We were moving slow this morning, so we only had time for a plate of steamed rice rolls on our way to lunch. Joe’s Steamed Rice Noodles in Landmark Quest Mall was our choice and the food came in 5 minutes. I needed a plum drink as my blood sugar was a little low. Since I almost never drink sweetened beverages, the lightly sweetened drink was a treat! The rice rolls were superb. Shrimp, dried shrimp, bean sprout, cilantro and corriander was our choice. The portion was huge and we ate it before snapping a pic.
Then it was on to join @DaveCook who invited us to join a regular lunch group. We had a spectacular time. Classic Cantonese done with amazing attention to detail. Very old school. [Chef Wong’s Bistro on Northern Blvd at Farrington added thanks to @Saregama 's question below]
We started with a seafood beancurd soup. Really good.
Next was salt and pepper fried shrimp and fish. The two seafoods must have been fried separately before tossing is the salt, pepper and green onion mix. Again, extremely good.one of the best S&P dishes I have had.
A glorious roast duck followed. I had a bit of the neck and thigh and both were exemplary.
Clams in black bean sauce was again a textbook rendition. The clams were mostly a sauce delivery system.
Shrimp in lobster sauce. A very good dish.
There is a saying in the theater. Do not pull out a gun in the first act unless someone uses it in the second. This was our lobster foreshadowing!
Really super fried rice and perfectly cooked greens. The rice had lots of crispy bits: crispy rice, crispy dried shrimp and dried scallop. This was pretty amazing. The greens were really good as well.
Roast chicken. Superb but plain in comparison with preceeding dishes.
The return of the lobster burried in a huge mound of fried rice and served with very tasty noodles. The lobster was a little large and the meat a tiny bit tough but the flavors made up for that. I think the fried rice was a different style. A great finish to an amazing meal with wonderful company.
We walked back to our AirBnB very slowly and mostly napped until 9pm when we decided to go for more food. We decided to try a crab and kebob restaurant. They had a scan to order qr code. It took forever to load on Kay’s phone and never loaded on mine. Then we were supposed to register to send our order. Well, I do not feel the need to give personal info just to have dinner so off we went to another skewer joint closer to our AirBnB. We would have gone there to begin with but as we passed by, there were no tables available. On our return there was one table. They gave us a paper menu to write in our order. They ignored us for a long while, but just as we were about to walk, one guy took our order sheet and just stood and stared at it. After several minutes of his inaction, we again left.
So a couple of doors down the block was another BBQ joint. I think they were probably closed and the language barrier was just as huge. But these folk made the effort to get to understanding. And we are glad they did. We LOVED the food
We started out with a plate of edamame and boiled peanuts. Lots of anise! Really fun start.
The food was grilled on their sidewalk BBQ cart. We had beef, lamb, cauliflower, enoki and simply amazing chicken wings. So good dusted in cumin, salt and chili. They brought a dish of chili flakes so I could spice mine up.
By the end were were communicating freely with a few words of broken English and lots of thumbs ups and smiles was better than words. We are thinking about returning tomorrow and having oysters, scallops in the shell and more. It was a struggle, but we had really good skewers (probably the best skewers we have tried) and a wonderful cross cultural experience. And it was only a block away. And we had 9 or 10 skewers, 2 Tsing Tao for $42.
While it is hard to be away from our overlords, days like today are why we stay in Flushing so often. Not just good food, but an escape from US culture to being the outsiders.
