The onion soup ($5) wasn't bad, but it also wasn't on a par with the dark, deeply flavored version in Huntington.

"This tomato bread soup is pleasantly smoky," I said, savoring the deeply flavored soup with Parmesan cheese.

Peasant-simple, it's a casserole of whole-wheat bread chunks, savoy cabbage and fontina cheese in a deeply flavored oxtail stock.

The sauce is a deeply flavored blend of three toasted dried Mexican chilies: bitter guajillos, spicy pasillas and sweet anchos.

What Marsala is to chicken or veal Marsala, the deeply flavored port wine sauce is to this dish.

But Guh Song, a 25-year-old place in Oakland Gardens, bested all comers with its deeply flavored sauce.

The garlic-enhanced meatloaf sandwich is fabulous, as is the chicken soup, a clear, deeply flavored broth full of herbs and big chunks of chicken.

Delicious parsnip butter gilded four sea scallops, and a small swirl of deeply flavored mushroom sauce completed this compatible trio.

Chicken, however, got the wet treatment: a tableside bath of a deeply flavored broth made from smoked chicken and studded with corn.

Lamb pasanda ($14.95), a deeply flavored stew with fennel, ginger and yogurt, is equally tender.