Khmer Fish Cakes
Shrimp and Crabmeat Spring Rolls
Prahok (lettuce wrap and crudite platter with 3 “dips”)
Baked Amok (seafood curry mousseline with chunks of shrimp and scallop)
Phnom Penh Roast Duck in a red curry sauce
Shrimp and Crabmeat Fried Rice
Spicy Siem Reap Noodles
Mango Mousse Cake
My guests had never eaten Cambodian food before, and were blown away by pretty much every dish. Now that I have taught myself how to make baked / steamed amok / hor mok, I will try the grilled amok next time (the owner suggested I try it this time, but none of my guests had ever tried the traditional version before, so I stuck with it).
We ordered at least 2 dishes too many (even before dessert) but every plate was wiped clean.
I’m not a dessert person but the mango mousse cake was lovely, and came with most of a perfectly ripe mango on the side. And they have a nice Tokaji on the dessert menu too (which is pretty big now, even though not advertised).
Went to Baazi last night as a treat to a vegetarian friend, having fond memories of predecessor Awadh. they definitely have good technique - the kale tower with crispy fried kale dumplings layered piled up garnished with mango and a few pomegranate kernels and and then anointed with some dahi and the traditional chaat chutneys was great
the cauliflower app was deepfried and heavily sauced - I loved the spicing of the sauce but it was TOO SWEET, a flaw in every one of the dishes we chose, and would not have ordered it knowing it was deep fried .
Then we had their dal maknni, which I fondly remembered from a pre-pandemic visit, the eggplant dish, and an interesting cashew based methi malai curry of vegetables. The methi malai which I might say had a fairly light dose of the fenugreek leaves, though I note it did seem to be made with the ubiquitous frozen mixed vegetables which we found delicious though it shared the flaws of the other sauced dishes in this dish it may have come from coconut.
However all the dishes were heavily sauced, with an unwelcome sweetness and were very rich which gave the meal a monotonous tone. I was especially disappointed in the bagnar e baigan, the quotient of sauce to eggplant was too high, although I liked the spicing the sweetness and the over richness of the whole thing threw me off.
This monotony was our own fault in sticking to the veg side of the menu - the meat dishes at the next table looked and smelled great - but I think they need to look to the richness and sweetness issue in their saucing.
I can’t speak for the vegetable dishes you had, as the only one we have there is the cauliflower, and not as an appetizer but as an accompaniment to the meat dishes. I never noticed it being too sweet, just very spicy which we like. The meat dishes are heavily sauced but we just don’t finish all the sauce so it’s not an issue for us. We love the goat bihari, butter chicken and lamb shank, and I never thought any of these were sweet. If you do go back I’d be interested in hearing whether you agree.
Ive had great meat dishes there too, in the past, dont know what the issue was with these others. Even the chutneys with the chaat were a bit too sweet for my taste, as was the dal. To my taste the cauliflower (never would have ordered if I knew it was breaded) reminded me of a chinese dish, except that the spice palette was totally different. My companion loved all the food so THAT was a success!
Cauliflower sounds like gobi manchurian the way it’s often done here, rather than the menu description of coconut and chilli sauce, too bad.
I hear you on sweet, this is often a complaint in Mumbai when a vegetarian menu is skewed to communities who like sweeter food, but I haven’t encountered it much here. But I’m confused by the criticism of saucy – the eggplant dish is described as a stew, so it would be weird if it was dry. Also, everything is intended to be eaten with rice or roti / naan, so the sauce is necessary, or you’d be forced to order dal (which I’ve had to do when we skewed to mostly kababs).
There are “dry” vegetables listed as sides – sauteed potatoes (which sounds like a standard aloo sabzi) and lovely crisp okra “chips” which I usually order as a starter.
The goat is excellent.
My complaint on some things is the unnecessary use of things like cheese to “modernize” – like the seekh kabab (we scraped it all off).
my complaint is mostly about my ordering, the sweetness and the over-richness of everything was a bit monotonous. The eggplant dish had coconut (obviously a bit sweet) in addition to peanut in the sauce (not perceptible)
I just thought the eggplant was buried in the sauce, I was thinking of a dryer dish when I decided to try it, and I seemed to recall the eggplants were stuffed (I asked the waiter and he said not). My hyderabadi recipe provides for the baby eggplants to be stuffed and the gravy include curry leaves which this one did not but I note it does have a bit of sugar along with the coconut. I will see how the leftovers taste - the portions were very ample
The eggplant dish doesn’t sound like Baghaare Baingan, given that Baghaare litrerally means “tempered” aka sauteed .
(As an aside, it’s interesting that the dish is attributed to Hyderabad, given that the peanut / coconut combination is pretty classically Maharashtrian, but the Marathas did make it all the way down south, as sambhar was apparently originally a Maratha dish as well.)
We met the kids at 3pm at golden palace dim sum on division, lots of available tables, every dish was excellent, $75 for four people, at the moment this is my favorite dim sum joint in manhattan’s Chinatown.
We saved some room for the well-regarded North Dumpling the filling tasted a little of cinnamon, wrappers were thick-ish and tough, don’t think we’ll be back.
Noticed quite a few new places, I have some catching up to do. Fok noodles on Mott looked interesting:
Chalong (Hell’s Kitchen) - Finally made it. Concur. Really excellent. Chic, great service, and more comfortable than most Thai in the area. Nate Limwong from Fish Cheeks and Soothr at the helm.
Jeeb Pu - Crab, shrimp, and pork dumplings were great. Shumai on crack.
Peek Gai Tod - Fantastic sizzling hot Chicken wings. All small ‘mid’ wings which I much prefer. They carry more flavor, and usually crispier as was the case here.
Sator Goog - A fiery combination of ground pork, stinky beans (looking like Fava), shrimp and curry paste. Waiter warned Thai spicy but it was more like borderline. Really nice flavor.
Crab Curry - As good and well balanced as they get. Includes a small crispy soft shell crab but wasn’t really needed
Tom Som Pla - Nice southern style Tom Yum soup with Chilean sea bass chunks and Enoki of all sizes. The rest of the group found it over lemongrassed, but I didn’t mind
Mee Pum Riang - Southern style Pad Thai with shrimp. One of us cant tolerate too much spice so figured we’ll try it. It still had just enough heat, and was actually one of the best dishes. The coconut curry cream really transforms it, in the looks dept as well.
Toni and I are again spending July in Crown Heights, with a focus on eating, music, and neighborhood explorations. We’re hoping to tour mostly via city bus, which lets you see the city in detail.
Suggestions for interesting restaurants in neighborhoods less visited by tourists would be very welcome.
And if anyone is up for a food crawl somewhere, we’d love that too.
Of course, the possibilities are endless. Here is a “short list” of options just for Brooklyn alone. Amazing place to eat. Comments about these would be very welcome as well.
Gowanus - Claro (Mexican); Cotra (izakaya)(based on Ziggy’s reviews)
East New York - Forever Jerk; Ewe’s Delicious Treats (Nigerian)
Flatbush - Ethel Mae’s Soulfood Kitchen
Kensington/Ditmars Park - Dastarxan Kafe (Uzbek); Purple Yam (Filipino)
Borough Park - BK Seafood Market (Chinese); Si n’shpi (Albanian)
Sunset Park - East Harbor Seafood Place (dim sum)
Flatlands - Lazeez (Sudanese)
Midwood/Gravesend - Falafel Tanami, Gulchatay (Uzbek), Moldova Restaurant; L&B Spumoni Gardens; Joe’s of Avenue U (Sicilian), Chayhana (Uzbek)
Sheepshead Bay - Randazzo’s Clam Bar, Burchak Pide (Turkish), Nargis Cafe (Uzbek), Tandhir Rokhat (Tajik/Uzbek)
Bay Ridge - Kelly’s Tavern, Tanoreen (Palestinian)
Bath Beach - Liu’s Shanghai
Brighton Beach/Coney Island - Varenichnaya (Ukrainian), Brighton Tandir (Uzbek), Cafe Kashkar (Uzbek)
We are around, available and interested in several of your above options. Just a couple of points:
-Purple Yam is gone. They retired
-Nargis moved to another location and it went from one of our recommended “go to” places to a “never again” place
-Joe’s of Ave U is a steam table place that’s hit or miss. We go a bit, as its one of the last of its ilk with a good (eye of the beholder I guess) spleen sandwich
Welcome back!
Will you be getting around by public transport or car?
Lazeez closed.
Assorted places I have saved:
– Ba Xuyen – banh mi (at the opp end of 8th ave / sunset park chinatown from East Harbor)
– Omar’s – Indian toppings on pizza
– Dastarxan Cafe + Urgut Tandir Express – there’s also a Tashkent market nearby
– Djerdan Burek + Si n’shpi – right across from each other (I’ve also had an Albanian place in Manhattan bookmarked for ages, will get there eventually)
– Alta Calidad – Mexican from an excellent Indian chef who pivoted
Industry city is fun if you haven’t been, lots of things planned on weekends. Tasting rooms for local sake and spirits, among other things (like a Sahadis)…
You could conduct a broad review of roti, doubles, & caribbean if you were so inclined.
East Harbor is your average big, bustling, dim sum spot, I wouldn’t tag it as destination food if you have decent dim sum near home, unless you are craving dim sum (which I always am).
(A crawl would be easiest somewhere with a high concentration of things to try and accessible by public transport – the turkish stretch around 5th, sunset park, or one of the central asian concentrations perhaps.)
There’s a new Cambodian restaurant called Bong … https://www.instagram.com/bong.nyc/
… that recently opened in Crown Heights. I’ve tried the chef-owner’s food at various pop-ups, and I’m keen to try her new place, but reservations (dinner Friday to Sunday only) are hard to come by.
Perhaps your visit could also prompt a group lunch at the newer location of Laghman Express … https://laghmanexpress.com/
… which opened over the winter at 2376 Coney Island Ave. That’s at Ave. U, in Homecrest, where’s there’s much more to see, at least by day.
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