Lamai Birday is TODAY!

I missed that it was Lamai's birthday!

She has her usual Thai Sukiyaki feast. This "cook it yourself" dish is tasty and spicy (although not for everyone's tastes, so go easy at first.) I just had a little shrimp and scallops version for take out lunch. She also has cake and her lovely garlic and carmelized ribs. Here's a post on Lamai's other dishes, which are also available today.

In other news, I see the little place a few blocks down where Tacqueria Del Rey (and many other restaurants) used to be seems to be setting up to be a little grocery store. If the rumor is correct it will probably be a middle eastern place, but we'll have to see if it will have a bakery or deli associated. (They just put an ice machine outside, so it will probably be a decent convenience store for the neighborhood too.)

Drive bys - July 26, 2009

All news of Mexican restaurants this time:

*Ramon's is Back! For fans of the old Ramon's in north Lansing, there's a sign on a big red house on West Saginaw that says they are back (and you can see that they have a bbq outside too). The house is a block or two west of Pine St, or a couple of blocks east of the Lansing El Azteco. (Between Butler and Sycamore, but on the north side of the street.)

*Famous Taco has returned to the location right next to the South Precinct of the Lansing Police Department in South Cedar St. This was great location for us before, and I am looking forward to it.

*Sadly, one of our readers has confirmed that Tacqueria Del Rey closed its doors just yesterday. It was probably hard to compete with El Oasis so close by. We will miss this. (Same reader says there could be a middle eastern place moving in soon. The east side has the Jerusalem Bakery and the grocery/deli that moved into the old Lopez Bakery - but I think there is room for something more. We'll see if this location is really cursed or not.)

This is the time of year when our favorite little places suffer. The MSU audience is out of town. Many people go on vacation. Be sure to give some business your favorite small restaurant. Keep them in business!

The Bad Economy Has Gone Too Far

I'm getting used to trying to make do with less. I'm getting used to the products we buy costing more, or having less in the package.

But today I decided to have S'mores. I expected the candy bar to be smaller (it wasn't). The marshmallows are just as usual....

But the brand name graham crackers are now smaller than the candy bar in all dimensions! (Yeah, yeah, I know, the candy bar always used to be a little long, but you could fix that with a quick nibble.)



The flavor and texture balance is all wrong! This is an outrage! (You'd think Hershey and Nabisco could get together and deal with the downsizing of America with some proper coordination. Heh! No respect at all for the gourmets of this universe!)

I'm now going to have to get out my cleaver and start hacking at candy bars to get it to come out right.

Drive-bys: Recent Summer Food

A couple of quick bits about various places for not-good-for-you but good for your soul treats:

Fried fish and shrimp and onion rings: my favorite is Olympic Broil, which is in the old drive-in on Seymour Street in northwest Lansing. (Technically it's at 1320 N Grand River Ave, just north of the intersection of Grand River and Grand River. Below that intersection, the street is called Seymour. For those of us on the East Side, it's on the way to the airport.) They have great batter dipped fish and onion rings, as well as the usual burgers and fries and shrimp baskets and some Greek specialties.

However, I also just tried the place called just "Fish and Chips" at 2418 E Michigan Ave, a few blocks west of Frandor. Their cod was pretty ordinary fast foodish, but the perch was great. The chip were greasy but big and thick, and though I didn't try the shrimp, I took a quick bit of their cocktail sauce and found that it wasn't just ketchup - there's real horseradish in there. I'll be checking out the whitefish and catfish later on, and give you a better review. Oh, and the hush puppies I had with my order were good too. (Which is not true of the last time I was there many years ago.)


And ICE CREAM!

The soft-serve ice cream place in Old Town formerly known as Tate's Freeze is open again under the name of Arctic Corner. It's at 314 E. Grand River Ave. - that's the southwest corner of East Grand River and Center St., kitty corner from the soul food restaurant that used to be Vernadine's (and the old Lamai's before that). Here is a rather sloppy but thoroughly enjoyable Turtle Sundae that I had during a recent rainstorm.

Of course, when it comes to old fashioned soft-serve, you can't beat the Tasty Twist at 1307 E. Grand River Ave. in East Lansing. We always stop for a small cone dipped in chocolate whenever we actually have room left in our stomachs. I don't have a picture because you can't set the cone down to take the picture as easily as a sundae. (Okay, that's an excuse, usually I'm too busy eating the cone to take the picture.)

Tacqueria Del Rey

Editor's Note: Alas, it appears that Tacqueria Del Rey has gone out of business. I think they were probably just too close to El Oasis. If you'll note in the comments below, a reader believes that a middle eastern place may move into the location.


Tacqueria Del Rey has opened up on Michigan Avenue, where Mexico To Go used to be. While they don't have a lot of variety yet, they have that real tacqueria taste.

They tell me that this is their first restaurant, and the menu is still evolving. This means they didn't have a take out menu for me the last two times I stopped in, so I can only tell you about what I remember.

Good juicy carne guisada, which sometimes can be had as "lonches" - or a Mexican sub sandwich. (You can have any filling on that that you can have in a taco, but I recommend the guisada, because the juiciness goes with bread best.) I enjoy the pulled chicken, and I usually get a tostada. It supposedly comes with ground beef, but the beef they've put on it for me is seared and chopped - yum.

Sometimes they have Pan Dulce in the bakery counter as well. These big, lightly sweetened rolls have a colorful outer layer of a sweeter topping - still bread but more sugary. Pan dulce come in different shapes, but here they are mainly snail shell shaped.

Also, to go with your meal, don't forget the Jarritos, Mexican pop. I particularly recommend the tamarindo flavor to relieve your mouth if you go too heavy on the hot sauce.

Tacqueria Del Rey, 1825 East Michigan Avenue. (517) 977-0148.

Thai Food from Lamai's Kitchen

I've spoken before about Lamai, but I haven't written a real review. (Well, I waxed poetic about Lamai's Pad Thai a long time ago.) One of the reasons is that I keep forgetting to get great pictures. Sorry about that. I'm too busy eating.

Thai Food From Lamai's Kitchen is not the sort of place you go for the great atmosphere and the perfect service. But it's the sort of place that elicits passion in her customers. At her old place up in north Lansing, she often didn't have any employees, so the customers would wait on each other. One day, we even were given menus and water by the heath inspector! Everybody, I mean everybody, was eager to pitch in and keep Lamai in business.


It's just that Lamai is a great cook. And since the customers were always waiting eagerly to serve themselves, she opened her Michigan Avenue restaurant as a buffet.

Don't expect stereotypical Thai food here. It's authentic, but it's also one hundred percent Lamai. She's like a Thai grandmother, determined to feed you well, no matter what the ingredients. (And at times, if she's not too busy in the kitchen, she will come out and nag you about being too thin, or not trying the best stuff on the buffet.)



The first part of the buffet contains a selection of Thai salads, including her specialty Thai Fresh Eggrolls (pictured here). These are a little like the Vietnamese "spring roll", which is not fried, but wrapped in rice paper. Lamai's version, though, is filled with a lovely, light Thai salad, and are amazingly good with her special Fresh Eggroll Sauce. (Almost like a sour lemon syrup. It's yummy.)

She has a number of great salads, my favorite of which is made with browned Chinese Sausage and Cucumber. And then there is the ground turkey seasoned heavily with lime and herbs. Oh my. Or the Green Apple and Carmelized Onions with Cashews.

She usually has a rich and sour soup of some kind, either a spicy and sour Tom Yam, or a rich and spicy Tom Kha Gai. On Fridays, she has a seafood buffet, and seafood Tom Yam is really really really tasty. Watch out for the large chunks of lemon grass in any of her soups. Lemon grass tastes great, but it's woody.

On the buffet proper, she usually has a couple of kinds of noodles, including her famous Pad Thai. Some stir-fries (I recommend the Ginger Chicken - which is the dish with mushrooms, green peppers and peapods), and miscellaneous dishes that occur to her. She has taken to making her own version of the stuffed eggplant in garlic sauce that you see at dim sum places. Hers is heartier and except on friday, usually stuffed with pork rather than shrimp.

At the end of the buffet she usually has a couple of choices of rich and spicy Thai curries -- usually a red chicken curry with bamboo shoots, a Penang Beef which is stewed in sweet coconut milk and some third dish often with green beans.

She also has her own unique version of Crab Rangoon -- not a sweet and goey as you find other places. And without crab. She uses carrot and green onion, and it tastes even better than crab so don't complain.

On Thursdays, she replaces some of the dishes with Vegetarian versions, and on Fridays, she has a Seafood buffet that has the most amazing little rounds of fried shrimp that you will ever taste. (Have them with the fresh eggroll sauce - heavenly!)

Thai Food From Lamai's Kitchen is on Michigan Avenue at Fairview (right next to the Gone Wired Cafe). Yeah, it is sometimes hard to park around there. Suck it up. The weather is getting warmer. You can park on the neighborhood streets and walk a little. And she's now OPEN SUNDAYS. (Note, she closes between 3pm and 5pm every day.)

Thai Food From Lamai's Kitchen, 2033 E. Michigan Ave. (517) 267-3888.

Everyday Restaurant - Dim Sum Weekends

It seems like I've been hearing from lots of people about Everyday Buffet, a Chinese restaurant in Brookfield Plaza in East Lansing (located where the old Chinese Family Buffet used to be). I kept hearing the food is very good, and seems to cater to the Asian crowd. (And their non-buffet menu is full of great looking varieties of noodle dishes, which is a good sign.)

I finally decided to try it on the weekend, when they do a dim sum buffet. I definitely had a good meal out of it. (I don't know how their weekday lunch buffet is.)

The main problem here is the same as all dim sum buffets: not all dim sum is suitable for a buffet. The bao (steamed bbq pork buns) were a little tough and dried from sitting on the buffet. The squid/octopus was very tough for the same reason. The flavors for both were great, though. And there was the usual mislabeling of some dishes. (Like the sweet rice dumplings -- the meat-filled was labelled as sweet bean paste, and the sweet bean labeled as meat. Just remember that the triangle shape is almost always a dessert flavor, and the football shape is meat.)

But there is a lot more on the good side. Because it's a buffet, you don't have to have a bunch of people there to try a variety of flavors. You can have a little taste or a big bowl of the congee as you please. (They had four flavors, plus fried crullers to go with it, and the lightly sweetened red bean dessert soup too.)

You can see in the picture that my plate was piled high. The dark gravy on upper left is from the stewed beef brisket, which I considered the start of the show. Tender and lots of flavor. The greens were Yu Cai, I think, which is a slightly bitter green, but it tasted great with the other ingredients. The water chestnut cake (hidden under the big bao on the top) was very tasty. The turnip cake was good (not as good as Little Panda, but better than Golden Wok). The shiu mai and pan fried dumplings were decent, but not exciting. I really liked the fried taro dumplings, filled with meat (not pictured). Taro looks kind of like a hairy football when fried. And the pie guo - or stewed bits of sparerib in garlic sauce, was very tasty.

They also had a few regular non-dimsum dishes, such a Singapore Noodles and a shredded pork and pressed tofu dish that I have liked at other places. They also had the now usual selection of sushi and fruits on the salad bar.

And... they have a scale, so it appears you can buy take out buffet by the pound. (Always a plus in my book.)

Everyday Restaurant, 1375 East Grand River Ave, East Lansing. (517) 337-1882.