Posts from the ‘Chinese’ Category

Happy Family

1/2 I’d never partaken in steamboat, shabu shabu, hot pot, Chinese fondue, whatever you want to call it, until recently (though I’ve broth-swirled a little Canadian horsemeat). Flushing’s Happy Family a.k.a. Little Lamb (a cartoon sheep with a shirt collar appears on various signage) proved to be a great jumping off point. Actually, it’s a little more advanced than amateur; we had some procedural ordering confusion.

In my day, Mongolian was simply suburban code for a pile of stuff cooked before your eyes. Here it’s all d.i.y. You pick your broth from red, white or green. The latter is herbal and I wasn’t feeling the urge. But you can also go yin-yang and choose two broths kept separate in a huge metal pot inset in your table. White=creamy soymilk. Red=hot as hell. There are all sorts of oddities floating in the liquids like a whole nutmeg kernel, jujubes (Asian dates) and a metal tea bobber filled with mystery herbs and chiles (opening it would’ve solved the mystery but I didn’t want to unleash any unnecessary fury).

The tricky part was how to acquire dipping material because you pick the hot pot by meat i.e. lamb hot pot or fish head hot pot, but there are also pages and pages of a la carte items like chicken, taro, and innards. We picked beef hot pot because it seemed neutral and it came with a plate of bean curd, greens, rice vermicelli, dried mushrooms, hard-boiled egg, bean sprouts and lots of other crunchy things. We eventually got our waiter to bring shrimp and pork-stuffed fish balls to supplement our thinly sliced beef. Practically anything could be improved by the hot pot treatment, but whatever you do abide the menu’s plea “please don’t bring other products into the store to cook (including beverages and liquors).”

Because we’re gluttons, we also got grilled lamb skewers to start. Cumin was definitely present but I was surprised at the chile level of the spice rub. This was my kind of food. I have a high tolerance for heat (though I’m not sure when I acquired this. I’ve always liked spicy food but I was just thinking about a birthday dinner in my early twenties where my mom took me out to Bangkok Kitchen in Portland and the tom kha gai was so punishingly hot that we couldn’t slog through it. Now, wiser and older, Portland Thai food seems pretty tame though I’ve never returned to Bangkok Kitchen for comparison. Were we NW wusses and I’ve toughened up or have my taste buds dulled from years of smoking? I only sparingly indulge anymore, f.y.i.) and even so there was a tongue-burning that persisted throughout the meal. Combined with the heat and steam emanating from the hot pot itself (and a few drinks—though no soju for me), sweating was nearly unavoidable. And as you might imagine, as the broth bubbles and cooks down the resulting concentrated soup is intense. It was nice to be able to alternate between the fiery and sweet chambers of stock.

Even though the hot-potted treats don’t really require them, there is an eighteen-slot condiment bar in the back of the long room that’s just kind of fun to poke around. Black beans, chopped garlic, sugar and soy sauce all kind of make sense, but if you’re feeling wild you can also take a scoop of pure MSG. Ah…sweet, sweet glutimates.

My “real” review for nymag.com

Almost completely irrelevant asides (you have been warned):

Hot-potting has become a euphemism in my household for what gastro-intestinal unpleasantness occurs about twelve hours later. There was a lot of hot-potting going on last week in Mexico City that has yet to cease. But I never realized how funny hot-potting was until I heard it referred to by someone who had no idea what hot pot was.

I met up with a former coworker a few weeks ago to get the dirt on who’d been fired, humiliated and so on. But I became intrigued when she started describing my replacement, a young Chinese-born go-getter with an apparent penchant for hot-potting. It seems that the girl whoops it up all over Flushing, indulging in hot pot with wild abandon, comes into work late, and then complains, “I have terrible cramp…very strong period” as an excuse. No one seems to think that these cramps are liquor induced except for my friend who now refers to binge drinking as hot-potting. But she’s suspicious, mean-spirited and astute like me so I’m inclined to believe the hangover theory.

Once the former coworker walked into the women’s bathroom to find the new me laying on the ratty entryway couch moaning in pain with her boyfriend at her side rubbing her head. Frightening (though not so much as the pair of abandoned shit and blood stained panties once left in front of a sink on the floor by god only knows. P.R. is a classy profession).

Hot-potting has become a great catch all phrase for everything unseemly. This former coworker (and no-nonsense dyke) also shared my love of the word hot pad, the self-given nickname of my butch Girl Scout camp counselor who resembled an obese John Denver. I don’t even want to imagine what hot-padding is.

Happy Family * 36-35 Main St., Flushing, NY

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A Fan Ti

One of our waitresses matter-of-factly asking James “Is she your wife?” baffled me all evening. I’ve learned that there’s a certain ESL bluntness that seems particularly acute with Chinese to English and it doesn’t bother me. I’m never sure if lack of subtlety is a translation thing or if it’s cultural. It was easier to shake our heads and say yes rather than explain, “Well, actually it’s kind of complicated. We’re actually just dating but we’ve been together for nearly eight years which is longer than anyone I know has been married, but we’re just boyfriend and girlfriend.” We were the only ones speaking English so maybe she was attempting to chitchat to make us feel welcome? Or was it that I didn’t seem like his wife, and we make an odd couple? I like James’s version, that it was her way of asking if he was available.

The other waitress didn’t speak English at all and I do appreciate that she brought us Chinese menus, though I think it was more a case of her not really thinking it through as opposed to concerted non-pandering. After a few seconds she was mildly scolded by the lady boss and made to bring us English menus without our saying anything.

At least the English menu wasn’t lacking any of the oddities that we didn’t order anyway. I have no fear of offal but it’s no fun eating it alone. The first thing listed is lamb testicles and a bowl of eyeballs bobbing around in liquid is also for the taking. We compromised and stayed on the tame side.

Despite sounding like an American bastardization, I had to order the kung pao, which is called simply lamb in hot pepper sauce. It’s peanut crazy and full of startling ma la sensations. Going double lamby, we also had the salt and pepper lamb, which comes spice-crusted (cumin-heavy) on the bone with a little saucer of crushed Sichuan peppercorns and salt for dipping. We barely used half and our mouths were numb by the end of the meal.

This is the type of place where it’s not like you’re blending in anyway so why bother trying. I was initially afraid of looking barbaric by using my fingers to pick at the bits left on the bone of our salt and pepper lamb. I then noticed others were flat out gnawing on the thing. I should be so shameless.

I would’ve ordered something with bean curd but soybeans and well as organs don’t fare well with this not-my-husband dining companion. To squeeze a vegetable in, I tried the eggplant, which I’m sure was oil laden to make the flesh so silky. It was nothing like you’d get from corner takeout (last night I ordered pork with eggplant from our local not-so-great place Ting Hua [not to be confused with Wing Hua a few blocks up and definitely not to be mixed up with Me and My Eggroll in between the two] and I was given pork egg foo young instead. Bizarre, I haven’t had that since I was a kid) there’s a sweetness and also a chile spiciness, not just garlic, and somehow it stayed steaming hot for a full twenty minutes.

I love places like this, i.e. Little Pepper and Happy Family, which I haven't posted yet. Maybe it’s all the chiles and peppercorns but I always end up with a good feeling, even a sense of well being (seriously) when I eat Northern Chinese food.

My nymag.com review (nitpickers, it contains a to-be-corrected inaccuracy not of my doing)

A Fan Ti * 136-80 41st Ave., Flushing, NY

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King 5 Noodle House

1/2 You might think noodles were the main attraction, based on King 5’s name but I’m not sure that that’s the case. Taiwanese breakfast (sweet or salty soymilk and doughy things like you tiao and those bings that seemed to have taken Manhattan last year) is a draw but getting to Flushing in the a.m. is just not happening for me.

Instead, I stopped in for takeout spicy beef noodle soup and then got stymied by their three entrees for $19.95 special because there were so many choices. The heaving bag I ultimately took to go had to have weighed over ten pounds. The beef noodle soup didn’t suffer too much from the journey home because they package the noodles and broth separately, a nice touch. I was thinking along pho lines but the stock is deep brown and much richer. Completely un-delicate, spicy and stew-y like cold weather fare.

I had been looking for something called three cup chicken but didn’t see it on the menu, though it’s possible that it went by another name. Chicken with chestnuts sufficed. That sounds potentially bland but was anything but. I forget how good hacked up skin-on, bone-in chicken can be because I never cook it at home (where there’s just a sad bag of Costco chicken breasts in the freezer). This was my favorite of the three dishes I tried. I find that Taiwanese food is strong in the right ways: pungent, oily, salty and spicy but not so much as Sichuan.

I had to try intestines because they popped up in more than one place on the menu. The ma la rendition wasn’t Sichuan peppercorny in the least. In fact, they were totally done E3 style (shorthand in my household for Thai stir fry with chile and basil). Another surprise was the form. I imagined thin, lengthy organs like I’d recently eaten with Argentinean parrillada but they were girthy and sliced lengthwise and had more of a tripe quality. I like innards so all was well, but I hate to admit that I don’t know what animal they came from.

Beef with green chiles were totally green chiles with beef, in a good way. This would be a great lunch with a big bowl of rice. I’d certainly rather have this dish over sushi or Subway sandwiches.

Refrigerated takeout containers aren't the most appetizing but I’m just not motivated to set up elaborate shots. Even though my words are no great shakes, I'm even shakier when it comes to stellar photo snapping. I admire, yet am stymied by food blogs with over the top photography. I was just going to stereotype and say that it seems to be an Asian thing but thought better of it (I don’t want to get the reputation for culture generalizing—I’ve already pointed out that macaron mania also seems to be Asian-centric) then was like how can something be a stereotype if it’s true and are stereotypes so bad if the attributes are positive?

There’s just a different aesthetic going on. Seriously, so not my realm: Chez Pim, Chubby Hubby, Kuidaore, Nordljus. And those are just ones that immediately sprang to mind. Of course, I’m sure I could easily find four Asian-run food blogs with horrific photography if I tried but I don’t want to cause any trouble (at least publicly—I’m going to go look for some ugly pictures this very second and keep them all to myself).

My succinct and objective take on King 5 for nymag.com

King 5 Noodle House * 39-07 Prince St., Flushing, NY

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East Buffet

I can’t say East Buffet without thinking Eve’s Buffet. That will likely only mean anything to Portland, Oregon old-timers, skuzzy pre-90’s folks, not the current uber-indie inhabitants. Before there was Meyer Café (which could be defunct now for all I know) there was Eve’s, a dowdy little coffee shop inside Fred Meyer (the best NW grocery store ever).

Unsurprisingly, the word east also brings up Easter, which might be why I’ve been twice on that non-essential holiday (as well as on my thirtieth birthday, which was totally essential). Last year I cooked a fresh ham. This year I was burnt out; persistent eating enabled by strangers seemed the thing to do.

I had been holding off on E.B. because it’s the kind of place my mom would love, not in an ironic way, and she’s visiting in June (my mom’s been to NYC twice in the nine years I’ve lived here and I’ve gone home as many times. I don’t think that’s weird but practically everyone I know sees their parents multiple times annually). She took me to her local Chinese Buffet, Treasure Island, which was fine by Beaverton standards, but it’s no Flushing. Really, what does it matter if I go again a few months?

At 5pm on Sunday (opening hour for dinner) the vast rooms weren’t even close to crowded. They were only using one half of the restaurant. Saturdays can be a mob scene and you often get caught in the middle of wedding parties and events. I don’t mind mayhem but pile ups occur when a fresh item is brought from the kitchen. Crab legs in particular, bring out the glutton in people. I don’t think they’re worth the effort (especially if E.B. decided to start enforcing their 1 ½ hour dining maximum rule) but they seem to be the unanimous favorite. Every table had more than one plate piled high with the orange, spindly appendages. They used to serve hacked up lobster tails in a brown garlic sauce and making it to the tray before it was decimated was worse than a rush hour not letting people off the subway before shoving on scene. I’m sure cost, not a call to manners led to the crustaceans’ removal, though.

James decided that we’d need to eat five plates of food to bring the cost per plate down to a reasonable level ($27 per person). That was pretty ambitious. By my third plate, I was kind of done in but a fourth had to be forced to get a dessert course. To say that there is a lot of food is an understatement. Even with four plates, I probably only sampled 10% of what was on offer.

Two stand alone stations are devoted to warm food. There’s one for cold, which I enjoy, despite ignoring the half filled with fruit, jello and dubious gelatinous treats, one which is black and jiggly that I’m guessing is grass jelly. The other half of this stall contains spicy, oily tendons, baby octopus, sliced organ meats, raw fish, seaweed salads and the like.

Behind the cold food is a sushi counter where you can pick and choose from a wide selection rolls and sashimi. I feel like this is a thing unto itself and usually abstain or just pick one or two items. I also never touch the soup or soft serve ice cream machine and try not to load up on noodles and definitely not rice.

Kind of the middle of the fray there is a carving display where peking duck is sliced on demand. In a double decadent whammy, there are also thick, meaty rectangles of roasted, crackly skinned pork. To the immediate left is a grilling area that turns out Korean ribs, skewers, scallion pancakes and other delights.

It’s strange how these photos make the plates look like they contain less food. They seemed much, much fuller at the time. Not to say that this is skimping.

I forgot about the no noodle/rice rule, so I only picked at the dull, slightly peppery noodles then got a little scared over the no wasting food or you’ll be charged rule. I picked up some random sliced cold meat, tendons and who knows what, wakame, shrimp, two little octopi and a battered fried sardine. I’m not sure what made the mini cephalopods bright red.

Seriously, this plate was a killer. I overdid it with meat, which can’t be discerned in that pile. Short ribs, roast pork, bbq pork, chicken, everything pretty fatty. As you can see there’s also a grilled eel nigiri, raw tuna slice, green beans, a fried bean curd blob with shrimp, that crazy dish of battered shrimp with walnuts and mayonnaise, and something white, translucent and topped with sesame seeds, kind of like konnyaku.

Peking duck was amazing but I should’ve gotten it earlier because I was feeling a little ill by the time I made my way to it and the pork wedges. New rule: rich food first. Forget about pacing. Like I said, sushi seems unnecessary but I couldn’t resist a couple pieces. I also picked up a few more tendons (I don’t know why I like cartilage so much) and a cereal covered prawn.

No, Asian desserts aren’t the big draw but I couldn’t leave empty handed. Clockwise from the lavender cup: taro pudding, caramel colored layer cake I thought would be peanut butter but was mocha, lotus seed pastry, a greasy mochi type ball that only attracted me because it was weirdly green and a cheesecake-ish square.

Now, I’ll have to fast the next few months to build up my stamina for another East Buffet excursion in June. Ok, fasting is not in my vocabulary. How about I just vow not to set foot in any all-you-can-eat joints for two months. (4/8/07)

This seemed like a good spot for a celebration. Apparently, two wedding parties thought the same thing. This was my most surreal visit to date, which might be appropriate for a 30th birthday. We were seated in a room next to a wedding party with bad '50s medleys, top 40 techno and glow sticks. In order to get to the food, we had to walk through their festivities. Not that I'm complaining, we got a show with our buffet. Well worth the Saturday night wait and $25. (7/27/02)

I don't even know where to begin with this one. If heaven were a giant all-you-can-eat restaurant, it would be patterned after East Buffet. From the sheer size (two floors), neon sparklers atop the building, and hostesses with walkie talkies, you know you're in for something larger than life.

I happened to go on Easter, but there's no need to wait for a special occasion to gorge yourself silly Chinese-style (I wonder if they actually have all-you-can-eat in China). Stations are brimming with items from accepted to the novel. One contained fruit, salads, and more jiggly gelatin-based items than a church picnic. There was also a sushi bar, a meat carving area with Peking duck and lamb with mint jelly (that I'm guessing was only there for Easter), and a tour of Asia's greatest hits space that confused me with satay, scallion pancakes, Korean bbq, tempura and live shrimp in tanks–were they supposed to cook them on demand? I was also baffled by the little shell balls that people piled on plates, sucked on and spit out. Snails, I'm guessing? One section had spicy shrimp and lobster tails that people were literally fighting for, yet in the same environs were odd old-school American treats like lobster thermidor. There was also an impressive dessert counter heavy on the colorful, coconut-laden, and ricey goodies.

Highlights included various dim sum, crab legs, that scary dish with prawns, walnut and mayonnaise that tastes really good even though it creeps me out, and sushi (I never knew it could be so filling–I suppose a giant plate of anything will use up stomach space). I ate so much I didn't even have room for any of the soups, congees, or Peking duck. My only letdown was their lack of turnip cakes, which I had expected to be there. But I was appeased a bit by their half-off bubble tea special.

Take note of intimidating handwritten list of rules in the lobby with a bit about time limits and getting a 20% charge for wasting food. What does that mean, wasting food? Who would do such a thing? I smuggled out a sesame ball and feared the worst, but sometimes you've got to take risks. (4/15/01)

East Buffet * 42-07 Main St., Flushing, NY

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