NY eats: Chinatown

Believe it or not, I don't think I've ever been to New York's Chinatown before!
It shouldn't even be called a "town," given how spread out it is. What I saw: lots of old-fashioned characters, a woman selling zhong zi (sticky rice in bamboo leaves) on the street, and a lot of internet cafes. And restaurants, of course.

Honestly, I don't remember what the name of the restaurant we went to was called, but we ended up having some really tasty Shanghai eats. Just in case you're unclear, Shanghai food is known for being mild and sweet, with fresh vegetables and seafood. They are particularly known for their xiao long bao, or soup dumplings (Actually translated as "Little Dragon Dumplings"). I MISS THESE. You're meant to eat them on a spoon so that when you bite into the outside, hot, savory broth leaks out and you immediately slurp it, and the entire dumpling, into your mouth. Actually, the "soup" is actually a kind of gelatin, or basically solidified pork broth that melts when steamed. I suppose that makes it sound kind of unnappealing, but they're amazing. They also sometimes contain crab as well as pork.
We ordered pretty light food, and my favorite Shanghai dishes.
Tofu-vegetable soup-- Unfortunately, this was chicken soup! Not even broth... just a rich, golden soup that was VERY obviously chicken. I had one accidental sip.

A dish of fish in wine dregs-- the fish fillets were sweet, with a thick, gloopy sauce. I'm not sure if this is thick because of cornstarch or the fish itself, but this is a dish that I would have no idea how to make... because we don't have wine dregs (which seem to be similar to lees, or what is left over after fermentation). They contribute a unique flavor that I wouldn't be able to put my finger on if I didn't know they were there.

Soy beans with a kind of pickled greens and tofu skins-- I love this dish. It probably couldn't be any healthier. The tofu skins aren't fried either, but have the texture of rough, thin, noodles. Because the vegetables were pickled, it isn't bland either. I personally love soupy food, and all these dishes had a lot of sauce that was great spooned over rice.

They also ordered lamb with chestnuts-- apparently this was good, but not great.

AND OF COURSE, soup dumplings:

I'm jealous, since we only have one Shanghainese restaurant in our Chinatown, and it just so happens to be owned by the owner of the best Sichuanese restaurant, so I'm not sure how authentic this is. This, on the other hand, tasted just like what I ate in China (Beijing, not Shangai, but still).

Sorry guys! BUT I GOT TO MEET ARUN!

Sorry about the delayed post. Even though swim season is over and this lack of torturous exercise is making me feel incomplete, I don't actually have much time to talk about this, since I also have to blog today. So, yesterday:
Breakfast-- felt like cold cereal for a change. This bowl was OVERFLOWING:
Combination of Puffins, GoLean Crunch, grapenuts, and Mighty Bites (don't really love these, although the shape is awesome... trying to get rid of them).
1 banana, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries
soy milk
wheat germ
sprinkle of almonds
On the side: applesauce with a little Greek yogurt.
This was probably a little overkill: all the fiber was pretty much sitting in my stomach. We were supposed to leave for Arun's Michigan house at around 11:30, but I figured it would take us a while to get there and I didn't know how long it would be till I ate. I figured I was safer with a snack:
A sliced pear, a few walnuts and some cottage cheese.
I WAS SO EXCITED TO MEET ARUN! It also felt great to get out of the city, although being in the car gave me a killer sinus ache. We ended up being later than expected, but I still got lots of buffet photos. Arun was really friendly-- in his 60's, wearing a kind of Asian-looking silk jacket, and he shook my hand and kept addressing me by name and everything! It would have seemed like almost a family gathering (lots of Chicago's Thai community) if it weren't for the camera people from the CANADIAN FOOD NETWORK circling around us with those tubular microphones. It was actually pretty funny, because a ton of people started gambling in the other room, and the TV people said, "we won't film that."
There were people there working for the mayor (there was a big Thai Fest in 2005 to fundraise for the tsunami, and my neighbor Marion wrote the book). There was free Thai massage, and there were photographers and the like. Basically, it felt like a really friendly gathering, except, once again, for the cameras.
As for the food, it was excellent! Not exactly "home cooking style," and judging by the size of the kitchen in this vacation house, I'm guessing they brought it over from the restaurant. But still, it was delicious. Of course, as Marion put it, "this is only a picnic for him." Can't wait to see what his restaurant is like! Oh! Forgot to mention that there were framed restaurant reviews all over the walls, including the JAMES BEARD AWARD.









That roasted pig reminded me of Lord of the Flies... other than that, there were great coconut noodles with shrimp, tofu and peanut sauce, vegetarian rolls, fish cakes, pickled eggplant, stir-fried cabbage, eggs boiled in soy sauce, and many more delicacies.
And dessert: Asian cookies and cakes, which I didn't have. I did have this amazing tapioca soup-ish dish... I don't know how to describe it except that it's one of those extremely sweet, condensed milk Asian desserts that I'm usually not a fan of. This, on the other hand, was probably the best thing I ate there! It was called "floating" something (not floating island), but I don't remember. Either way, the "soup" had coconut, taro, and was really sweet, and the tapioca balls floating in it were lichee, taro, and KABOCHA SQUASH. Sold.
Actually, it was Marion's birthday on the 6th (wish she'd told me), and because she's basically Arun's best friend, about 4 or 5 different cakes were brought out! But I was stuffed and stuck to the Thai stuff.
Anything else of note? Just as I suspected, Arun didn't really eat anything, but I did catch him nibbling on a piece of honeydew that somebody else had left out. Poor chefs!
The photographer there told me I should be a model! Not even kidding! I was kind of shocked. She asked if I was part Asian and I said yes. She said she was looking for more Asian models, and that she doesn't have any upcoming projects, but she took down my contact info and said she would let me know. And if that weren't strange enough, the two masseuses also came up to me and said I should be a model! They said "you have a certain grace to your posture. You hold yourself very well and you have an interesting look." I don't think I've ever felt so flattered!!
I had a headache after all the food, so we walked around the house, where there was a beautiful stream. It even started snowing a little! Sadly, we had to drive back.
ARUN HUGGED ME!
By the time I got home, it was almost dinnertime, and I didn't even want to think about food! But eventually, I did start getting a little hungry, and I basically had a "lunch for dinner" kind of thing:
A whole wheat bagel with a Laughing Cow and 2 kinds of smoked salmon (one was gravlax) and pickles
Some leftover pumpkin lentil stew
and later, an apple.
I brought my parents Arun's food.
I am so excited for Friday... Arun's Arun's Arun's...
By the way, the show that they were filming, which I don't think is usually aired on the American Food Network is called "At the Table With," if anyone's heard of it.

Goodbye Beijing

To sum it up, here is what we mainly ate:

For breakfast I ate oatmeal and very occasionally Chinese-style (i.e. a sesame shaobing).

For lunch, we usually ordered fast, home-style dishes from downstairs, such as eggplant, stir fried eggs and tomatoes, Ma Po tofu without the meat, etc. etc.

If we were feeling slightly less lazy, we would eat at the restaurant in our building: again, simple, but more Cantonese-style food: fish head tofu soup, stir fried greens, and clay pots with mushrooms and five spice powder.

Other wonderful restaurants nearby:

A Xin Jiang noodle place. Xin Jiang food is basically Chinese-Middle Eastern fusion, so they eat flatbread (Nang, obviously the same root as the Indian naan) and hand-pulled noodles like extremely chewy, thick, spaghetti, which you can eat with tomato and egg, or eggplant, peppers, and garlic shoots for the vegetarian options. As a carnivore, they have a ton of meat options: lamb, sliced beef, you name it. Everything comes in huge portions and is just great to carb-load after a swimming workout. My dad once ordered something called shou zhua fan (rice to eat with your hands), that was basically a biryani/pilaf/fried rice hybrid. The rice was short grained, but stir fried with lamb, cumin, and dried apricots. It looked great. Recently, we also had the lightest dish of cabbage in broth with nothing but a little bit of dried shrimp and goji berries—the perfect restorative tonic. We also ordered a huge pot of soup (made vegetarian) with a base of spices and hot pepper, swimming with cubes of tofu, noodle scraps (that’s the only way I can think of to describe their shape), and vegetables. Last but not least, I sampled two sweet pumpkin dishes: one served with glutinous black rice in a sticky orange syrup, the second much less sweet, but filled with raisins, figs, and Chinese dates (jujubes)—that one was much better. I saved it the next day to eat for breakfast.

This restaurant I mentioned earlier—the one hidden away in the village part of our neighborhood that has yet to be modernized. Every time we went there, we would order ge da tang, soup thickened with lumps of dough, egg, wild vegetables and tomatoes. In addition to this, we would get the fabulous sesame pancakes, filled with a sandy, sticky and sweet sesame paste within a crispy flatbread. Even the simplest stir fried vegetables they did amazingly well, especially the mung bean sprouts, which were cooked with nothing besides Sichuan peppers, peppercorns, and a little vinegar. Two more great dishes that we tried: a variety of vegetables topped with an omelette (“vegetables covered with a quilt”) and smoked tofu with garlic shoots: usually smoked tofu is too hard, but this was soft and tasted more like bacon than anything I’ve had in years.

The dumpling place—I only came here once this year, but it’s great if you’re looking for something easy and quick. Pick a filling, any filling, and the weight you want (usually 2-3 ounces), in addition to some simple cold salads and you’re good to go. Some of the fillings they might have would be any combination of beef, lamb, chicken, or pork with any kind of vegetable, vegetable fillings with egg, and of course seafood dumplings. When I went, we got pork and cabbage, green bean, lotus root and egg, and lamb with scallion. Sometimes the simplest things are best, especially drenched with lots of vinegar.

Another dish I love is zhou: there's a specific place we went to for it: known for health benefits, rice porridge is a way to get a lot of volume for very few carbs. You can get it either salty or sweet. Some zhou I've ordered in the past is mushroom and broccoli zhou and boneless fish zhou. Of course, Korea and Japan have their own versions, where the rice is already cooked and added to a broth, whereas in China the rice is cooked slowly like oatmeal into a thick porridge.

Of course, we had the occasional Korean

or Japanese meal.

And I always found time to grab one of the yogurts on the street—Chinese yogurt, although you can get it in the store, is always better served in the ceramic jugs that you drink on the spot with a straw. More of a drink than Western yogurt, it’s only slightly sweetened and is a wonderful thirst-quencher.

So that’s it! I’ll miss you, Beijing… I’m also in for a shock when I find out how expensive everything is when I get back.