Ever wonder what goes on at night inside the neon squiggle festooned former diner that is Flushing’s Lake Pavilion? Well, wonder no more. The Cantonese banquet hall is the subject of a two-star review in this weeks’ New York Times. Gotta give Pete Wells props for trying goose webs and screw clam, which is not a clam, but rather an organ extracted from a sea cucumber.

In case you’ve got a forequarter of beef lying around that you’d like to turn into pastrami this video might come in handy.

I’ve always been fascinated with Rocco’s Calamari in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Now Eating in Translation helps me understand why. Rocco is Calabrese, just like my dear old Ma.

KF Seetoh,the King of Southeast Asian food bloggers has a mouthwatering primer on Hainanese chicken rice, Singapore’s national dish.

“Prepping stag penises is an extraordinary business. Double entendres are unnecessary; single entendres will do,” so writes Fuchsia Dunlop in a piece in the latest Lucky Peach that manages to invoke castration anxiety, amusement, and curiosity as to the prized Chinese ingredient’s tonic properties.

There is a candy bar in Trinidad & Tobago called Lunch. In cross-section it looks a wafer ringed by caramel, puffed rice, nuts and chocolate. I know this because the good folks over at First We Feast have hipped me to a Tumblr that specializes in nothing but cross-sections of candy. Thanks you internets!

Lower East Side appetizing institution Russ & Daughter’s is opening a cafe around the corner from its iconic century old shop. No word on whether it will serve Nikki Russ Federman’s least favorite beverage Cel-Ray.