It’s a popular thing, not new
Laghman Express, Bensonhurst. Only a couple of dishes for a quick meal. Good, not great.
Guyurou laghman - My usual at any Uyghur. The meat was good, but the entire dish had a weird metallic flavor. Not as good as Kashkar Cafe.
Spicy chicken with rice - Better. As spicy as it can get for a “Russian” place but the spicy sauce helped. Like a restrained Chongqing chicken served with bad rice.
Washed it down with Georgian Pear Lemonade which doesnt have any pear or lemon.
I like the concept and to be in and out in 30 minutes.
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Unusual shape for a galouti kebab (I’ve usually had them round and flat).
Looks yummy.
As a glance at the menu would reveal, they are Kakori kabab.
Let’s blame the hockey pucks Saar described to me as Galauti for those being on my mind.
My favorites there were the samsa and the dry fried noodles. Also the black fungus salad.
Need to go back.
I had meant to comment on your sup-par Saar experience. My own experience of their chicken kebabs – both the lasooni and the saffrony – over multiple orders over multiple years has always been excellent. Never dry (most recently three weeks ago). Sorry that yours were. It’s unfortunate that the lamb kebabs were misrepresented to you by your server. Taken on their own terms, I like them but not as much as the chicken. They’ve also had very good (but more expensive) lamb chops in the past, but they don’t seem to have them right now. Kebabs and a roti or naan is my standard order. Their other dishes can be hit or (mostly) miss.
sub-par
Given this I’m unlikely to go back just for kababs (that I already had a miss with), as there are excellent versions of those to be had at all the usual haunts in JH & Manhattan both.
sub-saar
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Haar-haar, yaar.
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Birria nachos from the truck on 6th and 52nd. Really tasty. Could have used a bit more pickled jalapeño though.
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Lungi, E 62nd & 1st, mostly South Indian, some Sri Lankan.
A solid start with a logo’d Ceylon Tiger, which I ordered because I forgot what arrak was. I remember now! I’m not a huge fan of arrak! Nandu chaaru, which did not seem like it would be a soup, but was a soup (and a good soup, according to me, with a lot of crab flavor), medhu vada, calamari, chile cheese dosa and idli, kochin kadala kari (i.e. chickpeas in a nice sauce), prawns with curry leaf, crab roast, eggplant. I didn’t get a picture of the dish that was most fascinating to me, vathal kozhambu, or turkey berry crisp. There were also all manner of hoppers - the consensus was that the plain ol’ hoppers were the best - such a nice fermented flavor. Generally, the vegetarian stuff was more successful than the seafood stuff (with the exception of the calamari, which held its own). The prawns and the crab were both overcooked and overwhelmed by their sauces.
This was the rare dinner where I came out at the end thinking I’d had the exact right amount of food. Should I take credit? Should Lungi?
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I’m going to posit that this is cultural. There’s heavily spiced )(and highly beloved) prawn, crab, and fish curry across most of India and Sri Lanka, not overwhelming, just expected.
With my own now-westernized protein expectations I often find the prawns “overcooked”, but that’s just how they’re cooked. Like the mussels at the Filipino place.
More excellence in NYT food journalism (or a strange boondoggle that someone thought was appealing)
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I didn’t want to make a sweeping generalization, but it’s hard not to since I can’t recall ever having seafood at a South Asian restaurant that I didn’t think was overdone. Same goes for the Caribbean.
Very, very bad use of NYT $ and real estate.
Yes, “over” and “under” are all cultural.
I remember a video someone linked here or on CH of a fish curry being made by fishermen with fresh catch (of hilsa) – the fish boiled and boiled and boiled till it was “done” to their liking. It was just out of the river, so I couldn’t think of any hygiene reasons for boiling that long, other than that they wanted the spices to cook to a certain point, and the rice was done by then.
Plus if you’re going to pick a fancy place to dump on, Carbone actually still has good food, so that was funny to me.
CHAMA MAMA UWS
The XLB at Joe’s reminded me that I still cannot fathom why 3 Georgian dumplings that were meaningfully less good cost the same as 8 Chinese ones.
I had a quick lunch at Chama Mama recently, featuring lamb khinkali, Imeruli khachapuri, and Chikhirtma / chicken soup (a lot like avgolemono). Plus a trio of adjika.
The Imeruli khachapuri was delicious, especially with the walnut and onion adjika.
But the meal left me thinking again about what people are and aren’t willing to pay for – I’m trying to think of a mid-level Indian restaurant asking $8 for 3 tiny portions of chutneys, or a Chinese one asking you to pay for chilli oil.
Aside from my question about 3 khinkali vs 8 xlb.
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CHINATOWN — JOE’s SHANGHAI, GREEN GARDEN VILLAGE, SHU JIAO FU ZHOU
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