By Samantha Nwaoshai

There are said to be at least 10,000 restaurants in the New York metropolitan area and a good number of them have Asian cuisine of some sort. The thing is that some restaurants are holes in the walls, serving the same noodle and rice dishes that you can get delivered to your room, while other places just have nice tables. Dragonfly in SoHo is one of the few Asian cuisine restaurants that are more than just somewhere you go when you are itching for noodles that are not Raman.

Dragonfly is not your typical run-of-the-mill Chinese restaurant. For one thing, it samples from a cornucopia of cuisines from several places in Asia, including Malaysia, China (and one of its cities, Hong Kong), The Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and a touch of India. Also it becomes a hip and trendy lounge at night, even with a happy hour. Like most lounge/restaurants, Dragonfly has several specialty drinks, along with the “required knowledge” drinks that every bartender has to know. The difference here is that they are crazy mixtures that do not sound right. Only here can guests have 12 different kinds of Cosmos, yes 12. The cost for five shots that are literally the colors of the rainbow, is $31. There is even a tri-color shot that is very visually appealing.

Finding Dragonfly was like finding an oasis in a desert. The décor was simple yet aesthetically pleasing. There was a wall-sized window that gave an excellent view to outside. During the summer the windows are opened to give an outdoor-bistro-like feel. There was also a colorful aquarium with exotic fish, embedded in the wall that separated the restaurant from the lounge/bar area. Upon our entrance, we were given our choice between sitting and dining on sofas or at standard table and chairs, since we were famished (and traditionalists) we chose table and chairs.

Since it was a Wednesday mid-afternoon, we were the only ones there. Service wasn’t exactly sluggish. It took a while to decide what we were going to order since there was a plethora of culinary delights from which to choose. The appetizers alone were diverse in background and flavors. The most bizarre of which was easily “salt and pepper frog legs,” or simply deep fried frog legs. (My dining partner and I were not adventurous enough to try that.) Even though the menu was quite diverse it still had some recognizable dishes like pad Thai, lo mein (of any styling), miso soup, and General Tso’s chicken, just to name a few.

My friend and I both split vegetarian spring rolls. We also had the hot and sour soup. As adventurous as I would have like to have been, I went with the Singapore mei fun. Yes, the dish that can be found in any Asian restaurant, but there are so many different variations and understandings of the dish, that each restaurants makes it a different way. The most common version dish is basically extremely thin noodles (think along the lines of angel hair pasta), made with shrimp, crab, chicken, pork, bean sprouts, onions and green bell peppers. It is seasoned with curry and other spices. The dish is generally supposed to be spicy. My friend ordered sesame chicken with broccoli with a spicy Hunan sauce served with brown rice.

Our appetizer arrived rather quickly (it helps when there isn’t anyone else there), which was quickly followed by our soup. Considering we ordered a lot of food it was nice to not see the food overwhelm the table. The timing between each dish was reasonably right. My Singapore mei fun was served in a metal dish that came with a cover, which was really interesting since my friend only had traditional china. The Singapore mei fun was different than any that I have had before. Here they decided not to have any crab, instead added lettuce and carrots, and went a little heavy with the curry. Also the noodles were cut a lot shorter than what I was used to. I guess they kept in mind that it was easier to eat short noodles with chopsticks. The changes were welcome since I did enjoy my meal, as did my friend. We felt so stuffed we didn’t have room for dessert, not even jello.

Since it was the two of us and we split an appetizer, had soup and entrees too, it came to about $35 including tip for each of us..

Dragonfly is that little restaurant that all the cool, hip people know about. It is a modest restaurant Sunday to Thursday and Hip Lounge Friday and Saturday evenings. It just has qualities that other places just don’t possess.