Eating In Translation

Bashundhara Mini Super Market

(This venue is closed.) This bright, spacious halal butcher and grocery may well stock a very good selection of meat from the subcontinent (and Malaysia, too!) in its two rows of top-loading freezers, but it offers a less-than-overwhelming array of snacks. A "hot mixture" from Wy-Nad Foods (400 g.; $2.99) — including roasted peanuts, banana chips, curry leaves, and chili powder in addition to those fried crispies — had a pleasant level of heat but was a little shy on the banana.

Bashundhara Mini Super Market
40-04 73rd St. (near Roosevelt Ave.), Queens
718-672-9690

Aires del Sur

(This venue is closed.) Friendly Argentinean-Colombian bakery with a few elaborate pastries and many attractive homey-looking items. I don't know the proper name for the sweet shown here (75 cents), but it balanced cookie, caramel, and coconut very nicely.

Aires del Sur
77-07 37th Ave., Queens
718-507-6539

Lickety Split

A cone of strawberry ice cream (specifically, Breyer's; about $3) though nothing to go out of your way for, was a welcome follow-up to a seafood feast.

Lickety Split
295 City Island Ave., Bronx
718-885-9654

The Original Crab Shanty Restaurant

I squeezed into a booth here with my friends Bill and Nancy, and her cousin Valerie, about 6:00 on a Saturday. The Crab Shanty does a volume business in a number of regards; by the time we left, there was quite a wait. Lots of garlic bread and an assortment of vegetables arrived a moment after our menus. I couldn't even tell you what Bill and Nancy ordered, since Valerie and I were fully occupied with the "banquet for crab lovers" ($52.95). The softshell crabs, at left, were good; the nearby crabcakes, overfried and bready. A stuffed Dungeness crab, just visible at top right, was OK, but naturally I would have preferred picking my own meat from a whole crab; I couldn't say just what that crabshell was stuffed with.

Two snow crabs yielded lots of leg meat and sizable chunks from the body, much of which I enjoyed for dinner the next evening. We hardly touched the six hardshell garlic crabs beneath them (let alone the french fries or those two half-cobs of corn) — when everyone else was leaning back, it was time to have our leftovers wrapped — but picked at home, the crabmeat I didn't scarf up immediately found its way into a pretty good pasta sauce.

The Original Crab Shanty Restaurant
361 City Island Ave., Bronx
718-885-1810

Tu Do

(This post is based on visit's to the restaurant's previous location across the Bowery, where it was called Pho Tu Do.) For the first anniversary of Meetup's Vietnamese Food Dining Out Group, we got things going with grill-it-yourself platters of bo nuong vi (marinated thin-sliced beef; $16.95) and tom nuong vi (marinated shrimp; $16.95). I'm no expert at softening the rice papers in hot water, grilling the beef and shrimp evenly, and especially at wrapping them up with veggies and mint, but it's fun.

Among the appetizers, cha gio (eight for $6.50), fried pork, crabmeat, and rice vermicelli spring rolls, were excellent; chao tom ($9.95), was so-so, but I'm not so fond of shaped shrimp paste, even with sugarcane.

I was more disappointed in the bo luc lac ($7.95), which seemed heavier on red and green peppers than on the namesake beef cubes, and was entirely lacking in those curious speckled sesame taro chips. My sinh to sau rieng (durian shake; $3) was a little thin.

Rau muong xao toi (water spinach with garlic; $7.50) was good, as were the family-style quartet ($23.95) of spicy and sour fish soup, fish in spicy sauce, "garden vegetable" in oyster sauce, and BBQ pork.

Tu Do (formerly Pho Tu Do)
102 Bowery (Grand-Hester Sts.)
212-966-2666

Nick & Toni's

The white beans that accompanied my grilled calamari ($14) were too soft; the squid and even the fennel seemed ready to follow suit. Don't believe I saw calamari anywhere else on the menu; did my squid legs find a happier home at another restaurant?

Nick & Toni's
100 West 67th St. (Columbus Ave.-Broadway)
(one of two locations)
212-496-4000

Fatty Crab

(This venue is closed.) Perhaps anticipating a rush after tomorrow's New York Times review, Fatty Crab has already updated their menu: No more desserts, as of tonight. A couple of amiable waiters told me that the desserts took too long, in too crowded a kitchen, for too little customer appeal (although I'd love to know what a $6 ice kacang tastes like).

After squeezing onto the banquette, I started with a dozen slices of green mango in a Jenga-style construction ($3), which were pleasantly tart on their own; a dish of chili, salt, and sugar added a minor variation. I returned to it as a palate cleanser, during and after my nasi lemak ($10): fall-off-the-bone curry chicken atop coconut-flavored rice, surrounded by fried peanuts, fresh and pickled vegetables, a little sambal ikan billis (fried anchovies with hot sauce), and a lovely poached egg. If that combo and the rock-and-roll soundtrack isn't lively enough for you, scoop out a little of Fatty Crab's belecan (fermented shrimp paste), a tabletop condiment that can hold its spoon at attention.

Fatty Crab
643 Hudson St. (Gansevoort-Horatio Sts.)
212-352-3590

Bombay Talkie

(This venue is closed.) At tonight's tasting, none of the three offerings from In Pursuit of Tea intrigued me enough for a second cupful, though the second-flush Goomtee Estate Darjeeling — "robust, muscat flavor," said the tasting notes — would be worth considering. The house chai, on the other hand, was worth another go-round. Of the complimentary bites from Bombay Talkie's menu, baigan bharta — pastry-wrapped smoked eggplant — was passingly fair. A papdi chat — a small puri pre-loaded with potatoes, chickpeas, and a tamarind-yogurt sauce — was predictably soggy; the crispy fish and lamb kebabs were tired.

Bombay Talkie
189 Ninth Ave. (21st-22nd Sts.)
212-242-1900

Joon's Fine Seafood

Here's my kind of triple-decker. Two slices of bread remained intact just long enough to cushion three large filets of fried whiting ($2.95); flounder, cod, porgy, catfish, and snapper are also available at slightly higher but still very reasonable prices. No seats at Joon's — just a fresh-fish counter to the left, a cooked-food takeout station to the right — but there's plenty of sitting room at the chessboard tables across the street, near the basketball courts at Goat Park.

Joon's Fine Seafood
774 Amsterdam Ave. (at 98th St.)
212-531-1344

Tai Pan Bakery

To a lesser extent than Kakala in Sunset Park, this Chinese outpost offers a cuisine-bending menu that includes spaghetti "bolognaise," Black Forest cake, napoleons, Norwegian smoked salmon (with prawns), and borscht. A chain-restaurant feel and chaos at the counter, however, seemed like a lot of hubbub to little effect; an indifferent coconut tart (80 cents) didn't change my mind.

Tai Pan Bakery
37-25 Main St., Queens
(one of several locations)
718-888-1111