New England Style Chinese Food Delivered Directly To Your Door

In one of the first articles on Chinese food I wrote for the old Menuism website, I described how certain regional Chinese American specialties were unique to a particular geographic area in the United States, such as the chow mein sandwich in Fall River, Massachusetts and fried breaded cashew chicken in Springfield, Missouri.  In the same vein, there were general styles of regional Chinese food identified with a certain locality, such as New York Chinese food (though the specific characteristics might not be entirely precisely understood.)   In any event, these dishes could only be experienced by visiting the specific locality involved, and while interesting, not interesting enough to justify a long trip by itself.

Strangely, while by far the greatest number of online requests come from former New Yorkers looking for New York style Chinese food in their current place of residence, of all the restaurant food that gets shipped cross country via UPS wrapped in dry ice, the only Chinese food  available that way is New England style Chinese food.  It is provided by a company called Bamboos Nation Interstate.    It took me a while, but I think I figured out why you can buy New England style Chinese food online for home delivery, but not New York style.  The answer is dual.  First of all, the concept of New England style Chinese food is well defined.  It is marked by dark fried rice, fried chicken fingers, boneless breaded fried chicken with almonds, shrimp in dark lobster sauce, boneless spare ribs, often served at restaurants with a Polynesian motif that serve pupu platters.  (The "dark" factor attributable to the fact that these items are cooked with molasses, a recipe not used anywhere else in the country.)  And secondly, there are a substantial number of Chinese restaurants in New England that check all the boxes and are still operating.  Consequently, Bamboos National Interstate has a core group of restaurants that they work with regularly, which is supplemented by other restaurants on a rotating basis.

Actually when I first found out about Bamboos Nation, I hesitated about ordering.  For a full meal the cost was about $150 for the food and a similar additional amount for shipping, all for Americanized Chinese food which I wouldn't find particularly tasty.  The thought of eating New England style Chinese chicken fingers was tempting, but the rest of the menu with chop suey, fried rice and chow mein dishes was totally unappealing.  But then I saw that one of the participating restaurants also had hung su gai, a form of almond boneless chicken that never showed up in California, and that I could do double orders of both dishes instead of single orders of unappealing dishes, then it was a no brainer, and I sent in my order.  

Since Bamboos Nation only ships out once every week or two, with shipping it took almost three weeks for my shipment to arrive.  How exciting when my package came from Tahiti Restaurant in suburban Boston!

 

 

 

Loose items in the box.  Teabags.

  

 

A can of Dole pineapple chunks? 

 

 

And a flyer.

 

Condiments.

All the cooked food wrapped up and kept cold.

Inside the insulated bag were all the containers of food.

Oyster pail of rice--with a metal handle.  Haven't seen one of these with a handle in a long time, but apparently they are still commonly in use on the East Coast.  We ditched the handle in California a long time ago.

Hung su gai sauce.

At last!   Full version of hung su gai!

Seperate order of chicken fingers.

Lastly, giant egg rolls.

Even though it's been quite a few months, I still have a few frozen chicken fingers that I haven't eaten yet.

A Trip To The Enigmatic Chubby Cattle BBQ

About four years ago I described my visit  to Wagyu House in Industry, which was the most stunning and possibly most popular Chinese restaurant in all of the San Gabriel Valley.  Wagyu House was part of a budding empire called the Chubby Group, which has opened Chinese and Japanese branded restaurants across the country.  Wagyu House was wildly successful, probably the highest grossing Chinese restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley.  Strangely, though, while the Chubby Group is opening all kinds of restaurants at an accelerated pace, they surprisingly closed Wagyu House about a year ago.  But shortly thereafter they opened up a branch of their Chubby Cattle BBQ chain less than a mile away in Rowland Heights.  And then Wagyu House opened up as a straight up hotpot, Chubby Cattle Club.  And also in Rowland Heights is yet another member of the family, iWagyu.  While Chubby Cattle locations have been opening in numerous locations both in the San Gabriel Valley and elsewhere's, I had not bothered to visit any of them since Chubble Cattle BBQ are all you can eat Wagyu restaurants with different price tiers starting in the $50s range.  Not being a large meat eater, it didn't make sense for me to go there, particularly since I had already eaten at Wagyu House, which was hot pot based.

The Chubby Cattle BBQ locations did follow the precedent set by Wagyu House of being highly patronized and having a high level of customer satisfaction.  But there has also been controversy with a large number of naysayers, particularly showing up on Reddit, and aimed at some of the Chubby Group's business practices.  You can check out some of the more specific comments on Reddit concerning topics like sourcing and quality of their Wagyu, questions about their membership and rewards programs, the unbelievable number of cookie cutter 5 star Yelp reviews that thank their servers by name, health inspection issues and probably more.

But the fact is Chubby Cattle has a lot of satisfied customers with good food so I finally decided to check it out.  The surroundings of Chubby Cattle BBQ are quite nice.  Not quite as exquisite as Wagyu House was, but certainly very nice.

 

The feature, of course, is Wagyu.

 

Yellowtail sashimi

 Steamed eggs

 

Grilled silken tofu.

 

Come hungry and you will get your money's worth. 

You Can Go Home Again--And I Can Eat Dim Sum Without Leaving Town

So those of you who follow me on social media may know, last year I declared I would no longer eat dim sum in Los Angeles because it was so vastly inferior to that in the San Francisco Bay area.  Of course that didn't mean I would refuse social engagements with family or friends if dim sum were involved.  Nor did it mean I would not test out the goods at newly opened dim sum restaurants.   But it did slow down my dim sum consumption, which had not been that great anyway,  to a trickle locally.    

However, late last year I received a tip that Sea Harbour in Rosemead had revised its menu sometime since my most recent visit, and in fact after checking it out online it was time for a return visit.  And indeed, Sea Harbour is back on my list.  It didn't take long for me to be convinced when I ordered my beloved crispy baked bbq pork buns, still called French style bbq pork buns on the Sea Harbour menu.  I had always ordered this item on my visits to Sea Harbour, even though it was a cut below all the Bay Area versions, and even the equivalent snow mountain bun at Family Pastry in Los Angeles.  However, this bun had been reformulated to match my favorite versions.

 

Also on the menu was one of my Bay Area favorites that I had not seen in the San Gabriel Valley, best described as double thick gelatinous cubes.  Up north they were usually ginger buns, but this one was called date pudding.  Just as good though.

 

Not a Bay Area exclusive, but it was great to see this red rice crispy shrimp cruller rice noodle roll at Sea Harbour.

 

 XO squid ink spicy scallop and shrimp dumpling.

 

New style chicken bao are large with a leafy pattern.

 

Chicken knees (or is it knuckles or ankles?) anyone.

 

Truffle siu mai with shrimp and pork.

 

Interesting to see they still have the old "intestine" style rice noodle rolls.

 

Fried egg tofu in Thai sauce.

 

Milky white egg tarts.

 

Crispy pork pastries

 

Preserved meat rice casserole.

 

Gold leaf shrimp dumpling.

 

Bean curd skin with abalone sauce.

 

Radish cake

 

Xiaolongbao

 

Shrimp and vegetable dumpling

Rice noodle rolls with spare ribs

 

 Gold leaf lava buns.

 

Now that Sea Harbour has stepped up its dim sum, hopefully other San Gabriel Valley dim sum purveyors may follow. 

 

My Very Tenuous Link To The Record Multi Oscar Nominated Film "Sinners" (Yes, It Has To Do With Chinese Food)

Sinners is a movie that I would never watch.  For one thing I probably will watch a movie only once every couple of years due to a combination lack of spare time and my general aversion to things fictional.  And secondly, horror movies with vampires would be the last genre of movie I would care to watch.  I mean I have trouble getting all the sleep my body needs as it is, so why would I watch something which would make it even harder for me to sleep?

However, while there are a few degrees of separation, I do have a slim link to the movie itself.  Well, sort of.  Back in 2017, Chinese-American filmmaker Dolly Li produced a video series on Chinese food in America for Al Jazzeera.   She had been referred to me by Los Angeles Times columnist Frank Shyong, who had written a front page Los Angeles Times story about me, as someone who could help her out with the San Gabriel Valley portion of her series, which also included visits to San Francisco and the Mississippi Delta.  I guess I impressed her with what I told hear about Chinese food in the San Gabriel Valley, and she asked me if I would be interested in being the on camera guide for a food tour of the San Gabriel Valley.  I politely told her she was crazy and should get somebody young and attractive.  She said she would consult with the producers, who wholeheartedly agreed that I should not be the video guide.  So I only ended up being noted as a consultant to the presentation.  The final product was a great success, but I have no regrets about not pursuing a role in the documentary, as I figured that if I was in it, it would not have been as good.  

Since writer-director Ryan Coogler chose Clarksdale, Mississippi as the setting for Sinners due to his family ties, he was aware of the importance of Chinese-American grocers in the African American community in Clarksdale, as well as other Mississippi Delta communities during that time period.  So while most people may find the existence of Chinese American characters in the movie to be random, or some sort of strained attempt at diversity, it was an accurate representation of something that actually existed.  Coogler ran across Dolly Li's documentary profile of the Mississippi Delta Chinese population, and hired her to be a consultant for the movie to ensure the maximum historical accuracy.  

Naturally I was tickled to hear of the depiction of Mississippi Chinese in Sinners. Furthermore, I ate at a Chinese restaurant in Clarksdale in 1976, and coincidentally I wrote an article  about this visit just last year.    Plus we have distant Mississippi relatives on both my father's and mother's side of the family.  So given all this, will I break down and actually watch the movie?  Well, not exactly.  But since the movie is already on streaming I thinking I'll pull it up and fast forward it to the "good parts" (i.e. Chinese scenes).

 

 My 1976 visit  to Clarksdale chinese restaurant

Dim Sum On The Las Vegas Strip

Even before Las Vegas developed its own Chinese community some 30 plus years ago, there was a tie between that city and Chinese food.  That's because before then, a number of casinos had started serving late night Chinese food to Chinese American gamblers, who apparently had been ferried into town on casino sponsored travel junkets.  In subsequent years Las Vegas attracted richer Chinese gamblers from around the world.  About 20 years ago this led to the erroneous belief among some people that Las Vegas had the best Chinese food in the United States.  This was traced back to a comment by legendary Ruth Teichl who indeed said that some of the casinos were turning out the best Chinese food in the country, but the food she spoke about was not available to the general public.  Rather she was talking about invitation only dinners thrown at casinos for their Chinese high rollers.

The growth of the local Chinese community that led to the creation of a Chinatown on Spring Mountain Blvd., as well as increasing patronage from Chinese visiting the Strip from around the nation and the world, led to more and more authentic Chinese food in in Las Vegas.  Not to the extent it would match the quality of the food in Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York, but still good enough so that nobody would complain about it.   At first every casino had its own Chinese restaurant, then casinos kept adding a second or maybe even a third Chinese restaurant  At first, though on the pricey side, I didn't find anything outstanding, but then restaurants like Hakkasan and Red 8 stepped up Chinese food on the strip to a new level.

However after last month's visit, it is apparent to me that Las Vegas has finally carved out a Chinese food niche as to upscale Chinese food on the Las Vegas Strip.  While Las Vegas did have expensive Chinese dining at such restaurants as Wing Lei, Blossom and Jasmine, I really didn't take them seriously.  However about 5 years ago, two new openings in the Venetian, Mott 32 and X Pot, delivered the quality to match the high prices.  Finally getting a chance to visit Mott 32, I was impressed by everything we had.

Nicely decorated dining room with salute to Anna May Wong.

 

 

 

 

Hot and sour Iberico pork soup dumplings 

 

Mushroom dumplings

 

Peking duck egg rolls

 

Sugar coated crispy baked BBQ pork buns

 

Perhaps the best beef chow fun I ever ate

 

Xiaolongbao.  Order of just 4?

 

Snow pea leaves, cooked to perfection.

 

And Guava pudding, better than mango pudding.

 

Likewise the lineup at the oddly named Washing Potato, in the largely moribund Fontainbleu Hotel was also stellar.

 

 

Washing potato squash and pine nut dumpling

  

Cucumber and wood ear salad

 

Wonton in chili oil

 

Scallop shu mai

 Pineapple buns

 

 Banana egg rolls