Eating In Translation

Sanur Restaurant

(This venue is closed.) Breakfast special, without the traditional banana-leaf wrapper.

Multi Tastes Diner

Perhaps it's the tensile strength of those gentle curves, or perhaps it's the bulbous suggestions of serifs. I don't know the typeface by name, but I've seen it around town. And at Multi Tastes — which also dishes out American diner standards and Spanish lunch specials — it's recognizable at a glance as a high sign for Chinese food.

Multi Tastes Diner
23 Saint James Place (at Madison St.)
212-587-8870

Chinatown Fair

In years past this ramshackle video arcade also hosted live entertainment: "world famous dancing & tic-tac-toe chickens."

Mei Yu Spring Restaurant

(This post is based on visits to the restaurant's former location, a few doors away, when it was known as Sweet Spring.) Rice is the sole grain in Southern Chinese congee; a congee that sports red bean, mung bean, or millet must hail from some Northern clime. So I thought.

"No dumping, drains to NY Harbor"

It's the rare sign that safeguards local waterways with a warning in more than one language. In Lowell, Mass., home to a large Cambodian population, I came across an unusual bilingual drain marker, but nearby Boston's older, metal plaques were English-only.

Stencils offer more flexibility in addressing New York's multicultural kitchen crews. In the top photo, restaurant workers are cautioned in Chinese, and again in English; in the bottom photo, Spanish is added to the mix. Whatever the staffing situation at the very back of the house, the message is the same: Keep cooking waste at bay. As of late 2012, both sets of stencils were gone, but no more-permanent markers had replaced them.

"No dumping, drains to NY Harbor"
Mosco St. at Mulberry St., and Chatham Sq. near Mott St., Manhattan

Hyo Dong Gak

Don't keep mum, or the fried noodles and duck sauce will be trotted out.

Lee Chung Cafe

Any sighting of Burmese dishes is worthy of note in New York, even if they share pride of place with grilled cheese and bubble teas.

Mangal Kebab

The baked-dough menu features a flotilla of pideler.

Cafe Marlene

(This venue is closed.) Slovenia borders the Alps, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean, and its cuisine looks to influences from many directions.

Maialino

The littler pig dish, at the restaurant named for little pig.