Eating In Translation

Hunan Manor

Though sometimes compared with Sichuan cooking, the cuisine of Hunan province tends to make do without mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns; extra chillies often take their place. Sour flavors have their say, too. Here, both spicy and sour pervade well-chopped string beans, paired with slippery yam cakes ($8.95 lunch special; $7 to go). See also this slideshow from sister restaurant Hunan House, in Flushing; many if not all the pictured dishes are available at Hunan Manor, too.

Hunan Manor
339 Lexington Ave. (39th-40th Sts.), Manhattan
212-682-2883
Sister restaurant: Hunan House
137-40 Northern Blvd. (Main-Union Sts.), Flushing, Queens
718-353-1808
www.HunanHouseNY.webs.com

Farmers' Loan and Trust Company Building

On the facade of a financial services firm, the meaning of the squirrels seems clear: Gather ye nuts while ye may. But the significance of the peafowl — these look to be mirror-image males, not a peacock and peahen — is more problematic.

Barros Luco

(This venue is closed.) You can't tell the players without a scorecard.

OMS/B

Japanese pot au feu?

Caterina's

(This venue is closed.) This Italian-Hungarian kitchen gave up the goulash earlier this winter; a "building for lease" notice is posted beside the door, and the telephone is disconnected.

You can still find a relatively strong Hungarian community on the far side of the Hudson, but in Manhattan, it's ever more difficult to get a good palacsinta.

Caterina's
316 East 53rd St. (First-Second Aves.)
212-355-5360

Koglin Royal Hams

(This venue is closed.) This German-rooted provisioner's housemade ham lard — with onions, apples, herbs, and tiny cubes of schinken, or smoked pork loin — is absolutely decadent atop a crust of bread.

Kar Won

Meat lovers will appreciate the roast-pork-to-noodle ratio.

Recently Opened: Gulluoglu

My dining brief on this Turkish bakery and cafe appears in the November 25, 2009 edition of The New York Times.

"Poisson Paysage V"

"Fish Landscape 5," here, with yellow cabs; my effort with a passing, towed coffee cart was not as well-framed. This bronze is one of several sculptures by the late artist François-Xavier Lalanne and his wife, Claude, temporarily installed on the Park Ave. median in the 50s. If you're a fish lover who prefers portraiture, step right up and strike a pose — but only till Friday.

"Poisson Paysage V" ("Fish Landscape 5")
François-Xavier Lalanne, 2007
Park Ave. at 56th St.
Through November 20, 2009

The Leopard

I know little about this "Midtown French-Continental 'time warp'," except what I read in an old Zagat. The New York Times, which reported the restaurant's passage in June 2004 (yes, it's been lying in wait that long for a favorable real estate market), added that The Leopard had "been at 253 East 50th Street since the mid-60's."

Nada-Sushi

Not angling for the Hispanic market, I take it. (See also the apocryphal misadventures of the marketing for the Chevy Nova.) Nada, I learn, is a ward of the Japanese city of Kobe. But I haven't visited the restaurant; wisecracks aside, about it I know nada.

Nada-Sushi
135 East 50th St. (Third-Lexington Aves.)
212-838-2537

Kolache Mama

(This venue is closed.) From above, it bore some resemblance to a traditional Czech koláč.

Crawdaddy

It's fitting that the former entrance to Crawdaddy, a New Orleans-themed restaurant that opened in 1975, is marked by a swirling stylized crustacean, since style and not culinary substance was its stronger attraction by far. "Crawdaddy's decor is so beautiful that I fear I may be lured back in spite of the genuinely terrible food," wrote Mimi Sheraton in her September 1, 1975 review in New York magazine, "With Roux My Heart Is Laden." Gael Greene looked in five years later for a roundup of "disenchanted evenings" titled, no more enticingly, "Eat, Drink, and Be Wary."

Crawdaddy survived at least till the mid-1980s (the exact date of its demise is unclear); New Orleans cuisine, still going strong, is best enjoyed on location.

Surviving sidewalk marker for Crawdaddy restaurant
East 45th St. (Madison-Vanderbilt Aves.)

Korean Cuisine Redefined

This reception in honor of National Foundation Day and Korea Day celebrated both contemporary interpretations of the nation's cuisine (smoked tofu; fluke with caviar; pumpkin porridge with pumpkinseed oil, roasted chestnuts, and dried jujubes) and classics (galbi, kimchi, bibimbap).

Among the traditional confections, or hangwa, were these humble cubes, prepared from steamed, pounded glutinous rice, called injeolmi. The coating is a powder of some sort of dried bean; the rice itself is seasoned, very gently, with oil previously used to fry shallots (my best guess). Injeolmi aren't very sweet; they're enjoyable more for their chewy texture, which reminded me of the Chinese-Malaysian-Singaporean muar chee (more often transliterated muah chee). I circled back for seconds.

Korean Cuisine Redefined
At the Korean Consulate, 335 East 45 (First-Second Aves.)

"Get your candy-ass to the gym"

Season's greetings from the New York Health & Racquet Club.

"Get your candy-ass to the gym"
Iluminated sign outside the New York Health & Racquet Club
132 East 45th St. (Lexington-Third Aves.)

Nigeria Independence Day Festival

Not just beany — sardine-y.

NYC Japan Street Fair

"As you like it, on the griddle."

Café Zaiya

I prefer a closer shave.

Szechuan Gourmet

One ingredient is an old acquaintance; one is a new friend.

Dalga

Seafood from where? At first this seemed to be a figure-ground issue: Dalga might be tracing the outline of an island, or of a body of water. There was no one to ask; the restaurant is shuttered, and the phone is disconnected. Though the front entryway I spotted some amphorae-like crockery (overturned, next to a paint tray and roller) that suggested the eastern Mediterranean. Crete? No, that island is too skinny. The Black Sea? No, too curvy (and in another sense, nowadays too little known).

More perturbing was the lack of context, as if I'd found a stray piece from a picture puzzle that never made it back into the box. Eventually I recognized that like many playthings that suffer wear and tear, this particular puzzle piece had a delicate bit broken off, at upper left, where it borders Bulgaria and Greece. By now, you must have fitted the piece into the puzzle; treat yourself to a plate of kalamar tava.

Dalga (closed)
401 East 62nd St. (First-York Aves.)