41-28 Mall Question?

[Lau]

I might have time to stop here tomorrow, can someone give me the links to the latest translation of the menus for Chengdu Tian Fu and Xian place? I can speak enough to get by, but my reading ability is not good

[Miss Needle]

Lau, here are the links to the Chengdu place.

http://www.chow.com/photos/135131
http://www.chow.com/photos/128621
http://www.chow.com/photos/135642

Regarding the Xian restaurant, there are pics at the stall.

[Xiao Yang]

And if the owner of the Xi'an stall (see pic) happens to be around, his English is excellent and he is very helpful. I'm not sure how often that is, now that he opened his branch location down the street.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2163/2...

[chefjellynow]

he is always at the new shop. i talked to him an hour ago and he told me he's still setting up for cooking. he had handhelds like buns and such but for any cooked food you had to go downstairs. he only comes downstairs for a few min's at a time to restock on stuff.
great pork buns...they definatly changed them. used to be just roast pork. now its still just roast pork but with soy or shoyu cooked in...a bit saltier but reaaaaly tasty

[Lau]

thx for the help...the owner is not there, just a bunch of ladies running the place

so i ended up hitting the Xi'an place, i really wanted to his chengdu tian fu, but i just couldn't do it b/c i couldn't eat anymore and it probably wouldn't have done it justice if i was full when i ate there anyhow

overall, I thought the Xi'an place was good although i didn't think it was mind-blowing like i would stop by to grab a lamb sandwich if i was in the area, but i dont think i would trek out from manhattan just for this place alone...maybe my expectations were too high given how much its been talked about on the boards or it could be b/c im overall less experienced in more northern cuisine generally. Anyhow, it was ridiculously cheap as I spent $8 and got the following:
- liang pi - i believe this was the specialty of the house and every table there had this dish, Its basically thick wheat noodles and what i believe is fried wheat gluten (looks kind of like that dried re-constituted tofu) with cilantro in a sort of mildly spicy and tangy sauce. It doesn't look that different than the biang biang mian that everyone is talking about although I believe that is more of a soup noodle dish and this is not. It's reasonably tasty, but the flavors were much more mild than I was expecting and it didn't blow me away
- yang rou pao mo (lamb sandwich): this was very good as everyone says. The cumin tastes great, the lamb was tender and not gamey and the onions and peppers in it tasted great. I liked the bread alot. Definitely my favorite thing here and enough reason to make this place noteworthy.
- zhu rou pao mo (pork sandwich): its actually not called a zhu rou pao mo b/c i looked at the characters, but I couldn't read enough of them and i just told the ladies i wanted a zhu rou pao mo and they understood. Anyhow this is the shredded or pulled pork version the lamb sandwich. The bread was the same bread so that was great, the pork itself I thought was just alright. The texture was good, was reasonably tender, but something about the seasoning was just ok. I couldn't put my hand on it although I thought about it for a long time and something about the seasoning in the lamb reminded me of chinese style beef jerky like the kind you get at ping's in the city...while i like chinese beef jerky it didn't taste right with the pulled pork. Wasn't bad, but thought it was just so so. Now that I think about it, I had something very similar to this 5-6 yrs ago in chengdu in china and i think i might've been comparing it to that in my mind and that was a much better version of this.

Overall, like I said before it was good just not great although I'd probably classify the lamb sandwich as great or close to great. I love the whole hawker center thing as it really really looks like china almost scarily so. As far as language goes, I can see it being an issue for people who can't speak any chinese as they didn't speak any english and even speaking chinese, one of the ladies started talking to me really fast and had some accent which made it harder to understand and i got a little lost, but it was fine once i got her to slow down, she just laughed when i gave her a blank look and was like uhh my chinese is bad you gotta slow down. Luckily they've got those pictures in there, funny enough there was some jamaican lady eating there...looked out of place, but its good non-chinese / asian people are trying places like this

I really wanted to try chengdu tianfu as i walked by and the food looked delicious...all tables were full...so next time ill make it there

[Miss Needle]

Thanks. We tend to have similar tastes in Asian food so I'm glad that you reported back. I was there last weekend, and only had the lamb burger at the Xi'an stall because I was saving room for the Chengdu place. Totally agree that the lamb burger rocked. I didn't realize that the liang pi had hunks of wheat gluten in it -- I can't eat it in large amounts. Oh well, guess I won't be trying that anytime soon.

I agree that mall is a bit tough for those who don't speak the language. A very humbling experience indeed.

[Xiao Yang]

The pork version of the lamb burger is usually called something like 红肉煮馍 (hong rou zhu mo).

I'm not sure what your sex is, but the liang pi are said to be popular with young women in Xi'an because the long name is "mi mian liang pi" which can be interpreted as "face complexion noodles."

Next time try one of the wheat noodle dishes.

[Lau]

Xiao Yang - well the liang pi is a wheat noodle dish and a im a guy although my gf liked that dish the best so maybe that makes sense haha (although she wasn't crazy about any of it)

Miss Needle - its not a bad dish, its actually reasonably decent, just didn't live up to expectations especially given everyone was ordering it...also the wheat gluten stuff just kind of tastes like fried tofu although a bit more airy and its more noodle than wheat gluten, but a decent amt of wheat gluten

[Xiao Yang]

It is? I believe the traditional version of Xi'an liang pi uses rice noodles and kao fu (or something similar). Next time I'm in town I'll try it. I'm not too fond of rice noodles in "dry" dishes, which is why I avoided it Also, at my age, my face complexion is beyond help....

[Miss Needle]

Problem with me and wheat gluten is if I eat it in large amounts, I have problems breathing. I can handle things like bread and wheat noodles (but won't eat large amounts of them), but can't eat those fake meats made out of gluten. So perhaps I can order it and skip the gluten -- unless you think it's integral to the dish.

[Lau]

Xiao Yang - well kao fu is a type of wheat gluten i believe, in fact im pretty sure it is and this was very similar to kau fu, but a little lighter although i guess it could've been kau fu just prepared differently than i have had it prepared. Also, are the noodles in the biang biang dish wheat noodles? if so im pretty sure these are the same noodles and they have a brown-ish hue to them, they didn't have the same consistency as most rice noodles, pretty sure they are made of wheat. Also if u read that fushcia dunlop article it talks about this dish and specifically says the noodles are wheat.

Miss Needle - oh you have an allergy...well u could pretty easily avoid the wheat gluten if u wanted to

[Xiao Yang]

The noodles in the biang biang and the other dishes I tried were wheat, and maybe there is a wheat noodle liang pi in Xi'an as well as the Mi mian liang pi. I'm really not that familiar with Xi'an cusine (most of my hands-on experience is from the mall) but know the riice noodle liang pi to be a characteristic dish. See here:

http://eatingchinese.org/photogallery...

Kaofu is gluten from the bran, not the kernel, of wheat. It's actually a pale blond in the uncooked state (my wife buys it in frozen blocks and it's really pale before she cooks it). It's surprising to find it in a xi'an dish because it was supposedly invented by monks from Hangzhou who indroduced it at the Gogdelin vegetarian restaurant in Shaqnghai in the 20's and its definitely associated with the cuisine of the Shanghai region.

[Miss Needle]

I could have used some face complexion noodles last weekend. I broke out after eating the spicy, oily food at Chengdu Heaven (and I rarely break out). I knew instinctively that eating this wasn't right for me at this time but did it anyway.

[Lau]

btw does anyone know what the restaurant on the very end serve / specialize in?...so when u walk down the stairs, u turn left and chengdu tianfu is on your left, then walk straight, but if u keep walking straight instead of taking a right down the hallway to the xi'an place, there is a place in the corner that i believe looks slightly more like a restaurant than the rest (and i mean just slightly)

just curious b/c it was the only place i didnt peer into or at least sorta check out

[Brian S]

I believe it is hotpots but I just glanced at it months ago, so my memory might be wrong.

I'm glad you enjoyed the mall!!!!!!!!!

[Lau]

yeah that mall is money...im sure there are all types of gems there in terms of specific dishes, i wish my chinese was perfect and then id be able to figure everything out w/o giving them a blank look when they talk to fast or start talking about stuff that i dont know about....need to get of my friends who speaks / reads better than me to come with me

[Xiao Yang]

Yes, I think that is the place that Flaco fingered as a Chongqing restaurant, but it mat have changed, according to designerboy. Looks like it needs further exploring!

http://www.chowhound.com/topics/49782...

[designerboy01]

The last one before was a hotpot place, but I think there is a new place that opened.

[designerboy01]

I was there last night, but the last one at the end of the mall was closed. The hotpot place mentioned above was opened. They also serve noodle soups. I got the lamb noodle soup for $6.50 (they got beef too) and I was asked the level of spicyness I wanted If I wanted to eat this kind of food again I prefer this place over Qin's Lamb noodle soup in the basement on 41st Avenue. The air conditioner was off so I was drenched in sweat during and after the meal.

[Joe MacBu]

I ate there about a year ago. From what I could decipher, they served a lot of noodle soups. I somehow ended up with a kitchen sink version of beef noodle soup (w/ tofu, bamboo shoots, unidentifiable things). I recall it being pretty good.
I returned once and asked for permission to take photos of their menus so I could do my homework; I was denied and kicked out. I have not bothered to return since.

[squid kun]

I had the same experience at one of the Muslim places at the old J&L Mall. They didn't kick me out, exactly, but they didn't want their menu signs photographed.

[Brian S]

They are probably afraid that you are a government agent and that their menu somehow violates some obscure law they never heard of. (Of course it doesn't violate anything, but they don't know that.)

[Xiao Yang]

You never know. I know of a couple of Shanghainese restaurants in the SF area that serve "coba", or jiao bai, a vegetable popular with Shanghainese but which is prohibited in the US (though not Canada). It's shown on the Chinese "specials" posted on the walls in Chinese on pieces of paper and I can imagine paranoia about someone photographing them.

[kathryn]

Putting together some notes on the Golden Shopping Mall at 41-28 and finding some confusion....I'm trying to pull together a list of stall names, numbers, and styles of foods available for my next trip out there.

Stall 36 - X'ian Famous Eats (Xian style)
Extensively documented on CH.

Stall 31 - Chengdu Heaven aka Chengdu Tian Fu aka Chengdu Sky House (Sichuan style)
Ditto.

Stall 29 - Happy Family (Fuzhou style)
Mentioned briefly on CH as being across from Chengdu Heaven, used to be a vegetarian spot. It was identified before the discovery that the basement of the 41st Street entrance linked up with the street level Main St. entrance, etc.
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/329064

Stall 32 - Ru Yi Wenzhou Little Eats (name from outside sign) (Wenzhou style
)Got the name from a photo of the food court sign that Gary Soup (Xiao Yang) took. I'm hoping this is the same place that is in his write up. Sietsema describes stall 32 as being Wenzhou style food.

Stall 38, (no name given), Tianjin-style cuisine (Sietsema)
Stall __, Wang Zhen's Muslim Snacks aka Wang Zhen Qing Zhen Xiao Chi
Dunlop says Wang Zhen's is is Tianjin-style cuisine. Is Wang Zhen's the same as stall 38 described by Sietseam?

Stall __ - Old Wong Kee (Fuzhou style) -- visted by Dunlop. Is this the same as Happy Family? Across from Wang Zhen's, said Dunlop.

Stall 15 - Four Seasons Noodles / Ma La Soup (hot pot, shabu shabu, noodles)
Is still around? Did anybody ever try it? I definitely tried a big noodle place in back that had "15" as the stall number. It had nice big booths and a counter, but I don't remember seeing any hot pots. The sign that Gary Soup posted has two stall 15's though. Maybe the Ma La Soup place is the one that is much closer to the Main St. entrance.

Stall 27 - Lanzhou noodles

Stall 1A - Nan Bei Dumplings (lower level)
Stall ___, Dumpling and Noodle House
Are these two stalls the same?

Stall C4 (?) - Shangdong Dumplings

References:
http://newyork.seriouseats.com/2008/06/draft-golden-shopping-mall-in-flushing.html
http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-04-22/restaurants/regional-chinese-fare-hits-flushing-like-a-ton-of-bricks/
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/516764
http://www.flickr.com/photos/garysoup...