Posted by Tam Ngo, September 12, 2008 at 10:15 AM
Miang or mieng. Kham, khum, kum, or kam. With mieng meaning “many” and kham meaning “one bite,” this salad is a symphony of its confederate parts.
Mieng Ka Na is often served as a snack on the streets of Bangkok, wrapped to order in betel nut leaves. But at Wondee Siam I, you’ll find Mieng Ka Na on the “Secret Thai Menu”—served as a pre-assembled salad accompanied by Chinese broccoli leaves. Diners use these raw leaves to roll their own hand-wraps, filling them with fluffy dried pork, brine, chili, peanuts, shallots, ginger, and thin bits of lime. A little bit o' this, a lotta bit o' that. Salty. Spicy. Sour. Sweet.
Mieng Kha Na is only one of several mouth-puckering dishes at Wondee.
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Posted by Emily Koh, July 23, 2008 at 4:00 PM
After having conquered—maybe "endured" is a better word—Brick Lane Curry House's phaal curry challenge, I'm beginning to suspect everyone at the Serious Eats HQ are not-so-secretly using me as a guinea pig to see how much spiciness one can take before their tastebuds become obliterated. Although slightly concerned about potential ulcers and the future of my digestive capabilities, I am not one to back down from a challenge (what did I say about spice seekers and their egos?), which is why my ears perked up when it was mentioned that Sripraphai not only served some of the best Thai food in New York, but also some of the truly spiciest. So off I went to Queens, expecting to taste some of the spiciest Thai dishes in a milder redux of my earlier Indian curry adventure.
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Posted by Ed Levine, July 8, 2008 at 10:30 PM
Photographs by Robyn Lee
Talay
701 West 135th Street, New York NY 10031 (at Twelfth Avenue; map); 212-491-8301; talayrestaurant.com
Service: Friendly and attentive, if a little inexperienced. There's even free valet parking
Setting: Is it a restaurant-club, a lovely al fresco dining spot, or a lounge? In fact, it's all three
Compare It To: Asia de Cuba
Must-Haves: Crispy shrimp, Thai beef salad, whole crisp snapper, arroz Valenciana
Cost: $60 for three courses, including a glass of wine, tax, and tip
Grade: B
There's a new restaurant row in town, and it's in a most unlikely location: Twelfth Avenue in the 130s. Tucked among Riverside Park, the West Side Highway, and the huge Uptown Fairway digital billboard, this newly formed aglomeration of restaurants includes the seminal Dinosaur Barbecue, the Hudson River Club (no relation to the now-defunct downtown restaurant of the same name), Covo, and Talay, an Asian-Latin restaurant-lounge comprising three distinct spaces—a lovely outdoor dining space facing an old Riverside Park retaining wall, an indoor dining room featuring clublike lighting and a pulsating hip-hop and rap soundtrack, and an upstairs lounge that starts to get going around 11 o'clock most nights.
The look and feel of the indoor dining room, not to mention the upstairs lounge, would have you believe Talay is more lounge and club than restaurant, but don't let looks fool you. Talay is actually a pretty serious Asian-Latin restaurant featuring the handiwork of two talented chefs, Phet Schwader (AZ, now closed) and King Phojanakong (Kuma Inn chef-owner). Order carefully from the ridiculously friendly waitstaff presided over with aplomb by an unflappable cheerleader–general manager Romi Macasaet, and you can eat very well here.
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Posted by Joe DiStefano, June 16, 2008 at 3:30 PM
When I saw this package of dehydrated sandorica amidst more conventional tropical fruit items like dehydrated baby bananas at Thai grocery Sugar Club I had no idea what it was, but such ignorance has never stopped me before. The round orange fruit on the label led me to believe sandorica was in the citrus family, but beyond that, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, June 6, 2008 at 1:15 PM
Serious Eats contributor Matthew Amster-Burton just tipped me to this review of Wondee Siam in the Bangkok Post: "I read the Bangkok Post review every Friday, and I've never seen them venturing outside Thailand before."
After brushing off popular Sri Praphai, the paper's Ung-Aang Talay writes:
Wondee Siam's som tam Thai was quite authentic, made from crunchy strands of green papaya with only a few easily avoidable threads of carrot thrown in for colour. It also included crisp, sweet green beans and American cherry tomatoes, so much tastier and more fragrant than local Thai equivalents. Sourness seemed to come from American limes, perhaps Key limes, whose flavour was close enough to Thai manao. The crab, however, was alien, larger and with a thicker shell than poo na and more difficult to eat, but still viable. It was made sour and hot and was very satisfying.
Talay also liked the soft-shell crab there. [Snip, after the jump.]
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Posted by Joe DiStefano, May 19, 2008 at 1:00 PM
"Like so much else about Thai cuisine, making the perfect miang kum is all about balance."
When I picked up the above package of miang kum at Sugar Club, a wonderful Thai grocery store in Elmhurst, Queens, I asked the fellow behind the counter if it was a kit for a salad (or yum, as Thai cold dishes are known). He enthusiastically nodded yes. In addition to offering Thai videos, the Sugar Club stocks a lot of delicious prepared dishes, like papaya salad, so I was excited to try this make-your-own one, since I’d never seen it anywhere else before.
When I got home and opened the foil container, I had no idea what to do with the contents. There was a baggie of about 20 cabbage leaves cut into triangles; a Ziplock packed with toasted, shredded coconut; a tub of what tasted like sweet tamarind paste spiked with fish sauce; a bipartite zippie, half filled with tiny dried shrimp and half with peanuts; another bipartite baggie with small cubes of ginger and teeny wedges of lime; and another two-compartment affair with chopped shallots and about five or six red Thai chilies.
A quick web search provided me with all the info I needed to get started. Miang kum is a Thai snack that involves wrapping a variety of savory items in a green leaf, whether it be lettuce, spinach leaf or in the case of my kit, cabbage. Even though this one didn't include it, sometimes you'll add garlic. My research indicated that it’s often eaten with beer, so I popped open a can of Sapporo and got to work.
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Posted by Ed Levine, August 3, 2007 at 6:15 PM
Photograph by Robyn Lee
I recently interviewed Pichet Ong, chef-owner of P*ong and the author of The Sweet Spot, Asian-Inspired Desserts
, and the subject of Thai restaurants in New York City came up.
I told him about Thai Market, which he promised to check out. We both agreed that Pam Real Thai Food was not what it once was.
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Posted by Ed Levine, July 23, 2007 at 11:20 AM
I finally made it to Thai Market, and I was mightily impressed. First of all, I loved the look of the place. There were blown-up photos of markets in Thailand, umbrellas on the ceiling, and Thai cups cleverly placed in and on gold-leaf walls. Its owners have managed to make the place look great without spending a lot of money, much like Land Thai Kitchen did 25 blocks south.
Steamed Thai dumplings with delicate wrappers were filled with minced chicken, preserved radish, and peanuts. Grilled sliced skirt steak was accompanied by al dente string beans and delicious preserved chili purée. A minced pork salad was enlivened by ginger, bird’s-eye chili, and crunchy Napa cabbage. A dish called Amber Shrimp mixed Chinese celery, onion, egg, and chili and was sautéed with yellow curry.
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Posted by Ed Levine, February 24, 2006 at 1:01 PM
Three months in the slurping, my chicken soup piece came out Wednesday in the NYTimes. For those of you who don't read the Times, I am going to list my ten favorite chicken soups (I sampled a hundred) here, along with a few others I really liked that just failed to crack the top ten:
- Blue Ribbon Bakery 33 Downing Street (Bedford Street), (212) 337-0404. Matzo ball soup, $7.75.
- Cubana Café 110 Thompson Street (Prince Street), (212) 966-5366. Chicken soup with avocado, tomato, cilantro and yuca (cassava), $5.
- Fred's at Barneys New York 660 Madison Avenue (60th Street), ninth floor, (212) 833-2200.
- Estelle's chicken soup $8.
- Grand Sichuan International 229 Ninth Avenue (24th Street), (212) 620-5200. Chicken and pea shoots, $8.95; chicken with pickled cabbage, $7.95.
- Hearth 403 East 12th Street (First Avenue), (646) 602-1300. Chicken soup with escarole, chicken dumplings and pastina, $12.
- Momofuku Noodle Bar 163 First Avenue (10th Street), (212) 475-7899. Chicken noodle soup with Shanghai thick noodles, onions and scallions, $11.
- New Chao Chow Restaurant 111 Mott Street (between Canal and Hester Streets), (212) 226-2590. Chao Chow wonton soup, $3.50.
- Perry St. 176 Perry Street (West Street), (212) 352-1900. Chicken soup with vegetables, avocado and dill, $13.50.
- Pio Maya 40 West Eighth Street (Avenue of the Americas), (212) 254-2277. Chicken soup, $3.25.
- Sripraphai 64-13 39th Avenue, Woodside, Queens, (718) 899-9599. Chicken soup with mushrooms, coconut milk and galangal; Cornish hen in hot and sour soup (tom-zap), both $7.
A few others I really enjoyed:
- Akdeniz 19 W. 46th Street (bet. Fifth and Sixth Aves.) 212-575-2307; Slightly creamy chicken soup that comes to life with a squeeze of the lemon they serve it with.
- Al Bustan 827 Third Avenue (bet. 50th and 51st Sts.) 212-759-5933 Lebanese Chicken soup enlivened with the same lemon squeeze and, surprisingly, a touch of cinnamon.
- Azuri Cafe 465 W.51st (between 9th and 10th Aves.) 212-265-2920; I was lovin' the chicken soup here until I put the first piece of matzo ball in my mouth. It was ice cold. So I cut up the matzo balls into little pieces and let them sit in the soup for a minute or two to heat them up. Brilliant!
- Brooklyn Diner USA: 212 W. 57th Street (between Broadway and Seventh Ave.) 212-977-2280; Fine classic chicken soup with moist chicken and a toothsome broth.
- Teresa's 103 First Avenue (between 6th and 7th Sts.) 212-228-0604; If the noodles were al dente at this Polish coffee shop, this bargain chicken soup ($2.75) would have cracked the top ten.
