Nothern Chinese in Flushing

[Wet Towel]

Which is the best? I've read about:

m&t
golden palace
fa run
hong yi shun
northeast taste

any recommendations would be much appreciated.

[jade628]

Where can I get a really good beijing meat pie in Flushing, NY or LI or Manhattan? read this to know what I'm talking about. Giving me the Yums!
http://www.chow.com/digest/72859/wond...

[Lau]

ive never seen this anywhere in manhattan or flushing (i doubt u can find it while there is a decent selection of chinese food in flushing, you do not have the same breadth as SGV in LA), the closest u can get is a xian bing in flushing at the street level area of the golden mall
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kathryn/5049097576/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kathryn/...

[scoopG]

The stall at the Golden Mall - both inside and on the street are run by the same Owner - Tianjin Snacks. They have some type of pies but I have not tried them. Henan Fengwei also has some type of xian bing as well but I've not tried them either.

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/728696

As far as I know the SGV has very little in the way of Fujianese, very little Sichuan and no Henan or Shandong cuisine...

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Golden Shopping Mall
41-28 Main St, Queens, NY 11355

[fredid]

BigJ - Is the menu for "house of orient northern chinese style" accessible for us non-Chinese character-readers? Thanks!

[bigjeff]

yup, I just typed all that stuff in straight from the menu and I can't type chinese characters.

[Wet Towel]

to reopen this thread, which of these is best?

m&t
golden palace
fa run
hong yi shun
northeast taste
other?

[erica]

You got 41 replies here:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/732249

[bigjeff]

new isht:

house of orient northern chinese style
46-09 Kissena Boulevard,
Flushing, NY 11355
917.285.2052

this place is down the block from satay and carnation bakery, across from Yi Jia; this is the restaurant right on the corner of the plaza. interesting dishes include:

lung slice beef and tripe in chili
conch with spicy sauce
pork skin aspic
shredded potato with hot sauce
dongbei pasta
spicy hand teare chicken
skin gel with sour sauce
dongbei pork chop
marinated pig elbow
shredded tripe with hot pepper
dongbei style spicy salad
harves (not sure if this is a typo)
di-san-xian
fried eggplant
ba-si sweet potato
ba-si egg! (making a return appearance)
ba-si three vegetables!!!
twice cook pork
pig kidney n squid
cumin beef
steam beef with hot chili sauce
lamb with beer
cumin lamb testicle
mongolian lamb chop
geleshan lazi chicken
fried quail
rabbit
duck w/ shredded taro
cumin flounder
quirrel fish
steam fish head
conch
clam
deep fried fish
leek with (hopefully) sea intestines
various sea cucumber, crab n lobster
various hot pot which sound great like sichuan pig blood or cabbage and sichuan meatball
many many dumplings, noodle soups and "big bread"-style pancakes

sounds amazing right? who's in?

house of orient northern chinese style
46-09 Kissena Boulevard,
Flushing, NY 11355
917.285.2052

-----
House of Orient
46-09 Kissena Blvd, Queens, NY 11355

[bigjeff]

and as a sidenote (since this other place isn't northern):

further down the block from House of Orient Northern Chinese Style is another restaurant, T&T Restaurant; the first two words in chinese are "tien" as in day.

T&T Restaurant
46-11A Kissena Boulevard
Flushing, NY 11355
718.661.0819

looks like a fujian place; selections include:

sweet soy milk
taro cake
oyster cake
fuzhou sonton soup
fuzhou ho fun
fuzhou meatball soup
10pc dumping
noodle soups available with various organs: tripe, intestine, stomach, omosa, oxtail
rice cake or "nian-gao"
the house special is potato ball and meat stuffed rice ball soup, and egg and meatball with noodle

most of it under $5 or $6, many at $3 and $4. reminds me of an eldridge/east broadway spot. looked good.

T&T Restaurant
46-11A Kissena Boulevard
Flushing, NY 11355
718.661.0819

P.S. if anything, there is also a lady lamb hawker right on kissena in front if you need an appetizer.

-----
T&T Restaurant
46-11 Kissena Blvd, Queens, NY 11355

[fredid]

BigJ - Is the menu for "house of orient northern chinese style" accessible for us non-Chinese character-readers? Thanks!

[scoopG]

These two new spots do not appear very promising. No paper menus to take away. Both seem to offer a hodgepodge of various regional dishes. The Peking Duck place suggests that you call 30 minutes prior to ordering the Peking Duck. (Now that may be cause they've just opened and do not have a steady stream of PD customers.) They do offer the PD three ways though if you prefer. From what I can gather, the Owner of the old Northeast Taste also owns a nightclub that was more lucrative, sort of let Northeast Taste coast, then a rent increase at Northeast Taste spelled doom.

[lwong]

As you are aware, Chinatown restaurants march to a different drummer in terms of how they conduct themselves business-wise compared to western restaurants, especially when their targeted customer base is Chinese. When a restaurant still retains the old signage of “Spicy House,” and still does not have an English name for their restaurant, the lack of paper take-out menus is fairly minor. (LOL)

The “no name” Peking restaurant has a very limited menu with sparse titling of the dishes, but if one orders the dishes known to be Peking dishes, we found that they were cooked with reasonable skill.

The locations of these two new northern restaurants are not the best, as they are at the southern fringe of Flushing Chinatown. A person entering the front door of those restaurants must want to specifically eat at those restaurants, as there would not be much random walk-in customer traffic, hence the owners of these restaurants must know from the start that their work is cut out for them in trying to prepare good and tasty food at reasonable prices to build up a customer base quickly, otherwise they will not last very long.

But in the harsh Darwinian world that the Chinatown restaurants inhabit, this is a given with tremendous turn-over of restaurants for those that do not come up to the mark in satisfying their customers and keeping their landlords at bay. The one Chinatown business that continues to do well is the Chinese restaurant renovation business, due to the high turnover of restaurant spaces as old restaurants fail and new ones take their place.

But the adage that the “Proof of the pudding is in the eating” appears to be true, as despite your less than positive tentative assessment of the “Peking Duck House” and “Restaurant without a name” based upon a review of their menus, you have apparently taken the obvious next step and partaken of the dishes at the “Peking Duck House” and have posted quite a positive review of the Peking Duck House restaurant (http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/763840 ).

[scoopG]

um...the woman (new owner) I ran into in the old Northeast Taste just after they had closed down around July 25th told me she would be opening a new Dongbei place! I wonder too where Chef Chen went to.

The former Sichuan place was called Spicy House and just never seemed busy. Limited too compared to what Little Pepper and and Spicy and Tasty offer.

[buttertart]

Some locations are just death to restaurants it seems.

[bigjeff]

could it have been this place I write about in this thread down the page?
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/7322...

timing is not quite right though

[lwong]

The last time we ate at the “Northeast Taste” restaurant, a short time before they closed, we noticed that Chef Chen was in the parking lot directing traffic and afterwards was also not in the kitchen cooking but stayed in the dining area taking care of the customers and other front room activities. This was sort of strange but the demise of “Northeast Taste” later explained the absence of Chef Chen in the kitchen. There was also a noticeable change in the taste of the dishes without Chef Chen in the kitchen.

Hopefully, Chef Chen will reopen a new restaurant in a new location sometime in the future.

At the new “no name” Peking restaurant, the old sign of the previous restaurant “Spicy House” is still there.

[lwong]

Enjoyed the many responses, but unfortunately we are busy packing to go away for several weeks and lack the time to answer the many responses, but will do so when we come back from vacation.

But a quick answer to “Soupcon” is that we second “Lau” in stating that Peking Duck is quite good when done well. As to whether Peking Duck is an “over-rated, over-hyped niche dish, and not an appropriate one to build a whole restaurant around,” this would depend upon the tongue of the beholder, but there are certainly many single themed restaurants such as pizza joints (DiFara’s, Motorino, and others) and hamburger joints (Shake Shack), that have received good reviews even though they are single themed restaurants, and there are certainly other types of single theme food restaurants that have also garnered favorable reviews, although the specific names escape us at the moment, but it is hard for us to discern the differences between pizza, hamburgers, and Peking Duck that would meet your appropriate requirements for a single themed restaurants for pizza and hamburgers, but not for Peking Duck, unless to be consistent, you also feel that pizza and hamburger joints are also “over-rated, and over-hyped niche dish” that are not deserving of building a whole restaurant around.

Our assumption is that you might not find Peking Duck to your personal liking, but this does not invalidate the appropriateness of opening a single theme restaurant based upon Peking Duck assuming that there is sufficient customer demand for Peking Duck. In fact, that was the theme of my feeble attempt at some droll humor in my posting above, in indicating that NYC needs more Beijing immigrants in order to support a single theme Peking Duck restaurant.

According to Wikipedia, the single theme Quanjude restaurant chain started in Beijing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quanjude) that specializes in Peking Duck was opened in 1864, and serves over 2 million Peking Duck dishes annually.

One last food for thought is that one should revel in the many diverse food offerings available in this very large world of ours, especially for people who live in the NYC metro area who are exceedingly fortunate to live in an area with such a diversity of different food cultures, where one can partake of an alien food culture for just a mere swipe of a Metro Card.

And if we can appropriate a phrase meant to describe the sexes and use it in the food sense, “It is vive la différence, is it not?”

[soupçon]

To clarify, I do not dislike Peking Duck, and in fact enjoy a well done Peking Duck as a specialty item as part of a big meal, especially the skin-only presentation. I know it is a very popular dish and top Chinese restaurants of all stripes pride themselves on delivering (or trying their best) a good version. My point is that it doesn't make a lot of sense for a restaurant to specialize in it, or to be built around it. Sure there is Quanjude, but it derives most of its business from gastrotourism.

Peking Duck is the Giant Panda of Chinese food.

[buttertart]

It would be very nice to have a duck restaurant here that did the whole dinner - skin with the best meat, pancakes, etc; meat shreds with beansprouts; duck eggs; soup.

[soupçon]

You can't find that in New York? A number of high end Cantonese restaurants like Koi Palace in the Bay Area offer admirable "Duck Three Ways" treatments, though they certainly don't define themselves as Peking Duck Restaurants.

[Lau]

making peking duck the real way is a pain and very few places do it, at most cantonese places they make a roast duck and call it peking duck, it is different than the real thing although i do like the cantonese version

the only place that attempts to do it that i know of in NY is the peking duck house in manhattan, but their version is just okay

[soupçon]

I've traveled to China 10 times over the past 20 tears and have been eating Chinese food for 50. I certainly know the difference between Peking Duck and Cantonese roast duck, and have been in high-end Cantonese restaurants that do a decent eking Duck. My point is that even a perfect Peking Duck is little more than a novelty, bringing a nice shared ritual to the table and not much else.

[Pan]

The fact that you see it as no more than a novelty doesn't make it no more than a novelty to everyone else. And on my last trip to Beijing in 2004, my family and I ate twice at a neighborhood restaurant which made excellent Beijing Ka Ya and also made a whole bunch of other excellent dishes, so it is not even necessary to specialize in Beijing duck to make it delicious. I would have posted a link to my report on this restaurant in Beijing, with photos, but I posted it on eGullet, and they seem to have scrubbed the links and photos from before 2006.

[buttertart]

It's especially wonderful when you get the whole skin/meat/duck eggs and fat scramble -mmm-/beansprouts and slivered meat/thick soup nine yards, something I haven't seen here in the US. My one Peking duck experience in Beijing was at Made in China which was a huge mistake, deracinated and prettified out of existence (we were also served maybe 1/2 of the meat and skin on the half duck we preordered). Better luck next time.
Just realized that this was more of the same from me, but it's still valid.

[Pan]

I don't remember ever getting duck eggs as part of the presentation in Beijing. Actually, I'm not sure I ever knew that was a possibility. Beijing Ka Ya is always a multi-course meal in Beijing, though.

[buttertart]

The egg thing was always served with BKY at the Zhi Mei Lou Restaurant in the Ximending in Taipei, but that was ages ago. Forget your truffled eggs, just give me the duck ones soft-scrambled in duck fat with a sprinkle of scallion greens...

[Pan]

So maybe that's a Taiwanese take on things. It does sound great to me!

[buttertart]

These people were mainland refugees, Beijing Mandarin all the way. It was the early 80's, the tail end of mainland chef-run restaurants (and we were there to benefit, something I will be thrilled about forever). KMT brass brought their cooks and when they died off the cooks opened restaurants.

[scoopG]

Exactly - "one duck eaten three ways" as they say.

[buttertart]

Like at the Zhi Mei Lou in the Ximending in Taipei, a place of happy memory.

[lwong]

According to a recent posting by “ScoopG” in this thread, the new “Peking Duck House” restaurant in the old “Northeast Taste” location will serve Peking Duck three ways. As to whether the Peking Duck dish tastes good is another matter, but according to the poster “Lau” in this thread, one of his friend’s who is knowledgeable about Chinese food has tried the “Peking Duck House,” and has indicated that the “Peking Duck” dish there is only “just okay.”

[Lau]

no those are two different peking duck houses, ScoopG tried the one on main street......the one my friends were talking about is on union, they are different places

[lwong]

Thanks for the clarification. We had assumed that you were referring to the Main Street “Peking Duck House” since your reply was to our posting discussing the Main Street “Peking Duck House” restaurant.

And we agree with your friend’s review as we had tried the “Peking Duck House” on Union Street a while back. When a restaurant’s name is “Peking Duck House” and the Peking Duck is neither carved at your table nor is the Peking Duck even warm, this is not a good harbinger of things to come.

When we tried to look up your original posting with your reply to refresh our memory, we noticed that your posting and all of the other postings associated with our original posting with the “Riff” on the immigration of Beijing residents to America had been deleted. It appears that we had run afoul of the “Chowhound Police” on maintaining the purity of the Chowhound site to be strictly writing about food with no political overtones of any nature. (LOL)

[squid kun]

Contact info ...

-----
Peking Duck House
36-12 Union St, Queens, NY 11354

Deyi Peking Duck House
43-18 Main St, Queens, NY 11355

[lwong]

Thanks for the addresses of the two “Peking Duck House” restaurants in Flushing.

We will have to try the Main Street “Peking Duck House” restaurant, after reading the review by the poster ScoopG on a recent posting. When we had walked into the Main Street “Peking Duck House” restaurant several months ago to look at the menu and see what the diners were ordering, we did not notice any diners ordering “Peking Duck.”

[scoopG]

And before Quanjude there was Bianyifang in Beijing. Started as a vendor at a Bejing meat market in 1855 and by 1930 had nine outlets in the city. Name change during the Cultural Revolution but re-emerged in 1978. Claims there Peking Duck see no flame in ovens fired by cherry and walnut wood topped with millet stalks for that old-time flavor!

[lwong]

Thanks for the info about the chain of “Bianyifang” restaurants serving Peking Duck dishes that preceded the “Quanjude” restaurants. We were not aware of the “Bianyifang” chain of Peking Duck restaurants, but since the “Quanjude” chain of Peking Duck restaurants have overshadowed “Bianyifang” in fame and reputation, the assumption is that this was due to meritorious efforts on the part of the “Quanjude” restaurants.

Have you tried the Peking Ducks at the “Bianyifang” restaurants? Are the Peking Ducks there better than the ones at the “Quanjude” restaurants?

[JMF]

Quanjude... I've been to all the locations... and dream about the multi-course duck meals.

[Chandavkl]

You raise an interesting issue. There's probably 10 or more Shanghai style restaurants in Los Angeles and San Francisco for each Beijing style place. One explanation put forth has been that Beijingers are used to eating a variety of styles of food, but the fact is that you can probably count all the Beijing style restaurants in California on your fingers (with a few fingers left over). Are there just not a lot of Beijingers here in the states?

[Lau]

ive met very few people from beijing in the US and most of them were exchange students not immigrants. Usually the food that is under represented is simply b/c there just aren't that many of them

i think peking duck is really good, but unfortunately difficult to prepare and easy to mess up

[lwong]

The prevalence of certain nationalities or ethnic groups in America depends upon the initial entry of that particular group and since Northern Chinese did not start immigrating to America in any large numbers until the recent last decade, with Beijing residents probably not being in any large numbers, this would probably account for the paucity of Peking style restaurants in America.

Since it is the 5th Preference (Brothers and Sisters) on the immigration priorities that allows large numbers of immigrants to enter into America and with the present waiting time for the 5th Preference for China on the order of about 10 years, and the added 3 to 5 years plus to become a citizen, it will probably be at least 10 to 20 years before there are any appreciable large numbers of Beijing residents living in America. For this reason, we do not expect any large numbers of good Peking Duck restaurants to open any time in the near future in NYC or other Chinatowns in America.

[soupçon]

Am I the only one who feels Peking Duck is an over-rated, over-hyped niche dish, and not an appropriate one to build a whole restaurant around? I'd guess that people in Beijing order Peking Duck about as often as people in Shanghai order hong shao ti pang.

[bigjeff]

part of the reason I've been so reluctant to eat asian food in NY lately is that I had such crazy good food in taipei, shanghai, suzhou, seoul, jeonju and damyang lately (I know, I still haven't done my tri-partite post) and especially in seoul, I learned that places should have one, maybe two good dishes that they perfect. indeed, seoul's alleys of single dishes where maybe eight or nine restaurants all serve the exact same dish made me re-think the way I've been eating korean food here. when I was trying to figure out if this was unique or not, I made the comparison that chinese restaurants here try to do it all, korean restaurants here try to do it all, etc. but I realize it is because those are foreign cuisines in america. aside from diner's, just think that you go specifically to a pizzeria for pizza, a sub shop for a sub, a steakhouse for steak, a fish house for fish, a pancake house for pancakes, etc. whereas in seoul, you go to a T.G.I.F. or a Tony Roma's for the american experience, where the menu would, similarly, jump all over the place with america's greatest hits.

kinda makes sense right? regardless, single-item vendors and restaurants will kick the ass of any place that covers all bases, even the places that are well-known for a handful of dishes and people end up always ordering a basket, like soup dumpings if you go shanghainese. but then, similarly, you order maybe a shared antipasti always in italian places? or, a fried apps platter (wings, poppers, mozz. sticks, etc.) in an american restaurant. hmmmm.

[Lau]

ahhh you've joined my club of specialist restaurants being the best

[squid kun]

>single-item vendors and restaurants will kick the ass of any place that covers all bases ...

Totally makes sense.

[Polecat]

I know what you mean, Jeff. I just spent a few days (daze) in Hanoi, where it's hard to turn a corner without spotting a Pho specialist. Heck, they're so omnipresent that, when you see a joint that offers two types of Pho (Pho Bo/Pho Ga) instead of one, you assume that it's second rate. And you're probably right.

What's important to keep in mind is that, if it weren't for places like Pho Bac, Pho Banc, etc, I never would have been curious to begin with.

By that same token, If I'm lucky enough to ever reach any part of northern China, it will be because of places like Golden Palace. The food, for me, is a conduit to everything else. It not only fills me up and satiates me - it whets my appetite for the world.

Of course, this is a whole other discussion anyway. But I'm grateful to live in a city where, when serious-minded eaters talk about eating Chinese cuisine, they have a choice of Sichuan, Hunanese, Fujianese, Dongbei and so on.

So I guess what I'm saying is: Let's eat.
p.

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Pho Bac
82-78 Broadway, Queens, NY 11373

Golden Palace
14009 Cherry Ave, Queens, NY 11355

[bigjeff]

hanoi! you lucky duck. awesome.

[E Eto]

I'm surprised that you're just figuring this out now. I thought it was fairly common knowledge about most restaurants, especially Asian places. It is useful to think of the folks operating "ethnic" restaurants in the US as economic actors, trying to maximize their profits by appealing to the public. Only in niche markets (i.e., ethnic concentrations) can specialists really survive. It usually pays off for most restaurant operators to offer more than their specialization. But it takes a good chowhound to identify that specialization, and encourage those operators to continue preparing their specialties, instead of becoming another one of the all-purpose joints that dominate the scene.

[bigjeff]

well not so much figure it out now because, well, pretty much all of flushing is like that and I have my specific spots for specific dishes but even then, my go-to guy for X still has about 20 (or 40 or 60) other items that are just a waste of energy and space. the difference was never as clear until this first trip to korea; the style of eating there is just so good; each night we went for at least two courses, at two different restaurants because there was no point in getting both courses from the same place. and it would usually involve a short cab ride between both restaurants! such a huge contrast to k-town style eating.

and of course, my response is also to the above (or below) conversation about having a single dish support a restaurant. or, is the conversation more about the appeal of that particular single dish, which in this case, was peking duck?

[scoopG]

Failed to mentioned Fu Run (not Fa Run). Solid but perhaps more crowded with folks who do not want to venture too far from the #7 or LIRR stop. Their Cumin Lamb Chop has to be one of Flushing's signature Chinese dishes:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/6998...

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Fu Run
40-09 Prince St, Queens, NY 11354

[erica]

I've been reading a lot about their (Fu Run's) Muslim lamb chop...have you had this yet, Scoop?

[scoopG]

Yes I have erica and it is delicious! I reviewed that up-thread. Here's a photo:

[erica]

Yikes! My memory is worse than I thought! I actually commented on your review! Thanks for having patience with me-and for the pic-I need to get back there asap!

[scoopG]

I’d start with Golden Palace myself:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/640895?tag=search_results;results_list

Northeast Taste has closed and was to re-open under new ownership. M&T serves Shandong/Qingdao food and I would not call it northern - Qingdao is southeast of Beijing! But it is well worth a visit to taste their seafood specialties.

M&T:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/640474?tag=search_results;results_list

Hong Yi Shun is now called Rural but still serves Dongbei cuisine.
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/714292?tag=search_results;results_list

Hong Yi Shun moved to Kissena and is now Jiang Li:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/7142...

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Golden Palace
14009 Cherry Ave, Queens, NY 11355

SN New Restaurant
44-09 Kissena Blvd, Queens, NY 11355

Jiang Li
4418 Kissena Blvd, Queens, NY 11355

[soupçon]

The dividing line between Northern and Southern China is considered to be the Huai River or (more recently) the Yangzi River. In either case, that puts Shandong in Northern China. There's no reason "Northern": Chinese food has to be from north of Beijing.

http://is.gd/f0h9S

[scoopG]

It's all relative and depends on the time period. But 魯菜 - Lu Cai or Shandong Cuisine bears little resemblance to "Northern" or Dongbei Cuisine.

[Chandavkl]

For us old time Toishanese Americans from the mid-20th century, "Northern" was used to connote any Chinese cuisine other than Cantonese, and was sometimes used interchangeably with "Mandarin." That would include most definitely Shanghai (which I considered a Northern cuisine until about 15 or 20 years ago) and even Hunan style food. I think you'll continue to see that terminology from our group for a few decades to come.

[Wet Towel]

Does anyone know if Northeast Taste has reopened?

[scoopG]

Not that I know off. Nor do I know where Chef Chen Weiliang (陳衛良) ended up!

[northNJfoodie]

he may have retired and is living the good life. I ran into him around 1pm in Flushing about a month ago