03/12/22 9:18pm



Park Sanbal Bab’s sole dish, long simmered beef and cabbage soup.

Spring’s just about a week away, but winter’s not quite done with New York City. The blustery weather provided a perfect reason to hit up Park Sanbal Babs, a homey Korean restaurant specializing in just one dish—a beef and cabbage soup called gukbap—with my pal Jonathan Forgash. He’s a chef by trade turned community activist and restaurant advocate, and a big fan of steaming bowls of comforting stews and such, so I knew he’d be down for a mission to Murray Hill in deep Flushing.

I’d heard about it this highly specialized restaurant from some Facebook food nerds a few weeks ago. “There’s only one choice to make, spicy or not,” one of them said. I treated myself to an Uber and and was cheered to see Google indicated Park Sanbal Babs was “less busy than usual.” As soon as I saw it I recognized it from years of exploring the vast K-tropolis that starts on Union Street and Northern Boulevard and runs practically all the way to Great Neck. I poked my head inside. Every table was occupied and there were about four people waiting in the small space by the door. “I wonder what Google thinks really busy looks like?” I mused to myself as I walked outside to explore the neighborhood.

Banchan is limited so as not to distract from the main event.

“This smells almost like my grandmother’s house,” Jonathan said while we waited. “How many? You want spicy or non spicy?” a Korean lady asked us. “Spicy,” we both responded. Moments after Jonathan said “This doesn’t seem like the type of place that encourages lollygagging,” we were seated. “I’ve passed this place hundreds of times, and I’ve always been curious,” I said as the waitress placed our bubbling minicauldrons on the table.

Two bowls of rice, sliced omelette, a stack of dried seaweed, hot green peppers with miso, and some excellent radish kimchi accompanied our soups. It’s almost as if the banchan selection was limited so as not to take away from the main event, a dish that cooks for four hours.I’d expected the soup to be incendiary, but was surprised when it wasn’t. It was, however, perfect for a cold day. A few spoonfuls in, we noticed the endearing soundtrack of Parksanbal Babs. It consists of the two Spanish speaking waitresses constantly calling out “Excuse me,” as they hustle in and out of the kitchen bearing boiling bowls of soup.

On the wall next to us was a sign in Korean that I was sure said something about the food. Turns out I was wrong, it’s more about Parksanbal’s hospitality. A friend of mine translated it thus: “First time guest is welcome because it’s the first time. Second time guest is welcome because it’s a known face. Third time guest is welcome because they are a regular. Fourth time guest is welcome because they are a family.”

I’ve long held the theory that since so many Koreans live and eat in Northeastern Queens often the restaurants there don’t have encyclopedic menus but are rather specialists. Parksanbal though is a specialist among specialists. If this weather keeps up I’ll be back sooner rather than later for another dose of its $15.99 medicine.

Park Sanbal Babs, 41-10 162nd St., Murray Hill, (718) 840-8467

01/06/22 4:23pm
Shaut thee thoke, or Burmese lemon salad, is a powerhouse of flavor.

In 2013 I had the pleasure of exploring Jackson Heights with Suketu Mehta a journalism professor at New York University who grew up in the neighborhood. Back in his day, many local businesses were Gujarati, including an appliance shop that Mehta said was run by two gents named “Raj.” “Indian immigrants coming to New York would visit two places, the Statue of Liberty and Raj and Raj.”

Mehta will be pleased to learn that visitors to Jackson Heights still visit the Statue of Liberty, but some like the young couple I met as I was emerging from COVID quarantine, visit Yun Cafe first.

“This tastes just like back home, the young man,” said of the homestyle Burmese cuisine made by Tin Ko Naing and Thidar Kyaw and the restaurant’s namesake, their daughter, Yun. (Sadly I was not able to tell them if the Statue of Liberty was open and instead recommended a Staten Island Ferry ride and a Sri Lankan food outing.)

My new friends were having some chicken soup and a mixture of laphet thoke—the classic tea leaf salad—and gin thoke, which features fermented ginger. Last I checked there were more than a dozen of thoke on the menu of the restaurant in the Jackson Heights subway station, including kaut swe thoke (a melange of noodles, potatoes, and curried chicken) pin le sar thoke, a seafood salad.

I’m slowly working my way through the thoke roster, but that day I wanted to try the shaut thee thoke or lemon salad, since I’d been hearing great things about it.

Lemon features prominently in shaut thee thoke, but like many Burmese salads, it’s a cavalcade of flavors, crunchy dried shrimp, sweet fried onions, insistently spicy green chili, raw garlic and pungent shrimp paste.

“It’s my family’s favorite,” Yun said when I told her how much I loved the dish. It’s also the epitome of the Burmese culinary concept “chin ngan sat,” or “sour salty spicy.”

I suppose it’s also a good way to test one’s sense of taste and smell after a bout with COVID. I wonder what other delicious secrets lurk among many other thoke I have yet to try.

Yun Café & Asian Mart, 73-05 37th Rd., Store #2, 646-920-7551

01/05/22 4:33pm


“We don’t eat pork or drink alcohol,” some guests on a Flushing Chinatown food adventure told me when asked about dietary restrictions for their upcoming tour. “Perfect time to check out that oyster omelet at the Fujianese joint in the New York Food Court that Dave wrote about,” I thought to myself, for you see, I don’t like to put anything on my tours that I haven’t vetted myself.

Oyster omelets are a hawker food eaten throughout Southeast Asia, but most famously at Taiwanese night markets. The first time I ate a Taiwanese one I had a raging hangover and couldn’t really stomach the gloppy consistency from the sweet potato starch. I wasn’t sure to what to expect of Minnan Xiaochi’s Fujianese version.

Unlike its Taiwanese cousin, the Fujianese version was almost paper thin and super crunchy from the egg itself as well as the plenty of green onions that were fried until crispy. What starch there was wasn’t gloppy so much as a binding agent. Hai li jian as it’s known in Southern Fujian made for a fine meal with a bowl of rice and an especially novel stop on a food tour.

Minnan Xiaochi, No. 13, New York Food Court, 133-35 Roosevelt Ave., Flushing

11/08/21 4:24pm
This Colombian style burger was not created by the Arepa Lady, but rather her daughter-in-law, Nelly.

Back when I first moved to Queens in the late 90s, The Arepa Lady—aka Maria Piedad Cano a former administrative judge from Medellin, Colombia, turned street food legend—served precisely two things from her cart outside a nightclub on Roosevelt Avenue. The first, arepa de queso was a puffy disc of corn flour sweet and gooey with crisped edges from a griddling in margarine and topped with salty quesito cheese. The second, arepa de choclo, was made from a sweeter corn enfolding cheese.

Both are equally delicious and both are still served at Areperia Arepa Lady, which her son Alejandro Osorio opened with her in 2014 to return the favor of his mother supporting him and his siblings through street food for decades.

“She’s old school,” Osorio says of his mother. “We can add new things, but we can’t mess with her recipes. Those things include arepas filled with shredded beef, the fried plantain sandwiches known as patacones, and most recently, a Colombian style hamburger.

Osorio’s wife, Nelly, who runs the Jackson Heights restaurant with him came up with the idea for the burger because many diners had been asking for a burger. For Colombians though the hamburger is quite a different animal than the somewhat austere version served at cookouts in America. In Colombia, the patty and the bun are a canvas for a carnival of fruity sauces, other meats, and other textures. Arepa Lady’s Colombian burger does not disappoint. It consists of a patty topped with American cheese; ham; and crisp fried bacon topped with a fistful of crunchy potato sticks, and finally crowned with a trio of sauces green garlic, pink sauce (a mixture of mayo and ketchup), and pineapple. (My waiter, Brandon, who hails from Cali told they are fond of the tart, sweet pineapple sauce in his hometown.) For an extra few dollars you can add shrimp, which I did.

Despite all those ingredients, this was no Frankenburger, but a seemingly restrained study in excess. (It was, however messy, and you may well want to remove bracelets and other jewelry to eat it.) All the flavors—juicy patty, salty ham, and smoky bacon—worked well together and the potato sticks and sauces completed the picture, though next time I’d skip the baby shrimp.

Dining across from me in the otherwise empty restaurant a maroon robed Tibetan monk and a young friend enjoyed some chicharron and an arepa. As I was leaving I almost told them they should try the burger next time.

“My Mom hasn’t tried it yet,” Osorio told me when I asked what the family matriarch thought of his wife’s creation.

Areperia Arepa Lady, 77-17 37th Ave., Jackson Heights, 917-745-1111

11/01/21 3:39pm
Filipino breakfast of champions featuring a whole smoked milkfish, two fried eggs, eggplant, and tomato salad.

It’s been a while since I logged on . . . by that I mean posting on C+M, but more specifically filing a dispatch about Filipino breakfast. Many restaurants in Woodside’s Little Manila and elsewhere in Queens offer various silog platters including longsilog, which features sweet and fatty pork longganisa sausage, and tosilog, which highlights sweet cured pork. Today was the first time I saw tinapsilog ($11.20) on a Filipino breakfast menu though.

“It’s a smoked fish,” the waiter informed me. “Is it like dasilog?” I inquired further. “Yeah, but smoked,” he responded.

Not entirely sure what to expect, I decided to give tinapsilog a try, if only to better understand how they arrived at the price $11.20. I was absolutely floored by what landed on the table. I’ve seen plenty of whole fish before, but this milkfish was absolutely beautiful. A thin sheet of golden amber skin stretched over the flesh. Best of all, that skin was shatteringly crunchy and smokey, almost like a fish bacon. The platter came with two sunny side up eggs; some Chinese eggplant; tomatoes; the requisite sinangag, or garlic fried rice; and some vinegar to dip the fish into.

I’m not quite sure of the prep beyond the smoking, but I’m going to guess it was fried because every bit of skin and bone including the head and tail was super crunchy.

A lot of people ask what inspires me when it comes to food writing and my stock answer is usually something like: “Look, if I eat something absolutely amazing, I’m almost physically compelled to write about it immediately.” In case you are wondering today’s breakfast met that criteria.

Amazing Grace, 69-02 Roosevelt Ave., Woodside, (718) 335-7036

09/06/21 1:00pm

Like many a good eater, I’m a fan of crispy pork belly. Here in Queens, Colombian chicharron and Filipino lechon kawali abound. And in my little corner of the World’s Borough—Elmhurst’s Thai Town there’s moo krob—Thai style crispy pork.

At its best, it is shatteringly crisp, and last night I was quite pleased to have the best version I have ever eaten at Sabay Thai Cuisine. Run by Chef Busaya Jeamjenkarn, Sabay is a sleeper of a restaurant, better known in the local Thai community than by foodies. It boasts a vast menu, including lots of Isan specialties. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that I’d never set foot in the place until I moved into the neighborhood last summer.

Until recently those Northeastern dishes like Isan style beef tartare and an excellent, well-balanced pad Thai were the sum total of my experience with Sabay’s menu. The other night I had a hankering for Thai style crispy pork though. “Is it really crispy?” I asked before ordering, since there’s little worse than soggy fried pork belly.

I opted for moo krob kra pow, a preparation made with a spicy Thai basil sauce. Soon a plate piled with golden brown pieces of pork belly along with blistered bits of skin all shot through with basil, chilies, garlic and onions appeared. I could hardly wait to eat it! I snuck a piece of crunchy skin to munch on before taking the requisite photo.

Ordered medium spicy, Sabay’s moo krob kra pow still packed respectable heat thanks to a trifecta of dried chilies, fresh Thai birdseyes, and long green hots. Typically I like to add a few spoonfuls of chilies in fish sauce, but not this time.

“You are making me hungry,” Chef Busaya said as she heard me happily crunching away on her creation. “How do you get it so crunchy?” I asked. “Do you pour hot oil on it?” “No we just boil and then let it marinate in vinegar and lime overnight,” she responded. “And then we bake it the next day. It’s easy.”

I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect that Chef Busaya’s moo krob recipe is slightly more complex than she makes it out to be. I’m absolutely certain that I will be eating much more of her crispy pork in the near future though.

Sabay Thai Cuisine, 75-19 Broadway, Elmhurst, (718) 424-9054

08/22/21 10:17pm
Gai yang, corn salad, and pork tongue made for a great late summer meal.

One of the best things about living in the heart of Elmhurst’s Thai town is that I have a front row seat to all the goings on in New York City’s hotbed of Thai culinary culture from the bad—like the closing of northern Thai stalwart Lamoon—to the good surprises like fresh durian at Thai Thai Grocery and new restaurants like Eat Gai, the Elmhurst outpost of the critically acclaimed Essex Market khao man gai specialist.

I’ve been eagerly watching the development of the Eat Gai space, which used to be Indonesian restaurant Upi Jaya, for months. I’m pretty sure owner Bryan Chunton and his partners got tired of me and every other neighbor stopping by to ask “You open yet?” Well, this Saturday as tropical storm Henri sidled into town Eat Gai opened its doors for a soft opening dinner. As a rule I don’t write about restaurants when they are in soft opening mode, but I made an exception, especially since I was eager to try what Chunton had described to me as Thai style rotisserie chicken. I’m a big fan of pollo a la brasa—whether Colombian or Peruvian—but I’d never had Thai style rotisserie chicken.

I found the specialty of the house gai yang or “roast chicken” just below and to the left of the menu’s tag line “Thai Chicken Specialist.” I opted for a half bird ($16.95), rounding it out with a Thai corn salad ($9.95) and roasted pork tongue ($7.95). The bird itself was fragrant, juicy, and tender. Chunton told me the restaurant uses smaller birds because they’re tastier. Something about really good roast chicken always makes me want to eat like a caveman and Eat Gai’s version was no exception.

The bird is served with two variations on jaew sauce, one is only slightly spicy the emphasis on tamarind, the other fairly vibrates with salt, chili, and lime leaf. I prefer the spicier version, but really chicken this good needs no adornment. The corn salad, a summery take on tom yum, rounded everything out making for a great meal on a rainy night.

Chunton was kind enough to introduce me to his chef, Mukda Sakulclanuwat, who hails from the town of Mukdan in Thailand’s Isan region. She shared a few of the secrets of her glorious chicken with me. For one thing she marinates it for two days in a mixture of lemongrass, cilantro, garlic, and coconut milk, rendering it tender and fragrant.

“I grew up with this food in my neighborhood in Isan,” she recalled. “Every day I helped my friend make this. After we would finish here Mom would let us go play.”

When asked whether she brushed it with anything while it was cooking, she thought for few beats and said, “Oh yes pork fat.” And that folks is why I always seek a specialist when it comes to street food.

Eat Gai, 76-04 Woodside Ave., Elmhurst

10/05/20 11:20pm

Spicy and herbaceous, a contender for Elmhurst’s best chicken feet.

Pata Market, located in the heart of Elmhurst’s Thai Town is many things to many people: a community bulletin board for those seeking apartments and jobs; a source for Thai snacks, including Lays chips; and a place to score bespoke tom yum and prepared foods.

A month ago I moved into the neighborhood and now I find myself at Pata Market more and more, which is how I found the subject of today’s post. When I saw the container marked kanom jeen nam ya pa on the counter whose ingredients included rice noodle and chicken feet, I was wondering where the noodles were, but my friend behind the counter pointed out another takeout container filled with noodles and all manner of herbs. (more…)

08/16/20 10:03pm

I’m not sure whether the catfish pad prik khing from iCook Thai Cook falls under what’s sometimes referred to as Thai Royal Cuisine. What I do know is I can’t resist a punny headline. Nor can I resist Boonnum “Nam” Thongngoen’s vibrant Thai cooking. So I was very happy to hear her Elmhurst restaurant, which shares a space with the hotpot restaurant iCook, reopened on Friday for outdoor dining.

Like a lot of things these days, P’Nam’s menu has adapted. The major change is the addition of a half dozen $15 set menu items that I call Thai happy meals, each served with soup and rice. That’s where I found catfish pad prik khing.

“I have order envy,” my dining companion said eying the translucent fried basil leaves and curlicue of green peppercorns adorning the ruddy catfish. It tastes even better than it looks, thanks to the curry paste that hums with the warmth of chili and ginger and the perfume of galangal, lemongrass, and lime leaves. The fried catfish is lovely, and, like the paste itself, unabashedly spicy. So I was glad for the rice as well as a mellow bowl of kai pa lo, egg and tofu in a sweet five spice broth.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that in addition to offering extra rice, the waiter encouraged me to finish my soup. Welcome back P’Nam and company!

iCook Thai Cook, 81-17 Broadway, Elmhurst, 929-522-0886

04/16/20 8:59pm

“It’s all gone. You should call ahead next time and pre-order,” my friend Elvi at Indo Java Groceries said the other day when she read the disappointment on my face. It was scarcely 1 p.m. and they were all out of the soup I’d planned to have for lunch.

I’d learned about the soup—whose name is lost in a fog of COVID anxiety—from looking at the store’s Instagram page, which I dutifully checked last night to reserve a plate of lontong cap go meh. Longtong, a pressed rice cake is often eaten with satay and in a spicy soup, but I’d never had this version. Chef Rebecca of Mamika’s Homemade Cuisine told me lontong cap go meh is a Central Javan specialty eaten on the 15th day of Lunar New Year.

It was sold as a kit of sorts at the shop. One compartment of the plastic takeout box was filled with chewy lontong topped with the ground soy bean that Rebecca characterizes as “a must,” and other devoted to a giant bag filled with a broth of chayote cooked in a chili-laced coconut milk broth. The last compartment was occupied by opor ayam—chicken cooked with onion, garlic, coriander powder, turmeric and coconut milk—and sambal goreng ati ampela, spicy chicken livers and gizzards. All in all it made for a very satisfying late lunch.

Like Fefe Ang of Taste of Surabaya, Rebecca is helping to feed workers at local hospitals. And like Fefe she delivers, just send a DM to her Instagram account. So even if you can’t make it to Indo Java, you can have a taste of Indonesia come to you. But if you can, you might want to stop by on Saturday’s when the market is stocked with all sorts of dishes trucked in from Philadelphia. Talk about brotherly love.

Indo Java Groceries, 85-12 Queens Blvd, Elmhurst, 718-789-2241