HO Dinner: Lula Mae 5/17/2023 5:30pm

We have two seats available for our next HO dinner, 5:30pm on Wednesday 5/17/2023 at

If you’d like to join, please respond here!

Just bumping this up. Anyone?

Thanks! This was on my to-do list today.

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Alright! As there are no new takers, changing the reservation to a party of 6.

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Looking forward to seeing @SteveR (+1), @JenKalb (+1) & @ninkat at Lula Mae tomorrow, 5/17/2023, 5:30pm. Let’s eat!

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Lula Mae is turning out some impressive food. We were seated in the comparatively peaceful but very dim (and kinda loud) back room, which is the excuse I’m going with for the quality of these pix.

Cha Kwai with Tom Yum Butter. This is a cruller. An excellent cruller. With a sweet-ish, spicy-ish butter.

Market salad. I usually don’t have high hopes for such things, but the dressing redeemed it.

Hamachi crudo. Is never bad.

Not everyone was a fan of the duck salad, and I didn’t try it, but it certainly is pleasing to the eye.

Crab fried rice, a dark horse. Doesn’t look like much, and indeed didn’t taste much like fried rice (not crispy, not eggy). And yet, was fabulous. So crabby!

Rice noodles with vegetables and, obviously, an egg.

Not pictured: cucumber salad (very nice), bok choy (too sweet, too tough, according to me), morning glory (probably the best of the approximately five versions of this I’ve had), fried chicken. And I see from the itemized bill that someone ordered an IPA called Baby Kittens, good lord.

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Although my wife and I enjoyed the meal, I’ll agree that it was “some impressive food” without giving it an overall recommendation. The cruller was well done, similar to the churros (no cinnamon here) one can find around the city. At $8 each, the excellent butter didn’t make that work for me. The duck was not tasty enough & certainly not a $33 dish. The cucumber w/shallots was fine, but lacked much oomph. Better versions of cold cucumber &/or bok Choy dishes can be found at lots of places, with better dish prep. & portion sizes expected for the $16 each these cost. Everything else was fine, with the hamachi and the crab rice being the dishes I thought stood out. What I walked away thinking, however, was that I had a good meal of no particular ethnicity at a “trendy place” price. I certainly don’t have a better idea of Cambodian food having been here & had hoped I would. Anyone remember “Cambodian Cuisine” in Ft. Greene? Well, this aint that.

I remember it from when it lived on the UES.

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And as discussed:

From here:

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I have a somewhat higher opinion of the food, although I agree it was pricey - that mood lighting will cost you!

That’s a hard no.

Look, when the revolution comes, all you’re gonna have to eat is bugs. So best get used to it.

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Can they be… sea bugs? :smirk:

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They taste like soft shelled crabs. Except for the head, which tastes like poison. So please learn from my mistake and don’t eat the head.

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You can have the head. And the rest. Forever. You’re welcome.

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Think of them as soft shell crabs… with hair.

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I prefer my foods to have undergone at least a modicum of hair removal. It doesn’t have to be a Brazilian, but… it’s not a texture I actively seek out :wink:

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Well, since we’re off and running on tangents…
I grew up across the street from a live chicken market. They’d kill it, my mother would take it home and cook it. Some times she went to Waldbaums supermarket and bought a packaged chicken. Either way, she’d first hold it over an open gas oven flame to singe the hairs off before cooking. Sometimes she was more successful than others.

What kind of chicken has hair???

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Tangentially continuing… the Silkie, for example: