At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes. The neighborhood surrounding the Elmhurst Avenue subway stop has been home to several excellent Thai eateries for years and new ones have been popping up lately. One worth mentioning is Sugar Club, a tiny Thai grocery/video store. If you have a hankering for curry pastes, palm juice or those scary looking little bottles of Thai Red......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes. Although the English part of the label references the famous Dylan song, the exact translation of Kaze ni Fukarete Tofu-ya Johnny, stamped on the blue-and-white tubs of premium bean curd, translates to “Johnny the tofu maker blown by the wind.” It’s one of several products made by Kyoto’s Otokomae Tofuten or “handsome guy tofu shop," and......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes. What, you’ve never heard of Ranggupnya Biskut Kelapa Tropi Coco? One doesn’t need to speak Malaysian to figure out that this box contains coconut cookies. Unlike the West’s venerable soft macaroons, these little discs are ranggupnya, or crispy. The package’s claim of Malaysia Terkenal, or Malaysia Famous, just screamed "buy me!" The fact that they’re also......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes. What you see before is bag of dried hibiscus flowers, or karkade, as these dried little blossoms are known in Egypt. You can boil them up to make a wonderfully red-hued tea that's packed with plenty of vitamin C. As you can probably guess from the image on the packaging it's sometimes served hot......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes. Don't tell us you've never heard of kopcheny jazik! Even though Gothamist has spent more than our fair share of time at old-school Jewish delis we've only recently begun to enjoy this Russian cousin of deli tongue. In case you're wondering, the ruddy colored smoked veal tongue is pronounced "KOP-chornee YAH-zeeg." We always slice it......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes. Euro Shop, a small store whose window is decorated with the flag of the European Union has always intrigued us. Among other things it offers a half dozen types of paprika paste; a meat counter filled with bacon, sausages and pork crackling; and a plethora of Hungarian junk food. Now that we’ve had their homemade......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes. Many of you out there remember snacking on pistachio nuts whose shells had been dyed red. Heck, as kids half the fun was watching your hands change color. The other day we found some pistachios that are just as fun to eat, but decidely more grown-up. While browsing among the dried nuts and fruits at......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes. It would seem to be nothing less than dereliction of duty for an Italian-American food writer to have never been to the Italian food mecca that is Arthur Avenue, but it does on occasion happen. This oversight is even more glaring given that said food writer is half Calabrese and had never set foot in......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes. Gothamist has never been a big fan of rice porridge, whether it be Chinese congee or Korean jook. The number of bowls of congee we've eaten can be counted on the fingers of one hand. And we never had occasion to try jook until just the other day. Not that rice porridge is offensive, far......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes One of our favorite things to do at Asian markets is try out unusual snacks. Many of these goodies combine salty, sweet and often fishy flavors. And some, such as salted plums are made from preserved fruit. Our latest find in this vein is Buah Pala Bersalut Gula, or sugar-coated nutmeg. We found ours at......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes Gothamist is no stranger to the pleasures of the izakaya, which in our case usually include copious amounts of sake and yakitori. For some reason we've shied away from such dishes as spaghetti with spicy cod roe, even though we've enjoyed spicy cod roe dumplings on several occasions. Perhaps our aversion stems from the fact......

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes One of the great things about Rego Park apart from all the Central Asian kebab joints and it being the home of graffitti legend Cost is all the treats at the Russian delis scattered throughout the neighborhood. Which brings us to the subject of today's find at the ethnic market: korzhiki. Think of these round......