(This venue is closed. As of 2022, the owners still operate Little House Restoran in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.) "Kueh" (pronounced Kway, also spelled kue and kuih) is a broad term embracing many small Southeast Asian savories and sweets. Kueh are everywhere in Malaysia — the previous home of the Little House owners — as well as Singapore and Indonesia, but they're hard to track down in New York. Sanur, a bi-level establishment on Doyers St., in Manhattan's Chinatown, once showcased the city's brightest and most varied selection in the window of their upstairs cafe, but when the owners chose to focus on their downstairs restaurant, the windowside shelves were left bare.
A few kueh, consigned by an outside confectioner, do crowd their way onto the countertop at Little House. Layered kueh like these commonly are made from layers of steamed rice flour blended with mung bean starch, and customarily are colored to signal their flavors, in this case, pale green for pandan, deep brown for palm sugar. I expected that these kueh would be purely sweet, but to my surprise the pandan layer was salted, too, a tad much.
Also shown: a tray of housemade bak chang, the pyramid-shaped Malaysian analog to zongzi, and pulut panggang, leaf-wrapped cylinders of glutinous rice filled, for this variety, with shredded coconut and dried fish. More details, you can unwrap for yourself.
Little House Café
90-19 Corona Ave. (90th-Hampton Sts.), Elmhurst, Queens
718-592-0888
www.Facebook.com/pages/Little-House-Cafe-Elmhurst/474707772715154
