“We don’t eat pork or drink alcohol,” some guests on a Flushing Chinatown food adventure told me when asked about dietary restrictions for their upcoming tour. “Perfect time to check out that oyster omelet at the Fujianese joint in the New York Food Court that Dave wrote about,” I thought to myself, for you see, I don’t like to put anything on my tours that I haven’t vetted myself.
Oyster omelets are a hawker food eaten throughout Southeast Asia, but most famously at Taiwanese night markets. The first time I ate a Taiwanese one I had a raging hangover and couldn’t really stomach the gloppy consistency from the sweet potato starch. I wasn’t sure to what to expect of Minnan Xiaochi’s Fujianese version.
Unlike its Taiwanese cousin, the Fujianese version was almost paper thin and super crunchy from the egg itself as well as the plenty of green onions that were fried until crispy. What starch there was wasn’t gloppy so much as a binding agent. Hai li jian as it’s known in Southern Fujian made for a fine meal with a bowl of rice and an especially novel stop on a food tour.
Minnan Xiaochi, No. 13, New York Food Court, 133-35 Roosevelt Ave., Flushing
Gong xi fa cai! Happy Year of the Rooster! One of the best things about Chinese New Year is that the celebration lasts for 15 days. So here on this fourth day of the Lunar New Year festivities, C+M presents a list of our favorite Chinese dishes in Queens, some old, some new, all decidedly delicious. Normally this column contains seven entries, but we’re giving you one for good luck!
1. House special ribs with spicy sauce, Fu Run Even though it’s the restaurant that introduced Chinese food fans to the cumin encrusted glory that is the Muslim lamb chop I’ve been over their version for quite some time. It stopped being good the moment the restaurant decided to prepare the racks of ribs in advance and reheat them. So I was very pleasantly surprised by the house special ribs with spicy sauce ($14.95) that I tried the other day. La xiao le pai, literally little spicy riblets, turn out to be deep fried Dongbei style rib tips shot through with fried peanuts, chilies, and cilantro. They’re the best pork ribs I’ve ever had in Flushing. Fu Run, 40-09 Prince St., Flushing, 718-321-1363
2. Hakka hot chicken, Tangra Masala I have it on good authority that there’s nothing wrong with eating chicken to celebrate the Year of The Rooster.; it’s only unlucky for the chicken. And, since it’s the Year of the Fire Rooster, there’s no better dish to celebrate than the hakka hot chicken at Peter Lo’s Indian-Chinese restaurant Tangra Masala. The dish of hacked up bits of fried bird is coated in a glaze that marries the flavors of chili, soy sauce, vinegar, and garlic. Shot through with chilies and sautéed onions the succulent pieces of poultry call to mind Dominican style chicharron de pollo with an Indian-Chinese twist. Tangra Masala, 87-09 Grand Ave., Elmhurst, 718-803-2298
PLEASE NOTE THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED
3. Sesame biscuit with fried jelly bun When I first saw the hawker stand set up across the street from the Golden Mall I thought it was yet another skewer specialist. Turns out the lady running it specializes in a vegetarian sandwich, sesame biscuits stuffed with fried bean jelly. A shao bing jia liang fen will set you back a mere $5. The bun’s filled with wobbly blocks of bean jelly that have been fried on a flat top and slathered with a profoundly garlicky sauce. Shao Bing Jia Liang Fen stand, 41st Rd, across form Golden Mall(more…)
Who knew Gui Lin Mi Fen had an awesome tofu salad?
As a nonvegetarian omnivore the first things I think of when it comes to vegetarian food in the bustling Chinatown of downtown Flushing are the tofu from Soybean Chen and the dosai at the Ganesh Temple Canteen. But what would a real vegetarian choose? To find out I turned to Howard Walfish, the man behind the web sites Lost Vegetarian and Brooklyn Vegetarian, who was kind enough to share his favorites in this guest post.
Downtown Flushing can be a little daunting for vegetarians. Between the restaurants, street vendors, and food courts, there are hundreds of places to eat. Many of them don’t have English-language menus, and many of them have decidedly nonvegetarian specialties. But all it takes is a little digging, and you can find lots of great vegetarian food. Here are a few of my favorites.
PLEASE NOTE THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED
1. Tofu Salad at Gui Lin Mei Fen Gui Lin Mi Fen is best known for its noodle bowls, but there’s a sleeper vegetarian hit on their menu that’s easy to overlook: a tofu salad. The firm tofu is diced and flavored with kalimeris indica, a plant also known as Indian aster. The herb adds an herbal, floral note to the salad that makes it irresistible. (135-25 40th Rd.)(more…)
Seafood sticky rice balls are gloriously golden brown.
The menu at Diverse Dim Sum is as advertised, running to some 30 items, including various pancakes, noodles, dumplings, and other snacks. The soup dumplings at the oddly named Shanghai xiao chi specialist are so good—thin of skin and fragrant of broth—that I’ve sampled hardly anything else on the menu.
I’d been hearing great things about the seafood sticky rice ball ($3), so the other night a carb craving friend and I decided to have it as a sidecar to an order of xiao long bao.Hai xian zi fan gao, as they’re known in Chinese, come two an order and they’re more blocks than balls.
“Chinese pizza,” the lady behind the counter said as she presented the pair of golden brown slabs. (more…)
“Wow, where’d you get that?” I said to my new friend Mike as he presented a jazzy looking bowl of wavy hand-pulled noodles bobbing with Chinese chitterlings and pickled mustard greens in a crimson broth. “Over there,” he said waving a hand toward Guchun Private Kitchen.
I love Guchun for its chao bing.The Northern Chinese specialty substitutes strips of flatbread for noodles to such great effect that I’d never even given the la mian so much as a second look, so I was glad that Mike, a first-time visitor to New York Food Court, had sussed it out. (more…)
I’ve been eating my way through Flushing’s New York Food Court for about a year. Yet somehow, I only just got around to trying Mango Mango yesterday. The bowl of spicy soup I’d just finished had put me in the mood for something sweet to cool down.
I wasn’t in the a mango mood though, and almost left the food court without getting dessert. Then I saw the hand written special sign reading “mille crepe durian (slice).” There was also a mango version, but I was more intrigued by the durian. (more…)
Zhi zi liang fen, slippery cool, and garlicky as all getout.
PLEASE NOTE THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED
“What’s your favorite noodle dish?,” is a question I’m asked all too often. As a food nerd I have about a dozen favorites encompassing Thai,Uzbek, and Chinese. One of my top Chinese noodles these days is the ma la liang mian or cold noodles—humming with ma la flavor of tingling Sichuan peppercorns combined with red chilies—from Szechuan Taste.
It’s so good that it’s taken me a year to start ordering the stall’s other cold noodle specialties like zhi zi liang fen, or gardenia bean jelly ($3.75). Despite the English name, there are no flowers in it whatsoever. Just Like its bone-white cousin liang fen, this sunnier version is made with mung beans. (more…)
Peng Shun’s Mongolian roast lamb ribs are astounding.
PLEASE NOTE THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED
“Wow I think you renewed my faith in this dish,” a dining companion said the other day. He was talking about Muslim lamb chop a delicacy that rose to ascendancy on cumin-scented wave of glory at Fu Ran neé Fu Run about five years ago. Sadly Fu Ran’s version ain’t what it used to be. On my last few visits it was precooked, rendering what should be gloriously juicy, fatty lamb flesh rather dry and tight.
Muslim lamb chop also called lamb in Xinjiang style is a specialty of Flushing’s Dongbei restaraunts. The version that rocked our world’s can’t be had at a restaurant though. It’s served in a much more humble setting, New York Food Court.(more…)
There are so many dumplings in the bustling and delicious Chinatown of downtown Flushing that keeping track of them all would be a lifelong task. A task for which I am ill-equipped. Perhaps that xiao long bao obsessive guy whose exhaustive soup dumpling survey is making its way around the interwebs will come to Queens one day, calipers and scale in hand. Until he does I will muddle along as best as I can. That being said, let’s talk about two of my favorite new dumplings. (more…)
Shanghai noodles and xiao long bao at Diverse Dim Sum.
They were easily my favorite xiao long bao in downtown Flushing. I’ve missed the juicy, translucent packages of pork and crab these past four months as much as I’ve missed warm sunshine. Before Flushing Mall closed back in January I asked Diverse Dim Sum’s owner where I could find their soup dumplings. He said they were going to reopen on Kissena Boulevard. I’m pleased to say Diverse Dim Sum is back and it’s a lot closer than Kissena. They’ve set up shop at New York Food Court. (more…)
