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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El Buen Chapin Deli

GUATEMALA 🇬🇹

The Guatemalan offerings at this address have went through quite a transformation over the past year. After the old flower shop went out of business in early 2018, the shop eventually became somewhat of a corner store for Central Americans despite its mid-block location. It had some trinkets and a few groceries, but seemed to be mostly used for people to send remittances and otherwise back home.

Eventually a sign showed up outside with the simple offer of chuchitos, the wrapped-and-steamed masa delights very similar to Mexican-style tamales. With a crisp new Guatemalan flag in the window and no other outward facing signage, it was hard to resist coming in to check it out.

El Buen Chapin Deli is continuing the story of the Central Americanization of Sunset Park, and surpasses Karen Deli in the southern reaches of the neighborhood as the strongest presence for the country.

Even back before the new steam table opened, the shop was selling some packaged baked goods, national team jerseys, colorful tradition dresses and pants and a hodgepodge of other pantry products.

Before this year, the woman running the shop would have to leave her envios booth and open up the big Coleman cooler that had the foil-wrapped chuchitos (above, one unwrapped) sold individually. On the first attempt it was noticed that they would be gone not much after noon.

Chuchitos are still made almost daily, but now a rotating steam table is on offer and has taken command of the interior. Two tables offer four seats each and depending on when you arrive finding a seat could be difficult. Plan to make some friends at any rate, as you will probably share a table once you do sit down.

Most dishes besides soups will come with a hearty portion of rice and beans and two fluffy homemade Guatemalan-style corn tortillas for $10. On the first time coming to the steam table, the woman smiled and asked "Conoces la comida guatemalteca?" very confidently. It was nice to hear a specificity of cuisine, a sort of pride that references back to the name of the place.

On some days you might find chiles rellenos (above and below), very thin peppers stuffed with ground beef and vegetables. Each one is dipped in a flour and egg batter before frying. The dish is quite mild but they have a good green salsa available if you need it.

As mentioned, like most dishes this comes served over their very good rice and black beans. It is an enjoyable and filling dish, exactly the type of meal many other customers are looking for before or after their day of work.

The restaurant is everything you might expect and want from a workaday place. A dry erase board is out front daily with the selections available inside, but you will see everyone take a look at the offerings before deciding. The kitchen staff are happy to remove lids and offer views of each dish.

On one recent visit, a simple sopa de pollo ($10, above) was enjoyed. Filled with potatoes and chayote, the extremely large chunks of on-the-bone chicken are actually difficult to handle with the plastic silverware. By the end the tortillas came in handy to hold meats and keep juices from splashing.

A bit of a surprise in execution was the pepián de gallina ($10, below), a hen stew that is served with a really rich sauce that almost has the thickness and likeness of a mole. One of the most famous Mayan dishes still loved today is done really well here, although the bony bits of hen are almost an afterthought. Bites of the rice and pepián were the real winners.

Tablecloth.

The store still seems to do the tasks it used to, and some come in for medicines or other reasons, but now someone will have to leave the kitchen to attend to these needs in the front. The back of the shop and its daily prepared foods are clearly the focus nowadays.

The shelves seem to get more stocked with each visit, including many universal products and some Guatemalan things like Pollo Campero-branded ketchup, something every fridge needs. You will also find packaged bakery items from a famous place in Philadelphia as well as fresh baked goods in a case from a local baker. A true one stop shop.

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SUNSET PARK Brooklyn

3915 5th Avenue

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EL SALVADORin

EL SALVADOR 🇸🇻

For the past two weeks, the new Central American residents of Sunset Park have all been convening at it's newest restaurant, the oddly named EL SALVADORin, which adds a small "in" to hopefully make light of the fact that most people incorrectly say the demonym another way. But regardless of their intentions with naming, the restaurant stands as a symbol for the third wave of what makes the neighborhood.

Since the 1960's and 70's, Sunset Park saw its predominantly European immigrants replaced by Puerto Ricans, who populated the western portion of the neighborhood. A more recent wave starting in the 1980's but accelerating in the 90's saw this part become much more Mexican in nature, with families from the state of Puebla making up a big portion of new residents and business owners. Most people from other parts of the city still describe the neighborhood by these terms today.

Quietly over the past decade or so, in addition to a few restaurants here and there, Central American-owned businesses have popped up offering money transfers and other services, and almost every Mexican grocery made sure to stock the goods that Guatemalans and Salvadorans were looking for to fill their homes.

As Industry City attempts to mine the neighborhood for profit and give nothing in return except to those already privileged, Sunset Park's thriving communities continue to say no and show there is another way. EL SALVADORin is not only a bustling restaurant with an expansive menu, it stocks products from the country and coffees from the region.

Since the restaurant is very new and getting its feet underneath it still, many folks have been checking it out and bringing their families. The kitchen runs in linear order of when checks come in, so do give them some patience if you arrive just after a big group. This happened on the first two visits, but without any rush was no big deal.

Both of these meals of course required pupusas ($2.50-$3, above and below), available in almost any variety imaginable and in both corn and rice flour version. As always, these are patted out freshly to order, and arrive piping hot straight from the griddle.

Pupusa de arina de arroz.

No matter which you order, a small side of curtido, a pickled cabbage topping, and light tomato salsa will arrive along with your pupusas, a hint of how to eat them. Most Salvadorans will use each sparingly, letting the disc and its ingredients play the marquee roles, but no one is going to scold you for dumping everything on top before digging in.

As noted, the rest of the menu is ambitious and tries to offer as much from the country's cuisine as possible. Small plate appetizers, soups, large plates, and desserts all have their own section. Come in the morning to summon your true Salvi self for a cup of hot coffee and a slice of quesadilla salvadoreña, a sweet and dense cake (or is it bread?) made with cheese.

Weekend lunch time is perfect for soup options like sopa de gallina india ($13, above), a warming savory bowl full of root vegetables. You can ask for the hen to come on the side, a recommended decision that gets you a perfectly seasoned and baked leg to eat or add as desired.

Most plates will come with Salvadoran-style tortillas (seen in background of photo below), thicker than their Mexican sisters and almost like a small pupusa without fillings. These will line your stomach quickly but are a thoroughly enjoyable way to get beans and meats into your face. They come hot and fresh, but lose their character fast as they cool so start with them when attacking your meal.

Plates like salpicon de res ($14, above) are served with rice and beans or your choice of a few other sides. This "salad" of shredded beef, chopped onions, and tomatoes is served cold but perfect to wrap in those warm tortillas or simply alone with spoonfuls of rice.

Eating large pieces of meat is almost expected here based on the tables of others, whether in the form of a sandwich with thick slices of steak or chicken breast stuffed inside, or as a platter with rice and beans. Grilled shish kebab-like pinchos are a favorite, and grilled or fried whole fish can also be arranged.

In the mood for a simple plato típico on the second visit, carne asada ($14, above) worked perfectly and provided for plenty of leftovers as well. The seasoning and tenderness make sure you do not need any condiments, bites are best with or without a little rice and beans.

Many antojitos that share names with Mexican foods are found throughout the Central American isthmus, sometimes similar and sometimes very different. Flautas de pollo ($6, below) turn out to be quite similar to Mexican flautas with a thin tortilla wrapped around meat and fried very crispy.

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SUNSET PARK Brooklyn

4620 5th Avenue

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Golden Rich 好想吃

TAIWAN 🇹🇼

Lovers of Taiwanese-style stinky tofu will know right when they open the door that they are in for a treat. The smell of fermentation hits you right at the front, enough so that a stinky tofu rookie was actually observed stopping in her tracks and retreating back out to the street when it reached her nose. Open up the restaurant's menu and five large photos of stinky tofu dishes take two out of the four pages.

The other two pages and the back focus on a surprisingly wide breadth of Taiwanese favorites from the bento boxes made famous on railways to three cup and popcorn chickens. The Taiwanese couple that runs the tiny corner shop is dedicated to bringing as much of their cuisine to Sunset Park as possible, a neighborhood that has a few choices for Taiwanese but usually from a mainland perspective and very focused.

Of course on any Taiwanese menu these days is beef noodle soup ($9, above and below), a dish whose "moment" does not want to fade. The version here is certainly near the best in the city, with super tender high quality meat and unique house made noodles. Lift them up with your chopsticks and notice the wavy edges. Bite into them for the wonderful chew and mouthfeel.

Recommended is to resist the urge of the spicy version they offer and do it yourself by adding the chili oil that is on each table. This lets you focus on their delicate savory broth and put just the right personal touch into it.

Don't be shy about the tofu, unless you already know it's not your bag. The fried blocks here are definitely stinkier and funkier than most locations that offer it but dumb it down quite a bit. With Golden Rich's version, you can vividly remember your first experience with the dish in a Taipei night market whether that be positive or negative.

In addition to a plate of ungarnished stinky tofu, they specialize in what they call "stinky hot pot." Four offerings are available with beef, seafood, pigs feet, intestines, or a combination of everything that is the signature dish. The beef stinky tofu hot pot ($13, below) uses those same beautiful cuts that were found in the noodle soup, but surrounds and submerges them with the tofu.

Also really enjoyable amongst the dish and rich soup of the hot pot is a really nice pig blood cake, dense with glutinous rice, as well as the tiny bowl of braised pork over rice that is served with every hot pot.

Amongst the Taiwanese favorites hinted before is their really simple bowl of pork chop over rice (below), a meal that usually never lives up to the one at Hua Ji in Chinatown. Here it is successful though, and uses a perfectly fried chop, bits of fried pork belly, pickled mustard greens, and a nice yet sparingly used sauce over the rice.

Come back many times and enjoy quintessential dishes like noodles with soybean paste ($7.50, below). This tofu is of the unfermented kind and is combined with ground pork and put over the same noodles found in the beef soup. Any dish that uses these should be considered, as they really are a star.

A nice array of flavors is in the dish, make sure to mix it up thoroughly to make sure the greens and sauce gets to every last noodle.

A couple burritos populate the menu as well, but thankfully this is not some sort of unfortunate fusion food and just an interesting way to translate. The beef burrito ($7, below) is actually niu rou juan bing (牛肉捲餅), rolled up goodness surrounded by a crispy fried wrapper. The essential pairing with the beef inside of these is scallions, some of which stick out one end with other crunchy greens. A lovely layer of sweet hoisin sauce permeates the whole thing, making every bite almost a dream.

The second time the roll was a bit soggy, but hopefully this is the exception to the rule. For such low prices, it is fascinating that everything can maintain such a high quality here across the menu, using good ingredients. Golden Rich is a real gem.

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SUNSET PARK Brooklyn

4001 8th Avenue

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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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Macao Imperial Tea

MACAU 🇲🇴

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MACAU 🇲🇴 Dispatch from Sunset Park, Brooklyn: 📸 (1) Passion fruit green tea with cheese foam (2) 8th Avenue facade. ° This chain is from Macau. That, admittedly, was the only reason I went. I had this passion fruit tea with cheese foam. There are other locations in Flushing and Manhattan. The end. ° 📍 Macao Imperial Tea, 5401 8th Avenue, Sunset Park, Brooklyn. ℹ️ Instagram exclusive post, no story. @macaoimperialteaus ° ° #EattheWorldNYC #eattheworld #worldfood #worldfoods #nyceats #eatnyc #eatingnyc #nycfood #nycdining #eatsofnyc #newforkcity #foodlovers #foodlover #instayum #instafood #instaeat #nycfoods #nycfoodies #nycfoodie #forkyeah #brooklyneats #brooklynfood #sunsetpark #sunsetparkeats #sunsetparkbrooklyn #macanese #macanesefood #macanesecuisine

A post shared by Eat the World NYC (@eattheworldnyc) on Dec 7, 2019 at 5:27pm PST

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SUNSET PARK Brooklyn
5401 8th Avenue

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Eat the World NYC is and always has been free. There are no advertisements blocking you from seeing the content or popping over while you read. If this website has helped you explore your city and its wonderful cultures a little better and you are able to contribute, please consider doing so. Eat the World NYC is a labor of love, but also takes a lot of money and time everyday to keep running. You can Venmo me @JAREDCOHEE or please click here to send a PayPal donation, no account is necessary. Thank you!

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Tasty Pot 味鼎

TAIWAN 🇹🇼

Since becoming enormously popular in the Bay Area a few years back, Tasty Pot has been testing their feet in the waters of Southern California, Florida, the Midwest and now a few on the East Coast including their newest in Brooklyn's Sunset Park, opened about a month ago. The Taiwanese hot pot trend has yet to secure a footing in this town. Pot Pa Hot Pot opened in Flushing early in 2018 but barely survived a full year.

Tasty Pot, with its own success elsewhere and a city that must be near peak Taiwanese exposure, will try to settle in. On a strip populated with other large eateries and KTV spots, the warming individual cauldrons await.

The dining room is a hodgepodge of colors and neon, textures of vinyl and metal, and shiny decor on every surface. Panels and solar shades have scenes of Taipei to surround the eating area and set the mood.

Besides the foundation of individual hot pots, part of the formula here is also providing Taiwanese boba drinks, of which they have a full menu from A-Cha brand. At lunch time, each pot comes with a standard iced green tea, so the boba menu was not sampled on the first visit.

At the top of the hot pot options are Taiwanese flavors such as stinky tofu and Taiwanese supreme spicy, but the first offering of beef hot soup ($13.99, above) is a great place to start.  The rich soup can be heated up from zero to four peppers, known as "flaming spicy," so feel free to go nuts. The thin slices of beef do not get overcooked too quickly, showing that quality is pretty good for the price point.

The specially-designed hot pot stand comes with a well-covered fire source that you can adjust or turn off yourself. The soup will remain bubbling for a long time if you let it go. Bits of tofu, meatballs, corn, vermicelli noodles, and a good amount of napa cabbage will require cooling before bites.

Each order comes with the option of an extra portion of vermicelli noodles or a bowl of rice. The green tea tastes a lot better once it has the soup broth to contrast with its sweetness. In addition to the bold tastes already in each pot, a set of three additional flavors is available on each table (below), a soybean paste, chili oil, and garlic soy sauce. After some experimentation, a fun combination of the three is great for dipping slices of meat.

Not as good as the beef is the kimchi dumpling hot soup ($13.99, above), Tasty Pot's ode to Korea. Unfortunately the napa cabbage and spices used do not really replicate fresh kimchi, and the dumplings are a little boring. After a recent couple days in Seoul, what it did most was raise a craving for kimchi jigae or soondobu. Keep these desires to your next visit to a Korean restaurant.

Like Korea, the restaurant has hot pots that try to replicate the flavors of Thailand (probably tom yum?), Japan (miso), and Sichuan Province, which should probably be turned down if the kimchi pot is any representation.

On a future visit, the cheesy milk hot pot is most looked forward to, with its freshly grated orange cheddar that melts after arriving.

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Eat the World NYC is and always has been free. No advertisements block the content or pop over what you read. If this website has helped you explore your city and its wonderful cultures a little better and you have the means to contribute, please consider doing so. Eat the World NYC is a labor of love, but also takes a lot of money and time everyday to keep running.

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SUNSET PARK Brooklyn
715 61st Street

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