This pillowy sandwich is filled with an absurd amount of pork fluff.
As a kid I never really dug Fluffernutter sandwiches. I think it has something to with them not being quite savory enough, after all I was the type of kid who ate Accent out of the jar and cut notches in apples to fill them with lunch meat. Last week I had something at Flushing’s Sun Mary Bakery that I’m pretty sure I would have been happy to find in my lunch box: the Chinese Fluffernutter Sandwich.
Perhaps my nickname for rou song dan gao, or Chinese dry pork cake ($2.50), is an exaggeration, but it definitely has the same junk-food gone healthy sensibility as its Western counterpart. Rou song, or dried pork stands in for the peanut butter, in this cakelike bun. A sweet pillowy roll is split and slathered with a buttery spread and then topped with a ridiculous amount of dried pork fluff. It is savory, sweet, and decidedly unwieldy. Bits of crunchy sweet-and-salty pork fluff will fall out as you bite into it.
A strong iced coffee cuts through the fatty sweetness of the bun. I think I may like it better than the old school roast pork buns I used to eat with my old man at Mei Lei Wah in Manhattan’s Chinatown. By the way I’m pretty sure this item is not unique to Sun Mary Bakery, I’d be curious to know how many folks prefer it to the American Fluffernutter.
Sun Mary Bakery ,133-57 41st Rd, Flushing, 718-460-8800
Interesting. In LA, the more common pork floss (ugh, how i DESPISE the term) cake is in a form of a roll cake, with rou song stuffed within the rolls and mayo as “cream” of the roll cake. I’m not sure I’d prefer this rou song cakewich over the pork floss roll cake…
I haven’t seen it in sandwich form here, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I did, but a number of GZ/HK style bakeries serve pork sung rollups (loaded with mayonnaise too).
Incidentally I’m (probably fortunately) too old to even know what a fluffernutter sandwich is.
I used to get these in Sunset Park and they sell them at most Chinese bakeries. They’re great but the roast pork bun from Mei Lei Wah still has the edge for me, even though the cleaned up modent Mei Lei Wah doesn’t have quite the run down charm it used to.
@Gary: A Fluffernutter sandwich is peanut butter + marshmallow Fluff. It’s a big thing in New England, where Fluff is from. Honestly, it’s not as bad as you think!