Chiu on This

The lunch that never will be

RIP New Chao Chow, my favorite restaurant in Manhattan's Chinatown. My sister and I had planned to go there for lunch last week to fill up on some noodle soups. I'd warned her that the last time I went there, it was closed, but that I couldn't tell if it was a temporary, vacation thing (the sign didn't say much, and there was no city health inspection warning) or something permanent.

Well, it's permanent. And what a shame. I'd been going there over a span of 25 years for Chinese/Thai noodles and iced coffee. I think the first time I went was with my uncle, his wife, his in-laws who were visiting from Bangkok, and my mom. My uncle's in-laws were shopping for a chandelier in the nearby lighting district. After a successful purchase, accomplished by my uncle's mother-in-law, who, without speaking any English but with an astute use of raised eyebrows and other impressive facial expressions, mostly of disdain, was able to negotiate a price to her liking from the salesman, we headed over to Chao Chow for lunch.

Slightly bigger than a hole in the wall and with several communal tables, Chao Chow was usually pretty packed with people dining in or standing in line for take out orders. I don't recall if the group photo of the staff with David Letterman in front of the store was already up there in 1986; whenever I did take notice of it, it just added to my fondness for the place, which always seemed to have the same core wait staff and cooks, with only a few rotations of younger waiters over the years.

I liked Chao Chow so much that I didn't want to tell other people about it or bring them with me. I didn't want to explain what it was that I was eating or ordering; why the addition of condiments like fish sauce, sugar, vinegar, hot sauce of different varieties (green chilies in white vinegar, ground red chilies with garlic), and white pepper was such a fun but frustrating ritual - I could never get the balance of flavors right until I hit the last third of a bowl of noodles, while my mom could get it just right from the get go, and customize it to the different likings of my sister and me (thanks, mom!), and we'd always find this inability comical; why the waiters would look either puzzled, amused, or irritiated that my sister and I always had to ask the same questions before ordering, as if we couldn't remember the simplest things (is that the fat white noodle or the thin one, or the yellow noodle?); or whether this was a Thai place, a Chinese place, or what.

Chao Chow was a place I'd go to with my family and was the repository and backdrop of many fond memories of eating, laughing, and chatting, most likely about food. I'm sorry to see it go, and I hope all the folks who worked there and fed us and put up with us are doing well. I wonder who kept the Letterman photo.

Postscript:

Since we weren't able to eat at Chao Chow, my sister and I met at XO Kitchen nearby. My sister ordered a seafood noodle soup that she declared pretty good. I guess we'll have to be on the lookout for new-to-us places that will live up to our standards.

The bora and the tennis roll

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of hanging out with my friends Nionne and Seth in Richmond Hill / Ozone Park to chomp on Guyanese food, specifically, Guyanese-Chinese and baked goods.

When Nionne, a former colleague, recently posted on Facebook that she was enjoying Ovaltine with tennis rolls with cheese, I was intrigued, trying to imagine, rather than doing an immediate search on the interwebs, what a tennis roll could possibly be. With an ulterior motive in mind - Nionne had taken me to eat Guyanese-Chinese twice before at Hibiscus Restaurant and Bar, and I'd developed an intense liking for their fried rice dishes - I asked her what tennis rolls were, and she offered to take me for a visit to Richmond Hill, hitting up Hibiscus along with a trip to a Guyanese bakery. Yes!

This intersected nicely with some plans I was making for another eating outing with my friend Seth, whom I've known since my college years. Seth has been living in NYC for maybe less than two years and, as a historian, amateur sociologist, and generally inquisitive person (altogether, a smart person who is not a smartypants), has already learned a helluva lot about the city's neighborhoods, peoples, patterns of habitation, and foodways. In short, he's one of the few non-annoying chowhoundy folks I know willing to travel across boroughs for food. We'd been trying to figure out where to eat next (he'd nixed a previous suggestion to try the Iraqi hot dog at a Colombian place in Elmhurst) when the opportunity for Guyanese-Chinese came up. His response when I asked if he'd be up for it was, "Would I be up for it?  WOULD I BE UP FOR IT? I am GEEKED!"

Okay, so with this lengthy preface out of the way and our cast of characters established, here's the food:

My pick: Fried rice with chicken. Magically delicious!

  Seth's pick: Chow mein with lapchong (Chinese sausage)

I didn't take a picture of Nionne's choice - the fried rice with everything (lapchong, shrimp, chicken) - as I think I was already tunnelling into my tower of food. Once again, I can't actually describe or define what made my dish so delicious, or what the specific variation Guyanese contributed to hyphenate the Chinese element of the fried rice. I can say that the chicken, both dark and white meat, was perfectly cooked: a crisp yet slightly chewy skin, that difficult combination of textures to achieve; somehow scarcely a trace of fat or greasiness; and very moist and tender flesh left on the bone. I couldn't identify the sauce drizzled on top of the chicken - not XO sauce or oyster sauce, but something like those yet not as salty and not sweet. Small bits of the green bean-like bora, which I thought looked like Chinese long beans (only to discover while doing some lite background research for this blog that they're - gasp! - actually one and the same vegetable) brought a welcome crunch and slight trace of bitterness and chlorophyll to the rich dish. I highly recommend adding hot pepper sauce, which is similar to this brand of Thai Sriracha hot sauce, to the fried rice and chicken for even more flavor complexity and happiness. (Speaking of Thai hot sauce, I felt like this dish was something my mom and her side of the family would really like, as it does remind me of Thai versions of fried rice, including the slice of cucumber on top.)

After polishing off lunch and wrapping up the leftovers - portion sizes here were enormous - we decided to walk over to Little Guyana Bake Shop to find those tennis rolls, and to aid with digestion. We made a detour to check out Warung Kario, a Surinamese restaurant that's on our to-do / to-eat list; we'll need to do some homework before then, as none of us could translate the menu. The stroll down lively Liberty Avenue on a sunny day, punctuated with stops in grocery and seafood stores to figure out what banga mary fish looks like and how much Ovaltine costs, provided a nice diversion from my impending sense of doom from not having gotten any work done over the weekend.

Once at the bakery, Seth got an super red sweet that looked of Asian Indian provenance, and Nionne picked up some tennis rolls and other items. I mooched a tennis roll off Nionne and bought a bottle of mauby, which I'd never tried before - unfortunately, I didn't develop a liking for mauby, which tasted bark-y (well, it is made from bark), slightly medicinal, a bit too sugary, and bitter; I'm willing to give it another try, as maybe it was the specific formulation/brand of the drink that I didn't enjoy and not the type of drink itself.

As for the tennis roll, even though it didn't come hot out of the oven, it tasted lovely. I'm not a big fan of breads or sweets, so it boded well when my first bit led me to want to continue eating. I had done a slight bit of reading up on tennis rolls so couldn't take credit for identifying the lemon and orange flavors in the bread (from the zest that goes into the batter). The tennis roll reminded me a little bit of Portugese sweet bread, but less dense and less sweet. I ate a few bites but was still too full from lunch; I saved the rest for breakfast the next morning. Slightly toasting it didn't make it any better and detracted from the texture, adding butter was good, but next time I'm going to 1) try it with cheese, as I can see how that'd work nicely and 2) with a little sweetened condensed milk, to be decadent.

Whew! I feel full and happy just reliving this. If anyone wants to replicate this meal, take the A train to Lefferts Boulevard to get to these places, and let me know if you're going so I can join up with you.

Something-hyphen-Chinese

Today's going to be a good eating day. I'm meeting up with Nionne, a former colleague, and Seth, a friend from college, to have Guyanese-Chinese food in Richmond Hills in Queens. One of the best things about living in NYC is the wide range of hyphenated Chinese foods I've got access to.* There's Cuban Chinese, of course; Indian Chinese, a brilliant mash-up of cuisines (I still have to write up something about the fantastic Himalayan Hut in Jackson Heights); Guyanese-Chinese, which I'm so grateful to Nionne for introducing me to, and which I'll write more about in a separate post; and Peruvian-Chinese, which I tried out with Seth and a couple of friends last summer.

My notes from that lunch at Chifa Union in Elmhurst aren't that great, mostly because the blazing heat of that day had melted much of my brain away. I hate Hate HATE hot weather, and I'd had the bad luck of picking one of the hottest days of the year to try out a new restaurant and even worse luck in picking a bad - that is, unnecessarily long - route over broiling, unshaded concrete sidewalks to get there. When I arrived at Chifa Union, I was a disgusting fount of sweat, and only an arctic blast of air conditioning could have cooled me down.

So while I don't have good descriptions or even the right names for the dishes we ate, I can at least share some pictures with you, and give an overall endorsement to Peruvian-Chinese food, which I do plan to try again. (For other reviews, try out this item from Edible Queens and this writeup from Serious Eats.)

I think these are the remnants of Chi jau kai, a deep fried chicken dish

We demolished the chaufa (fried rice)

Sweet and sour fish

Was this the Chancho con tamarindo (roast pork with tamarind)? Sigh. I need to keep better track of things.

* A few years ago, I'd heard about a series of documentary films about the foods of the Chinese diaspora, and after a quick bit of searching while writing this blog, I'm excited to have run across this video online. I haven't watched it yet and am really looking forward to seeing it and learning more about the culinary and cultural evolution of Chinese cooking.

Any takers?

I'm in the mood for Szechuan food, and I'm keen to go back to Legend Bar and Restaurant in Chelsea. My friends Tim and Sue, who were in town over Thanksgiving last year, suggested it. I was eager to find a place that could replicate or approximate my experience in San Francisco with ma po tofu, so we met there for lunch. Our meal of ma po tofu (with fish, if my memory's right), dan dan mein, and dry sauteed string beans, really hit the spot. I want to order a fair number of dishes and could use a couple of "good eaters" (in this context, people who have hearty appetites, aren't naifs about Chinese food, and can take spicy food) to join me. Any takers?

The path of the locust, 2011-2012 edition

I spent the last two weeks of December hanging out in Honolulu with my parents, grandma, aunt and uncle from Australia, my sister, and Lani, my parent's adopted 11-year old miniature beagle. Folks ask me if I had a good time; maybe they imagine that I'd be hanging out at the beach or what not. Nope. Mostly what I do is eat with my folks, because that's our M.O., and because food in Hawaii is just so much danged fun. Here's an index to some of the places I went to. But my mom's home cooking is what I'll always crave the most!

• Kapiolani Community College Saturday Farmers Market. You definitely need to go to this market if you're in Honolulu. My next post will go into a bit more detail about what I ate, bought, saw, and sampled there on two visits.

• Bubbies Ice Cream. Multiple locations; I went to the one in Koko Marina. Mochi ice cream makes a perfect little snack. Traditional azuki bean tasted very nice, but the chocolate eggnog was odd. I couldn't get my hands on the li hing mango flavored version, unfortunately. Try the chocolate banana flavored ice cream.

• Ramen-Ya. Multiple locations; I went to Hawaii Kai Towne Center spot. Very good chicken katsu and a hearty curry ramen. Tasty and a good value, which means an assortment of family members wound up eating there three days in a row.

• Uncle Clay's House of Pure Aloha in the Aina Haina Shopping Center. Shave ice with a story and a smile. I'll describe the flavors and the philosophy in a subsequent post.

• Kamehameha Bakery. My mom says the malasadas here are excellent and stay yummy for days, but they were all sold out by the time we got there (around 2 or 3pm). The poi doughnuts are also supposed to be really good. We managed to leave with some interesting (in a good way) haupia filled taro rolls. Need to go back to investigate the other goodies.

• Morning Glass Coffee and Cafe in Manoa. I went with my folks and Lani, as the cafe is just a few blocks away from the vet's office. An open-air eatery, Morning Glass prepares each cuppa joe individually and offers a Hawaiian coffee of the day. On our visit, we had Rusty’s Ka’u Red Cattura (which I found out by asking them via Twitter). They have pastries and heartier fare, including burgers, which smelled super ono! Another place I need to go back to for more "research."

• Harbor Village in the Koko Marina Shopping Center. Good Chinese fare including beef with asparagus in black bean sauce, Peking duck, shrimp with walnuts, and pork with pickled mustard greens. We went twice while I was there, and I think the family went a third time after I left. On our first visit, Danny Kaleikini greeted my parents as if they were neighbors; I guess he's not called the Ambassador of Aloha for nothing.

• Koa Pancake House in the Hawaii Kai Towne Center; multiple locations. Big portions, and I mean big. I got a breakfast special - a Portugese sausage omelette with a "side" of pancakes - that could have fed three people. Whew.

• Gyotaku in the Niu Valley Shopping Center; multiple locations. Good bento options, and even though I'm not a huge sweets person, I really liked the Okinawan sweet potato pie with haupia.

• Kua'aina Sandwich Shop near Ward Center. I referenced this in a previous blog. The fries, which I didn't previously mention as shoe-string style, are still addictive, but their teri-burger, while fine, still can't compete with my memory of the teri-burger from Burger Land. Thumbs up, though, for offering a heaping amount of pepperoncini as a side order.

• Royal Gardens on the third floor of the Ala Moana hotel for yum cha. An unusually upscale Chinese restaurant, I wind up going here at least once a year with my family. We arrived this year on New Year's Day right when the doors opened. The place was swarming with diners within minutes.

2011: My favorite dish

And the winner is...Ma po tofu from Mission Chinese Food in San Francisco. (The picture doesn't do the dish justice.) Folks have said that Mission Chinese has been overly hyped. I can't speak to that since (1) this was the only dish I've had there, (2) I've only gone  there once, and (3) I didn't have to wait at all for a table (I went for lunch, fairly soon after they opened for the day).

The flavors were brilliant and complex - spicy but not one-note. Biting into the Szechuan peppercorns that studded the dish, I felt like I was eating electricity - zap! ping! zzzzzt! And I got the full-on mala effect of numbed lips.

As I tucked into the dish and savored its odd combination of earthy and ethereal qualities, I remember hearing Radiohead playing in the background and thinking, "This works for me." "Wish You Were Here" came on immediately after, and I really wished folks were with me to share my meal.

I've eaten ma po tofu before and have often cooked a very simplified version of it with ground pork and pretty much no spice. But this version made me sit up straight, open my eyes wide, and breathe deeply. In the wake of eating this, I've had ma po dishes about 3 more times in about just as many weeks, but this version still stays in my mind.

Maybe finding a similar - or better - version in NYC will make for a good 2012 quest. Happy new year!

Name that...thing

My note taking system has failed me. How could I forget what this crazy looking thing is called? I believe it's a monkey something - monkey's paw, maybe? It's not from a monkey, though; it's actually a fungus, a totally odd and offputting looking fungus, but very tasty. It appeared in a soup, and the hairy looking parts soaked up the broth like a sponge, and the rest of the fungus was very dense and meaty.

This meal took place in May of this year, when I was in Beijing for work. I managed to wedge in some time after an early work dinner (terrific Szechuan food; I need to look at a map to remember where we went) to see my uncle Kenneth. He and his business partner/girlfriend took me to Heng Shan Hui, a Cantonese restaurant that they go to frequently and that seems to be a hangout for people from Hong Kong and in the film industry.

So, yes, this was my second dinner of the evening. Maybe my overstuffed condition explains why I didn't do a better job with documentation. But this crazy monkey mushroom is certainly hard to forget.

Cantonese Western food

My colleagues and I were in Hong Kong in early May, attending an international conference on comparative perspectives on criminal justice in China, organized by the Centre for Rights and Justice at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Our stay in HK was short - just two days and three nights - as this was a pit stop of sorts before our longer trip to Beijing for a number of meetings.

I had done zero research on places to eat in HK, figuring I'd just rely on my colleagues who'd been there before; on recommendations from people at the conference or at the hotel; and on my college friend Alex, who I hadn't seen in roughly 20 years, the last time I'd been in the city. At some point, though, I got a number of recommendations from friends on Facebook, including some from college friend Andy, who'd worked several years in China, and from Thom, an acquaintance from Columbia, who almost daily posts pictures on Facebook of wonderful meals that he's cooked.

An appetizer

This man knew what he was doing.

More on my meal at Beijing Da Dong Roast Duck, coming soon.

And now for something completely different

Lobster noodles from Happy Days in Kaimuki. My family likes to come here for group dinners; typical items we order include shrimp and walnuts, sizzling pork chops, and roast duck. It's not the most elegant place around, but the food's good.

This meal took place in December 2009. Pictured is my uncle Stefan, dad of my cousin Nick. My dad is serving up the noodles, and my mom can be heard asking, in Chinese, for a small portion. I was testing out the video on my [then] new iPhone.