NYCReview
photo credit: Noah Devereaux
Sky Cafe
Included In
In the Austin Powers movies, Mike Myers plays Austin, Fat Bastard, Dr. Evil, and Goldmember. Each character has his own distinct wig (or bald cap), over-the-top accent, and quirks, and could each justifiably qualify as your favorite. At Sky Cafe, a tiny Indonesian restaurant in Elmhurst, the chicken pulls off a similar acting maneuver, and you should come here to experience its full range of talent. Every chicken dish is excellent and warrants icon status.
Sky Cafe’s chicken comes in many forms. If you order the nasi lemak ayam goreng, you’ll get a crispy fried leg and thigh alongside coconut rice. In another case, the chicken comes boiled in a spicy orange broth. But to experience the most impressive poultry act Sky Cafe pulls off in one dish, you’ll need to try the combination egg noodles. Aside from thin homemade noodles, sweet barbecue pork, and a marinated hard-boiled egg, it comes with pieces of shredded chicken, chicken-filled wontons, and a side of perfectly-tangy chicken broth that you can mix into the noodles (or just slurp on its own). Like Dr. Evil, the combination egg noodles deserve a cult following.
We all know that eggs come from chickens and chickens come from eggs. So, the hard-boiled eggs at Sky Cafe deserve a spot on the chicken’s IMDb page. They make their way into several dishes here, but our favorite version comes in the rice cake soup (lontong sayur) - which is hearty enough to be your whole meal. It’s tie-dye orange in color, costs exactly $7.50, and has a coconut-base involving lots of sambal chili sauce. Fishing around in it sort of feels like excavating on an archeological dig. Only instead of seventh-century tablets inscribed with poetry about rainfall, you’ll find tender pieces of beef rendang, big chewy rice cake squares, and hard-boiled eggs that somehow hold a crispy-fried exterior even though they’ve been soaking in a creamy broth.
Other than the food, there’s not too much happening at Sky Cafe. Solo diners stare at CBS on the TV, and bike couriers shuffle in and out to pick up deliveries. But if you’re like us, you’ll end up lingering here to ponder how chicken - the Mike Myers of Sky Cafe - pulls off so many great iterations of itself, and which character is your personal favorite.