Earlier this week @Ike, @vinouspleasure, @JenKalb, and I went on a brief crawl through Flushing Chinatown. We began at the new Lee & Bai Chinese Buns shop for two sets of Chendgu-style breakfast buns, with braised pork and with pickled radish and cabbage. The latter are mistranslated on the menu as green pepper braised pork buns; in fact, they’re the only vegetarian option. They’re spicier than the pork and tastier, too.
We took a longish walk to the gussied-up Golden Mall, where nothing tempted us more than samples of castella cake (not shown here). I think the one that Jen and I split was flavored with black sesame. Rather than eat at the mall, we crossed the street to New Northern Dumpling King, whose owners are from Dongbei, I believe.
They no longer serve liang pi. We ordered the dalu mian, noodles in homestyle gravy, that took their place on the menu, and I think we agreed that this was our least-liked dish. We did better with a plateful of red oil wontons; I imagined that they’d be swimming in sauce, but that’s the Sichuan style. Best of all, to my taste, was a shredded green radish “pie.”
Afterward we cooled down during a walkthrough of the Tangram complex, which continues to line up new food tenants; on the mezzanine, we passed three or four spaces under construction. We also happened on a new-to-me kiosk on the ground floor, Sally’s Nyonya Kuih, and tried three of Sally’s namesake confections: cendol kuih talam, kuih pulut tai tai, and, best, pandan kuih talam.
thanks @DaveCook , @Ike and @vinouspleasure for sharing your company and Flushing expertise! My preferences lined up pretty much with Dave - I liked the Dongbei pie and the wontons as well as the veg bun quite a lot, the pork bun was very good but nothing different from many another steamed pork pun as i had hoped the Chengdu label suggested. The kuih was good (with the blue pea sticky rice item and accompanying gula melaka dipping sauce very enjoyable and the the pandan/salty coconut layered item also very good - the two layer item with gula melaka base and bits of cendol in he top coco layer was disappointingly insipid. tho that did not make it bad just not worth the high price…Jim snaffled up all the leftovers that I accumulated with no trace the next am. Loved the trip and gonna get out my cookbook and see how I can do making some kuih.
I really enjoyed lee & bai, it would be fun to work through their entire menu. As a pork lover, I preferred the braised pork bun, the texture reminded me of eating pulled pork over white bread as a young kid on our slow, meandering annual trips from NYC to FL.
the shredded green radish pie at northern dumpling was delicious but I preferred the wontons. The use of crushed red peppers seems odd, I wonder if that’s a Chinese spice or simply easy for them to source. It’s worth noting that the dalu main noodles had a hard boiled egg under the surface of the noodles which lent some richness to the otherwise bland dish. Still, pretty sure there aren’t any more dalu noodles in my future.
the Malaysian confections were delicious, $36 must be a record spent for dessert on a crawl Still, I was happy to have tried them.
after our crawl I knocked around a supermarket for a bit and then purchased a three meat over rice at corner 28. This was by far my best experience with the roast meat there, IMO it still lags behind Manhattan’s roast meat joints like NY noodletown and Big Wong but I can’t see not stopping every time I’m in flushing. A big portion of duck, chicken, and roast pork over rice was $12, for some reason discounted to $10 and they threw in a bottle of water. I will say it’s cringy to walk the gauntlet of women by corner 28.
it was good to catch up with everyone, Dave, thanks for leading us on what turned out to be a hot, hot day.
I’ve been wanting to try the various dumplings at New Northern Dumpling King, good to hear the wontons were good. The radish pancake looks interesting – I’ve been tending to the pickled cabbage ones elsewhere for the extra flavor boost.
(I’m not a big tapioca dessert fan, but those look good – they had little boxes of them at Lady Wong for “a bit” more.)
Agreed about Lee & Bai. Fantastic find. I definitely think working through the whole menu would be great. I also really wanted to get back to Alley 41 but we ran out of stomach capacity, so let’s be sure to do that in the future.
I’m normally loathe to let my photos be compared with Dave’s as I’m no photographer, but I got a different angle on the nice wontons at New Northern Dumpling King, so just for the sake of completeness, here’s this shot:
I went back to New Northern Dumpling King later (identified on Yelp simply as Northern Dumpling King) and got the cold eggplant with garlic to take home. It tastes exactly the same as it did at the sadly defunct Best North, which is gone from the Friendship Plaza (?) at 41-42A Main St. (replaced by a beef noodle place).
I didn’t get the kimchi this time, but I eyeballed it and it looked very much like Best North’s used to. So at first I wondered if Best North and New Northern are related. OTOH, there is a thread on Reddit suggesting not; plus the staff didn’t seem the same from what little I could tell. Maybe Dongbei cold eggplant with garlic just always tastes like that.
It doesn’t photograph well, but I assure you it’s delicious and very garlicky.
Here’s some more-substantial Sichuan from a group lunch, just before summertime, at Szechuan House. Not Szechuan Mountain House, a more-refined restaurant in One Fulton Square that has spawned four more locations including two in Manhattan, but Szechuan House, which is close in location and atmosphere to the old, Roosevelt Ave., location of Little Pepper.
Shown: dan dan noodles, cumin lamb with chile pepper, fish filet with tofu, dry-sautéed string beans, sautéed preserved pork, and eggplant with garlic sauce. These dishes and four more were turned out in quick order by what seemed to be a one-man kitchen; our server was the daughter of the chef. Our party of 12 paid $25 a head, and to reach that grand total we had to tip very generously.
One of my absolute favorite restaurants in all of NYC. Consistently excellent food and wonderfully warm and gracious hospitality. Sometimes I have to remind them not to tone down the spice, but the flavors, ingredients and execution are always spot on. I can’t overstate how much I love it here.
If I have time or room for just a bite in Flushing, a steamed bun is always a good bet. This is a radish and dried shrimp bun from Lin Cafe, in the Friendship Shopping Plaza at 4142A Main St. You certainly can sit at this cafe, but understand that it’s simply a shallow alcove within a narrow micromall; I took my bun to go.
Not long after: lard mix noodles, shown as served and — more revealing of their tender, smooth texture — after being tossed, at Hunan Noodle, inside the complex at 3636 Prince St. Several years ago this restaurant operated from a small kitchen inside the Landmark Quest Mall, a local incubator where Joe’s Steam Rice Roll got its start, and that’s always worth a look-see.
Dave, is this a current Hunan favorite, or do you have any current favorite Hunan places in the area? I remember how much I enjoyed Hunan House on Northern Blvd. back in the day.
I haven’t been to what’s now known as Hunan Cafe, or to Hunan Kitchen of Grand Sichuan, in some time. I’d sooner return to Hunan Noodle. Too bad it’s not set up to handle any more than a small group.
Still, I was happy to have tried them.
