Cafe Arzu Stuffs Me Knifeless With Manty And Lagman

Queens Boulevard stretched long and wide, its twelve lanes hemmed by convenience stores, Chinese restaurants, and combo law office/taxi driving schools. “Stop!” I cried. The tiny woman and her non-wheelie suitcase scrambled to the median after giving us a relieved finger. We kept going. And going. “So that’s Lefrak City,” my driver said, after a while. Later, “So that’s the circus mural from Annie Hall.” I kept waiting for “so that’s Cafe Arzu.”

Cafe Arzu is a Bukharan/Uzbek/Uighur restaurant, and it was for the last ethnicity’s food that we were making this epic trek. My father has been the legal counsel for seven of the Guantanamo Uighurs since 2004, and every time he comes to New York, I tell him “there’s this Uighur restaurant we have to go to,” and every time it is too far from midtown. Last night the restaurant in question (Cafe Kashkar in Brighton Beach) was still too far, but Cafe Arzu, in Forest Hills, was not.