"The Chinese dumpling is a magnificent product of the human imagination: At its best, it is charming in appearance, chewy and savory, and can trigger a head rush like sashimi or blue cheese." Tim Wu calls for a Dumpling Revolution, and my belly rumbles in agreement. [via Kathryn]
"August is shaping up to be an exciting month for fans of Chinese street food," says New York Magazine and gosh, I think they might be right, with two newly-opened purveyors of cheap tasty treats opening in recent weeks: Province in Tribeca (Church & Walker) serves meat-filled mantous for $3.50-$3.75, and Roll and Dough in the West Village (West 3rd near 6th Ave) is the Manhattan outpost of Elizabeth Ting, the lady known to Chowhounders as the Flushing Bing lady for her delicious bings, flat packages of sesame-seed encrusted dough with all sorts of delicious things inside. Lots of photos here, taken by The Girl Who Ate Everything.
Look, ma—now we do videos too! Hope you all like this one, there should be more coming soon. We hope to put two or so up every week.
Thanks so much to Mo SantRam for the great editing advice!
The first time I ever tasted the sweet, sweet nectar of soup dumplings was at the Chelsea branch of Grand Sichuan, three or more years ago with Alaina. Grand Sichuan St Mark's has been open for over a year now and while I was slightly disappointed with them during their first few months, I'm happy to report that the food has gotten better and better every time I've visited. In fact, after my most recent meal there this past week, I can finally say that Grand Sichuan St Mark's has now replaced New Green Bo as my number one Chinese spot—the only way I could love it more is if the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory opened up a branch on St Mark's too!
Soup dumplings aside, my current favorite items on the menu are the Sichuan Wontons in red oil, the Sichuan Dan Dan noodles, and the cold cucumber in scallion sauce. Thank you to Donny for making me try the latter dish despite my anti-cucumber bias, it's so delicious and refreshing that I now order them with every meal, and so should you.
Robert Sietsema reviews Super Taste hand-pulled noodles, on Eldridge. Recommended by Sietsema, after the place was recommended to him by Calvin Trillin? You know I am so eating there sometime in the next week, right? Hand-pulled noodles with beef + pork dumplings, bring it on.
(Mike King of Twenty Bucks a day visited Super Taste recently and enjoyed himself, saying "score one for the cheapwads!")
eGullet conversation with Ruth Reichl on Chinese food on NYC (emphasis mine): "Which is all a long way of saying that after living in California, it's hard to get very excited about Chinese food in New York. We just don't have the kind of monied, sophisticated Chinese eaters who support great restaurants."
And on the absence of Chinese restaurants in the Michelin Guide: "This is a subject I could go on forever about: Basically, Americans are racist about Chinese food. We just don't think it should be as expensive as western food. When my friend Bruce Cost had a great Chinese restaurant in SF, one of the reviews actually said, "What makes him think we should pay as much for Chinese as French food?" And he was buying from the same purveyors as Chez Panisse." [via kyu]
Snow pea shoots or dou miao are in season now until early spring. I've seen them recently at San Francisco's Chinatown markets, but didn't buy any because I didn't know how to prepare them myself. A quick search this morning and I found EatingAsia's recipe for Hot and Spicy Noodles with Pea Shoots, and another recipe for a simple garlic stir-fry (scroll down to the second recipe on the page).
Eating China is a new-to-me website and blog about Chinese food culture and history. Despite my love of other fermented foods (kimchi!) and beverages (beer!), the godawful stink of stinky tofu is still in the way of a real love affair between me and this unique dish.
NYC Nip and Squirt. A Full Belly patron saint Robert Sietsema reviews Mott Street's two-year-old Shanghai Café: "The most expensive ($6.95 for 8) features pork and a larger wad of crab than has ever been found in a juicy bun before. Sans crab, the dumplings are two dollars less, and I don't know which to recommend, since each is equally good in its own way. A third type cloaks gravy and pork in a doughier dumpling, fried crisp on the bottom like a pot sticker. The squirting grease will still kill you." Sounds like my kind of place! When I'm in Chinatown I almost always eat at New Green Bo, but I'll give Shanghai Café a shot next week.
Mei Wah: Eating in Chinese. "Like Calvin Trillin (most famously) and many others, I have never quite been able to sit down to a meal in a Chinese restaurant without wondering. Wondering if the Chinese characters on the menu said the same thing as the alleged English translations. Wondering what goodies I was missing from the Chinese-only specials board on the wall." The author learned to read enough Chinese to decipher a menu and you can too! [via The Girl Who Ate Everything]
NYC The Dumpling Man weblog claims that the "dumpling war" is over now that the Plump Dumpling will be a Chinese food takeout joint rather than a dumpling specialty eatery. Am I the only one saddened by this news? Speaking of sad, a video clip inspired by "the war."
NYC Some of you may remember me posting about last month's Taste of Chinatown 2005, in which over 50 restaurants, bakeries, tea houses and specialty shops in Chinatown offered tasting plates for just $1 each. Despite the rain I went down to Chinatown and met up with some friends to see what the various places had to offer, my pocket full of singles and my belly uncharacteristically empty.
I missed last year's event so I have nothing to compare this year's to but I thought it was a real mixed bag. A dollar per serving is a wonderful price point and I hadn't been to any of the places participating before, so Taste of Chinatown could've introduced me to many new great tastes, but that's not quite what happened. Each restaurant should've taken the event as an opportunity to put their best foot forward, to offer small portions of some of their best dishes up even if they lost a little bit of money on the day itself as a temporary loss leader, to make new customers out of people who might never otherwise step through their doors. From what I saw though most places decided not to go this route and offered basic items you can get from every other restaurant in the neighborhood (not to mention the greasy takeout places all over the city), like noodles and fried rice; smacked of cheapness and was to me a bad marketing decision.
Now that I've got my little diatribe out of the way: I went around trying lots of different things, taking heed of which items the people who were clearly regulars were purchasing. I ended up doing most of my eating on Mott! Here are some of my notes, with links to photos:
Mandarin Court
61 Mott
212-608-3838
They had lots of dimsum out but by far my favorites were the fried dumplings, both pork and shrimp. I went back for a second helping, making sure that my friends tried their wares too, and I will return to try a full meal.
House of Vegetarian
68 Mott
212-226-6572
I'm a dedicated carnivore but I really enjoyed the two desserts from HoV, the surprisingly delicate fried banana and the very light, very refreshing mango pudding. (Their hot & sour soup is supposed to be very good, for those of you who are strict vegetarians and had given up on ever having some again!)
Mr Tang's
50 Mott
212-233-8898
Rude service plus both things I tried, fried dumpling & fried tofu, were nasty. Two thumbs way down.
Ping's Seafood
22 Mott
212-602-9988
Everything I sampled from Ping's Seafood was just fantastic. I usually avoid chicken at Chinese restaurants but the spicy chicken on my plate was great, extremely hot but you could still taste all the underlying flavors. The real revelation though was the chow fun, none of my companions had ever had chow fun that looked anything like their chow fun and we couldn't get enough of it, we still talk about it a month later! I'm returning to Ping's later this week and will be sure to order it, and also to follow Gastronome-In-Training's recommendation to always sit upstairs, where the carts are more active.
Peking Duck House
28 Mott
212-227-1810
Talk about your temporary loss leader, Peking Duck House's tasting plate was actually Peking Duck! And they didn't exactly scrimp on the servings either. So as you can imagine the line was extremely long, at least 30 minutes or so. I was tempted to approach someone near the front of it and offer to pay for their serving if they would get one for me too but chickened out and ended up not having any, but you can bet I have plans to dine there sometime soon.
Hsin Wong
72 Bayard
212-925-6526
This place is right beside A Full Belly all-time favorite New Green Bo so I've walked by it many times and never even so much as glanced at the menu, but it was getting cold out and congee seemed like a good way to warm up so my friend Miranda and I decided to split a tub of what turned out to be lovely hot congee with century eggs and super salty pork. I'm happy to have an alternative for those days when I fiend for congee but getting to Congee Village on the LES feels like too much of a chore.
Seminal New York photoblogger David Gallagher went on vacation in China recently and lucky for us, he's posted a gallery of photos from his trip: Eating China. Everything he had looks and sounds delicious, but while I'm terribly jealous of it all I'm particularly intrigued by the fried pork soup dumplings—I'm obsessed with pork soup dumplings and try to have them once a week, but I had no idea they came FRIED. Anyone know of a place that serves them fried in NYC Chinatown? Please let me know!
SF Yank Sing: A Dim Sum Dynasty. The SF Chronicle takes an in-depth look into the history and family behind San Francisco's most famous dim sum house. Henry Chan says, "I do what the society wants, not what the Chinese in China want... It's a philosophy."
