the confined nomad

Brunei Darussalam?  Surely that doesn’t count.  It’s really just part of Malaysia in all but name, right? A tiny sultanate that only exists independent of Malaysia because it elected to remain a British protectorate rather than join the Malaysian Federation when it declared independence from the Brits. Now we’re just nitpicking, and I’m the one stuck trying to locate this “cuisine” in NYC?  Well loyal readers, nitpicking is what the Nomad crew does best.  Ask Noquar.  He complains about it nearly every time we go out.  Brunei is a UN member state, so it’s on our list. This isn’t Nam; there are rules.In our research, we learned that most of the small number of Bruneians in New York live in Elmhurst, Queens, shop at the Chinese and Malaysian supermarkets (Hong Kong Supermarket and Top Line Supermarket, respectively), and eat out at the Malaysian restaurants there.  We also turned up a deservedly well-reviewed Malaysian-Chinese restaurant appropriately called Taste Good (8218 45th Avenue, Elmhurst, NY 11373).

We had a game plan. We decided to compile a list of typical Bruneian dishes and see if any of them featured at Taste Good.  We would then head to Top Line to see if we could find all of the ingredients for a couple more dishes.

We almost didn’t make it.  Tearing down the BQE in the Nomad’s 1992 Toyota Corolla, we blew a tire, spun out of control, flipped a half dozen times and miraculously landed right side up on the shoulder of an exit ramp.  Noquar managed to pry the doors open and pull his wife and friend from the twisted metal.  He then lifted the car up with his left hand and replaced the tire with the donut using his right.  In the end, despite her whiplash and dislocated shoulder, the Nomad managed to get us to a tire garage.  We got a real tire, licked our wounds, and were on our way to find Brunei.  Those are the details as I remember them anyway. We did this a while ago.  Things are a bit fuzzy.  There was definitely a flat tire, though.

When we finally got to Taste Good, our stomachs had long begun auto-digesting from hunger.  Unfortunately, our friend and dining companion (half of the Quinnoney duo that has guest blogged here in the past) who we had planned to meet there, had arrived at the restaurant, eaten and left by the time we got there. She did say it was fantastic, though, and she was right.  The restaurant itself is small and simple but charming.  It’s lit by colored Christmas lights and filled with cheap Chinese gift shop decorations, which sounds tacky in theory, but is actually warm and inviting.  We sat down, pulled out our list of Bruneian dishes, and started searching the menu for matches.  Luckily, we found quite a few…and ordered them all.

Having spent a good part of the day standing around on a BQE exit ramp, I can’t think of anything that would have been more refreshing than the fruit ices we ordered to drink.  Noquar had the lychee ice, and the Nomad and I ordered the longan ice.  Both had large pieces of fruit floating in sweet, cold nectar.  Food-wise, we each started with the roti canai, which bode well for the rest of the meal.  The roti was perfect, mildly sweet and chewy, and the yellow chicken curry was rich and creamy. This was followed in short order by the pandan ayam, crispy fried chicken wings wrapped in pandan leaves and served with a sweet, spicy sauce, a winner for sure.  We also had some bak kut te, a beef and tofu hot pot that would mostly be served on special occasions in Brunei, as beef tends to be far more expensive than fish, chicken or seafood.  The nasi lemak was excellent, creamy coconut rice served with vegetables, curry chicken, and spicy anchovies.  Finally, we had the assam laksa, thick, chewy noodles in a fish-flake broth flavored with lemongrass and shrimp paste.

Roti canai with yellow chicken curry

Pandan Ayam: chicken wings wrapped in pandan leaves

Bak Kut Te

Nasi Lemak

Assam Laksa

I’m sure the speed with which we polished everything off wasn’t healthy, and we were approaching an uncomfortable level of fullness.  That didn’t stop us from ordering dessert, though.  Now, I wouldn’t venture to call the service at Taste Good friendly, or even moderately pleasant.  Our server was all business.  We hadn’t really taken note of this as our empty stomachs had taken priority earlier in the meal.  But by the time we ordered dessert, the restaurant was virtually empty apart from us. That still didn’t stop our server from preemptively bringing us the check.  She was hardly impressed when we complimented the food and asked for dessert.  In fact, she acted more as if we had just asked her to get on her knees and wash our hot, dusty, stinky feet before we stepped back out into the New York summer.  She snatched away the check and the take-out menu we had taken notes on, and proceeded to bungle our order despite our having confirmed it with her a second time. I never had the sense, though, that she was treating us any more contemptuously than she treated anyone else, and it’s certainly no reason not to go visit this place.  When it came out, my Malaysian iced tea didn’t quite satisfy my craving for a sweet, strong Malaysian iced coffee (which is what I ordered), but it was delicious and refreshing nonetheless.  The desserts were simple and tasty.  The bubur cha cha was chunks of sweet potato swimming in coconut milk and the pulut hitam was a dark rice pudding.  Both were mildly sweet and served piping hot.

As we were leaving, painfully full and happy, we chatted for a couple of minutes with the nice woman next to us who had been waiting for her take-out order.  She seemed to have derived a whole lot of pleasure from the fact that we were clearly enjoying our meal and took note of it a good half dozen times.  That’s one thing that’s been fairly apparent throughout this whole mission; shared enjoyment of food creates a real sense of connection among people who otherwise would have nothing to do with one another.  It may be small and superficial, but people seem to feel like you’re sharing in their world in some small way. Worlds that, day to day, most likely have very little in common converge ever so slightly on that table.  Does that mean we walk out of that restaurant with some deeper understanding of anything, or that we’ve bridged some cultural divide?  Almost certainly not, but we did enjoy stuffing our faces with the very same food the woman next to us may have enjoyed stuffing her own face with later that evening.  That’s something, I guess.

(Part 2: the supermarket and our cooking efforts to follow…)

Tags: Brunei, food, Malaysian, Queens, restaurant

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 22nd, 2009 at 9:49 am and is filed under B, Brunei. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.