Filed under Queens, Southeast Asian · Print This Post
64-13 39th Avenue between 64th and 65th Streets, Woodside, Queens
718/899.9599
about $45, without drinks, with tip
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Sripraphai is the kind of restaurant you have to visit again in order to really get a good feel for its Thai cuisine. Dining with a large group would help because sharing is encouraged in order for you to taste more than two dishes. Because it was just me and the Dr., we could only order three. Out of
those three, only one was solid.
The mango salad with crispy dried catfish to me was what makes Thai cuisine good. It was salty, hot, sour and sweet all the same time. The red onions, cilantro and chili peppers woke my taste buds up. It reminded me of the Filipino daing, only saltier and spicier, and perfect with a cold bottle of beer.
The dishes over rice were safe and less flavorful. I should have known better when I read that the pork came with “special house sauce.” The Dr.’s duck was a little bit better with the small, round eggplants I rarely see in any other dishes I eat in New York City. It also reminded me of the Filipino pakbet. Both came with a generous plateful of rice we couldn’t finish.
We didn’t have enough room for dessert, but we swore we’ll be back to order the other specials on the menu. Next time, we’ll skip the rice dishes and bring an army of friends with us.
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Filed under Chinese, Queens · Print This Post
39-07 Prince Street, Flushing, Queens
718/359.1601
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The pain didn’t take effect until five minutes into our meal. When I say pain, I’m talking about our tongues going numb, beads of sweat starting to dot our foreheads, a ringing sensation behind our ears and ooze starting to form in our small noses. All were good pain, mind you, and even as they got worse, we kept eating. If you like your Sichuan Chinese food, you know what I’m talking about and if you venture to Flushing, Queens, then you know that spicy and tasty are enough adjectives to describe the Spicy & Tasty buffet.
We were in Queens to check out the panorama of the City of New York in the Queens Museum. We hardly take the number 7 train so when we found ourselves in the city’s largest borough, the most ethnically diverse county in the entire United States, we decided to continue on to Flushing and look for a late afternoon meal. We’re not familiar with the neighborhood at all so we stopped by Duane Reade to steal a glance inside one of the city magazines. Unfortunately, there was always one restaurant listed under Queens, but luckily, Spicy & Tasty was the one selected by The New Yorker. The restaurant was only an avenue away from the subway so we took the quick hike, feeling very determined to eat spicy Chinese food.
The Dr. grew up in Los Angeles and if he misses a cuisine more than Korean, it would be Sichuan Chinese. We have several Shanghainese Chinese restaurants in New York, but only a few good Sichuan places. He would recall to me trips to Monterey Park eating spicy dish after spicy dish flavored by fagara peppercorns. In fact, the last time I went to Los Angeles without him, I went to his favorite Sichuan restaurant and finally understood why a good sweat is sometimes appeciated and even necessary. To my delight, his eyes lit up as soon as we walked in Spicy & Tasty. He wanted to order everything behind the glass. We pointed and picked three dishes and added a soup and a bowl of dan dan noodles to our bill from our table.
The culprits were the spicy root vegetable, the crispy tendon salad and the dan dan noodles. We took turns picking the pieces with our chopsticks, blowing through our tongues and stuffing our mouths with the smoked tofu and celery to ease away the numbness. When the pork and squash soup was served, it was like water to two quenched survivors. I found myself playing with the Filipino upo in my mouth to dilute the spicy and garlicky combination of the dan dan noodle sauce. There was laughter, imagining how we looked like that moment, and then the laughter turned into quiet, happy tears.
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