Mandalay Restaurant

Second Avenue Deli closed, so I’m in desperate need of a tip on a good corned beef sandwich. I haven’t found too many great burritos in this town, so I often test my Spanish skills in hopes of finding one to rival a west coaster. And I’m slightly obessesed with pickles, so I tend to nudge the conversation in that direction if I sense someone might know his way around a full sour.

But I usually do NOT go out of my way to get tips on where to find fried chicken. Although fried chicken is one of my favorite foods on the planet, I get enough of it right here in the comfort of my own home. My special lady friend Melissa, drawing on the techniques of countless generations of Khymer-style Thai Muslim chefs from her mother’s “Neighborhood of Kitchens” in Bangkok, fries up chicken at home like no New York City fry cook ever could.

She guards the family recipe with her life, but I can tell you she fries it first and then puts it in the oven so as not to burn it in the oil but still cook it all the way through. She also makes a dipping sauce for it with lime juice, fish sauce, hot pepper, and some other secret ingredients. And she serves it over jasmine rice.

The results are heavenly every time. I’ve never had fried chicken with skin so crispy or meat so juicy, much less both factors combined perfectly. The eating experience Melissa provides makes your eyes light up, as evidenced by this shot of Melissa’s friend Melanie going in for her second bite:

But there is something about me that makes people think I want to know where to get fried chicken. Most likely it’s the shape of my face, which, precisely BECAUSE of fried chicken, is round. I used to be skinny, believe or not. My ribs actually showed until I was 8 years old.

It was then that I discovered the joys of that sacred deep fried bird and began riding my bike to Roy Rogers multiple per week. I used my allowance, and when that ran out, I sold baseball cards to finance my fried chicken expeditions. This continued unabated for a few months, and I steadily gained weight without understanding why. My mom noticed the startling weight gain too, but she didn’t know why either. I wasn’t telling her where I went after school every other day, and she chalked up the second chin to our purchase of a Nintendo, which occured simultaneously.

Finally, as I was chowing down on a drumstick one afternoon, my mom and brother walked in to my Roy Rogers on the way home from my brother’s swim practice. “What are you doing here?!?” my mom asked, very surprised to see my greasy face. “What are YOU doing here?” I replied. “I come here all the time.”

My body never recovered. My ribs never showed again. But I never lost my love for fried chicken. My mom took it upon herself to teach me well that I can’t continue to eat fried chicken two or three times a week if I wanted to live to see the next century. So nowadays, I try to keep my fried chicken consumption down to that Thai fried chicken that Melissa cooks when the mood strikes her.

Still, I cannot resist good old soul food style fried chicken every once in a while. I’ve been known to stop at Popeye’s from time to time (a step up from Roy’s, I believe). And, as I say, people tend to tell me where to get fried chicken without my asking. After I cross the Manhattan Bridge, I keep getting told to go to Ruthie’s Restaurant a couple blocks east of the Fulton Street Mall in Downtown Brooklyn. Not only did I get multiple recommendations from my fares, but the great Robert Seitsema of the Village Voice gave Ruthie’s a favorable nod as well.

Our friends Mark and Jack, who like to squeeze into our tiny apartment whenever Melissa is frying chicken, came along for the Ruthie’s run when they heard Melissa wouldn’t be cooking. We were immediately welcomed with open arms and friendly smiles by everyone from the counter girl to the waiter to Ruthie herself as she did the cooking in the back. We all felt right at home. And when the food came, we were feeling even better.

The chicken looked perfect. But it was too hot to eat, having just come out of the oil. It was practically still snapping and popping like it was in the pan. So we dug into the sides. PHENOMENAL. EVERY ONE OF THEM. The mac n’ cheese was cheesy and crispy just like i like it. The collard greens were flavored with bits of smoked turkey which made the vegetable as tasty as a good plate of meat. The black-eyed peas were delicious as well, exuding an almost pickled aroma. And the candied yams were better than any I’ve had during my 26 Thanksgiving dinners.

Finally, the chicken had cooled down enough to tear into without giving ourselves second degree burns. It was everything we hoped it would be. The skin was crispy and bursting with flavor. And the meat, even the white meat, was tender and juicy. I want to make clear that I still prefer Melissa’s Thai fried chicken, but I could see myself getting back into my Roy-Rogers-8-years-old-selling-baseball-cards-to-eat mode with Ruthie’s.

After all that, dessert didn’t disappoint. The red velvet cake might have been a little dry, but the sweet potato pie made up for it and more. I didn’t think anything could be sweeter than those candied yams, but this pie took the cake. The crust tasted homemade and buttery, and the filling was silky smooth and sweet like Melissa. Mark modeled it for me:

Even though we felt like we were at home, I have to say that eating at Ruthie’s isn’t quite as comfortable as actually eating at home. Her food is so good, it attracts everyone to her door, including the local junkies. As we ate, the man pictured here hovered in the doorway begging for some collard greens:

He wasn’t so much begging for them like a homeless person on the street would, but he was begging for them like a child would from his mother. They are that good. When he got to his feet, he stood in the doorway pleading with Ruthie, “Just a little a your greens Rootie. Pleeeeease. Just a little Rootie.” He seemed to know her.

One of the things I love about that woman is that she didn’t just say, “Get the hell outta here” like most owners would. She told him, “Don’t come here LIKE THIS. Don’t disrespect my place.” She wasn’t saying he could never have her collard greens. That would be cruel. Her greens are the stuff of life. She was just saying that he couldn’t have them “like this.”

Finally, he proved to be too much, and she took it upon herself to kick him to the curb. Take a look at this video (no sound necessary because you can’t understand what the junkie is saying), and watch closely at the end as Ruthie comes to our rescue: Ruthie To The Rescue On Youtube

Don’t tell my mom, but I think I might start eating more fried chicken.

Ruthie’s Restaurant, 96 DeKalb, Downtown Brooklyn/Fort Greene

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Ba Xuyen

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Noodle Bar

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If you were to ask someone from my parents’ generation to conjure an image of Vietnam, he might well speak of sitting at the dinner table and watching the siege of Khe San on the evening news. He would recall seeing huge US Air Force C-130s landing on the base’s airstrip under heavy fire, then unloading ammunition and medical supplies. Before their propellers fell silent, scores of wounded American soldiers were loaded onto the cargo planes to take off again under more heavy fire.

Nearly 40 years after those nightly newscasts, I visited Vietnam without the company of the US Air Force. I hadn’t considered that I too might have to be medivaced out of the country a broken man. Although the last shot fired in anger at an American by the man in the black pajamas was now more than a quarter century ago, I found Vietnam a harsh and torturous place. My own tour in Nam nearly resulted in yet another American casualty. However, the extent of my injuries reached only to the sensitive area around my upper buttocks and lower back.

Weeks of touring the country exacted a heavy toll on my tender, fleshy backside. Whereas my countrymen had arrived in country lean, mean fighting machines after six weeks on Paris Island, I had prepared myself only with extra shifts seated behind the wheel of my yellow cab. My job gives me the flexibility to travel, but driving 12 hours a day, exercising only my right foot upon my Crown Victoria’s pedals, turns my body to mush. Hard traveling through the Mekong Delta on a wooden boat and across the Central Highlands on a Soviet era motorcycle had tightened my atrophied lower back into excruciating knots.

(The Mekong Delta)

At the end of my journey, already in agony, I traveled to Hanoi by bus. I had not yet learned to become a savvy Vietnam traveler, so, stupidly, I chose a seat above the wheel well, cutting my leg room by more than half. As a result, I spent the entire length of the ride from Hoi An to Hanoi in a one-legged quasi fetal position. It was as though I was performing a jackknife off the high dive with 17 hours of hang time. I had discovered a new definition of pain and suffering.

(Everyone travels rough in Vietnam; Look closely and you’ll see the guy in pink holding one kid on the bike in front of him and two behind)

I was laying flat on a marble bench by Hoan Kiem, one of Hanoi’s many lakes, when I was approached by a young man who wanted to sell me post cards. When I told him that I didn’t want any, he took the rejection as a cue to take a break from hocking his wares. He sat next to me on the park bench and introduced himself as Pham Van Tai in excellent English. We conversed quite freely, and I learned that in addition to selling post cards to tourists he was a college graduate and drove a taxi. We shared a moment that trascended our nations’ stormy past relations when I responded that I too was a college graduate who drove a taxi back in New York.

By this point in the conversation I felt comfortable enough with him to complain, and I regaled him with my harrowing tale of woe on the bus the night before. When Tai heard this he excitedly told me about Hanoi’s famous back remedy in Lang Le Mai, otherwise known throughout Vietnam as “Snake Village.”

Since I had nothing on my agenda for the rest of the day aside from laying flat on my back, I agreed to go with Tai in his taxi. His taxi, it turned out, was a yellow cab similar to my own that he had to borrow from his cousin. He took me across a bridge over the Red River and deep into an outer borough of Hanoi. After reaching a concrete village of sorts on what must have been the outskirts of town, I started to notice paintings of snakes on every other building as we bumped along the wet dirt sideroads.

(Of course I didn’t have my camera when I met Tai, but this is a good shot of my brethren yellow cab in Hanoi)

We arrived at our destination, a three-story bunker of a building with glass, waterless aquariums full of slithering snakes lining either side of the doorway. The proprietor came out to greet us promptly. He immediately got down to business with Tai as his interpreter. Neither of them had explained to me what the back remedy was exactly. He offered me a cobra for $40US or a water snake for $25US. I had gleaned that I would be in some way eating this remedy, and I had not paid more than $2US for a meal in Vietnam yet, so I opted for the less expensive option on the menu. Tai took it upon himself to try to convince me to buy the cobra because, in addition to curing my ailing back, it would give me the stamina to have “boom-boom” 4 or 5 times that night. I told Tai that I had a girlfriend back in New York, to which he replied that this would be only for fun. “I am not trying to make a baby back at home Tai. That is just for fun too.” Silence filled the air, and a perplexed frown washed over his face.

The proprietor sat me down at a small table inside the building, set with 2 jiggers, each half filled with a particularly strong vodka. Before I could ask Tai what I was supposed to do, I was was hissed at by an unsettlingly large water snake being held in front of me. The proprietor then brandished a razor blade on a stick, startling me further. As I watched, slack-jawed, he pierced the underside of the snake’s writhing body, made a 2 inch long incision, and squeezed the thick, oozing blood into one of the jiggers on the table until it was full. He then reached his finger into the wound and pulled out the snake’s still-beating, gnocchi-shaped heart and plopped it into the same jigger, causing blood to spill out over the sides and stain the table cloth red. I looked up at Tai in amazement, and he motioned for me to drink the cup. So, with the water snake still hissing at me, I took the harshest shot of my life and, involuntarily, pounded the empty glass back down on the table.

I smiled proudly at Tai, but my expression quickly shifted to nervous consternation when I remembered the other half-filled jigger. By the time I looked back to the table, the proprietor was digging his finger into the snake’s body closer to its tail. Out came another small organ, this one turning the vodka an unholy neon blue color. The snake was taken away, and I was left there with Tai and my shot, now turning aqua, now teal, now turquoise. Tai had lost the English word for this organ, and for some reason, I refused to drink it until he remembered, as if pancreas was somehow more appetizing than spleen. At the end of my listing of every single organ I could remember from 6th grade biology class, Tai recalled the words “gall bladder.” After a few more moments of hesitation, I took that shot as well. Replacing the heart shot in its short-lived spot at the top of the chart, the gall bladder shot quickly became the harshest shot of my life.

Tai and I then sat down to the best meal I had in all of Vietnam. We drank snake wine until we were drunk, and stuffed ourselves with soup of snake, fried snake, steamed snake, grilled snake, boiled snake, sauteed snake, barbequed snake, and roasted snake with rice. Tai and I talked of life as we munched on our snake spring rolls, and I felt a closer connection with him than I have had with any of my fellow cabbies in Cha Cha’s garage back in New York. I am sure our friendship would have blossomed had I not left for the 20-hour flight to America the next day. My back, however, was good as new.

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So when the Army of Siam invaded Cambodia near the turn of the 19th century, the village was subject to a sort of reverse ethnic cleansing. The entire population of villagers, along with their culinary secrets, were forcibly relocated to a crowded neighborhood along a canal near the center of Bangkok. The people were made to cook for the royal court and this part of town became known as Baan Krua: The Neighborhood Of Kitchens.

My girlfriend, Melissa Dara, was born in Washington, DC . Had she been born just a decade earlier, it would have been in that fabled neighborhood. Her mother, as well as the previous dozen generations of Khmer-style Thai Muslim chefs, was born in that unique place on earth.

(A small part of the family back in Baan Krua; Notice Melissa with the huge smile in the middle and King Bhumibol with the suit on the wall in the back)

When I met Melissa, she had been learning the techniques of the Neighborhood of Kitchens from her mother for only three years. But Melissa and I were just friends, and it was kept a secret from me. I recall only vague memories of incredibly inviting smells each time I dropped by to pick her up or watch movies. I never had the opportunity to sit down to eat with the family.

About two years ago, Melissa and I began going out. She spoke of her mother’s cooking often, and soon I was invited to dinner. I was treated to a feast that to this day ranks as one of the best meals I’ve ever had. I have only a fuzzy recollection of the spicy shrimp and ginger soup, fried chicken with garlic and white pepper, and shredded beef jerky with palm sugar and shallots because my pleasures synapses were firing so fast I actaully got a physical high. I told her mother that she shouldn’t have gone through all that extra trouble just because I was coming over, but the whole family was quick to point out that they feast like that about six days per week for as long as anyone could remember.

At that point, Melissa had spent nearly a decade as an apprentice in her mother’s kitchen. And she diligently kept a notebook in both Thai and English of family recipes and cooking secrets. But she’d never cooked without her mother by her side.

Finally, just about a year ago, she tried her hand at cooking on her own in her Soho apartment. She bought a mortar and pestal for the occasion, and she used it to crush the shrimp that she mixed with the ground beef and peas so that it would achieve an ideal level of moistness. She served it inside at perfectly formed pocket of fried egg. Melissa had succeeded in making Kai Yudt-Sai (which translates to “egg-stuffed with stuffing”). We sat down at her counter on Vandam Street to a meal perfected over centuries, a meal quite literally fit for a king. And it was every bit as good as her mother’s.

(The chef gets ready to taste her Woonsen Ob, bean thread with chicken and shrimp in her New York kitchen)

Since that inaugural home-cooked Khmer-style Thai Muslim feast, my culinary life has been a waking dream. Melissa makes her mother proud about three times a week. And she’s already mastered more dishes than I can remember the names of, though her mother claims to have more culinary knowledge than she could possibly pass on in a lifetime. I can’t decide which is my favorite, the Nua Sawan (”heavenly beef”) with roasted coriandor:

or the Pad macaroni, a childhood favorite of Melissa’s:

(Here’s the Pad Macaroni during the brief moment before the eggs are cooked in)

I have the feeling I’ll never decide.

The only problem is that Melissa refuses to go out for Thai food in New York. She can’t imagine that anything could compare to her or her mother’s cooking, and she has a point. But I keep telling her that there is a large, recent immigrant population of Thais thriving in New York, and there are plenty of restaurants that could be phenomenal. I thought she might even learn something. Still, she resisted.

Melissa often rides shotgun with me in my cab to keep me company and chat with or gawk at my kooky fares. And last week, she was with me while I took three Thai restaurant workers from their job at one of the big, corporate Thai restaurants in Williamsburg back to their neighborhood along Roosevelt Avenue in Woodside, Queens. She spoke with them in Thai, and I had her ask where they eat great, cheap Thai food in Queens.

They all agreed that Sri Pra Phai was the best restaurant in the neighborhood. I reasoned with her that she goes out to eat when she visits Thailand, so why not explore Woodside. Eventually she caved.

(Evidence of Melissa going out to eat in Thailand with her Aunt Pa Pah: eating a coconut milk dessert at Lantay outside Bangkok)

Today, we went back to Woodside. Melissa was apprehensive. She seemed to feel as though she was cheating on her mother’s cooking. But she started to relax as soon as we walked through the door and caught a whiff of the restaurant. It didn’t smell exactly like home, but it really did smell like true Thai cuisine.

Naturally, I let Melissa do all of the ordering. We started with Kanom Cheeb, delicate steamed dumplings filled with chicken and shrimp, mostly because she knew they are a pain to make herself so we might as well take advantage of the restaurant kitchen. I tasted one and decided they were delicious. I eagerly looked at Melissa to see her reaction, and I witnessed a reluctant nod of approval. Once the waiter was out of ear shot, she said, “My mom makes them much better. . . but these are good. Oh my God, you gotta try my mom’s.” It was a start.

The Thai iced teas came, and we agreed that they were the real deal. I drank mine much too fast and ended up ordering a second. “As sweet and refreshing as anything I’ve had back in Thailand,” Melissa said.

Then it was time for the moment of truth. The main courses arrived. She ordered two of the most basic dishes that her mother makes. Melissa had already mastered both. We were served generous portions of Pad See-ew and chicken with basil.

(Melissa’s reluctant first bite of chicken with basil in New York that she didn’t cook herself; That’s spicy Thai)

She took her first bite from the chicken with basil, and she spent at least two full minutes tasting it without looking at me before she spoke. I was ecstatic when she gave it the thumbs up. The chicken was tender and the spice allowed the flavor to come through the heat without being overpowering.

The Pad See-ew was more than adequate as well. The noodles were fresh and tasty, the chinese broccoli had been cooked in well, and the beef was flavorful. Obviously, Melissa could have done better herself, but Sri Pra Phai has proven itself a worthy substitute. Most importantly, Melissa left the restaurant with a smile on her face.

We will likely return to Sri Pra Phai relatively soon. And we might even try a different Thai restaurant if we get a solid recommendation. But tonight, Melissa will be busy mastering her mother’s Drunken Noodles. And I will eat like a king.

Sri Pra Phai, 64-13 39th Ave, Woodside, Queens

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I’m no snob. I love food so long as it tastes good. But when I’m driving you to some distant corner of Queens, and I ask you what the absolute best thing is to eat around there, please don’t tell me, “Well. . . There’s the White Castle.”

I know there’s the White Castle. I know MacDonald’s is open 24 hours. I know Subway makes a mean toasted BMT. What I don’t know is that the deli man on your corner is from Nigeria, and he puts a pot of his grandma’s peanut soup on counter every night. I don’t know that the pizza shop two blocks up that looks like every other pizza shop in the city is good enough that people come from all over the borough for a slice. I don’t know which jerk store on your street has the spicier chicken unless you tell me.

Last night, one of my fares understood what I was getting at. I picked him up on Bedford and North 7th. He barely spoke a word of English, but he managed to communicate to me that he was going to Elmhurst, that he was from the Songkhla province in the far south of Thailand, and that he worked at a Thai restaurant in Williamsburg (I could smell the shallots and rice vinegar on him the moment he got in). We shared a special moment as we sang a Thai pop song called Pid Pby Laau from the early 90’s that my sweet Thai girlfriend had taught me.

As we crossed the Koz, I managed to communicate to him that I wasn’t particularly hungry, but that I just wanted something delicious from his neighborhood. He thought for a while, and then asked me if a shake was what I was looking for. “Perfect,” I said. I dropped him off, and he gave me a good tip. Seeming a bit ashamed that he was not sending me to a Thai restaurant, he gave me directions to Minangasli, an Indonesian place on Whitney Avenue. He told me to order the durian shake.