Eating In Translation

Masak

(This venue has closed.) My review of Masak, which combines Singaporean flavors with seasonal domestic ingredients, appears in the February 1, 2012 edition of The New York Times. For photos, see my slideshow.

Broken Rice

(This venue is closed.) Com tam, in Vietnam, describes a dish that includes broken rice. When cooked, the individual grains become softer than intact rice prepared to the same recipe. Broken rice also readily takes on other flavors; often it serves as a bed for grilled pork. Here the rice is tossed with tomato, pickled cucumber, carrot, daikon, and roasted scallion, and accompanied by fried catfish ($9).

The catfish, also available in one of the restaurant's various banh mi, was labeled "Hanoi-style." It's likely that the Vietnamese-born owner, absent this day, came from some more southern part of the country. However, the two folks on duty, one a Filipina, one a fellow from Nepal, didn't know for sure.

Broken Rice
580 Grand St. (Lorimer-Leonard Sts.), Williamsburg, Brooklyn
718-599-5015

Grande Monuments

(This venue is closed.) The staff of life is a source of comfort and, especially when baked to traditional recipes, a binding force in many communities. Grande Monuments, which provides headstones and related services in the Italian core of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, also offers bread from Il Fornaretto Bakery of Bensonhurst. (See, too, this story from WABC.)

The best selection surely goes to early arrivals (I passed this way in late afternoon), and additional specialties appear for the weekend (which means Friday and Saturday; Grande Monuments is closed Sunday). Also shown: a detail of the window display, where other sources of comfort include used romance novels.

Grande Monuments
382 Graham Ave. (at Skillman Ave.), Williamsburg, Brooklyn
718-782-1800
Closed Sunday

Not enough snow, but plenty of joe

Seen at Gimme Coffee
495 Lorimer St. (Powers-Grand Sts.), Williamsburg, Brooklyn
718-388-7771

Burgers

See the slideshow. Napkins not required.

Pok Pok Wing

(This venue is closed.) $11 may seem dear for papaya Pok Pok, Isaan style, but the price for this spicy green papaya salad includes a $2.50 supplement for dry chilies, the fermented fish sauce here called plaa raak, and salted black crab. That small carapace just barely covered a cherry tomato.

Gathered in Thailand's flooded rice fields, these paddy crabs — they're not marine crustaceans — are rare in New York. Last I looked, for a similar salad Zabb Elee employed domestic blue crab. But if the dainty black crab's main attraction is that it can be eaten shell and all, reportedly the practice in Isaan territory, perhaps the blue will retain my favor.

Pok Pok Wing
137 Rivington St. (Norfolk-Suffolk Sts.), Manhattan
212-477-1299
Open 5:00 (and no earlier) till midnight
www.PokPokWing.com

Dukagjini Burek

The terse menu at this Balkan bakery includes three bureks, filled with meat, cheese, or spinach with just a little feta and onion (shown, $4). Each slice is a quarter-pie, routinely cut in two for manageability. Though the dough that encases the burek is layered like phyllo and crisp on top from its time in the oven, inside it's engagingly chewy, like a good strudel.

Dukagjini Burek (also known as Burektorja Dukagjini)
758 Lydig Ave. (Holland-Wallace Aves.), Bronxdale, Bronx
718-822-8955
www.DukagjiniBurek.com

Oversea Taste Restaurant

(This venue is closed.) Stateside, "pearl noodles" is the customary, genteel name.

Kowloon Island

The name "Kowloon" — it's part of Hong Kong — means "nine dragons." And indeed this first, elaborate character in the restaurant's Chinese name, embellished with a head and tail, seems to be "loon," that is, "dragon." The balance of the characters, citing a southern Chinese province not far away, read "remember Guangdong cuisine." Perhaps "Guangdong cuisine the way you remember it" is more the connotation.

How Kowloon, a peninsula, might have been cut free from the Chinese mainland — at least in the translated, English name — I can't say.

Kowloon Island
1232 Ave. U (Homecrest Ave.-East 13th St.), Homecrest, Brooklyn
718-336-2338

Morgan Seafood Restaurant

This Egyptian-style shrimp sandwich was loaded with lightly fried crustaceans and doused with tahini.