Indonesian Food Bazaar

Everyone was looking for the lothek.

"The food is authentic; the vendors mostly sell the food at their home or [by] special order only," wrote the Eating In Translation fan who sent me news of this periodic bazaar, outside Astoria's Al-Hikmah mosque. The vegetable salad called lothek ($5) was a superlative example of its breed — not for those flowery tapioca crackers, which do contribute color and crunch, but for a peanut sauce that was ground to order for every customer. (In an earlier version of this post, I asked about the leafy, budding greens in the center; thai basil, that same reader told me. She also identified this dish as lothek, not the "quite similar" gado-gado, as I'd written earlier. The dressing for gado-gado uses coconut milk and must be cooked, she wrote; it also contains hardboiled egg, shrimp crackers, and the nut crackers called emping.)

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Indonesian Food Bazaar
Outside the Al-Hikmah Mosque,
48-01 31st Avenue
Astoria, Queens, NY

Exit near intersection of Broadway/46th Street
Start out going North on 46th Street towards Newtown Road
Keep the sun at your back, walk five minutes north to 31st Avenue.