ox | Johnny Prime

The folks behind Pure Thai Cook House and Feast have collaborated to create one of Thai Town’s newest joints, Taladwat.

My food buddy from Instagram, @NYCFoodFOMO, organized a few of us to go try some of their noteworthy dishes. Here’s how it went down:

I don’t remember the names of any of these dishes, but I can do a good job explaining them. The first one is a scallion omelette. This was great.

This roasted calamari was a favorite among all of us I think.

The coconut curry chicken was a little sweet for my liking, but the meat was delicious.

On the opposite end, this savory and spicy larb style ground chicken dish was awesome. My favorite of the night.

We had two types of pork. This was a pork belly in curry.

And this was stir fried with string beans. I liked this better.

This ground shrimp and shrimp paste “sausage” patty in a banana leaf was delicious. You can see the herbs mixed into it. Lots of flavor.

This braised ginger short rib dish was really tender. Definitely a go to for you meat lovers.

Soak up that sauce with this nice rice.

Then move on to dessert: pumpkin custard on sticky rice and mango sticky rice.

This place is worth trying when the sister joint Pure is jam-packed (it often is). I still prefer Pure to this, and perhaps Chai Thai and Noodies as well (for this part of town, anyway).

TALADWAT
714 9th Ave
New York, NY 10019

My wife picked up a pair of packs of this Side Project brand jerky while we were waiting to board our flight to Hawaii. Check out the cool logo of a bovine in a top hat:

We sampled thr two flavors on the plane: Mongolian and Philly Cheese Steak.

The interesting thing about this brand is that they stamp each pack with dates for when they were dried and packed, right there next to the ingredients list and nutritional info.

Pretty cool. When you rip the packs open, you will find a thick vacuum sealed plastic pouch containing the meat:

No doubt this preserves the freshness.

We first tried the Mongolian flavor. It was peppery, garlicky, and had good meat flavor. I was expecting a higher spice level for its claim that it would make Ghengis proud. But the texture was good, and it even had some sesame seeds embedded. Not wet, not dry, not sticky and not tough. It passed all hurdles that can usually trip up a jerky.