NYC, from A to Z: C is for Cambodia
I think I found the best happy hour in Brooklyn and... it's at a Cambodian restaurant?
This month has been a doozy. Almost immediately after having this month’s meal —which took place the first week of May — I started to get sick and I’m still not fully back to normal. I’m notoriously bad at resting so ditching my typical schedule of city exploration, writing and hanging with friends for Gatorade Zero, cough drops and as much sleep as possible has not been fun. All that plus two weeks of nearly no sun and constant rain has officially made me declare May as 2025’s biggest flop of a month thus far. All I can do is hope that it’s all up from here. Fingers crossed!
ANYWAY! Now that I’ve cleared up why this newsletter is coming embarrassingly late this month, I can tell you about this month’s A-Z adventure.
When I first posted about this series on my Instagram stories and asked for recommendations for A, B and C spots, my friend Davi responded and suggested that we go to a Cambodian spot in Clinton Hill. With A and B under my belt, Davi and I corralled our partners for a double date at Lula Mae. Here’s how it went:
Lula Mae
Location: 472 Myrtle Ave in Clinton Hill
Transportation: Clinton-Washington Avs G or B24, B38/54/57/62 Buses
Cost: $135.56 (for my and Claire’s half of the bill)
Claire and I got there around an hour before our 7p reservation to take advantage of the restaurant’s insane happy hour at the bar, where everything is $10 including large, strong, filthy martinis. In the order recap below, all happy hour items we ordered are denoted with an asterisk.
We snagged seats at the restaurant's spacious bar, which didn’t start to fill up until well past 6p, and started off with cocktails while we waited for Davi and her husband Sam before we decided on any food. My Lula dirty martini — which comes with your choice of garlic, jalapeño or bleu cheese olives — was one of the best I’ve ever had. As a lover of truly dirty martinis, I was so pleased when mine arrived with an entire sidecar of olive brine. I, of course, used the whole thing. I still can’t believe there’s a $10 Brooklyn martini, let alone an incredible one made with Tito’s and served with gourmet olives. I ordered a second one as soon as I was done with the first.
Once Davi and Sam arrived, they ordered drinks and we ordered a few happy hour food items before they asked us to move from the bar to our reserved table.
The order:
🥗 Cambodian noodle salad ($10)*
🥒 Cucumbers with fried shallots ($10)*
🐄 Loc lac beef skewers ($10)*
🍗 Lula’s fried chicken ($21)
🥕 Crispy tofu with pickled carrot ($15)
🧄 Wok tossed long green beans ($16)
🐟 Whole branzino ($46)
🍸 Lula dirty with garlic olives x 2 ($20)*
🍒 Shirley Temple ($5)
Starting off with the happy hour food, both the Cambodian noodle salad and cucumbers were a fresh, light start to our meal. The noodle salad had chunks of citrus, a heaping serving of cabbage and was topped off with various herbs, crunchy peanuts and a punchy, vinegar-heavy dressing — though, I do wish there were slightly more noodles. The cucumbers were nothing to write home about but I did really like the refreshing addition of mint to the dish. Since I don’t eat beef, I didn’t partake in the beef skewers, but my dining companions all seemed to enjoy them.
Happy hour options usually don’t impress me, especially on the food front, but I think this is one of the best in Brooklyn largely because of that glorious $10 martini. I will say that while the food is also only $10 with happy hour, the portions were noticeably smaller than the main menu portions we saw go to other tables.
The next category of dishes — not quite appetizers, not quite entrées — was my favorite. The tofu had a delicate fry, adding slight crunch but preserving the softness of the bean curd inside. Paired with a soy-vinegar dressing, carrots, edamame and a sprinkling of scallions, I loved both the texture (crisp, bright vegetables) and the flavor (acidic and subtly sweet). I liked the green beans, particularly the garlic confit they were served in, but probably wouldn’t opt to have this dish at the table again. But sometimes, you just need a vegetable in the mix!
For me, the star of the whole meal was the fried chicken, which comes two ways and is equal parts crispy and juicy. I had no complaints about the first preparation, served as wings and drums in a sticky soy-tamarind glaze and dusted with peanuts, but the second preparation stole the show. It’s served boneless with a dry-rub of acidic umami seasonings and comes with a lime pepper dressing that was a serious flavor bomb. I couldn’t get enough of this.
We finished off the meal with a whole branzino, which was served off the bone, but for some reason came with the fried carcass of the fish (see the mildly-disturbing photo below). The fish was cooked well and I’ll never say no to something served with steaming white rice, but at the end of the meal, I found myself wishing we had ordered the fried rice or flat rice noodles instead. While there definitely was a lot of flavor, it was missing the depth and complexity I crave in restaurant-cooked fish, and more of the mango slaw wouldn’t hurt.
As a little treat, I ordered a Shirley Temple from the kids’ menu and it was randomly so incredible. 10/10.
The service was a little off, and though I presume they were trying to be accommodating, I found it weird that they wanted us out of the bar seats and at our table even though nobody was waiting at the bar.
Overall, it was a delight to try a new cuisine, especially at a restaurant so close to my home, when there are notoriously few options for Cambodian in NYC. Now that I have a better gauge on the menu, I’m looking forward to going to Lula Mae for happy hour again soon. The fried chicken and that dirty martini are already calling my name.
Next month, I’ll be moving on to D and am looking to y’all for Danish or Dominican spots. Feel free to comment below or respond to this email with your recommendations.
As always, thanks for reading and I’m so glad you’re here. If you enjoyed this, please consider hitting the heart below or recommending Lindsay’s List to a friend (or two!). I’ll be back early next week with my May favorites.
Xoxo, Linds
Love Cambodian & Clinton hill both C spots for the C month
LOVE lula mae