Ever since sixth grade, I’ve had a weird fascination with Suriname. It’s probably South America’s least-discussed nation, since it’s tiny (population 490,000) and Americans are pretty much never interested in small countries that lack terrorists, beaches, and oil. If you tell a friend that you’re headed to Suriname, you’ll almost certainly receive a blank stare, or else your friend will ask if that’s the name of a new nightclub in Chelsea.

And that’s sad, because Suriname is at least as interesting as Chelsea. Suriname is a former Dutch colony, and arguably one of the world’s most impressive (and tiniest) melting pots, with substantial African, Native American, Lebanese, East Indian, Javanese, Brazilian, Chinese, and Jewish populations. Suriname is also one of the most multilingual nations on earth, with no fewer than 17 regional languages recognized by the federal government. I think that means that the food will be good.

you know what they say about a man with a big, long fried fish...

So I was pretty stoked when I realized that there’s a Surinamese restaurant in Queens, called Warung Kario. I was even more stoked when I found out that the owners are of Indonesian descent, since I love Indonesian food. Indonesian-Surinamese food? This was going to be shout-from-the-rooftops sort of good, right?

Warung Kario’s menu skews Indonesian, with items such as sate and nasi goreng prominently mentioned on the sign above the steam table. At lunchtime, however, the menu is pretty much completely meaningless. When we walked in at around 1:30 in the afternoon, the friendly owner smiled and said that she had just started to cook for the day, so our options were limited. We smiled back, confessed that we were new to Surinamese food and wanted to try everything, and asked for two plates loaded with whatever happened to be ready: curry chicken and fried fish, as it turned out.

you know what they say about a man with big, long cucumber slices...

Even with the limited options at Warung Kario, we could see hints of Suriname’s ethnic mayhem in the food. One dish included an entire deep-fried fish, sitting on a massive bed of fried rice and pan-fried noodles, in the style of a Chinese take-out joint. The plate also included sautéed collards and green beans, which resembled the side dishes served in a Trinidadian or Guyanese restaurant, and a few slices of cucumbers lightly marinated in sweetened vinegar… and I have no idea where that came from. The fish was fairly boring, but the vegetables were delicious, and everything was helped along by one of the tastiest hot sauces I’ve ever eaten—probably a product of the Javanese side of Warung Kario’s genealogy.

The curry chicken was absolutely heavenly: fresh chunks of chicken thigh, stewed in a surprisingly light yellow curry sauce, more reminiscent of a Caribbean curry than the feisty, coconut-milk-heavy stuff served in many Indonesian restaurants. The curry chicken was also served with a handful of stewed pinto beans, more collard greens, and a few more slices of lightly marinated cucumbers.

you know what they say about men with short, stubby chicken thighs and pinto beans... OK, I'll stop now

Each of our Surinamese combo platters ($8) were impossibly large—not that I’m complaining or anything. My companion was having boy troubles, and wasn’t terribly hungry (apparently, receiving 30 lovesick text messages the morning after a supposed one-night stand can really ruin your appetite… but you know what they say about men with big, long text messages), so I gamely tried to avoid wasting any of her food. That was silly, because I could barely finish my share of the platters. That was a big fish.

Was the food shout-from-the-rooftops good? Not quite. Unspiced fried fish and fried noodles won’t really make me shout about anything. But that curry was pretty damned tasty. And the hot sauce made my bowels shout and sing happily for days.

really, who wouldn't want to make their bowels sing with hot sauce-inspired joy?

Warung Kario
128-12 Liberty Ave., Queens (Ozone Park)
Subway: Lefferts Ave. (A train)

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Shaggy woulda loved this mezze platter

A few weeks ago, I ate a perfectly lovely meal at Gazala Place, one of the very few restaurants in the United States specializing in Druze cuisine. To be precise, it’s one of exactly two Druze restaurants in the United States: the other is Gazala’s, also owned by Israel-born Druze chef Halabi Gazala. Apparently, Chef Gazala is well on her way to constructing the nation’s largest Druze cuisine empire.

By now, you’re probably thinking, what the eff is a Druze? The Druze are a somewhat reclusive ethnic and religious group of somewhere between 1 million and 2.5 million souls, primarily residing in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. According to our good friends at Wikipedia, roughly 20,000 Druze live in the United States. And at least one of them makes damned good food, apparently. (Another Druze, Casey Kasem, does a very good job of sounding like a stoned teenager while talking with a cartoon dog.)

paper-thin pita

Along with two wonderful non-Druze friends, I chowed my way through an epic mezze platter ($24.95) at Gazala Place, loaded with baba ganouj, hummus, tabouli, some insanely fresh stuffed grape leaves, a spoonful of tahini, a couple of absolutely heavenly balls of kibbeh (ground beef), and a few “cigars”—something resembling tiny fried eggrolls, stuffed with seasoned ground beef and tomatoes. Much of the mezze platter fell into the category of well-executed Levantine standards, but Druze pita bread is its own unique, delicious beast—soft, paper-thin, whole-wheat dough, baked onsite daily.

no really: lamb fat is awesome

For our main entrée, we ate conclusive evidence that lamb fat is completely awesome. We ordered the daily special, lamb shank stewed forever in caramelized onions and tons and tons of lamb fat, creating an unreasonably juicy, dark gravy around the meat ($23.95, served with rice and a light cabbage/corn salad). It deserves a nomination for the best lamb I’ve ever eaten, alongside the ginger-rubbed lamb chops at Banjara, an Indian restaurant in the East Village.

Did I mention that lamb fat is completely awesome? Just checking.

Here’s the thing, though: I love great food wherever I can get it, but I love great food even more when it’s served in an unexpected hole-in-the-wall sort of place. If the restaurant looks unremarkable but serves amazing international food, I’m in heaven. Gazala Place is a nice spot. It looks like it should have great food. There’s even a flour-covered table in the window, where Chef Gazala works her bakery magic. I expected great food. I got it. We paid a decent amount of money for it. That’s cool. You should eat there.

clean, pleasant, and nondescript

Even cooler: a random-ass, nondescript takeout joint called Green Olive that serves phenomenal Israeli food for half the price. Hells, yeah!

I’ve walked past Green Olive (tagline: “Healthy Mediterranean Food”… yawn) literally 100 times since it opened last winter. It looks like a poor man’s version of Chickpea, the tasty-but-cloyingly-corporate-looking chain specializing in baked falafel. Nothing about Green Olive suggests that it would be any more interesting than Chickpea or the dozens of other Middle Eastern places in Midtown Manhattan.

that green sauce? serious dragon breath... but worth it

And clearly, I’m a dumbass for thinking that. For $12.95 (trust me, that’s idiotically cheap by Midtown standards), a friendly yarmulke-clad man (I really, really like the word “yarmulke”) loaded up the best chicken shawarma platter I’ve had in Manhattan: beautifully spiced fowl, accompanied by some of the best hot sauces I’ve eaten in NYC (your choice of a garlicky green puree, or a saucier, sweeter red version), and a fresh pita. The grilled chicken platter ($13.95) was just as brilliant—miraculously tender, and marinated in its own distinctly amazing way.

The side dishes, however, were the best part: top-notch baba ganouj and hummus, a fiery cabbage salad with red peppers, roasted squash and onions, and the best roasted eggplant I’ve ever eaten. All of it was at least as fresh and impressive as the food served by our Palestinian friends at Duzan in Astoria—and that’s one hell of a compliment. The plates were absolute gut-busters, but at least the platters included enough cabbage to push the chicken and vegetables through. (Too much information? You’re welcome.)

I’m sorry, Green Olive, for taking almost a year to try your food. I won’t wait much more than another few days before I come back.

cabbage with hot peppers... that'll feel great tomorrow morning

Green Olive
300 East 45th Street, Manhattan
Subway: Grand Central (4, 5, 6, 7, S trains)

Gazala Place
709 9th Avenue, Manhattan
Subway: 50th Street (A, C, E trains)

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Ethiopian honey wine, served by a total non-dickhead

As a longtime fan of hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurants (a friendly reminder: if the term “hole-in-the-wall” gives you happy memories of toilet stalls in truck stop restrooms, you might need help), I always have low expectations of everything besides the food itself. If the tables are dirty, the menus are tattered, and the service is clunky, that’s totally cool with me. If anything, I think crappy service can actually be a good sign. If a server puts great chow in front of me, I’m happy, unless the server is a total dickhead. And I can’t say that I’ve ever run across a total dickhead in an ethnic restaurant—just a charming lack of attention to details.

So Awash surprised me by being thoroughly awesome on all levels. I’d read some lukewarm reviews of the place, and wasn’t expecting much. We’d actually intended to eat somewhere else: Café Addis on 125th Street, a fun, clean, Ethiopian-owned bar that serves American-style sandwiches, but no Ethiopian food. The owner of Café Addis warned us away from some nearby Ethiopian and Eritrean spots, and sent us to Awash, nearly 20 blocks away. Thanks, Café Addis guy!

plated with care by another complete non-dickhead

Along with two large friends, I ordered Awash’s combo for three people ($37.50), with collard greens cooked in onions and peppers (gomen), spicy lentils in red pepper sauce (yemesir kik wat), beef with peppers and onions in berbere sauce (special tibs), chicken stewed in onions and clarified butter (doro alicha), and a surprisingly tasty dish listed on the menu simply as “beets,” which I had never previously associated with Ethiopian or African food. In a nice touch, the food was plated so that each of us had a bit of each item in front of us, preventing us from reaching awkwardly across our massive shared platter. Nice job, Awash.

nope, no blorg here

In most restaurants, Ethiopian food is what my sister would call “blorgy”—it makes you feel slightly fat and greasy, and makes you want to make “blorg” sounds while you (somewhat unsuccessfully) attempt to digest your meal. Awash scores points for serving flavorful but surprisingly non-blorgy food: our chicken was unusually light and delicious, the beets had barely a hint of oil in them, and the collards were gently stewed with only a hint of garlic—enough to be tasty, but not overpowering. Even the beef tibs and lentils, which often swim in a delicious puddle of grease, were expertly spiced, but blissfully light on the oil.

no blorg here, either... and no pisswater

Awash also gets bonus points for offering Ethiopian honey wine (your choice of red or white, $8; the red version is sweetened with blackberry juice, and highly recommended if you’re into sweet wines) and a variety of Ethiopian beers (St. George, Harar, Addis, and Meta, $6 each). One of my companions attempted to order a Bud Light, and our server (hereafter referred to as Beer Savior) recommended that he try a Meta instead. All hail Beer Savior! Beer Savior magnanimously prevented a silly American from drinking another bottle of pisswater American beer. (Note: Bud Light, the quintessential pisswater American beer, is now produced by a Belgian company. Weird, right?)

But wait, it gets better: when Beer Savior brought me a post-dinner bottle of Addis, he took the time to pour the beer at the table, and eyed the glass critically before putting it down in front of me. He thought it looked funny, and maybe a little bit flat. He went back to the kitchen, and returned with another Addis. Also flat. Apologizing profusely, Beer Savior returned a few minutes later with a tasty, non-flat Meta instead of another Addis.

Really… who does that? Whenever I order a bottle of beer in a four-star restaurant, the server never bothers to examine the beer before serving it to me. (Ok, so when I say “four-star restaurant,” I mean an Irish pub. Close enough.) You’re my hero, Beer Savior. And your restaurant’s food is pretty good, too.

beer salvation

Awash
947 Amsterdam Ave. (at 106th), Manhattan
Subway: 103rd St. (1 train)

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fattoush salad, sans drywall

At first, I worried that I’d picked the worst possible moment to visit Duzan, a Palestinian restaurant in Astoria: the entryway to the restaurant was littered with a small pile of lumber and construction tools, and I approached the place just as one of the owners was about to light up a cigarette outside. He apologized for the mess as I walked in, explaining that he was working on updating the look of the place, and that he didn’t have a basement to store his supplies.

I’m never bothered by a little bit of construction debris (drywall dust adds a nice crunch to any salad—try it sometime), and actually just felt guilty for interrupting the guy during his construction break. The man was clearly in full multitasking mode: as I stared indecisively at the menu, he had a brief, frantic conversation (in Arabic) with a neighbor, dashed out of the store for a quick errand while apologizing to me again for the mess, and then returned to prepare my meal(s).

hand-mashed... and apparently pretty tasty with liver and a nice chianti

I was in no hurry, and lazily read a few articles on my phone while I waited. At some point, I glanced up, and saw him slicing a cucumber for my salad. I looked up again a few minutes later, and realized that he was mashing fava beans with a spoon. No pre-cooked crap here: Duzan’s co-owner was making everything completely from scratch while I waited.

The fattoush salad was phenomenal: diced cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and marinated chunks of toasted pita bread, freshly tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice, and topped with sumac. For $5.95, I figured that the salad would be pre-made, or that the vegetables would at least be pre-cut. Nope. Even the dressing was made on the spot.

I certainly would have expected something like foul mudammas (fava beans mashed with garlic, olive oil, drywall and lemon juice; imagine hummus, but with fava beans instead of chickpeas) to be pre-made. Nope. The fava beans were mashed on the spot with a spoon, and hand-stirred with the other ingredients. It was served with an abnormally fluffy pita, pulled straight from the oven.

much better than the other chicken shawarmas I sometimes hit while swinging a dead cat

But the real treat was the chicken shawarma ($5.95), which is apparently Duzan’s specialty. (I tried to order lamb. The owner’s response: “Lamb is off the menu. You want chicken shawarma.”). There’s no shortage of shawarma sandwiches in NYC (you know what they say: swing a dead cat in NYC, and you’ll hit a shawarma stand), but great ones are surprisingly rare: the meat is often old and crusty or nauseatingly oily, and the pita is frequently stale and sad. At Duzan, the meat was tender and shockingly lean, the warm (and unusually fat) pita was carefully brushed with olive oil, and the hummus was absolutely delicious—and presumably made just before I ate it. Easily the best shawarma sandwich I’ve eaten in this country.

I would have loved to find some of Palestine’s seldom-exported national dishes at Duzan—I drool whenever I read about maqluba (a pilaf of rice, lamb, cauliflower, and eggplant) or musakhan (roasted chicken on flatbread, topped with sumac, allspice, and fried pine nuts). Duzan, for better or worse, sticks with familiar Middle Eastern standards—mostly variations on foul, hummus, and shawarma. But when the food is so astoundingly fresh, how could I even think about complaining?

Duzan
24-11 Steinway Street, Queens
(warning: google maps seems to get very confused by Duzan’s address… Duzan is located near the corner of Steinway & Astoria Blvd., no matter what google says)
Subway: Astoria Blvd. (N, Q trains)

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the only thing Iowans won't put in a deep fryer

I have a theory: pretty much anything tastes damned good when you dip it in batter and deep-fry it. A deep-fried hot dog surrounded in cornmeal? Delicious. A deep-fried Oreo cookie or Twinkie? Gooey and scrumptious, if you’re into that sort of thing. Deep-fried shoe leather? I haven’t tried it, but I’m pretty sure it would work.

Our good friends at the Iowa State Fair have pushed the boundaries of food on a stick for nearly a century (salad on a stick, deep-fried Snickers on a stick, or mango on a stick, anybody?). And now maybe they’ve outdone themselves: deep-fried butter on a stick. Awesome, right?

anybody get the feeling that deep-fried butter on a stick was invented by a consortium of Des Moines cardiologists?

I am not making this up: Iowa’s finest concessionaires take a full-sized, 4-ounce stick of butter, coat it in a vaguely cinnamon-y batter, and stick it in the fryer. It was the runaway hit of the 2011 Iowa State Fair—on both of my visits, the butter-on-a-stick hawkers had by far the longest line of any food stand.

Too bad it’s kind of gross. When you take your first bite of the stuff, you’ll feel a dribble of warm butter oozing down your chin. Oozing butter is fun and everything, but the slimy batter just doesn’t taste all that good. Imagine a cinnamon roll soaked with twice as much butter as usual—and half as much cinnamon and sugar. Or a doughnut hole sitting in a pool of butter and oil. Or the soggiest, butteriest French toast ever made, squishing with oil and butter whenever you take a bite. Not cute.

deep-fried pickles... luckily, nothing oozes when you bite into these

The funny part is that it probably would have been pretty damned good if they’d just coated the thing with a half-inch of powdered sugar after frying it. I’ll admit it: I might have ordered another one, if only they had given us a large dipping bowl of powdered sugar.

The other culinary hit of the 2011 Iowa State Fair was the Gigantor, a large hamburger topped with macaroni and cheese, and served between two full-sized grilled cheese sandwiches. I would probably have eaten one just to say that I did, except that my fiancé (wisely) said that she would force me to sleep in the barn if I tried to digest one of those suckers. Poor me, I had to stick with the jumbo turkey leg and pizza bread for my main course instead of the Gigantor.

Other culinary wonders of our six-day trip to Iowa: deep-fried pork tenderloin sandwiches (not on a stick), deep-fried portabello mushrooms, deep-fried zucchini, a deep-fried Milky Way on a stick, deep-fried pepperjack cheese on a stick, buttery roasted corn on a stick, and plenty of deep-fried dill pickles. And individually-wrapped bite-sized steaks at A Dong, Des Moines’ finest Vietnamese restaurant. And surprisingly delicious jambalaya and cornbread at the always-wonderful Court Avenue Brewing Company, which also serves a killer bloody Mary ($5) and one of the best tasting racks of beer in the country ($15 for a rack of eight surprisingly large glasses).

And then there’s Mom’s cooking, which—all joking aside—still kicks the ass of any deep-fried goo on a stick. See you next year, Mom.

Coming soon: deep-fried Hereford on a stick.

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