Fatty Crab

Location: 643 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014
Cuisine: Southeast Asian, Fusion
Hours: MON-WED (12pm-12am); THU-FRI (12pm-2am); SAT (11am-2am); SUN (11am-12am)
Phone: (212) 352-3598
Website: www.fattycrab.com
Prices: about $35/person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 8
Service: 1
Value: 1
Environment: 6

Frequency: Unique

The Thanksgiving celebration from last night continued for some of us as I joined Emily and Cindy for lunch in the city. Emily and I were off, but Cindy was working, so we met near her office around 14th St. & 8th. We talked about it last night and I thought the menu was interesting. They had Singaporean chili crab, which is rare here. They also had sliders... odd for any Asian restaurant.

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When we got there, they seated the 3 of us at a table for 2 even though the place was practically empty. The place looked purposely aged for authenticity and they used cheap plastic plates for table setting. If it was Summertime, I bet it would come complete with flies too. From looking at the menu, it was apparent that this restaurant was a fake Asian restaurant trying to rip people off who aren't familiar with the items. The chili crab was $45 because it was off season, so we passed on it. We really wanted to try the sliders, but they ran out. Of all ingredients, how do you run out of sliders? They offer pork buns as an appetizer... 2 pieces for $13! For details on the dishes we ordered, click here.

It's pretty rare for a restaurant to have a good food rating and a very low service rating, but I felt the staff was dishonest and insincerely friendly. They brought out 2 orders of the Watermelon Pickle and Crispy Pork when we only ordered one. That's OK... common mistake. The waiter took it back and mentioned to the person at the register that we only ordered one. Later, when they billed us, they charged for 2. They actually had the nerve to say that we had 2 also. They probably ate the additional order in the back and tried to get a free lunch from us.

Though the food was good overall, the value is among the worst I've had. Just about every item is grossly overpriced and portions are about 1/3-1/2 of what you'd get at a normal Southeast Asian restaurant.

Pre-Thanksgiving

Emily will be going to Thailand on Thanksgiving Day, so we won't really have everyone available for dinner that night. So instead, we had a Pre-Thanksgiving dinner tonight.

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Bahamas

Just a few weeks after my Mom got back from the Dominican Republic, she went on another trip to the Bahamas!

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Charlotte's Birthday

This weekend involved a lot of eating. It opened up with a Thai lunch with my parents and ended with Charlotte's Birthday party today. It was a nice little getaway to head out to Charlotte and Jeff's new house in Long Island... a first time for me and many others. From my place in Flushing, there was no expressway to get there and Google Maps calculated a 25 min trip... hard to believe for a place in Long Island. It actually took 40 min probably because of all the stops and local roads. Next time I'll try the LIRR method and see if that cuts the time.

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It was a nice cozy get-together because we hadn't done as many of the group dinners this year. Everyone moved or changed schedules, so I haven't seen a lot of them since Reinhard & Marites' wedding. Charlotte & Jeff's house in Port Washington is in a very nice area. It's residential, yet in walking distance of a downtown area similar to where I grew up in Congers. 40 min drive or 25 min LIRR is still very good city access also. It's a great place for working in the city and coming home to peace and quiet.

Back to reality tomorrow and back to my weekday diet!

Excellent Thai

Location: 36-50 Main St., Flushing, NY 11354
Cuisine: Southeast Asian
Hours: DAILY (10:30am-11pm)
Phone: (718) 886-8973
Prices: about $7/person (lunch)
Credit Cards: Cash only

Food: 8
Service: 9
Value: 9
Environment: 8

Frequency: Unique

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My Mom and I made note of this Thai Restaurant on Main St. when we passed by it on the way to the bank last week. There aren't many Thai places in a Chinese/Korean saturated downtown Flushing, so it's a nice break from our usual pattern. We decided to try it out for lunch today because I had the day off. Because we didn't get to see the interior the other day, the plan was to peek in and if it looked trashy, switch to a dim sum place instead. I looked in and the interior was very impressive.

We went in and the menu got me by surprised. It had tons of choices, but very difficult to find Thai items. There was a mix of Malaysian, Burmese and Hokkien, which is expected, but generic Chinese dishes dominated the menu. So it felt like we were in another fake Thai place that's really a Chinese restaurant. We asked the waiter where the Thai items were and even he couldn't point them out right away. We ended up going for the lunch specials, which had generic names. So we weren't sure if they were Chinese or Thai style. My Dad's beef looked Chinese, but he said there was a light curry flavoring in it. My Mom's pork was Malaysian and my curry chicken was Thai. For details on the food, please read the comments in the Picasa album.

The service was very good. The wait staff was friendly, checked on us a few times and very efficient. The place is clean and classy despite the extremely low prices. Despite the Thai menu items getting lost, the food was good. And their Thai food is really Thai style... once you find them in the menu!

Fall Back Sunday

This weekend is one hour longer because it was time to "Fall back" one hour. Though the official time of turning back the clocks is 2am on Sunday, sometimes I like to spend the extra hour on a different part of the day. This year, I just spent it on much needed sleep. I went to sleep normal time and woke up at the same time, sleeping away my extra hour. Because I didn't spend it on leisure activities, my extra hour felt like it evaporated. But at least I had a fun day to look forward to with our family dinner at night.

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Pinang Malaysian Thai

Location: 111-10 Queens Blvd., Forest Hills, NY 11375
Cuisine: Malaysian, Thai, Asian Fusion
Hours: DAILY (11:30am-10pm)
Phone: (718) 268-9135
Prices: about $15/person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 9
Service: 6
Value: 7
Environment: 7

Frequency: Unique

It was the 2nd week in a row that our family dinner was in a restaurant. We're going restaurant hopping now that my parents are into these Restaurant.com offers where you pay a low price for a more valuable gift certificate. Pinang Malaysian Thai seemed like a reasonably priced one where a $25 gift certificate (for $10) could go pretty far.

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I'm probably bias towards Malaysian and Thai food because I never really had a bad meal before in those cuisines. So it was all good. I'm mostly going to compare them to Sentosa since that's the best one in town. The food was a tie overall. Some items were better here... others in Sentosa. Please check out the Picasa album for details on each dish.

The service was just OK. The staff was polite and friendly, but inefficient. After we asked for the check, we probably waited longer than it took us to eat the meal! Naturally, they also made a mistake on the check and didn't take off the gift certificate. Be careful when using gift certificates at restaurants. They'll always try to pull a fast one on you... ALWAYS!

Prices were generally what you would expect at a Malaysian or Thai restaurant. The portions were just about right. For a family of 4, we ordered 4 dishes + 2 roti canais and had no leftovers.

Mekong

Location: 156-32 Northern Blvd., Flushing, NY 11354
Cuisine: Thai, Vietnamese
Hours: DAILY (11am-10pm)
Phone: (718) 886-2070
Prices: about $15/person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 9
Service: 3
Value: 7
Environment: 6

Frequency: Unique

We did something a little different for our weekly dinner this weekend. There was no baseball and we didn't really have any food in the house, so we went out for once. Emily found Mekong while playing with the Yelp! Android app. a couple of weeks ago. We went over there since it was nearby the house and we never noticed it before. It's just a couple of blocks from Mad for Chicken in a small shopping area.

As we entered, we started out with a bad impression because 4 of the staff members passed by and neither greeted us or seated us (it was not full at all). We just seated ourselves. After they served the food, they never checked on us until we were done. They also didn't thank us on the way out.

The food was very good in contrast to the bad service though. Dad even said some of the dishes were good, which is rare for him to say that of non-Chinese food! The portions for each dish were just about right for a 4-person family meal. We ordered 3 entrees & 2 appetizers. Please click here for more details in the Picasa album.

The prices were OK for what we ordered. $15/person is normal and the food was very good. The place was a little small and wouldn't be good for groups larger than 6. Acoustics are also bad. Because there are no cloth items or carpet, it's hard to hear people talk. The patrons are mostly high school-college kids too... not really a family place as Yelp! claims. Overall, it's still a good place to go to if you're willing to get great food and expect nothing else.

Weekend Projects

Since nothing much was going on this weekend, I had a couple of computer projects to catch up on. First, I went back to last week's Dual P-III. So all the hardware was installed, but the system wouldn't startup. I tried an extra power supply and got the same results. So it's possible that the motherboard got damaged the first time I turned on the system will all the devices installed... maybe it couldn't take the stress. For now, this one is on hold until I get another idea.

The next project was optimizing my netbook, an Asus EEE PC 1000HE. I read about overclocking, but the final result didn't seem like a good enough reward to try at this point. I just upgraded the BIOS to the latest, which allowed the integrated graphics card to take more RAM. I haven't noticed a big difference with this change, but I guess being up to date is good enough for me.

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And finally, I wanted to get Android working on a desktop since Chrome OS isn't out yet. There's a very easy implementation called Live Android. You basically download 2 files, combine them to make one ISO image. Then burn that to a bootable CD. Then you boot from that to get a read-only version of Android. I decided to give it a shot with my old Pentium-II laptop and it was perfectly smooth. Check out the Picasa album above for details and screenshots.

Dual P-III (Part 1)

Uncle Bock dropped off his old computer last week since he just upgraded to a much more powerful one. I always take in computers about to be tossed. If anything, the screws are useful to me at the very least. I still had a bunch of spare parts because one of my old systems that died had good parts. Uncle Bock's computer had a good motherboard with dual Pentium-III, but all the accessories are basic. Click on the Picasa album below for more details.

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So the system is still a work in progress. It's physically complete. The next step is just to figure out why it doesn't turn on. If it's not a problem with the motherboard, then the system is still OK. After that, I'll install some basic software on it and see how it runs compared to the single processor 1 Ghz P-III it's supposed to replace.