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
