(This venue is closed.) What the menu lists as "toasted bread" I would call "toast."
The menu writer's distinction, not unique to Sugar Club, reserves the short form for composed presentations such as honey toast (first photo below, $9). More elaborate still (but not shown here) is the so-called Romeo toast, a frequent subject of social media portraits. "Toast" is a thing, while "toasted bread" ($6) is merely a commodity lightly transformed by heat, tumbled into a pile beside the true center of attention: sangkhaya. Some renditions of this coconut egg spread are caramelized and brown, others, such as the semi-liquid version shown here, adopt a green color and faint herbal flavor from pandan leaves.
Previously: Several years ago, this clearinghouse for local Thai-snack makers expanded from a narrow storefront to much larger premises, with the prospect of indoor dining. Your timing must be excellent to snag a table, however. On one midafternoon visit all were spoken for, and I repaired to a stone chessboard table at the park down the block. There I got my first close look at jui kuay ($3), steamed rice-flour cups topped with radish and ground pork and seasoned with garlic and black pepper. In Singapore they're known as shui kueh or chwee kueh, and a fresh batch makes for a lovely light breakfast. My jui kuay, which had been sitting in a refrigerator case, were stiff; steaming them for a few minutes, at home, restored them to something like their original quivering consistency.
More display space has allowed Sugar Club to considerably expand its stock of commercially packaged items, but the featured attractions — at least for me — continue to be the freshly made sweets and savories that cover the counters and line the refrigerator shelves. Some bear the names of various restaurants in Queens, Manhattan, and (in the case of the jui kuay) northern New Jersey. Others, including the corn-studded rice flour and coconut milk sweets called khanom khrok chow wung (eight for $3), are labeled only with the name and cell number of a very-small-scale confectioner. Unless you're prepared to place a phone order in Thai, the surest way to secure such rarities is to stop by the club.
Also shown: molded taro paste laced with coconut, coconut milk, and sugar (six for $3); oven-dried baby finger bananas (about 30, 7 oz., $3); and a leaf-cupped item (one of five, 7 oz. total, $2.50) that the cashier assured me was sweet. That was true of the yolklike bean-paste center (mung bean, I presume), but the first and most notable flavor, which imbued the surrounding glutinous rice, proved to be black pepper. It's an acquired taste. (An EIT reader has since supplied the name khanom khaeng, adding that even Thais eat these less for the flavor than for good fortune during various holidays. Thanks, Peter!)
Sugar Club
81-18 Broadway (81st-82nd Sts.), Elmhurst, Queens
718-565-9018
www.Facebook.com/pg/SugarClubNYC
