Golden Palace

CHINA 🇨🇳

COVID-19 UPDATE: Golden Palace has a well-built outdoor dining area as well as indoor dining in accordance with NYS guidelines.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Written by Joseph Gessert, photographed by Liv Dillon.

Brooklyn’s dim sum palaces have struggled to find working business models during the pandemic, with several remaining shuttered and others transitioning to takeout with mixed success. 86th Street’s Golden Palace has the advantage of a large parking lot, in which they have built sturdy tents with heat and plywood floors. Steaming carts have been replaced by paper menus, and while you might miss the clatter of those wheels, your food will be cooked to order, meaning everything is fresh, hot, and better than ever.

Steamed rice rolls are omnipresent in the neighborhood, and a dim sum favorite is chinese donut wrapped with rice noodle roll ($4, below top left corner). Both the donuts and the rice rolls benefit from the cooked-to-order development, with the crunchy/soft contrast coming through very nicely. Another rice roll variation is leek noodle roll ($5, below), in which the noodles are rolled around pork and shrimp and turned on their sides. Both are best with a side of chili to complement the usual soy sauce.

Spare ribs with black pepper ($5) are tender, peppery, and especially good at Golden Palace, as is the stuffed bean curd skin ($6.50). As always with this dish, it’s not much to look at, but the balance of pork-shrimp-bamboo shoot and chewy bean curd skin is great here. Baked pork buns ($4) and deep fried stuffed dumplings ($4) bridge the gap from savory to sweet, with the latter especially enjoyable—minced pork is buried in deep-fried glutinous rice.

Fully on the dessert side of things are two variations on the bun filled with egg yoke theme—baked egg yoke custard bun ($3.25 for two) and steamed egg yoke custard bun ($4 for three). Both are delicious, with the difference coming down mostly to texture—the baked has a crunchier pastry with the egg yolk filling mostly dried out, whereas the steamed has a soft bao filled with runny sweetened egg yoke.

Dim sum meals are heavy on starch and sugar, and if you can muster enough diners in the current climate to justify an entree, your meal will be more balanced for it. Sizzling spare ribs with black pepper rice noodle roll ($18, below) is substantial, and might not be translated exactly right—the ribs are in a black bean and rice wine gravy.

Regardless, the sizzling platter is a textural triumph. Tightly rolled rice noodles have been pan-fried on the platter until a crust forms. Crunchy on the outside, chewy in the middle, topped off with peppers, peanuts, bean sprouts, and rib nuggets. This is a great dish. Still heavy on the starch, but you will not regret it.

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BENSONHURST Brooklyn

1619 86th Street

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Chuan Yue 川粤

CHINA 🇨🇳
(SICHUAN)

COVID-19 UPDATE: Chuan Yue has space for outdoor dining but on a recent winter evening were takeout only. When indoor dining resumes in NYC they have roomy tables separated by plexiglass.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Written by Joseph Gessert, photographed by Liv Dillon.

The classic pathway to finding good cheap eats is to order whatever is popular at a modest restaurant with heavy foot traffic and some hand-written signs. Sichuan food in NYC does not work like that. Sichuan is one of the wealthiest provinces in China, and immigrants from the province have generally been better-off and later-arriving than their predecessors from Fujian and Canton. As such, Sichuan restaurants are often a little more expensive and modernized, geared towards wealthier immigrants and their children.

Sichuan food in the Brooklyn Chinatowns has been slow to catch up with the quality on offer in Flushing. Bay Ridge’s Grand Sichuan House has long offered excellent Sichuan. In the past two years they’ve been joined by several new restaurants specializing in whole fish, as well as 7th Avenue’s Chuan Tian Xia, and now Chuan Yue on a quiet industrial block of 64th Street. Chuan Yue is closest in intent to Chuan Tian Xia, with both offering modern dining spaces and modestly upscale menus with some variations on traditional Sichuan cooking as well as excellent versions of the old-time standards.

 

Century egg with green peppers ($7.95, above top left) comes mounded in birds eye peppers and less-spicy grilled green peppers. Diners unfamiliar with century, or thousand-year eggs will be challenged by their appearance, with the whites treated with ash and turned translucent black. The flavor, however, is mild and familiar, and the rich eggs are a beautiful balance to the tang and spice of the peppers and dressing.
 

Thai-style wood ear mushrooms ($7.95, above top middle) is a similarly lush version of a common dish, with the mushrooms again dressed in bird's eye peppers, as well as cilantro and (unusually) slices of lemon. Pickled peppers put in an appearance in this dish, in this case small fermented yellow peppers that could be distant cousins to pepperoncini. Pickled and preserved peppers are more universally found in dishes from neighboring Guizhou and nearby Hunan provinces, but are a welcome addition to Sichuan dishes.

Also pulling from Hunan culinary traditions is a beautiful dish of garlic sprouts with Chinese bacon ($13.95, above). The garlic sprouts are leeks, and and the Chinese bacon is perhaps closest in Western analogy to Iberian ham, strips of dried and preserved pork leg that in this case have been stir-fried with dried peppers and vegetables until the meat’s smokiness permeates everything else. Chuan Yue’s version is less tough than what you might find in Hunan or Sichuan, but that might well be an improvement.

Dry wok cauliflower ($11.95, below) is a perfect vegetable offset to the rich meat dishes, while hot and sour duck blood ($15.95, top photo, top right) was the most unusual dish during a recent dinner. The duck blood is cut into tofu-like cakes, as with pig blood in South East Asian cuisine, and again is much milder and more appealing than it might sound to diners new to Sichuan food. This preparation is strikingly different from most Sichuan chili oil dishes, with spice (and sour) here coming from two varieties of pickled pepper while the chili oil leans heavily on Sichuan peppercorn and its familiar numbing properties. While Sichuan food is famously spicy and numbing, Hunan cuisine is spicy and sour, and this dish provides an unusual and very successful mashup of the two.

 

Several online menus exist for Chuan Yue, creating some confusion with ordering and unavailability of some dishes. Best to work off their newly-revamped website, which includes updated availability and package deals for family dinners, and to confirm your online order by phone. One recent order arrived with a complimentary order of soup dumplings, which while notably un-Sichuan were actually quite good, and provided a nicely mild counterpoint to the fireworks of everything else.

South Brooklyn diners in search of Sichuan lunch or dinner will be hard-pressed to decide between Chuan Yue, Chuan Tian Xia, and Bay Ridge’s Grand Sichuan. All have standout dishes, and happily all have their own specialties that are quite different from one another. Here’s to hoping that all three make it through the next few months and are around for years to come.

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SUNSET PARK Brooklyn

842 64th Street

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Qing Dao Restaurant 青岛饭店

🇨🇳 CHINA
(SHANDONG)

COVID-19 UPDATE: Qing Dao Restaurant is in a modest 3-stall food court. They are currently takeout only, with the food well-suited to reheating. In normal times there is proper seating upstairs.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Written by Joseph Gessert, photographed by Liv Dillon.

 

New pan-Asian steamed rice roll vendor Rolls Rice has been getting great press since their 2020 opening, in all the major New York City outlets. Their innovative rolls are really good, and the stall is worth a visit. While you are there, you should also pick up a truly inspiring takeout meal from their neighboring eatery Qing Dao Restaurant, who used to be the sole tenant at this address but has since welcomed company and reduced their footprint.

The rather desultory google maps listing is limited to simply Qingdao, and files it as a "Mandarin restaurant." In practice, Qing Dao slings a wide variety of wares from their namesake city in Shandong province. Qing Dao’s menu items show off the city’s unique history and geography—it is just across the Yellow Sea from the Korean peninsula and was occupied by Germany for two decades early in the twentieth century. Influences from both countries are evident in the cooking, and the Germans left behind a famous brewery—Qingdao can also be translated as Tsingtao.

 

Though it may prove useful to be well-versed in Mandarin, everything is ready to serve in trays, so it’s easy enough to point at what you want. Most items are priced by weight. The first four trays are all protein mains. Beef tendon ($5 for a small serving) is served cold with scallions in a light chili oil. The flavor is mild, but the dish is a textural experience, reminiscent of pigs feet but more user-friendly.

 

What the servers describe as simply beef ($10 for a large serving, above bottom left) is beef jerky in entree form. The jerky is cooked down until crunchy, saturated in sugar and chili oil that’s heavy on the Sichuan peppercorn, and finished with sesame seeds. Though not something you can eat a huge serving of, this dish is unique and memorable, bringing to mind Indonesian and Southeast Asian dishes as much as anything Chinese.

 

Over in the vegetable section there are plenty of options for vegetarians, with small containers of everything costing $5. Sour cabbage is again served cold in chili oil, and is aggressively fermented (hello kimchi, guten tag sauerkraut). Shredded potatoes, wood ear mushrooms, and cucumbers with garlic are all of the mild variety. Julienned celery and baked tofu is mild but soaked in Sichuan peppercorn oil, leaving your lips tingling. The star of the vegetable case defies easy translation, being described as “preserved vegetable” during two recent visits. It is green, has a ridged stem, and when preserved ends up very crunchy and a little sweet, which is balanced out perfectly by, you guessed it, a mild chili oil dressing. Whatever it is, get a container or if, or more, as both the flavor and texture are hits. Be forewarned that the crunch comes through clearly during Zoom calls.

 

Past the vegetables is a collection of beautifully homemade sausages ($10 a pound), which stand head and shoulders above other recent sausage entries from Chinatown. Qing Dao’s are larger than most Chinese sausage, dominated by whole chunks of pork meat and fat. The seasoning relies on the familar five spice, but is less sweet and more savory than many Chinese sausages. It appears cured, but also holds up well to a few minutes in the frying pan. Don’t forget to drain it on paper towels—these things do not lack in grease.

Besides the glass case items, the desserts in the entryway are also part of Qing Dao’s offerings, as are the bread products opposite the main counter. Amidst the buns and other options are containers of impressive guotie, or potstickers ($6 for six), longer and wider than other Chinese dumplings. These fry up nicely in the leftover oil from that sausage.

Shandong cuisine is one of the eight formal culinary traditions of China, but is far less well-known to New York eaters than its cousins such as Sichuan and Cantonese. Qing Dao Restaurant offers a great introduction to this food that’s no less memorable for how affordable it is. And for exploring new foods, you cannot beat the point and scoop method.

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FLUSHING Queens

40-46 Main Street

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Shan Xi Snack

CHINA 🇨🇳
(SHAANXI)

COVID-19 UPDATE: Both locations are currently takeout only. Online orders can be placed directly through the restaurant's website. Please note that many of the “special snack cold dish” items (cucumber, black fungus, etc) may not be available.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Written by Joseph Gessert, photographed by Liv Dillon.

Shanxi and Shaanxi are neighboring provinces in northeast China. Despite its name, Shan Xi Snack features menu items more commonly associated with Shaanxi, whose capital Xi’an has inspired the Chinese regional cooking chain Xi’An Famous Foods as well as dozens of other NYC stalls and restaurants offering variations on the cumin lamb burger.

 

A bit past the southernmost end of Sunset Park’s Chinatown, Shan Xi Snack’s cumin lamb crispy burger ($5.75, below) is genuinely different. Their version has a crispier, lighter bread, dollop of sweet mayonnaise, and a scattering of fresh vegetables dressing the chunks of cumin lamb. It marries the Xi’an burger with American fast food sensibilities, and is joined on the menu by a black pepper beef, a more traditional pork, and a handful of other burger variations including a vegetarian option.

 

 

A menu section is dedicated to various incarnations of tri-color cold skin noodles. Liang pi with spicy house special sauce ($6.75, below) is served room temperature, as is common with these noodles, mixed with cucumber, bean sprouts and chunks of gluten.

 

Stir-fried liang pi with beef ($7.75) is warm, with the vibrant colors lost a little in the stir-fry but the noodles’ texture holding up admirably. Judging by that texture, Shan Xi’s liang pi are likely wheat-based, rather than rice.

 

Hidden in the appetizer section of the menu, a very respectable hot and sour rice noodle soup (below) will set you back only $6.95. This is not the Chinese American soup of that name, but a tangier corn starch-free, altogether different dish that is commonly found in China.

 

It is often listed on English menus as spicy and sour. The noodles taste more like yam or potato starch than rice, and are delicious regardless of starchy origin. They are topped with baby bok choy, peanuts, strips of seaweed, and much more.

 

The surprise hit of two meals was crispy burger in lamb soup ($9.95, below), with chopped up flatbread, glass noodles, and chunks of lamb meat dunked in a rich and spicy lamb broth. The dish is a beautiful showing of Muslim influences in Chinese cooking. A mysterious plastic container of black garlic was added to the hearty soup and provided a perfect note of funk and acid.

Pumpkin pancakes ($2.95) are mild but very beautiful, with the pumpkin flavor subtle in a puck of glutinous rice. Plum juice is a bargain at $2, with the smoked preserved plums flavoring an increasingly-common favorite at modern NYC Chinese restaurants. And though Belgian biscuit milk tea ($5.75) comes out looking like black sugar milk tea, it’s actually full of crumbled cocoa cookies, in addition to boba, and the black sugar is chocolate syrup. The chocolate and crunchy cookie bits are yet another twist in a menu full of surprising textures and flavors.

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DYKER HEIGHTS Brooklyn

7002 Fort Hamilton Parkway

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Delicacy Passion Patisserie

CHINA 🇨🇳

COVID-19 UPDATE: The only visible pandemic impacts on this mostly-takeout spot have been masked staff and the banishment of the lone indoor table. On warm days, there may be two chairs set up on the sidewalk.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Written by Joseph Gessert, photographed by Liv Dillon.

 

Brooklyn’s second Chinatown, extending from Bensonhurst to Gravesend, is home to over a dozen Chinese bakeries, most of which offer the familiar (and pleasant) mixture of bubble tea, baked goods, and limited dim sum items made to order or pulled from a steam case.

 

On the eastern end of 86th Street, past the growing cluster of Vietnamese restaurants, the curiously-monikered Delicacy Passion Patisserie has been doing something quite different for the past two years. While this strip was largely shuttered in April and May, Delicacy Passion stayed open straight through the spring, and business is finally picking up at this unique Chinatown bakery that offers no savories, limited teas, and a small but ambitious selection of French-influenced Asian American desserts.

 

On assessing their display case you would be tempted to sample from the middle row cakes that feature combinations of Asian ingredients: jackfruit and coconut, red bean and matcha, durian cheesecake to name a few. These are all completely serviceable, and surprisingly subdued, but you will actually be better off picking from the top row, where the chef’s more outlandish creations are on display, and the most love has been put into both aesthetics and flavor.

 

The Big Apple ($6, below, right) is a shiny pastry apple, wicked witch-worthy, that opens up into a re-imagined apple pie a la mode—a white chocolate shell with mousse and apple filling seated on a graham cracker cookie. On a modest block of an unpretentious neighborhood it is a surprising accomplishment, this piece of fine dining stagecraft that tastes every bit as good as it presents.

 

 

The chocoburger ($6, above, left), its frequent counterpart on the top row, features a chocolate-shelled chocolate mousse burger sandwiched between jumbo sesame macaron buns. Crack it open and raspberry filling gushes out, marking the burger rare. Other recurrent top row items include a mocha cream puff bear, flowered cupcakes, and a selection of macarons that includes lychee and sometimes sriracha. Presumably there is a Vietnamese influence at work here somewhere.

 

It should be noted that as adorable as these items are, they will fall apart as soon as you stick a fork in them—appreciate your apple or bear or burger, take a picture if you are so inclined, but then resign yourself to the whole thing going to pieces as you dig in and enjoy.

 

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GRAVESEND Brooklyn

2379 86th Street

Ten Seconds Shi Miao Dao Rice Noodle

CHINA 🇨🇳
(YUNNAN)

One of the benefits of all the younger generation Chinese money flowing into Flushing and other parts of the city is a wealth of options for regional cuisines. In large Chinese cities with hungry and affluent people, there is a desire to eat the foods from all around the vast country, where regional styles are wide. These hungers have of course traveled with the newest residents, and new, sleek restaurants seem to be popping up weekly to cater to them.

One of the biggest trends of the last few years is the cuisine from the southern province of Yunnan, and specifically the rice noodle soup known as "crossing the bridge noodle." The original version of the soup is mild and subtle, without spicy or sour add-ons, and available here for $8.95. There are about a dozen other options for those looking for different tastes.

"Crossing the bridge noodles" (the literal translation) is the most famous dish from Yunnan and is known throughout China. There is some debate about the origins of the name and story behind these noodles, if you have a moment dig into this fun rabbit hole.

Served traditionally, a tray of ingredients (below) comes out while the soup broth is heated up. Sliced meats of your choosing, pickled vegetables, lettuce, and a quail egg make up some of the items that will eventually make their way into the soup. In Yunnan, rice noodles are eaten almost exclusively as the southern climate supports this staple over northern grains. A bowl of hot cooked rice noodles (below, top right) is brought out just before the broth.

In the name, ten seconds is simply a translation of shi miao dao, roughly the time it takes for your noodles to be ready after everything is combined. This chain operates hundreds of locations throughout China and this is the second in town after the one in the East Village. The experience there was fine but not thrilling, but here in Flushing all the tastes just seemed to have a bigger profile. (There is now a third location, also in Flushing further south on Kissena Blvd.)

When the bubbling stone bowl of broth arrives in this Instagram world, they will ask first if you want to do the combining on your own, probably an easier way of letting you take a bunch of videos. Let them do it though, and enjoy the beautiful presentation and process.

The cold blustery day of this meal required some spice and an order of spicy beef flank rice noodle ($11.95, above) appealed as the most likely to warm the bones. While certainly not the highest grade of meat, considering the price point the cuts of beef are decent enough. As all of the ingredients from the tray have disappeared under the lava-like surface of the broth, it is a joy finding them all later in the meal.

Importantly, the stone bowl comes very hot, which they will warn you about. This keeps the soup warm for a really long time, allowing for a slow enjoyment if desired.

Always a fan of black fungus with vinegar sauce ($4.95, above) a side was added, but the sourness of their concoction was almost too extreme. Luckily the crunchy pickled slices worked very well once added to the soup.

Sometimes restaurants on 40th Road can "hide" as the street is not usually part of any walk from transit, but next time in Flushing divert down here for the rice noodles of Yunnan.

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FLUSHING Queens

135-25 40th Road

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You can Venmo me @JAREDCOHEE or click here to send PayPal donation, no account is necessary. Thank you!

Hot Space 麻辣空间

CHINA 🇨🇳
(SICHUAN)

As with most things happening in the various Chinese communities in New York City and elsewhere in the United States, trends from back home take a few years to travel across the Pacific. Waves of younger people coming to the city loaded with decent amounts of money have led to the proliferation of regional Chinese restaurants that are popular in the major urban centers like Shanghai, Beijing, and beyond.

While spicy Sichuan favorites like tabletop pan-grilled whole fish are hardly new, restaurants focusing on the dish are, about five or six years past when they started becoming massive in China. Sunset Park has seen a few places with the dish front and center on the menu, even in more general Sichuan restaurants.

It certainly does not hurt to dine here with your friends who can read Chinese, but the menu is fairly simple enough to get through without much help despite being designed oddly. You would probably not come here without ordering one of the fish, all large and in the $45-60 range, so gather a group of at least four and come hungry.

They do their side dishes relatively well, so don't hesitate to order a good range to munch on and provide lots of alternative bites from the spicy fish. Along with cold Sichuan vegetables like cold shredded potato in special sauce ($5.95, above front) and fresh pepper with okra ($8.95, above back), the chicken in chilli sauce ($9.95, below) was well-liked by the table. [EDITOR'S NOTE: I missed how and why this happened, but this last dish arrived free for the group. Thank you Hot Space!]

Also worth your time is the dry pot cauliflower ($15.95, above), a dish that never seems to fail at Sichuan restaurants.

But back to the fish. The menu is not in the most efficient order for first-time customers to the restaurant, but basically you check the box for the type of fish you want, then choose a "flavor" and finally the vegetables you would like to be cooked along with the fish when it arrives at your table. Once you finish those three steps, you can start adding the appetizers spoke of, or other items and drinks.

The fish that ended up on the table this night was a big mouth bass ($59.95, above and below), the most expensive of the offerings. Some sauces can add more to the bill, but most come with the price of the fish as this spicy tofu pudding did.

For the first round here, the restaurant did the work of picking the vegetables. The golden combination ($9) includes enoki mushrooms, potato, lotus root, and kelp, and does a great job adding texture and flavor to the meal without taking away the focus from the fish.

In addition, there is a fairly large barbecue section of the menu that adds a different flair. While none of it will knock your socks off, a group can share a few of these like roasted beef ($3.95, above) and roasted eggplant ($4.95, below).

After the meal, a complimentary bowl of dessert arrives for each patron, a creamy mix of grass jelly, lychee, and milk. This is not overly sweet but gives just the right note to end the meal. All five bowls were emptied on this night.

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SUNSET PARK Brooklyn
774 51st Street

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[CLOSED] Jiang Nan Pancake Inc.

CHINA 🇨🇳

UPDATE: This business has closed.

Typically you might expect the peoples south of the Yangtze River to be more focused on rice dishes and rice noodles, but the proprietors of Jiang Nan Pancake have taken it upon themselves to change your mind. "Jiang Nan" traditionally refers to the geographical area just south of the far eastern reaches of the third longest river in the world, and far to the south of Shandong and Tianjin where you might find the origins of jianbing, the star of the menu here.

The friendly folks that run the place will ask you if it is your first time coming and seem to be a little sharper with customer service than most. Orders are constantly being picked up by app-based delivery drivers, but they do have two small counters to sit at inside. Pull up a chair in front of the jianbing maker and enjoy the show.

The connection between Shandong, China and Bretagne, France are immediate when you see the jianbing being prepared. The utensils may be a bit different, but the spreading of batter thin over a flat circular griddle is very similar. Toppings are added right on top as it cooks and when ready everything is folded together perfectly.

They offer a classic meatless jianbing for $4, a roast duck version for $9.50, and six other options in between. The wrapper is made from whole grain wheat flour and green bean, and in each "pancake" is egg, cilantro, scallion, lettuce, sesame, their house special sauce, and an ingredient translated as "crunch."

This crispy layer is important, adding a nice contrast to the softness of the wrapper. When the braised pork jianbing ($6, above and below) arrived it appeared to be two pieces, but this is an intricate folding system and is all one unit. The house special sauce is quite sweet but not overwhelming amongst all the other savory ingredients. Bottles of Sriracha are ready for a little kick if you need it.

Start tearing into your jianbing and it gets more interesting with each bite. Different textures and tastes populate every inch with another experience. One bite might swing towards sweet while the next is crispy and fatty. No matter which version you order, be prepared to be full and do not plan on eating anything else.

The shop also has some noodle soups and cold noodle dishes, so a return visit seemed necessary to see if the back of the menu was worth exploring as well. Unfortunately, based on the spicy cold noodle ($5.50, below), this side does not warrant much more thought and any follow-up meals will return back to the jianbing.

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BENSONHURST Brooklyn
1818 86th Street #3

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Land of Plenty

CHINA 🇨🇳 (Sichuan)

In the spectrum of things to be overrun with, Sichuan food is probably one of the least bad things in the world that could do the overrunning. Manhattan, Sunset Park and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, and Flushing Queens all seem to debut a new Sichuan restaurant each week these days, with younger generations at the helm. While some of these places are not quite up to the level of being recommendable and do not get written up, it is still a good development to see these new waves of children of immigrants and younger Chinese from a range of provinces coming over and opening up restaurants and spread the diversity.

Sichuan food is of course known for its high heat levels, but Land of Plenty prides itself in bringing all seven important components of desired tastes: Hot, sour, pungent, sweet, bitter, aromatic, and salty.

Spicy dry cold noodle dishes always seem to excel in Sichuan cooking and the chilled noodles with spicy sesame peanuts dressing ($7.45, above) was no exception and my favorite dish of the meal. Designed as an appetizer to share, I felt no shame in devouring the dish by myself and enjoying the nice range of most of those seven flavors buried within the dressing.

The meal also had the cellophane noodle with pickled mustard greens ($8.45, below), somewhat by accident. I had misread an Instagram post and ordered the wrong dish, but of course this was pretty delicious as well with a focus on the sour. There is also a spicy and sour version of this that I will look to on the next visit.

One other recommendation? Come with friends. Sichuan food, like much of Chinese cuisine is better eaten with a group so that you can share an array of different foods and make sure to have some of each category. Land of Plenty has a vast menu and very fair prices for the location it lives.

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MIDTOWN EAST Midtown
204 East 58th Street

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