EatingInTranslation

Thanks for the reminder. I haven't been there in ages, and I'm glad they've weathered the past two years.

It was, in fact, a Leidenheimer pistolet with a flaky, brittle crust and a soft, chewy crumb. Muffulettas are not on the opening menu only because the proper Leidenheimer bread is in shorter supply at the moment.

Lucky me: an excellent po' boy with housemade chips at the new Filé Gumbo Bar, Church St., Manhattan. Served at lunchtime only, with shrimp (shown), oysters, or, off-menu, half-and-half. The étouffée, which I eyed over the shoulder of a fellow diner before trotting off to second lunch, looks very promising, too.

No, only the fish, or in other versions shrimp, is fermented. This was a food fair with few signs in English, and I don't read Burmese. So I was very glad that my friend, who was helping out the cook, called my attention to a dish I'd never tried. I can't identify the stems, let alone provide a recipe (I took this photo only later), but from what my friend told me at the fair, the fish was most likely snakehead.

"Hope you didn't spill anything," my friend wrote, several hours after she introduced me to ngapi yay (Naah-pee Yay) at the latest MAHAA Burmese fundraiser in Elmhurst, Queens. "One thing I forgot to remind you.. DO NOT .. DO NOT spill anything.. It will SMELL all over." By this time I was back home. Fortunately, I'm the sort of fellow who keeps zippered plastic storage bags in his backpack. After I sampled this spicy fermented fish sauce over coconut rice, at the fundraiser, the remainder made it to my apartment without incident. Ngapi yay pairs well with f

Thank you all. Since I don't read or speak French, apart from a handful of words and phrases, I've been looking for "lamb." The more casual restaurants whose menus I've checked provide translations to English, but I've found surprisingly little lamb of any sort. (This is dispiriting, though not appalling.) I was hoping simply to walk into a relatively casual French restaurant and order "one like this," but that seems to be more difficult than I would have thought in New York.

Thanks, Stephanie! The adventures are still here, but it's much harder nowadays to find adventurers.

I was hoping simply to walk into a relatively casual French restaurant and order "one like this," but, as suggested elsewhere in this thread, that seems to be more difficult than I would have thought in New York. I'll poke my head in nonetheless, next time I'm down that way.

I love West African food, and I’ve been meaning to learn a little conversational French so I can better navigate Francophone African restaurants. But after a recent meal at Yop City — named for a district of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and newly opened in the Bronx’s Little Italy — I’ve realized I need a better footing in French food, too. Could you recommend a brasserie in Manhattan where I could find gigots d’agneau to compare with my meal in the Bronx?

As regards "formulaic lowbrow": They use cloth napkins, there's a wine rack behind the counter pending the liquor license, and they're regular folks.

I should have checked my photographic notes more carefully; I've edited my blog post to give the correct, Grand St. location, between Elizabeth and Bowery. I took my photo shortly after 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Thank you both for your help with IDs. In truth, I'm not seriously hoping to find fresh-made bak chang, or any particular hawker food, here in New York. It's more that I'm using my Singaporean experiences as a point of departure for further local explorations. Provided I can hit the streets early enough in the day, there's certainly a lot I haven't tried!

Not long after my latest visit to Singapore, I began to search New York's various Chinatowns for creditable renditions of my favorite Singaporean dishes. One of these, bak chang... http://www.eatingintranslation.com/2011/01/hiong-kee-dumplings.html ...also goes by many other names and is prepared in many varieties. On Canal St., I came across an elderly lady's sidewalk display... http://www.flickr.com/photos/eatingintranslation/5016328727/sizes/l/ ...where, with the help of a passer-by fluent in both Cantonese and English, I learned that one of the lady's leaf-wrapped bindles c

Oh, it's a friendly place, and a bargain, for sure. Next time, knife-peeled noodles.

I've been to 67 Orange St., and I don't need to return. Read on one of the big NY food blogs (last week, but can't find) that Charles Southern Style Kitchen will reopen in April or May. On the other hand, I believe Louise's Family Restaurant closed last summer. For fried chicken, I prefer Miss Mamie's to Manna's, and Margie's Red Rose to both.

The gelati are indeed housemade; my favorite is the Sicilian lemon, but I wouldn't kick the hazelnut off the table. Manducatis Rustica is more the offspring of the original restaurant than a branch. It was opened last September by the daughter of the Manducatis owners; she wanted to expand on her existing catering business and also to benefit from the Manducatis name. At the time, I had occasion to speak at some length with the son who's the sommelier at the original restaurant, and I received no indication that the new venue would affect the direction of the old. Are you quite sure that