Birthday Week: Esquina de Listo el Pollo

A short 4 hours after The Dumpling Tour had ended (and participants had gone home, taken naps, cleaned their places… whatever, relaxed), I was ready for my birthday dinner.  You say, What?  This little girl still wanted food?  Well, to be honest, not really, but my brother (aka Snorlax) eats at a lot of places in Queens, and a fair number of them can only be reached by car (I’m a little bratty, sue me: I don’t want to take public transportation in unfamiliar parts of Queens at night), which means I insist he take me.  Which means I have this list of places I’ve read about on his site that I want to go to, but rarely get a chance to go. 

So, on my birthday, I insisted on expanding our tummies once more for just a little more food… to try Esquina de Listo del Pollo.  My brother’s bold claim of “best paella he ever had” really rubbed me the wrong way; you know how I LOVE paella, and my favorite place in NYC was only recently discovered (by me/to me, not to the whole world).  I had to find out for myself if Snorlax knew what was what when it comes to paella.

When we got there, I was really thrown by the place: really spacious inside, but also really dark and cramped feeling – each booth/table had its own little cabana-esque thing, so we had a roof over our heads in addition to the regular ceiling, so it felt a bit smaller than it really was.  And, oddly enough, it was pointed out later that the waitresses were all extremely well-endowed… and the customers tended to be men in large groups.  Yeah… (though my brother swore that on weekends, when he goes, there are lots of families that eat there and celebrate occasions there!)  But by and large, the customers were of Latin descent, which means a lot to me – whenever I go to an “ethnic” restaurant, if the patrons are all of the same ethnicity as the food, I feel that speaks for the authenticity and deliciousness. 

As soon as we sat down, Snorlax began grumbling about “postobones”.  I had no idea WTF he was talking about, but it turned out it’s this fruit soda… they had apple flavored that night, so that’s what we got.  When we received them, I casually looked at the ingredients and blurted out, “Don’t you care about me?!”

The conversation that followed was a near word-for-word reenactment of the linked video commercial, except we both knew about the whole high fructose corn syrup issue and he was actually more against it than I was.  In any case, the apple soda was lightly sweet and tangy, I think I could make this myself at home with some really good apple juice and a splash of sparkling soda water.  No additives needed.

Despite the fact that – or perhaps because – we’d gorged for lunch, my brother chose to order this appetizer, a mixed sampler platter.  I definitely wanted to try as many things as possible, so it was a good call: fried calamari, shrimp scampi, and “baked” clams.  The fried calamari was alright, and shrimp isn’t so much my thing, but the clams were awesome, with this cheese crust on top, and super juicy and just… delicious.  My kind of thing!

Interestingly, I had been looking forward to the salad (any sort of vegetables, actually, to be honest, after all of the meat eating I’d been doing) that Snorlax said came with every meal.  No such thing arrived, so finally, I flagged down our waitress and began my question, “Oh, do our meals come with salads – ”

“Oh right,” she cut me off and hurried away.  I’d thought maybe not every meal did, but before I could suggest that, she’d left and returned with the above bowls.  Cole slaw… with raisins?  No big deal, we all started eating it – not the healthiest sort of salad you could find, but pretty darn good, with pineapple bits and… oh no… coconut shreds *sad face (for those who didn’t click over… I’m allergic to coconut).  It took me a couple of bites to realize it since, oddly enough, the coconut didn’t taste the way it normally does – papery and yucky.  In fact, FeistyMom chose this moment, when I’d pushed towards my brother really sadly, since I couldn’t eat it and he said he’d eat it, to declare, “I hate coconut, but I like this because it doesn’t taste like coconut.” 

(Snorlax suggested they’d run out of the regular house salad, which would be why we were plied with this…)

Did I mention that Snorlax ordered everything for us?  This pork steak with a rock hard biscuit of some sort (really terrible to even attempt to bite into!) and maduras.  (Choice of maduras or tostones; I like maduras, the overripe plantains, much more than tostones, which are the underripe plantains.)  He raved about this dish, but I found it kind of bland and uninteresting – pounded flat pork, breaded and fried, but not much flavor or moisture to it.  Meh.  I’d pass, though I did eat about half his maduras.  He was happy with the beans & rice that accompanied this as well…

*There were a lot of colored lights strung up everywhere, so forgive the hard red tint on this photo!

But now, the paella… oh the paella.  There’s a lot of stuff in there, but I can’t say it was all good.  The chunks of blue crab were impressive, but unnecessary and unwieldy to eat.  I’ve never been a fan of including items in paella that I really need the use of both hands to eat, because that just makes the whole affair super messy.  I’m more keen on the rice and what kind of flavor has been imparted on it from the ingredients added than the ingredients themselves (which, oftentimes in good paella, are actually bland because all of their yumminess has leached out into the rice!). 

I am sad to say that the paella itself was only ALRIGHT.  It wasn’t awful, but neither was it wonderfully perfumed with the essence of each ingredient, crusty around the edges where the hot pot had charred it (what’s up with the non-paella pan being used to serve it, too? – no crust!), no creamy goodness of perfectly cooked Spanish rice with just a hint of sauciness… Nope.  This was standard paella to be fair, but it won’t make my record book anytime soon.  Oh well.  I’ll stick to La Nacional…

Notice something off…?

Most of the waitstaff here didn’t really speak much English, so I mostly pointed to items on the menu.  Though we were stuffed (taking much of the food home with us), I opted for dessert because it was my damn birthday and I’d eat dessert if I exploded, damn it.  (As it turned out, I didn’t even get a birthday cake this year… until a few weeks later, when I returned to work and my coworkers surprised me with one, that is.  Do we not get birthday cakes when we get old?  Is that it?  No one even sang happy birthday to me this year!) 

I opted for the flan with ice cream and pointed at it, but immediately the waitress scurried off and I worried that I’d pointed to the flan with coconut ice cream.  I dismissed it as though they were next to each other, I’d clearly pointed at the ice cream one alone.  My mother said, “Just ask her and make sure, or you won’t eat it!” but before I could do so, the waitress came back with the above.

A quick peak reveals that I DID order the right one, as this has three scoops of ice cream with it – strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate – but it didn’t matter, as coconut shavings adorned the entire thing.  Double sad face.  Then, FeistyMom snapped at me, “You’re so stupid, look what we got.”  Triple sad face.  It wouldn’t have mattered, I should have pointed out, since we’d gotten the RIGHT order and I’d never have thought to ask or say “There’s no coconut on that, right?” because who puts coconut on every damn thing in sight?!  WHO DOES THAT.  Anyway, FeistyMom turned really grumpy and when pressed, finally admitted it was because she didn’t want any coconut.  We messily pushed most of it off; my brother would eat a bite with coconut and I’d swoop in behind him, eating whatever was un-coconutted.  It was an OK dessert, but a good end to a heavy savory meal.

Yvo says: I can’t say I’d recommend this place super strongly, though I understand it’s pretty close to the train station (the 7 train), so it wouldn’t be too far out of the way for most people.  I don’t believe it was expensive, but the only thing that I really liked and that really stood out to me was the baked clams, which are hardly a Spanish dish.  So, it was an enjoyable meal, but not really worth a recommended rating.  Big thanks to FeistyMom & Snorlax for celebrating with me though!!!
middle of the road

Esquina de Listo el Pollo
86-02 37th Avenue
Sunnyside, NY
718-779-7595