Top containers: left peanut sauce, right a vinegary cucumber/red onion/chili pepper salad
Bento, left to right: satay beef cut up and removed from the stick to fit in the box; baby carrots for color and veggies; drunken Thai noodles with beef and chilis
True and funny, ironic, sad story: so there's this Thai restaurant in the middle of Queens (my county, a suburbish/part of NYC) that everyone raves about. BEST Thai food in the city is the claim and declaration by many, many, many critics; even actual Thai people say it's the closest you can get to actual Thai food like you'd have in Thailand. The people who own it and work there are actually Thai. It's supposed to be fantastic, not that expensive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Obviously I want to go there. I've wanted to go there since I first heard of it years ago but it's never the right time. It's not near where I hang out at all, and just lots of small extenuating circumstances lead to not going over the past few years.
Yesterday, Cookie - whom you all should know by now from Cookie Bento! fame - and I am going to take a minute to gush here, over the wonderful people that surround me in my life and how lucky I am for all that I have and have had and will have - truly fortunate and blessed am I, there is no doubt - well, she came over to help me scrub down my entire apartment. True, we didn't finish, but my kitchen is gleaming and my bathroom is well on its way to sparkling as well. How much better can you get than a friend who's willing to scrub doody for you? Really? (I'm sorry, I know this is a food blog, but really. It once was food!) So awesome and amazing and I'm just touched that there are people out there who are just that good deep down in their hearts; after recent events I was beginning to doubt that there are really just that many good people out there and without even thinking, she showed me that there definitely are. Once again, Cookie, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. (I know you're reading!)
That's not the funny/ironic/sad part though. Of course we got hungry at some point and decided to head out to grab some stuff and grab food as well. Imagine my surprise when she announced we were going... yup, you guessed it, to the Thai place I have been dying to go to! I was super excited to be heading there, and really ecstatic to be trying authentic Thai food for the very first time!
...but. My camera had died just that morning and I hadn't had time to charge it. It was so dead that it wasn't just flashing the angry red battery light at me; I would turn it on and it would turn itself right back off in protest, "BATTERY NEEDS CHARGING" was the message. LOVELY. I was so mad, so disappointed, so upset that I couldn't take pictures! But the decision was made that I would just have to go back again to try more stuff and take some pictures! I'm totally down with that!
In any case, the above were the leftovers from the delicious meal. Except the carrots which I added myself. I'm not naming the restaurant to see if any NYC-dwellers can guess which restaurant I'm talking about- it's really hard not to know, but we'll see.
As always- happy bento!!!
that looks so good! i was a former nyc dweller, but will have to find out from my bro if he knows this place. =) good luck on moving in! it is so exciting to move into a place you can call your own.
ReplyDeleteI know! I know! Is it in Woodside? Do you want me to not give away the answer?
ReplyDeleteHaha you can say it if you want Meg, I would have said it's in Jackson Heights but I guess that could be Woodside, I'm not that familiar with those neighborhoods :)
ReplyDeleteI know which you are talking about and it lives up to the hype. Once you've eaten Thai food from here it's hard to go back to other places. Sad but true...
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