Eating In Translation

Bhutanese Ema Datsi Restaurant

"Ema" is chile, "datsi" is cheese, and ema datsi is a dish from a tiny Himalayan kingdom in which hot peppers are used, not as a seasoning, but as a vegetable. More chiles and cheese, as well as onion (and, I believe, garlic) appeared in the salsa-like condiment beside the traditional red rice.

It's quite spicy — the peppers were serranos, or something similar — but back home ema datsi is even spicier, a Bhutanese fellow diner assured me. The kitchen may have cut me some (unwanted) slack by scraping out many of the seeds; if you want the real deal, a firm hand is indicated when placing your order. As for the cheese, it's less runny than it might seem. The final photo gives a better indication of the consistency.

Ema Datsi, which is Bhutanese-owned and -operated, inevitably also offers menu items from neighboring Tibet and India. Though I'm eager to try the restaurant's version of traditional Bhutanese buckwheat noodles, I'm also intrigued by the housemade gyuma, a Tibetan blood sausage filled with tsampa.

Bhutanese Ema Datsi Restaurant
67-21 Woodside Ave. (67th-68th Sts.), Woodside, Queens
718-458-8588
www.BhutaneseEmaDatsi.com

Khao Kang

Weighed against the super-cheap, sometimes mysterious eats at Fujianese four-over-rice storefronts, the Thai fare at this corner cafeteria is roughly twice as expensive. Here the cost is all of $7.50 for just three choices, and you must make do without that bowl of thin Chinese soup. Decidedly in Khao Kang's favor, however, the steam table is refreshed more often than most, and the flavors are as spritely as any. Shown: an egg-and-vegetable cookup, jungle curry with vegetables and fish, and sour pork sausage; chunky spicy pork, ground spicy pork, and Penang curry. A bargain.

Best of all: On milder days, windows on two sides are thrown open onto quiet sidewalks. You won't miss the traffic of Chinatown, or Bangkok, one bit.

Khao Kang
76-20 Woodside Ave. (at 77th St.), Elmhurst, Queens
718-662-8721
Closed Monday

Romanian Fall Festival

Pastramă, not pastrami.

Tulcingo Restaurant & Bakery

Atoles (ah-Toll-ays) are an extended family of beverages, usually cornmeal-based, of various consistencies, that are common in Latin America. This particular Mexican atol (small, $1.50) is thin, with a faint tropical-fruit flavor. Fail to take note of the handwritten sign on the front door, and you might furrow your brow for a moment or two before you identify guayaba — guava.

Tulcingo Restaurant & Bakery
40-11 82nd St. (Roosevelt Ave.-Ithaca St.), Elmhurst, Queens
718-205-3134

La Cienega

Often referred to as a "Oaxacan pizza," a tlayuda (tlah-Yoo-dah) takes "thin crust" to an extreme. While even the crispest bar pie of my acquaintance is pliable in the middle, the tlayuda is shatteringly crisp from one edge to the other.

The name denotes both the bare, baked tortilla, which this Mexican grocery sells by the bag, and the prepared dish made with it ($9 to $12). For their basic version, the cooks at La Cienega smear the tortilla with pork lard and refried black beans, heat it on a flattop, and dress it with a mozzarella-like white cheese, lettuce, tomato, and avocado. Optional toppings — in my case nopales, or cactus, with good timing chivo, or goat — are heated separately and added as the dish is dressed. Though the assembled tlayuda, sliced like a pizza before serving, holds together only loosely, that courtesy plastic fork is less adequate to the task than nimble fingers.

La Cienega
104-31 Corona Ave. (opposite 50th Ave.), Corona, Queens
347-353-2366

Himalaya Kitchen

(This venue is closed.) That tingle tells you, if you aren't on top of your East Asian geography, that Tibet borders Sichuan province and that dofu khatse ngoen ma ($5.75) is a Himalayan take on Chinese mapo tofu. (Even at Chinese restaurants the name of the dish can vary. Szechuan Gourmet, which uses an older romanization for the province, gives it a curiously Western-sounding name.) This dofu khatse lacked complexity, but the bean curd was soft and the sauce had a bite; I was glad my sweet lassi ($2.50) was already at hand.

Himalaya Kitchen
86-08 Whitney Ave (Broadway-43rd Ave.), Elmhurst, Queens
718-651-1576

Itinerant herb vendor's pushcart

On offer: yerba buena, also spelled hierba buena (in the little bucket), a name that denotes various species of mint, and pápalo, a peppery herb that insistently makes its presence known in cemitas. At this moment the vendor and her cart were paused outside a self-service laundromat crowded with likely customers; a nearby nail salon was the likely next stop.

Itinerant herb vendor's pushcart
Elmhurst, Queens

Sky Cafe

Asked for a dish distinctive to Medan, capital of the Indonesian province of North Sumatra and first home to the chef, my waitress pointed to emie (Ay-mee, $7.50). Unlike most of Sky Cafe's noodles, which are served in chicken broth, these "gravy egg noodles" are swamped in a sauce prepared from long-simmered shrimp. The bowl is filled out with potato, firm tofu, a few small shrimp, and a hardboiled egg, topped with seafood-flavored crackers that snap and pop in the gravy, and freshened with a last-second squeeze of lime. Chopsticks are the traditional utensils, but for finishing off the gravy, using a spoon is more decorous than tipping the bowl to your lips.

Emie is sometimes also known as mee rebus (reh-Boos), meaning "boiled noodles." The now-closed Malaysian restaurant Mamak House served one of many variations.

Sky Cafe opened in mid-July in the space that previously was home to Mie Jakarta and Pondok Jakarta. The menu, still under development, is very similar to that at the original, Philadelphia location; prices currently top out at $9.

Sky Cafe
86-20 Whitney Ave. (Broadway-43rd Ave.), Elmhurst, Queens
718-651-9759
Closed Wednesday

Saka Dawa Festival

The commemoration of the birth, enlightenment, and parinirvana (death of the mortal body) of Siddhartha Gautama is named for the the fourth month of the Tibetan Buddhist calendar. This particular event, on the premises of a Nepali social group, came to light only because I took a wrong turn; when I found myself on the Elmhurst corner that is home to the United Sherpa Association, one of the gentlemen standing by the courtyard, or perhaps it was a driveway, asked if I'd like to have lunch.

In New York, many small festivals such as this are not promulgated outside the immediate community but do welcome passersby. True, most of the chow this day had no allegiance to either Tibet or Nepal: an apple, a cup of yogurt, a sushi roll, a brand-name veggie sandwich. The sole distinctive dish was dresi, a sweetened preparation of rice cooked with butter — a great deal of butter — and featuring golden raisins, cashews, and tiny tubers called droma. These, like most of the congregation, had made the trek all the way from the Himalayas; in the scope of things, my one wrong turn was a very small matter.

Saka Dawa Festival
United Sherpa Association (aka Sherpa Kyidug)
41-01 75th St. (at 41st Ave.), Elmhurst, Queens
718-779-7300
www.SherpaKyidug.org
(The 2014 festival was held on June 14)

Bangladeshi block party

While looking for a different event featuring food from another continent, I happened on a street festival sponsored by a Bangladeshi communications company. During the warmer months, similar single-block events pop up all over the city. Even when word is published in advance, often it's difficult to find out about the organizer, the entertainment, the vendors, or anything more than the time and place.

At midday a stage was being set up at one end of the block for musical performances; tented stalls lined both sides of the street, almost all of them draped with South Asian apparel and fabrics. Just one stall sold food, and though primed for bulky but mild European fare, I bought a serving of black chick peas ($3) to tide me over. Mustard oil, evidenced by the thin stripe at the edge of the bowl, pointed my palate in a different direction.

Bangladeshi block party
Elmhurst, Queens