Pok Pok NY

Roughly a billion years ago, give or take, we dined with our friend Howard at Pok Pok NY, Andy Ricker's temple of Thai in Red Hook. The food was clean, sharp, elevated, and bright, especially the kaeng hung leh (top), which mixed pork belly and pork shoulder curry with ginger, palm sauce, turmeric, tamarind, burmese curry powder, and pickled garlic. Also memorable was the papaya pok pok (below), a refreshing mix of green papaya, fish sauce, salted black crab (i.e., the thing that looks like a mushroom cap), tomatoes, lime, long beans, peanuts, dried shrimp, tamarind, palm sugar, garlic, and many, many, many Thai chilies. Definitely order the recommended sticky rice alongside this dish. 

Is Pok Pok worth the generally epic wait? We can't rightly say, in part because we walked right in at 6.30 on a Monday --- admittedly not most people's ideal time to eat. That ratio of hype to quality to amount of time spent on line is as individual as how spicy is too spicy or how pricy is too pricy or how blond is too blond. We went in hungry, came out full, and were in our PJs by 9. In other words, exactly how we like it.