New thread long overdue.
Old thread here:
Thwarted by Deluxe Green Bo being closed (which hopefully is just renovations and not something more extreme), but just as well in the end, because:
A return to Joe’s Shanghai for the still-excellent crab & pork soup dumplings / xlb.
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First time for me sitting down at Green Garden Village, from which I have taken out roast meats before (also from the place next door – 218). We got there at staff lunch time, so after we got served, everyone sat down at the tables around us and dug into their delicious-looking braised squash and some kind of beef (or maybe oxtail).
We, on the other hand, ate beef cheung fun and soy sauce chicken and pork char siu over rice. The chicken was fabulous, silky and perfectly flavored. The char siu we got a crappy piece of, oh well (I saw nice glistening portions elsewhere). The cheng fun was very flavorful, which was a relief to me because the last few iterations of beef cheung fun I have tried have been woefully un- or under-seasoned. Not this one, well-marinated and with plentiful cilantro to help it along. The noodle itself was of the rougher variety (ie not the delicacy of King’s, more the scoop-off of the fast places), but was a tasty dish.
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A little bit of capacity left (but not enough to do justice to a banh mi), on to Shu Jiao Fu Zhou for a small order of chicken & mushroom dumplings.
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The planned conclusion was steamed molasses cake (with a cup of coffee for me) at the bakery, but they didn’t have any of the cake, and we didn’t feel like anything more, so that was the end of that!
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looks like a delicious meal especially the beef cheung fun one of the items that made me really appreciate cilantro
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swung by mei la wah for a couple of pork buns and tai pan for two Portuguese tarts. Starting to sour on the mlw pork buns, there’s always some unrendered fat in the filling (perhaps by design) and sometimes I find the brown sauce cloying, I’m going to seek a new source.
That might have been the best rendition of soy sauce chicken I’ve had. Interesting that you found the cheung fun rough, I thought it silky but we are probably talking about two different things.
I wouldn’t mind gathering folks for a soup dumpling crawl to find our favorites in Chinatown. Or, if there’s no interest, perhaps I’ll take the @FlemSnopes route and create my own xlb database. Unfortunately, these days, I can’t eat much more than a single order of xlb, so I could use a at least a couple of partners in crime.
I think it was new green bo that had an old nyt review on their window with a Calvin Trillin quote that went something like: “I have an index card with Chinese writing that says “bring me what the table next to me is eating” 
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I’d like a poster of that GGVillage lunch to hang on my wall!
Happy to join an XLB Chinatown crawl if it’s in Nov or Dec, but equally fine with reading up on it here if timing doesn’t gel 
Yes, I almost ate some more xlb in Flushing yesterday in the spirit of research
Let’s update our lists and get to it.
That’s high praise coming from you given your extensive survey of soy sauce chicken purveyors!
Not so much rough as… messy? You know how the dim sum ones are neatly laid out & cut precisely, vs the other style (with corn etc) that are scooped off the tray – these seemed more akin to the latter, but with the filling & flavor of the former.
ETA:
- XLB survey
- Soy sauce chicken / char siu survey
All in the public interest
be happy to participate but dont have a list so no pre-suppositions!
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ah, yes, it was messy but I thought it very good. I’ve come to realize that I prefer the silky, tender noodles at places like Yi Ji Shi Mo and GGV to the firmer style found at dim sum restaurants.
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Still to try it. My main issue is that I don’t like the fillings at those places (egg, corn, etc) vs the dim sum ones. Also I prefer the sweet soy at dim sum as the saucing. The noodles are lovely, though.
