World to Table

Emily, Jeff and Youngsun

It’s almost been two years since I first moved to Queens, but I find that there is still so much to see and explore. Since most of my friends either live in Brooklyn or Manhattan, I’m usually biking across the Pulaski Bridge into Brooklyn or hopping on the subway to Manhattan; I really haven’t had much of a chance to explore my own borough. But this all changed when I began to prepare and plan for Asian Feastival. In the past few months, I’ve spent more time in Queens than ever before. As a result, I’ve gotten a chance to know more Queens people and Queens places, and I really love it.

Continue Reading

Gamelan rehearsal in action

The Javanese Gamelan group Kusuma Laras holds rehearsals at the Indonesian Consulate twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays. Beginning at 5:30, members trickle into the basement of the Consulate, each taking their respective place in front of the majestic bronze instruments, sitting shoe-less and cross-legged while rhythmically beating to the numbered musical notations. An hour and a half later, a cooker of rice and tupperwares filled with aromatic Indonesian home cooking are placed on the table buffet-style, indicating that dinner has commenced.

Continue Reading

Braving the summer heat and crossing borough lines for the sake of some home cooked Indonesian food at the Masjid Al Hikmah bazaar, Talisa explores Queens cuisine and recaps our epic Indonesian eating adventure. - Veronica

Being a Greenpointer, I’m only a Pulaski bridge away from Queens: that mythical, magical place of delicious food that has somehow managed to evade my ever-growling stomach since I moved to New York almost five years go. Aside from a few bites here and there and some lovely home-cooked feasts courtesy of the Chan’s themselves in Long Island City, I’ve been without a proper introduction to Queens Cuisine—a source of distress for a grub-lover like myself.

Continue Reading

Shanghainese soup dumplings are a culinary phenomenon: a bite of pork and a spoonful of soup all within a neatly pleated wheat wrapper. You’re probably curious: how does the soup get in there? Over the years, I’ve come up with a fair share of outlandish theories – at one point I was convinced the dumplings were injected with a soup-filled syringe. But all my conspiracy theories were finally laid to rest two weeks ago when the high priestess of Nan Xiang Dumpling House, Chef Huang Jian Ping (黃建萍), came over to make soup dumplings from scratch. In anticipation for Asian Feastival, an epic culinary event in Queens on September 6th (check out asianfeastival.com for the complete rundown), we decided to test her off-site dumpling-making capabilities and invited some friends over to witness her pork and dough sorcery.

Continue Reading

One late December night, I was in New York at Rolf’s sharing a beer and schnitzel with Lee Anne under the hypnotic glow of the festive holiday lights. Between bites, I mentioned that Kelly and I were going to Japan, and immediately Lee Anne’s face lit up. She whipped out her phone and excitedly flipped through a slide show of photos. “You must meet Shinji. He will tell you where to go,” she asserted.

Continue Reading

Balut, an Asian delicacy popular in the Philippines, is a fertilized egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell. It is traditionally made with duck eggs, but balut also comes in the chicken variety. While I have an undeniable love for eggs — fried, boiled, scrambled, cooked any and every way, I had never considered eating an embryo until my Filipino friend Louie sang praises about balut. The idea of slurping a duck fetus straight from its shell both intrigued and frightened me. Sadly, during my summer in Asia, I never got to try any balut. But all of was not lost. My chance arrived two years later, in an email from Chef King of umi NOM. I clicked open the email and read:

“Duck Balut tonight @ umi nom!!!”

And just like that, I was headed to Brooklyn.

Continue Reading

On our second day in Taipei, my family and I, along with our three close family friends, set out on a journey in search for Taiwanese breakfast. A common Taiwanese breakfast consists of sweet or salty hot soymilk paired with some form of fried dough to dunk in it. That morning we gathered excitedly in the lobby and asked the hotel doorman to direct us to the nearest breakfast spot.

With a scribbled map at hand, we scaled the streets and alleyways near the hotel, but no Taiwanese breakfast was to be found. Stomachs were rumbling as the seven of us wandered desperately around what looked like the financial district, pulling aside locals and asking them where to find hot soymilk. Most were puzzled. Finally, Agnes made a quick decision for all of us. She shot her hand in the air to summon an approaching taxi.

“Where can we get hot soymilk?” she asked the driver.

“Oh, Soymilk King is very close”, he replied.

… Soymilk KING? Take us there, taxi driver!

The taxi driver’s “very close” translated into a city tour across Taiwan, through a tunnel and over a bridge. Fifteen minutes later, we arrived in a district even my dad had never been to, right in front of the famed Yong He Soymilk King (or just “Soymilk King” as I like to call it). Our eyes scanned the open air kitchen, and our ravenous expressions quickly changed to joy.

Continue Reading

This is going to be my third time in Van Gogh Is Bipolar in the span of three weeks. My cousin Ashley introduced me to this small, beautiful hole in the wall when I was down in the dumps some two weeks ago, and the cafe’s pebbly courtyard, the violet fairy lights and a perfect cup of tea was the best defiance to a thoroughly rough day.

Continue Reading

According to the Food Section, Italians are expected to eat 40 million panettone this holiday season. What is panettone? A holiday sweet bread originating from Milan dotted with dried fruit, usually rum raisins and bits of citron.

When the supermarket has red boxes of pre-packaged panettone stacked to the ceiling, it’s a strong indicator that the Holiday season is in full swing. Having heard tales of dry, stale and dense panettone, I’ve been hesitant to invest in some for myself. Luckily, my friend Gary, who works at Grandaisy Bakery, gifted me a loaf and I’ve been carving away at it like a turkey on Thanksgiving day.

Continue Reading

Phad Thai

David Dale of Sidney’s Sun Herald daily newspaper recently declared phad thai one of Australia’s favourite take out dinners. As an ambassador for Thai food, this popular noodle dish has taken on the world. It seems like every Thai restaurant in America has it on the menu and packages of instant phad thai are even selling in mainstream supermarkets.

In Thailand, however, phad thai vies with boat noodles and fried rice as the ultimate comfort food. Any food centre or outdoor market inevitably has a phad thai stall which usually sells turnip cake fried phad thai-style and battered oysters as well. The oysters are fried with bean sprouts in a deliciously light, crispy egg batter and served with a healthy dose of sweet, sour and hot Sriracha chilli sauce. But that’s another blog post altogether.

It is a well-known fact that, in economic crises, traditional comfort foods return to popular favour and, in that paradox that can only exist in hard times, commonly found staples like phad thai start to get the glam treatment.

Continue Reading