The cuisine of Suriname, a tiny melting pot of a country on the north coast of South America, has been featured in at least five Queens restaurants. All have come and gone. My favorites were Warung Kario, where conversations were conducted in English, Dutch, and Javanese, and its successor Caribbean Suriname Restaurant, where the lingua franca was a creole language called Sranan Tongo.
The creole name of this event, Sranan Dei — Suriname Day — brought to mind a specialty of the latter restaurant, a creole chicken casserole called pom. Its namesake ingredient, pomtajer, pomtayer, or simply tayer, is a New World tropical plant that yields a starchy tuber; you may know it as yautia or malanga. This annual outdoor get-together was a chance to compare three different renditions of pom. Though I appreciated the crispy edges on the corner slice in the platter above, also shown in closeup below, the consensus favorite of our crew was the pom whose color was most suggestive of sour orange.
For a few more photos, including a plate of spicy liver and gizzard coupled with salt fish, the duo of trie and telo (fried anchovy and fried cassava), and bakabana, fried ripe plantain spread with a tangy, granular peanut sauce, see the Eating In Translation page on Facebook.
H/T David Druce
Sranan Dey (Suriname Day)
Roy Wilkins Park, Merrick Blvd. at Foch Blvd., St. Albans, Queens
www.Facebook.com/SrananDey
