A few weeks ago, I travelled to NYC to visit my best foodie friend, Ramon, and we visited one of my favourite Manhattan restaurants - Nooch . Nooch serves authentic Thai and Japanese cuisine and its complete interior, including the furniture and furnishings, was designed by Canadian design guru Karim Rashid (for more about the design and decor at Nooch please see my post on HGTV.ca). The affordable menu at Nooch ranges from a multitude of Japanese versions of salads, noodle soups, cold noodles, pan-fried noodles, tempuras, makis, rice dishes and main dishes to Thai versions of noodle soups, rice dishes, pan-fried noodles, side dishes, salads and curries. Nooch also features exclusive signature dishes such as: soft shell crab, pooja (deep fried minced chicken + crabmeat + salted egg yolk + sweet & sour sauce served with jasmine rice) and many other delicious Thai-Japanese specialties ( Nooch’s menu ). The menu definitely has something for everybody and it’s a great place to sample a bunch of different dishes, as the price points are quite reasonable. I recommend going with a friend and sharing a sampling from their menu. From top left: Emerald Dumplings($5.50US), Salted Dry Beef($8US), Spider Maki($7US) On our lunch visit, we started with the Emerald Dumplings (which are steamed soy bean dumplings served with a green curry sauce), an order of Salted Dry Beef (which is salted grilled beef) and the Spider Maki (which is soft shell crab in a maki roll). The dumplings had a nice consistency and the accompanying green curry sauce gave the dumplings a little kick in flavour which complimented the taste of the soy perfectly. I was a little ambivalent about the Salted Dry Beef, but it turned out to be rather tender and full of flavour even though it was dry grilled. I love soft shell crab and I love soft shell crab wrapped in rice even more, so I was a little hesitant about dipping the Spider Maki roll in the hoisin sauce that it was served with, but to the delight of my tastebuds - the pairing was a salty/sweet success! From left: Chicken Ramen($9.50US), Khao Pad Goong(($9.95US) Moving onto our main dishes, we shared an order of the Chicken Ramen Noodle Soup and an order of Khao Pad Goong, which is Thai fried rice with an egg, vegetables and our choice of crabmeat. The broth for the soup was miso based and it had chicken, seaweed, scallions, leeks, sweet corn, bean sprouts and naruto. I was in the mood for something comforting that afternoon and the...

Unexpected dining discoveries – whether made on a whim or made because no other alternatives were available – always inject me with glee. Uncovering yet another eatery with that “best kept secret” quality can transport me back to those giddy days of childhood, where trading whispered gossip on the playground was commonplace. Except now, instead of schoolyard twitters comes the sweet song of satisfied diners. Syphay , a small Thai and Laotian restaurant, was one I had passed by countless times on my way to the more prominent Malaysian establishment next door. Situated in a converted house, its exterior was never run-down, but definitely unkempt. However, after a friend of mine recently spoke of a good meal at Syphay, my food companion and I had a date with experimentation. Being a former residence, the building had not been able to shed some of its more dwelling-appropriate features, including multiple doors, an awkwardly-divided dining area, and cool air circulation difficulties. At the same time, it became clear that the packed house wasn’t present for the décor; many tables of patrons had an obvious familiarity with the place, and appeared to be regulars. The menu, divided into sections, including appetizers, salads, stir-fry dishes and curries was helpful, but we both knew the latter two segments of the menu would appropriate most of our attention. The Pad Thai (with shrimp, $13.95) was a must, the combination of rice noodles, egg, bean sprouts, chives and cilantro is something of a benchmark Thai dish for me. My companion was craving coconut rice, so we decided upon a curry compliment – the Matsa-Man Curry with chicken ($13.95), which contained coconut milk, potatoes, carrots, kaffir lime leaves and peanuts. When we realized we forgot to ask our waitress to communicate “peanuts on the side” to the kitchen for our pad thai dish (my companion is allergic), we scrambled to rectify our error. Our waitress thankfully assured us that our oversight was caught on time. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of our poor reading of the menu, as it was only after our curry was delivered to us, with peanuts, that we realized our mistake in ordering that particular dish. Though our waitress immediately offered to have the dish remade, we couldn’t have justified our error on the restaurant’s dime. Our dishes were wonderfully presented, plated on blue and white-patterned serving ware that visually flattered...