Dave Cook's approach is probably a very good one, although I do recommend trying the saoto, with plenty of sambal (the sweet/spicy soy-based sauce on the table) and skipping the egg in the soup. It's quite different from the Indonesian soup that it's based on -- a little richer, thanks in part to the allspice berries that go in during cooking and the Maggi cubes (which may sound offputting, but has become a near-ubiquitous ingredient in Surinamese cooking).

I think the big "win" at Karung Kario, though, is the home-made snacks you'll see on the shelves by the cash register -- usually some cassava chips, etc. There's a nut-based chip whose name escapes me that is definitely worth a try. You might also try pitjel as a side (bean sprouts with a peanut sauce) and dawet (a sweet rice-based drink) as a balance to anything spicy you might go for.

I went on August 10 and was underwhelmed, at best. The scallop and truffle raviolo was quite good, and the ingredients were certainly top-notch, but our wine pairings were uncreative (unless you count smelling like socks as creative) and our lobster was overcooked and stringy (and came on a completely flavorless mound of shredded fennel). Three pieces of hamachi came as one of the courses, and each slice was as thick as a piece of bread and completely ruined the mouth-feel; I'm no slave to tradition, but there's a reason why, after centuries of refinement, sashimi makers settled on pieces at about 1/4 the size.

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Ed's Chowder House
44 W 63rd St, New York, NY 10023

Anyone know if they sell slices? I'm intrigued, but would prefer to give it a test run, since it's easier to drag myself to Bensonhurst on the prospect of good pizza than five other people.

You could also try the tea room at Takashimaya, on 55th and 5th. A much different vibe than Alice's, so it depends on what kind of mood you want to set.

So I did head back here recently, just for the saoto. Definitely a huge step up from my first experience.

While I appreciate the charm factor as well, bottom line was that Del Re came very close to ruining my knives. I gave him four (charged $42)--two chef's knives, a boning knife, and a paring knife. He took a good 1/8" off the blade of the boning knife, and ground the paring knife and one of the chef's knives down so much that it went past where the blade originally started to bevel. On top of that, the truck shakes like a washing machine on spin cycle whenever the grinder operates. Heavy hand aside, I'm not so sure you can ever get a decent sharpening job out of a truck.

I enthusiastically second the mention of Spang Makandra--interestingly, though, I grew up in Suriname and found it to be the closest match to what I grew up eating. I would recommend the pitjel and saoto soup, which should already be familiar to you if you're into Indonesian fare. Incidentally, I went back to Suriname for the first time in almost 20 years just a few months after my Spang Makandra visit and found that, of the 20 or so bowls of saoto I had in Paramaribo, only one was as good as the one I had in Amsterdam--I credit the attention to detail/ingredients at Spang Makandra.

It may be that Warung Kario still hasn't mastered consistency. I grew up in Suriname, so I was excited to try this place out, and dropped by on a recent Saturday evening (maybe around 6).

We had loempia, pitjel, and saoto soup. The loempia had clearly been sitting around for a while, having grown a little soggy, and seemed to use mung bean sprouts in its stuffing instead of soya bean sprouts. It makes a difference in texture because of the much smaller width of soya bean sprouts. Some loempias in Suriname also include a thinner version of string beans in them that I would have loved to have seen. The spicy kejap that came with the loempia was faultless, though.

Gado gado and pitjel are slightly different dishes, but I wasn't too impressed with the quality of the vetegables in the pitjel. Again, sogginess was an issue, as the green beans and sprouts were water-logged and, to be frank, not the freshest-looking. The peanut sauce, on the other hand, was also faultless.

Lastly, the saoto came out disappointingly bland. This was a bit of a heartbreaker, since it's the dish I miss most from my childhood. You could taste the right blend of bay leaf and allspice that give this soup its character, but they could have used about 1/3 less water. I was also surprised at just how much chicken they put into it (all white meat, at that)--it actually was a bit too much for me. The peppered soy sauce that comes with the soup, though, was (surprise) faultless.

I'm hoping that I caught Warung Kario on an off night, but with all the tempting roti shops in the area, it might be tough for me to make it all the way out to the end of the C line again without ending up wanting to try something else.

Have you tried the list at http://www.realmilk.com/where4.html?

I went there a few weeks ago, and am inclined to agree. The pork belly was, indeed, spectacular, but I found the rest of the food to be rather bland, and not very inventive. I don't mind neo-Korean, but "neo" shouldn't mean "less spices." If there was an emphasis on better ingredients, I couldn't tell, pork excepted.

Three of us went, and rather than charge us for a dinner for two + dinner for one, the server charged us for three dinners for one. It gets her an extra five bucks or so that way. I couldn't care less of the five bucks, but it does strike me as being somewhat tacky.

Sorry for the late reply. It's just off Broadway, on LaSalle Street. I used to be able to walk in without a wait, but it's now about 15 minutes--not bad, all things considered.

Pisticci is what I imagine an honest neighborhood Italian joint to be. Their pasta is toothy and salty, and lightly sauced. The spaghetti pomodoro, for instance, is simple, textbook pasta, with the lightest chunks of bright tomatoes. I don't care very much for their main courses (or even additions like meatballs), but the pasta dishes have never done me wrong; it's not that the main courses are not good, but that the pasta holds its own against most places twice the price.

The atmosphere is cozy, if a bit cramped. It's a bit moot this time of year, but I've found that the service, being a little busy, is definitely better inside, rather than on the sidewalk.

Had the duck basil on 2/18/08 and am sorry to report that it was a bit dry, which seems like a difficult thing to do with duck. The seafood papaya salad, on the other hand, was easily worth all the hoopla. It's a very rare thing, I think, for squid to not be overcooked in a restaurant. Poodam's is one of only three or four places in the entire City where I found it cooked just right.

Even though I only live a block away from Max, I usually find it well worth the extra walk to go to Pisticci. Another thing about Max is that they seem to be storing their wine by the radiator or something, because the quality has been frustratingly poor, no matter what I order.

They kill it at the shop; I'm guessing it was beheaded on a rotating blade of some sort. They steam it lightly, I think, to get the feathers out.

Thanks for all the great tips. I've heard it's better to rest the bird, too, so I'll try letting it sit a bit longer next time. It did sit in a colander for just under 4 hours, but it wouldn't hurt to let it rest a bit more. Does it matter whether I cut the bird up before then?

I recently decided to brave a trip to the live poultry shop near my apartment, and bought a 5-pound white-feathered bird (red-feathered and black-feathered cost a bit more, so I thought I'd start/experiment with the cheaper meat) that I cooked up at home. I've been a city boy most of my life, but I do remember a few trips back to the farm, and recall that the chicken killed right before cooking was a little stringy and a bit tough; the same thing happened this time around (I braised it in broth with some vegetables). The scraps I had boiled for hours to make stock turned out nice and soft, but they were (of course) pretty flavorless at that point.

Any tips on making the meat a bit more tender? I'm sure it would make excellent coq au vin, but I wouldn't want to be limited that much.

I just picked up some packets from a supermarket in Flushing, and I can't get over how great they taste. The broth is almost as good as fresh (it helps to add a sprinkle of scallions, cilantro, or even sriracha), and the noodles are nice and toothy. It will be very, very hard to go back to Korean packaged ramen.

Oh, and it's cheap. All the tacos are $2, except, interestingly, the vegetarian taco, which is $3.

I'm a huge fan of the tacos at El Toro Partido (Broadway between 139 and 140), although I haven't tried the other offerings, or the Ecuadorian fare there. Their portions are generous, the meat is perfectly cooked, and the cilantro and onions are crisp and flavorful. Try the taco al suadero (beef belly), it's simply divine.

The decor is pretty plain--it's small, and looks like a nicer version of a Chinese takeout. They do have a pretty sweet jukebox, though.

I can't speak to how it compares to the food in L.A., because different U.S. cities have Mexican immigrants from different regions, but I understand that the customers at El Toro Partido are predominantly from the Mexico City area.

It's hard to find a reliable fishmonger, too. There was a story in the New York Times a few years ago about how salmon that was labeled as wild at a lot of places actually turned out to be farmed. Only one store--the most expensive one--had the wild salmon correctly labeled. I'd like to think that I could tell from the way the fat is layered and from the hue of the flesh, but I'd be kidding myself.

I was very excited about trying the wings at McKenna's, but could not have been more disappointed. Not only were they not great wings, they were actually some of the *worst* wings I've ever had, even compared to wing-deprived places like Northern California. They came out soggy and bland, without a trace of vinegary tang, and had the texture of something that had been frozen alongside a woolly mammoth They reminded me of the janky frozen A&P wings I used to get in college, and bake in the oven. Maybe the recipe changed, or maybe it was because I opted for the spicy, but these wings tasted like they had fallen off the back of a Sysco truck.

The fries were still good (McDonald's-ish pretty much nails it), but the wings are now $6, and only about 5 or 6 come to a plate. Oh, and the beers are $6 (For Yeungling! At a dive bar!), and they (illegally) charge you more if you use a credit card. All in all, whoever makes the management decisions in this bar needs to get his head out of his rear end.

I have no information other than my own perceptions, but it seems like Les Ambassades has changed either its coffee, or the way its made, in the past year. The default used to be a rich, creamy au lait, but now they've gone to serving weaker stuff.

My understanding with shrimp is that the reason why it's decapitated is because the vast majority of buyers don't want the head, but maybe it has something to do with sodium absorption during processing. I've had the luxury of having wild shrimp flash-frozen with the head on, and its mouth-feel is truly spectacular.

True, the situation does get a bit more complicated if you live further inland. But if the logistics are there to bring over live seafood and then put it in a tank, surely the logistics are there to bring over very recently caught seafood?

I live in New York, and I doubt much of the seafood here came from a boat right before it hit market (if it came from a boat at all, that is--and if it's in a tank, I doubt that it was ever wild, some crustaceans excepted). So as long as there's an airport nearby (Toronto? Buffalo? Rochester?), and enough demand, I think one could do okay.

And the problem with filets, I think, are probably not a function of freshness so much as cut/quality (although, of course, the fish keeps better if it's not hacked up first). Can you get frozen whole fish? Flash-freezing is pretty much standard these days, even with sushi. In fact, a flash-frozen wild fish, properly thawed, seems much more appealing over something farmed, stressed, and starved.

I often read posts raving about how "fresh" a place is just because someone takes a fish or crustacean out of a tank, but I've always found so-called live seafood to be rather lacking in the flavor department. I'd much rather have an animal that's been living and eating in the sea (albeit likely farmed, I know), than stressing and starving (and crapping, no less) in a tiny, tiny tank. My dad was a commercial fisherman, and I've grown up eating seafood, and neither of us have ever preferred anything "fresh" from the tank to anything that was brought in that morning from the distributor. And in the seafood-eating cultures that I know, that seems to be the preference as well.

Anyone else here confused by all thus hubbub? I think it's all just a marketing ploy, but I wonder if anyone else has tried comparing the two, either side-by-side or blind.

Prime Rib will definitely be my next D.C. steakhouse visit. I am, in one sense, relieved to hear about your ribeye (although I'm also sorry about your experience), because I wasn't sure if I just ordered the wrong thing. Incidentally, I was a little surprised to see them charge extra for horseradish sauce, and rather disappointed to have them forget it even after I ordered it. For some reason, steakhouses often forget to bring it even after I ask for it, but my thought is that, if you're going to put it on the menu and charge for it, you damn well better bring it, and bring it right with the steak, too. (Incidentally, they didn't forget to put it on my bill.)

I was very disappointed by the quality of the porterhouse at Charlie Palmer, and I suspect the other steaks are not much of an improvement. (Indeed, I'm a little surprised to see an expensive steakhouse play the fake-cut-of-meat game, where they basically invent cuts of meat to, ostensibly, sound fancy. One of their dinner offerings is a Kansas City ribeye--huh? So, is it a ribeye or a strip? Or is it their convoluted, misleading way of saying the bone has been left in?)

It's not that the beef is bad in quality, it's that the chefs apparently think it's bad--why else does it come drenched in thick, syrupy sauce and coated in mushrooms? I understand if they want to show off some deglazing skills, but come on--we're here for the steak. Bring its flavor out, don't mask it. Otherwise, it's not much better than a cheap steak with heavy sauce. I felt like I was in a sports car that was tuned to ride like a Buick.

Overdoing it seems to be the theme at this place. I got a salad with pancetta, and the pancetta was burnt to a crisp--effectively defeating the taste of what was probably once pretty good pancetta.

The sides were fine. The gnocchi was a bit large for my tastes, and (surprise!) overcooked, but the Brussel sprouts were perfectly done. Small but nice selection of cheeses that are woefully not paired properly.

Thanks for the tip--I didn't know about that place, but will be sure to check it out.

Spoony, I'm curious as to why you qualified Roti Plus as being Trinidadian .... Maybe I misinterpreted, was it because this started with talk of Jamaican food, or because there's something in particular about Trinidadian roti that you're less a fan of.

I haven't been in a few years, but I think they bill it as the house specialty. Then again, I know a lot can happen in a few years ... Han Bat and Cho Dan Gol, for instance, used to be a lot better. Still, this post is definitely inspiring me, I might have to make a run this weekend. I'll report back if I do.