A Day In Manhattan and Flushing

Despite being on the plane for 10 hours coming back from New York to Los Angeles (five hours on the runway, five hours in the air) my 24 hour side trip to New York after our annual training in the Washington D.C. area was a clear success.  Of course, anytime a trip starts in D.C. it starts off slowly since there's not much doing foodwise here.  I was looking forward to trying Golden King in Sterling, since this is the first authentic Chinese restaurant I've identified anywhere near Dulles Airport.  Indeed, from the time I got off the plane, it was less than an hour for me to get my baggage, my rental car, and find my way to the restaurant.  It was surprising that this wasn't a new style Hong Kong restaurant like Hong Kong Pearl, X O Taste and the other places that have opened up in Northern Virginia.  The Cantonese steak in the sweet sauce was just like the dish we had at our Chinese meal in Amsterdam and more reminiscent of what was served in 20th century Hong Kong style restaurants, as was the tofu fish casserole.

Once again our training was held at the massive Gaylord resort at National Harbor in now what is described as Fort Washington, MD.  As usual, while some of the food served at the meeting at the Gaylor was inventive, the execution was so-so.  One exception was a green lentil salad that was extremely tasty.   The food highlight of my stay in National Harbor was my snack at the afternoon break.  National Harbor is still almost like the Twilight Zone--fancy restaurants and designer shops, almost no ordinary retail activity like you'd find in a community occupied by real people, except for a drug store and Potomac Gourmet Market.   There was still hardly anybody ever on the streets or in the shops, though a few more than were visible on my first visit to National Harbor three years ago.  However this time I did find a couple of fast food restaurants this time, including ChiDogO's, a Chicago style hot dog place.  I ordered the Italian beef sandwich, which I strangely realized is something I had never eaten before, since there are few Chicago style eateries in Los Angeles.  I would best describe it as Phillippe's French dip without the dip, though it was quite moist. 

After the meeting ended I flew to LaGuardia airport and was picked up by the Sheraton La Guardian shuttle van.  The Sheraton LaGuardia is one of my favorite hotels because they offer van service, plus it's located in the middle of Flushing Chinatown.  Staying only a few minutes after checking into the hotel, I quickly made my way to the Chinese bus lineup on 41st Ave.  Since the bus line includes buses to the Chinatowns of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Elmhurst, and are not marked in English, I had to be careful to make sure I picked the right bus to Manhattan.  (The passengers are all working class Chinese  who speak little or no English so I couldn't ask them.)  I wasn't positive I was on the right bus until we were well along on the freeway.  As I got off the bus on Division St. in Chinatown, my first target was Cafe Hong Kong, the reincarnation of the restaurants formerly known as New Pearl River, Cantoon Garden, and South China Garden, and now known as Cafe Hong Kong. My goal was specifically to try their pineapple chicken, which made South China Garden the only restaurant in Manhttan that met with Mrs. Chandavkl's approval.  We would go to eat that dish and our other favorites up to three times each time we visited Manhattan.  (I once had to stop her from going there a fourth time.)  At the restaurant, I found they did not have pineapple chicken on their streamlined menu, but since they did have pineappple beef there was no problem ordering that dish.  I got there in time to order a lunch special portion, which was fine with me as it left more space to try other places.  They must know how well regarded their food is, as the regular price for the dish is $14!  To me it tasted the same as old, so Mrs. Chandavkl will be happy to learn that

My next stop was Red Farm in West Village  Red Farm is a spinoff of Chinatown Brasserie, the SoHo restaurant which was probably the best Chinese restaurant in Manhattan, but which strangely closed down last year.  However, where Chinese Brasserie was a full sized restaurant, Red Farm is a small restaurant inside what was probably once somebody's house, and which has a capacity of 42 diners and takes no reservations.  Red Farm was just two subway stops on the orange line from the Grand St. station in Chinatown, plus a walk of a few blocks, so I decided I would go to Red Farm right at their 5 pm opening.    While I had mapped out the walk from the 4th Ave. subway station, the problem as an out of towner is that when you come out of a subway station it's hard to figure which direction is which.  I did eventually figure out the general direction to Red Farm, but after two blocks I saw that the street had been blocked off by the police.   Initially it was a puzzle what was going on until I saw a rainbow banner on a building called Stonewall.  At that time I realized there was going to be a celebration there to mark that day's Supreme Court decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act.    There were so many TV transmission trucks there and on scene reporters.  I might have gotten on TV a couple times, as I walked behind reporters who were seemingly doing live reports.  It was really an unexpected bonus to be in the middle of history in the making.

Being well regarded even by people who appreciate authentic Chinese food, Red Farm was also rather expensive, with entrees starting at $25 and going higher.  Consequently I figured the best way to get a feel for their food was to order a bunch of appetizers.  I ordered the smoked cucumber salad, the salmon bruschetta, the steak tarts and the chicken dumplings.  Everything was great except the cucumbers, which were pretty ordinary.  I could not imagine that chicken dumplings could taste so good.  Appetizers came to about $40, so I wouldn't go back as the value isn't there.  (I had the same assessment of Chinatown Brasserie, which while the best Chinese restaurant in Manhattan, was exceeded by many Los Angeles area Chinese restaurants.)   But no question that Red Farm does deserve its high rating among the Chinese restaurants of Manhattan. 

While extremely pleased with my visits to Cafe Hong Kong and Red Farm, I was still a little hungry since I had a smaller lunch portion at Cafe Hong Kong and the Red Farm appetizers were quite small eats.  I took the subway back to Chinatown to try another new restaurant, Division 31 (located at 31 Division St.), where I ordered the Westlake beef soup, which was very flavorful.  I then hopped on the bus back to Flushing.  This time the bus was easy to identify because it was rush hour and there was a queue of people waiting, making the experience even more like lining up for the Disneyland parking lot bus.

Taking the bus back to Flushing I then headed to Oceanica, a new restaurant that succeeded Gala Manor and then New East Cuisine on 37th Ave.  The restaurant is located in a humongous second floor restaurant space off of Main St. and strangely has a Main Street address even though Main St. is a half block away.  Their main attraction was their $25 dinner buffet ($28 on weekends), featuring crab legs, lobster claws, and a whole variety of seafood choices.   But obviously that would be a little too much for me to eat at  that time.  So I ordered the fried tofu, which was actually one of the better versions I've had of that dish. 

In the morning I stopped by Good Kitchen, directly across the street from Oceanica, for dim sum. While New York is not known for keeping up with Chinese food trends, Good Kitchen did have some modern dim sum items, such as durian rolls, Mexican buns and honeydew puffs.  I had the green pea cake, which was kind of like almond jello embedded with green peas, the chicken rice noodle roll, not cheung fun, but more like a rice noodle burrito and the bbq pork buns.  The last item was so so, while the others were both interesting and very good.  I think this shows progress in Flushing's dim sum, which has been fairly ordinary, though not surprising given the lack of much Cantonese presence in Flushing.

For lunch, I had the hotpot at Little Pepper, which was the best known Flushing restaurant that I had yet to try.  I chose glass noodles, fish dumplings, bean curd skin, and snow pea leaves as my ingredients, and this was probably the best hot pot I've had in the US.  However it wasn't worth the $25 tab, and interestingly I was the only customer in the restaurant the entire time.  Of course people tend not to eat hot pots when it's almost 90 degrees outside.  (Actually it was 90 when I went into the restaurant, but by the time I finished the temperature had dropped 20 degrees and it started to rain.)  .  I also bought food for the plane trip home including giant beef bing from Feng Mao on Main St., onion pancakes from OK Ryan (a branch of Canaan Restaurant in Cerritos) on College Point, and a large tub of marinated tofu from Homers Taste, right next to OK Ryan.  I discovered Homers Taste and their marinated tofu on my last trip to Flushing.  It's the best I've ever eaten, with a smooth consistency like egg whites.  Interestingly both Homers Taste and OK Ryan do a massive trade in box lunches.  At OK Ryan I watched five young women furiously pack dozens of styrofoam containers full of Taiwanese food.

This capped a nice visit to Flushing, where I was able to update myself on most every block in the main downtown Flushing area, including the giant New World Mall food court.  While the food court has had significant turnover in tenants since last year, it is packed to the gills, not just at lunch, but even right before their 10 pm closing.  It also made me realize that Flushing is probably the most vibrant urban Chinatown in North America, ahead of San Francisco, Manhattan, Vancouver, Toronto, and of course, Los Angeles.  However since the food is weighted so heavily towards Taiwanese and "mainland" food, food court stalls and small restaurants, it's more specialty food rather than general interest food.

Two Weeks In Europe and Nothing To Eat

Well actually there was food to eat, it's just that it wasn't very good, such that I actually LOST two pounds on the trip.  We're back from our two week Baltic Cruise, and there were few food highlights and many disappointments, though the trip as a whole was so enjoyable that this was merely a minor inconvenience.  This cruise from Amsterdam to St. Petersburg, Russia and back was our first cruise on the Celebrity line, and since we had thoroughly enjoyed the cruise dining on the Princess and Carnival Lines, we were looking forward even more to our trip on the premium, 4½ star Celebrity Constellation.  Furthermore our friends who took this cruise with us had taken the Celebrity Mediterranean cruise 18 months previously and had been very pleased with all aspects of that cruise, including the food.

We were so anxious to begin our culinary adventure that as soon as we checked onto the boat we headed to the lunch buffet, not even stopping to visit our room or drop off our carry on baggage.  However, shortly into our first meal it became clear that something might be amiss.  After finishing the first plate I discovered that there really wasn't anything I wanted to go back for seconds for.  Well maybe it was just the items that happened to be part of this first meal.  But as the cruise continued, neither the food in the San Marco dining room, nor the food in the buffet came close to matching our two Carnival cruises from 2012.  Where last year I sent live food reports back home as I ate, this year I didn't. And as they kept on serving the same old dishes in the buffet (the "Asian" section was invariable except for the final day), it became more and more annoying.  Here I was thinking I would need to run two miles a day in the gym to make up for all the extra food I would be eating, only to find that I wasn't eating any extra.

It wasn't long before we started comparing notes with our friends who had taken the Celebrity Mediterranean cruise and others in our tour group.  There was clearly a consensus.  The food on this trip wasn't very good and certainly didn't match up with prior Celebrity cruises.  But what would cause such a deterioration in the food?  Low quality ingredients?  An executive chef (the only female executive chef in the fleet) who couldn't handle the job?  That was the real puzzle.  The food was so bad we heard other passengers complaining as they rode the elevator.

Of course the problem is that feedback like ours seldom gets back to management.  When the maitre d' came around to the tables with the chef, everybody said that food was fine, since nobody wanted to insult the chef to his face, particularly if the problem was something out of his control.  However, a week into the cruise in St. Petersburg, most everybody decided to attend the Russian ballet, but being tired plus not being highbrow when it comes to the arts, we decided to return to the ship for the dinner.  Since we were the only one from our group at the dinner seating, the waiter had lots of spare time and asked us about the food.  Under those circumstances we could afford to be blunt, and we were.  Immediately he ran to the maitre d' to convey what he had learned, and soon the maitre d' was staring down at us at our table.  At first he was defensive, questioning whether our Asian taste buds were different from the rest of the clientele.  But we retorted we were from California and used to eating Western food.  I delivered the ultimate insult when I told him Carnival's food was better, as he did not consider Celebrity and Carnival to even operating in the same market.   Eventually we convinced him of the validity of our criticisms and he was appreciative hearing what the other guests wouldn't tell him.  The next evening he went to the other tour group members and they also made comments similar to ours.  The maitre d' tried to make it up to us by giving our tables special extra dishes, including stir fried vegetables (tasted like chop suey), fried rice, and steamed vegetables.   He also kept asking what he could do to improve things, but food quality is something you can't fix in the middle of a cruise.

It wasn't that the Celebrity dining room food was uniformly bad (as opposed to the buffet, which was, except strangely for the last day of the cruise).  However there was tremendous inconsistency, both within servings of the same dish on the same day, and similar items on different days.  My lobster tail was great but Mrs. Chandavkl's was overcooked.  Monday's tuna was delicious by Thursday's was awful.  And when you're paying  premium to sail on Celebrity, such lapses in quality just are not acceptable.

What's In A Name? With A Couple of Cantonese Favorites It's Not What You Think

I love the pineapple buns you get at Cantonese bakeries, (known in Cantonese as bo lo bao, literally pineapple bun).  This is in part because I really like the flavor of pineapples.  So imagine my chagrin when after years of eating these I find that there's no pineapple content at all to a pineapple bun.  (I always thought the pineapple was the powdery yellow stuff on top of the bun.)   The term pineapple bun describes the look of the bun, craggy on top like the surface of a pineapple, and has nothing to do with the ingredients.  (Actually the naming is similar to the Cantonese chicken tail bun, a sweet bun made with coconut which clearly has no poultry content.  The name chicken tail bun is an adaptation of "cocktail bun", which is an amalgam of ground up day old buns, coconut and sugar.)  The only thing that makes me not feel completely silly is that very few people are aware of the lack of pineapple in pineapple buns.  Oh well.

More recently one sees Hong Kong style restaurants serving dishes called French Style Shrimp and French Style Fish.  These are dishes served in the manner of the very popular French Style Filet Mignon found at most Hong Kong style restaurants in the Los Angeles area these days.  This is a slightly spicy, slightly sweet. slightly savory dish served on a bed of shredded lettuce and garnished with tomato slices at each end of the dish.   The presentation of French Style Filet Mignon is pretty much uniform in all the Chinese restaurants, and French Style Shrimp and French Style Fish are cooked in the identical manner--spicy, savory, sweet with shredded lettuce and sliced tomatoes.  But what the restaurants who serve French Style Shrimp or Fish seem to have forgotten (or perhaps never knew) is that French Style refers to cutting up the meat into small cubes.  It does not refer to the accompanying ingredients and manner of preparation.  And French Style Shrimp and French Style Fish are definitely not cut into little cubes.   What's next?  French Style Rice?

Why I Don't Use Chopsticks

Having garnered some attention as the person who has eaten at over 6,000 Chinese restaurants, a great deal of focus has been paid to the fact that I can't use chopsticks.  This has generated some negative response in the form of "Well if you like Chinese food so much, why don't you learn to use chopsticks?"  Well the answer lies not in not wanting to use chopsticks, but not being able to use them.

They say the proper way to hold a pair of chopsticks is to hold them the same way you hold a pencil.  That's fine, but I never learned how to hold a pencil the right way.  My mom told me that when I was in the first grade, the teacher spotted the fact that I held the pencil incorrectly.  But alas, it was too late.  She could not undo what I had started and was unable to correct my pencil holding style.  Consequently, my fingers do not have the muscles needed to operate chopsticks. Indeed, I can't even use the spring operated chopsticks mentioned in the L.A. Times article for the same reason.  And believe me it's no fun travelling to Asia and having to remember to bring a fork to every meal, just in case the local restaurant didn't have any.  Interestingly, that has not been an actual problem except for once, in of all places, Los Angeles.

Note that the inability to hold a pencil properly is more than an annoyance.  In holding a pencil the way I do, writing becomes very painful after a short period of time.  Indeed, when I sat for the bar examination in the pre-computer days, I had to do hand exercises for weeks before the bar exam to prepare for the three day writing marathon.

Is. P.F. Chang Really A Chinese Restaurant?

One topic which commonly starts a food fight on internet message boards is whether P.F. Chang can really be classified as a Chinese restaurant.  You see it on Chowhound where somebody makes a comment about P.F. Chang which is followed by indignant responses that P.F. Chang does not serve Chinese food.  Likewise you also see comments on Yelp to the same effect.  Now P.F. Chang certainly doesn't serve authentic Chinese food, but neither do Americanized Chinese restaurants.  Can we say that P.F. Chang is so far afield that even if classifying Americanized Chinese food as still being Chinese, it still doesn't qualify?

Based on my personal experience I would agree that P.F. Chang fails the minimum requirement for being classified as a Chinese restaurant.  I remember walking into a P.F. Chang in San Diego, ordering the lemon chicken, and thinking that while the dish it was good, it certainly wasn't Chinese.  In the case of the lemon chicken, it wasn't breaded like the "authentic" Americanized version of that dish, the sauce wasn't sugary sweet, nor was it gloppy as the dish is typically made.  It was as if they took the name of a real Chinese dish and did their own take on it.  There's nothing wrong with that, except that continuing to call it Chinese is definitely a misnomer.

Confirming that P.F. Chang really doesn't serve Chinese food is one of my friends who hates Chinese food.  A couple of times a year I hold a gathering for a sizable group of people who worked together in the 1980s.  Typically I hold the event at a Chinese buffet because people straggle in and out at different times and this lets people choose the food items they prefer.  But this friend never shows up at these events even though she knows most of the attendees, because that's how much she dislikes Chinese food.  Oh, but there is one "Chinese restaurant" she will eat at--P.F. Chang.

There are any number of other factors which further reinforce the feeling that you're not eating Chinese food.  First of all, there is no P.F. Chang.  Rather the chain was started by Paul Fleming (the P.F.), who did bring in a Chinese consultant, Philip Chiang, that they could name the restaurant after.  Likewise, unless it's by happenstance, the person in the kitchen cooking your food isn't Asian.  While it is debatable whether one has to be Asian to be able to cook Asian style food, it does add credibility knowing somebody Chinese is in the kitchen. 

Then, look at the menu.  First of all, an extensive wine list is something almost never seen at a real Chinese restaurant.  Some Chinese restaurants do have a well stocked bar with hard liquor, and many offer beer, but few serve wine, particularly since wine really doesn't pair with Chinese food.  (Hmm.  Tofu with white wine, sea cucumbers with red?)  Then there's the dessert section full of chocolate goodies, cheesecake, and other Western desserts, never ever seen at a Chinese restaurant.  Not to mention that the main menu is peppered with Southeast Asian and other Pan Asian, non-Chinese items.  And when have you ever seen tuna served at a Chinese restaurant?

So while different people may have different definitions of what exactly constitutes a Chinese restaurant, I have to agree with those who conclude P.F. Chang really isn't Chinese.

They Did What To The Books We Donated?

Proudly, I was one of the founding members of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California way back around 1975.  And what began as gross roots movement by amateur historians has turned into a respected historical society with a number of original publications to its credit.  The latest is a book called Portraits of Pride, Volume II, a $40 coffee table style book over almost 300 pages with biographical profiles of prominent Chinese Americans, mostly from the Los Angeles area.   As with the predecessor book from 8 or 9 years ago, Portraits of Pride, thousands of copies of the book have been earmarked for donation to public libraries throughout the country.

Unfortunately, I have not had to time to actively participate in Society affairs during the past 30 years.  Indeed, I hadn't had time to procure a copy of the new book, either at one of the monthly society meetings, or at the sporadically open society Heritage Center in Chinatown.  So finally I decided that my best bet to buy the book would be through Amazon.com.  But strangely, while Amazon carried the first volume, it didn't seem to stock the new, second version.  However after doing some digging,  I found that while they had no new copies of the book, they had a large number of used copies, which seemed a little odd.  Upon closer examination, I also saw  a number of the used copies were marked "like new" and even "in original shrink wrap."  So I purchased the latter copy for $7.50.  The seller was listed as the Morgan Hill (CA) public library.  So that's what libraries do with donated books!

Fuzzy Math In Washington D.C.

While everybody knows Washington D.C. is the capital of the United States, few realize that Washington D.C. is also the capital of fuzzy math, particularly as practiced by that city's politicians.  A couple of tax proposals introduced by our Congressional representatives this past month are stark indicators of how the numbers work in Washington D.C.

Perhaps the most mind numbing example of the practice of fuzzy math is the Democratic proposal  to delay the sequester for the rest of the  year.  The cost of the sequester delay was $100 billion, to be split between alternate spending cuts of $50 billion and tax increases of $50 billion.  The announcement from the bill's authors proudly proclaimed that the $50 billion tax increase would be funded almost entirely by implementing the Buffett rule, which would take taxpayers whose income is largely taxed at 15 percent due to high concentrations of dividend income and capital gains, and subject them to a 30 per cent tax rate.  This sounds like a neat and easy method of putting the burden of the sequester delay on the very few super rich.  And aside from the "no tax increase, nowhere on nobody" purists, this might sound like a reasonable solution.  Except for the fact that the Buffett rule in fact affects very few taxpayers.  While it makes wonderful news headlines, there are not very many Warren Buffetts or Mitt Romneys who pay such a low overall tax rate.  In fact, there are so few of them that would be affected by the passage of a Buffett rule, that enactment of the Buffett rule would only raise a paltry $5 billion a year in tax revenues.  So how do they come up with $50 billion in revenues from this proposal?   Why by counting ten years worth of Buffett rule revenues in their equation. Yep.  Only in Washington can you balance the budget by offsetting one year (well, really ten months) worth of spending cuts against ten years of revenue increases.

The other example of fuzzy math is a proposal by Senator Levin of Michigan to close a tax loophole that doesn't exist.  Now in Washington D.C., politicians generally stay clear of raising tax rates, but have no qualms about closing "tax loopholes", even though most of those "loopholes" were consciously enacted by Congress to encourage selected economic behavior.  For example, dollarwise the biggest corporate tax "loophole" allows an accelerated depreciation writeoff of plant and equipment, which was specifically designed by Congress to encourage businesses to buy more plant and equipment.  Other loopholes encourage alternative energy sources, such as ethanol or wind energy.  In any event, the object of closing a tax loophole is to raise government revenues.  The loophole that the good senator wants to close is the one that permits corporations to take a bigger tax deduction for stock options granted to employees than the deduction which is allowed in computing the company's earnings reported to shareholders.  Again, this sounds like a potentially reasonable way to increase tax revenues.  Except that when an employer gets a tax deduction for stock options, there is a equal and corresponding amount of compensation income recognized by the employee for tax purposes.  In other words, closing this tax loophole raises zero dollars in revenues for the government.  Or as Billy Preston said, nothin from nothin leaves nothin.

So when the talking robot in "Lost In Space" said "that does not compute" we know it was talking about our politicians in Washington D.C.  I'm thinking we should take all our politicians and spay and neuter them so they won't beget any more.