Unless you can decipher the mostly
Cyrillic menu, it is best to heed the helpful servers at Sim-Sim Cafe. They are
happy to share their strong opinions
with you, and our waitress quickly made
it clear to me that I should not even consider ordering the potatoes with champignons when potatoes with chanterelles
is available.
But in the approximately 20 seconds
between when my companion’s Greek
salad arrives on the table and my potatoes with chanterelles joins it, I fall in
love with the Greek salad. I am embarrassed to say this, because who falls in
love with a Greek salad? But the heaped
plate of lettuce, olives, fresh tomatoes
and shredded feta, all dotted with dried
beef and sprigs of dill, is making me wonder if I have ever even eaten a Greek salad
before. This is the simple alchemy of
freshness on freshness—the vegetables
are crisp and the feta tastes homemade.
In the meantime, another dining
companion has discovered a pleasant
surprise in his dushbara, a meatball
soup. A soft, pungent olive is hidden
inside each lamb meatball. My own
potato-mushroom dish is a little tame in
comparison to these explosions of flavors. Yet it is faultlessly executed—the
potatoes are crusty, the mushrooms are
soft and chewy. It’s comfort food at its
stomach-filling best. The pleasure of this
dish, however, is in its textures rather
than flavors.
Fish is an important ingredient in
Azerbaijani cuisine. After all, the Caspian Sea kisses the eastern shores of the
country. The menu at Sim-Sim Cafe lists
no fewer than 10 cold fish appetizers
and at least eight hot fish entrees, not to
mention some of the kebabs. Kebabs, of
course, are one of those dishes that can
be found all over Asia, in various guises.
Arab or Persian in origin, kebabs were
taken around the continent by traders
and soldiers. Although lamb and chicken
kebabs are ubiquitous in cuisines as
diverse as Turkish and Indonesian (what
else are satays?), fish kebabs are rarer, so
we cannot pass on the sturgeon kebab.
Pan seared rather than charcoal grilled
like the lamb kebabs, the sturgeon is
juicy and moist. Rice and potatoes provide the perfect carbohydrate foil.
“Would you like some sauce with
that?” our waitress asks. We nod absentmindedly, but when the sauce arrives
I fall in love with
the Greek salad.
I am embarrassed
to say this,
because who falls
in love with a
Greek salad?
no one can get
enough of it. The
Greek salad is
gone by now and
the carbohydrate overload
is in full force.
The pomegranate sauce, tart
and deep red, is a
benefit to everything
it touches—the fish,
the meat, the rice—with its
fruity freshness.
Halfway through the meal, we are
done. With appetizers almost as big as
entrees, the unrelenting heartiness of
the o;erings and the glow of olive oil
on every plate, you will go home from
Sim-Sim with lots of leftovers, unless
you order carefully. Let me assure you,
though, that this is not a bad thing. The
next day, my potato-mushroom dish
(which somehow seems to have multiplied overnight), scrambled with eggs
and basil leaves, brings back delicious
memories. 312 Ditmas Ave., Brooklyn,
N. Y.; 718-484-1031
Beyond Rangoon
All good restaurants are labors of love
and longing, and this is truer of the
Rangoon Burmese Restaurant in Phila-
delphia’s Chinatown than of most restau-
rants. Rangoon is the brainchild of three
Burmese women who met in America
and decided to
hitch their wagons
to one star. Jenny
Louie was work-
ing in a noodle
factory and
Christine Gyaw
was a shampoo
girl in a beauty
salon. Meemee
Chiu was Christine’s
friend. In 1993, when a
restaurant owner in China-
town who couldn’t pay his rent
asked Christine if she wanted to take
over the lease, the three friends put their
heads together over some biryani that
Meemee cooked in her home and decided
to make a leap of faith. Within a few
years, Rangoon Burmese Restaurant had
become so popular that they had to move
to their current, more spacious address
on Ninth Street.
