright incendiary and delicious.
Maybe if you ask them do do chicken the same way as the crispy pork, they can put something together.
Peruvian ceviche, where?
I'm not a fan of Pio Pio Riko in Sunnyside. Decent enough chicken, but the ceviche was rubbery and the yam, corn, etc. not great. This past weekend, we had lunch at Pio Pio to Go in JH and besides terrific chicken (tender, flavorful, albeit not with very crisp skin), and a refreshing avocado salad, we had a good basic ceviche de pescado. Asked for it hot and got very mild (grr), but the fish was fresh, sweet and tender. Unexciting but enjoyable, definitely not awful at least on this visit.
One of these days I think I'm gonna have to do a ceviche crawl in Passaic, NJ.
Zabb: better than Sripraphai? Is it a lock?
Might depend on your take on fish sauce, in which case Sri might be the only option in the class.
Real answer IMO? Poodam's. Their menu's not quite as long as Sri's or the JH Zabb's, but I think they make the best Issan salads in Queens at the moment (many great, but don't miss the mackerel or catfish larbs!) and their curries are pretty terrific too. If you're gonna go meatless, it's hard to beat their Penang curry with mock duck.
Best Bagels (SoFla)
Boynton and Jog, actually, in the Publix shopping center. Good bagels and bialys, and even better pletzls.
Cheeburger Cheeburger in Forest Hills?
Their slogan, "Bigger is Better" is completely wrong. Smaller is better. Their burgers are nothing special. You could do better at a local pub in pretty much any neighborhood. The bigger a burger you get, the more the meat ends up cooking in its own steam, so I'd advise going small if you go at all. I agree the onion rings are the better accompaniment. The shakes are fine, but as with the slew of unremarkable burger toppings it's more about size and the selection of mix-ins and flavors than it is about quality.
Kids like it, but the portions are kinda big, nu?
Where to get ingredients for feijoada??
I'm going to make a left-field suggestion; before you head home from Rio Bonito in Astoria, you may want to check the carne seca and sausage situation at Muncan on Broadway around 43rd. Yeah, they're Romanian Serbs or something, but they make things spanning much of the range of the neighborhood. Their dry salami and mortadella are extraordinary, for instance, and I know they make a Mexican-style chorizo, so it may be worth popping in to see if they also do linguica or if they have a dried beef comparable to the carne seca you're looking for... and if you want blood sausage, let's just say you'll have choices.
Flushing Mall (39th Ave.) Updates or Reviews?
Went on Sunday. After seeing Kung Fu Panda we had a hankering for noodles.
The ma la tendon at the Chengdu stall was as good as remembered, as good as or better than versions at any restaurant in the city that I can think of. The sesame noodles, however, were disappointing, the flavor skewed too far to soy and roasted chiles.
We also got the lamb noodle soup from Lan Zhou. The whittled noodles were very good, chewy and nicely varied in texture. The lamb and broth were just fine, nothing amazing.
Longtime vegetarian - one-time meat bite in Queens
The only Astoria Bosnians I'd consider for a breaking-the-rules meal would be Cevabdzinica Stari Most, for the cevapi, pleskavica or the "Bosnian burger", or (in a somewhat distant second) the tiny newish place with a name I forgot on 31st St. near 30th Ave., which I think is an offshoot of Bosna Express in Ridgewood. The almost-kosher halal meat they use, however, is made even better when it's smeared with these places' fresh kajmak and/or yogurt.
The lamb with cumin at Little Pepper is a hell of a thing, too.
IMO Donovan's isn't even the second-best burger in western Queens. It's big, though.
Flushing Mall (39th Ave.) Updates or Reviews?
It's been a good year since I've been, but me and the missus sure are fond of the sliced tendon and the dan dan noodles at the Chengdu place. Haven't had better anywhere, not at Little Pepper, not at the midtown Szechuan Gourmet, not at Spicy and Tasty.
TOP 5 RESTAURANTS WITHIN TEN BLOCKS
46th St. area of Astoria, d/b/a The Astoria-Woodside-Sunnyside Borderlands:
- Cruz Mexican Deli (41st St. just off Broadway)
- Poodam's Thai
- Cevabdzinica Stari Most (42nd St. off 30th Av.)
- Rizzo's Pizza
- Brasilianville Cafe (34th Av. near 43rd St.)
Bonus section:
- Dos Banderas (48th St. off Broadway)
- New York Diner (Northern Blvd.)
- Pollos a la Brasa Mario
- The halal cart on the NW corner of 34th Av. and Steinway
- The souvlaki cart at the SW corner of 31st Av. and Steinway
Though frankly, we don't consider cabbing it until it's over 25 blocks, ill-served by mass transit and the weather is really bad.
Georgian Food?
You can sometimes find churchkhela (under different names) at Greek, Turkish and Levantine grocery stores. I think I've seen it labeled in English as "nut sausage". I've seen it both loose and vacuum-packed at a few places in Astoria. Some "Russian" grocery stores in Rego Park and Brighton Beach and the like should have it too, and they'll probably know it by its Georgian name.
It's more often a cloudy dark brown when I've seen it. Not sure whether the purple ones are due to a specific grape variety or food coloring. When I tried making it years ago (it's like candlemaking), I'm pretty sure it was brown.
Queens (mainly Astoria) Market Tour
Rio Bonito's pretty good for Brazilian imports and has a great community-center feel, but their buffet in the back by the butcher counter isn't nearly as good as Brasilianville Cafe a few blocks west on 34th Ave. Likewise, their fresh bread supplier is dismal. Stock up on catupiry, manioc flour, suco de caju, etc. there, but get rolls (and a buffet lunch) elsewhere.
"Korean" carrot salad by the pound?
IIt is Korean. The Uzbeks and other Soviet Central Asians got it from the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Koreans from Siberia forcibly relocated to that part of the USSR in the 1930s, as Korean resistance to the Japanese occupation began spilling over the border. To this day, the former Soviet Central Asian countries all have substantial Korean minorities, especially Uzbekistan.
Thai in Elmhurst: Nusara, Chao, or both?
Indeed. I'm a big fan of their beef and tendon noodle soup. The broth is a cousin of a Vietnamese pho base, but much better than any pho in the immediate area.. and those thick, chewy, elastic noodles... mmmm....
Burek at Stari Most (Old Bridge) - Astoria
The fake stone thing looks like.. well.. a repro of an old bridge. In particular the "old bridge" in Mostar, bombed in 1993 and rebuilt a few years ago. :)
Burek at Stari Most (Old Bridge) - Astoria
The best cevapi in the neighborhood, the similarly fantastic "burgers"... and yes, my new favorite spinach-cheeese pie in the neighborhood. Theirs is not the deep-dish filo wedge the other places around have, but rather an individual disc about 8" in diameter, bubbly, dense and knotty wih crunchy peaks, and the cheese (I'm thinking kajmak) is yellow-green, infused with the spinach juices.
It was most emphatically not microwaved.
The side of fresh yogurt, served in a glass, had a tang that went great with it and was also good as a drink, like a coarse, rustic lassi.
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Old Bridge
28-51 42nd St, Queens, NY 11103
Georgian Food?
Huh? There are those two explicitly Georgian restaurants in the Kings Highway area, and a bunch of the "Russian" restaurants and delis in Brighton Beach and elsewhere in the city (and across the country, for that matter) offer Georgian items. I daresay most of the emigres in American "Russian" neighborhoods aren't usually considered ethnic Russians to begin with. Georgian? Uzbek? Ukrainian or Tajik Jew? Here they're all magically transformed into "Russians" by dint of a convenient shared language. The USSR was a very diverse place.
Kabab Cafe downhill alertl!!!
I know Ali's specials can get pricey for what looks like a little hole in the wall, but AFAIK a sandwich or a app-sized bowl of hummus or baba there doesn't cost more than most in the city.
How do you spend $20 on a snadwich and app? $6 for a sandwich and $14 for the big mixed veg app platter?
For one person?
Also, it sometimes seems like every person in the city with a weird hangup about asking how much a special costs before ordering it goes to the Kabab Cafe at some point and comes away thinking they were tricked when stewed veal tail or a roasted trout costs more then the grilled chicken breast on the menu.
