As we’re exploring the Long Island City neighborhood, this was a pretty good find. It’s on Vernon Blvd where there are a ton of neighborhood restaurants. About 2 blocks away is a park that is in vicinity of the Long Island City sign and lets you view Manhattan from the east. We’ve been here a few times, and we always notice a decent amount of locals that continue to stop by. It’s relatively easy to eat here without needing to make a reservation.
We had a show to go to around 43rd and 9th Ave, so we decided to look around the Hell’s Kitchen area. In this area from my research, there seems to be some pretty good Thai restaurants that have been here for a bit or are opening up. We had recently gone to LumLum, which focused on more Northern Thai cuisine. Here in Chalong which is on 9th Ave between 51st and 52nd, they are focused on more Southern Thai. This restaurant is a few months old, and we were able to get a reservation for 2 for 5:30 PM the night prior to our arrival.
Zaab Zaab is a highly rated New York Times restaurant that serves North Eastern Thai food. We have been trying various Thai flavors that are very different than your typical Thai restaurant. I’ve noticed that these North/Eastern restaurants tend to have much more bolder and spicier flavors that are a bit more adventurous than what you’d normally expect. This is located fairly close to the 7 or E train by exiting off Jackson Heights / Roosevelt Ave. We walked in on an early Friday evening around 5:30 PM for 2 people.
LumLum is a fairly new Thai restaurant to the city. What attracted me was that it has a lot of Northern Thai flavors and influences in the food. Think Thai but modernized somewhat. When you see some of the photos below, you will see what that means. The restaurant is run by 2 sisters who grew up in Thailand. When you arrive, both the interior and exterior are very social media friendly. We arrived at around 5:10 on a Friday evening after work, and were able to walk in with just a party of 2. When we finished around 6:00, there was a wait outside already.
We were on our way to get some delicious Popeyes chicken on the 7 train, and little and behold, the 7 trains were running express from Queensboro towards Flushing and were running local heading towards Manhattan. Normally the 7 runs local both ways, but they were doing track work, and it wasn’t quite clear. The next stop after Queensboro was 61st Woodside, which basically skipped our desired stop by 3 stops. Instead of waiting, we decided to take the opportunity to check out this restaurant that we have ordered a few times on delivery apps.
What’s nice about Thai food is they are rarely bad, and they are very consistent even at different restaurants. We were in Cobble Hill after an errand, and this place was relatively close by and open for a late afternoon dinner.
We got 2 different Thai teas. The first was the regular Thai tea and the other is Lychee Thai tea. Both were pretty good. The lychee might be sweet for some, but it tastes literally like the fruit.
This restaurant is a current trendy Thai restaurant that we had to wait a month for our reservations. It’s actually a little hard to spot your first time. It’s basically where people are standing around aimlessly and down the stairs in a very hard to see nook. If there are no people, look for a sign that has an arrow pointing down to the basement.
We opted for the garden/patio seating, and luckily the weather was a perfect mid 70s temperature with very little to no breeze.
I’m not a big fan of venturing out to deep Queens. The trains out here are probably not as bad as going into Manhattan, but it sure feels bad. The E trains today were barely running, and the R trains were making local stops going towards Flushing.
However, today was one of those days where we felt like grubbing some all you can eat hot pot. Instead of Chinese style, we heard of this place in Jackson Heights that was Thai style. It was pretty interesting.
I was looking for Wondee Siam but somehow ended up here.
Like most Thai places, there are very few that are bad.
The kanom jeeb is pretty decent. It’s like fried shrimp shiu mai balls.
The country style curry was ordered with Chicken. Despite it having 2 pepper signs on the menu, it’s actually not that spicy. The curry was watery, but it’s easy to consume once you mix the rice with the sauce. The sauce has a ton of salty flavor in it though, so I find it a good match with a thai iced tea.
This place was really good for Thai food. Would love to come back again for their Tom Yum noodle soup and their soft shell crab special. Price was not expensive at all either.