Pok Pok Redeemed

“As I kept dunking, my perspective underwent a Copernican shift. The sausage had seemed to be the center of the universe, but it turned out that it, and everything else on the plate, revolved around that mesmerizing naam phrik nuum. Though this sausage, a favorite in the Thai city of Chiang Mai, needed nothing more than a cold beer, I began dunking it into that chile paste. And then I’d dunk the Frito-size curls of fried pork rinds, and wedges of steamed kabocha squash, and long beans tied into knots. The paste, called naam phrik nuum, was hot but not chokingly so, and had some of the grassy sweetness of a grilled green bell pepper, and one quality that green bell peppers don’t have: I couldn’t get enough of it. Altered perceptions come free with the price of dinner at Pok Pok Ny.”
 — Times dining critic Pete Wells gives Brooklyn’s Pok Pok two stars. Apparently, he didn’t mind the wait for a table as much as Bloomberg’s Ryan Sutton did. But it does seem like maybe he had some time to kill before the mushrooms kicked in.