In New York With The Kardashians and Lots of Unremarkable Chinese Food

Well first the Kardashian part.  Once in a while we get a glimpse of a Kardashian, or really a glimpse of a crowd of people looking for a Kardashian.  Back in 2010 we were celebrating my birthday at Katsuya, on the corner of Hollywood and Vine.  We arrived for an early dinner to beat the crowd, but when we finished dinner there was an absolute mob scene outside.  As we waded our way through the crowd of paparazzi and fans we saw that one of the power couples of the day, Lamar Odom and Khloe Kardashian were coming into the house.  

 

Needless to say it was quite a while until the valet came with our car.  By that time the crowd had gotten significantly larger, and as we drove off a car arrived behind us.  As we drove off, we decided to drive around the block and in front of Katsu-ya again, where we saw that someone was getting out of that car amidst a frenzy of activity.  We actually didn't see the person, but it was clear that somebody was making their way into the restaurant.  We found out from the next day's TV tabloid shows that it was Kim Kardashian alighting from the vehicle that had been behind us.

All this is prefatory to my account of last week's visit to Manhattan and the food I ate there.  For more than 15 years I visited Manhattan two or three times a year, mostly on business.  But having retired in 2018, and with the intervening pandemic, it's been four years since I last visited Manhattan.   Consequently, I was eager to revisit the Chinese food scene in Manhattan to see what was new, and hoping against hope that something better may have opened up in Manhattan in the interim.  (Since this was only a four night trip, there would be no opportunity to visit Flushing, where the Chinese food is much better.)

Of course, most of the time spent in New York was playing tourist, attending Broadway shows and traveling around Manhattan.  I wanted to see the Steinway Building, the world's skinniest skyscraper at just 60 feet wide, but because of the cloudy weather we didn't come close to seeing the top of the building from any vantage point.  But bordering the south edge of Central Park, that took us to 59th Street.  Walking across the street from Central Park, we saw this massive crowd blocking the sidewalk, as well as a slightly smaller crowd directly across the street.  We asked somebody in the crowd what was going on and she said the people were waiting for someone famous to come out, but she didn't know who.  We then walked around the crowd in front of what turned out to be the Ritz Carlton and asked the doorman at an adjacent building what was going on.  "Kardashians."  Enough said.  Like us, the Kardashians had arrived in New York from Los Angeles, though their visit was more purposeful.  This was the family headquarters for that night's Met Gala.

As I have written many times in the past, Chinese food in New York has been clearly a major cut below that in California, going back probably to the 1990s.  A major factor is that Chinese food in America continues to improve due to a combination of new Chinese regional cuisines arriving on our shores, as well as the creation of new dishes, because Chinese love their food so much that everyone is looking for newer and better dishes.  However it takes forever for these dishes to reach New York.  For example, two of my favorite Chinese dishes, Shandong beef rolls and fish dumplings, came to Los Angeles around 2005.  I couldn't find either of these in New York until probably five years ago.  Likewise, new, creative types of dim sum, like crispy baked bbq pork buns came to California around 2015.  But the only reason you can find any at all in New York is that the inventor of the dish, the Tim Ho Wan chain out of Hong Kong, opened a Manhattan branch in 2018.  The crispy baked bbq pork bun is my very favorite Chinese dish,  and surprisingly I did find one other version of this dish in New York, at Awesum Dim Sum near Times Square.  This was the first version of the bun I didn't like; in fact it was terrible.

 

You can multiply the list of cutting edge Chinese dishes in California that you can't get in New York (not even Flushing) many times over.  Most dim sum items in New York date back to the 20th century.  And while a large number of Mainland Chinese based restaurant chains have opened up in California, just a few have opened up locations in New York, adding to the New York Chinese food deficit.

This is not to say you can't get a good Chinese meal in New York, particularly in Flushing.  Over the years there have been a number of outstanding Chinese restaurants in New York that I've liked.   But they have all seemed to have closed down, with the last three, Hakkasan, La Chine, and Joy Luck Palace not having survived  the pandemic.  So in comparing the complete body of work between California and New York, there is no comparison.

This trip to Manhattan was meant to catch up on restaurants that have newly opened since my last visit, so by design I wasn't looking for the best food available.  Consequently the description of the food on this trip as being mediocre needs to take this factor into account, as I was not looking for the best meal available, and was only in Manhattan.

First stop was Tonii's Fresh Rice Noodles on Bayard Street in Chinatown for chicken cheung fun.  I was surprised to see the new style soft stone ground, wrinkly rice noodle brought from Guangzhou and Hong Kong, rather than the old traditional Cantonese pig intestine type roll.  There's also a branch of Guangzhou's Yin Ji Cheng Fan on the block, so Manhattan is up to date on rice noodle rolls.

A couple of doors down from Tonii's is Kong Sihk Tong, a Hong Kong style cafe.  The rice noodle logs with peanut sauce was very interesting.  

The most heralded new restaurant in Chinatown is Uncle Lou, started by a Chinatown old timer who decided to go into the restaurant business and concentrate on old time favorite neighborhood dishes which may have faded from the food scene.  I took a quick peek at the menu before leaving Los Angeles and it seemed interesting.  The buzz around Uncle Lou has been deafening with the restaurant crowded most of the time.  So, arriving for dinner at 7:30pm, it was not surprising to see the restaurant at near capacity.  What was surprising, though, was that only half of the patrons were Chinese.  I later learned that Uncle Lou received rave reviews from Peter Wells in the New York Times and Eater New York.  It was also surprising that I had difficulty in finding a couple of dishes to order for a light dinner.  We ended up with the snow pea leaves, which tasted OK but was tough, and the pork belly with mantou buns which was also OK but on the soft side with nearly melted pork fat. (Insta-potted?)  

 

Still puzzled by the lack of selection when I went back to the hotel room, I checked the menu I had looked at in Los Angeles and it was much more extensive.  Sure didn't look like the menu being circulated in the dining room.  Maybe they cut down on the menu selection to manage the level of activity.  But even if I had other choices, I kind of wonder.  Given than the issue with New York food is that it's behind the times, would having other throwback dishes have led to a more enjoyable meal?  I don't know.

The other new heralded Chinatown dining destination was the Mott Street Eatery, New York Chinatown's first Flushing style food court, still in the process of being leased out.  Flushing's food courts are full of very good eateries and I could spend a week sampling Flushing's food court food.  Mott Street Eatery?  Not so much at this point, though we were too early in the morning to try a couple of the more interesting sounding stalls.  

 

The food court currently is dominated by 89 Eatery (the reverse of the 98 Mott Street address), serving Cantonese noodles, dim sum, and other Cantonese specialties.   We ordered the wonton noodles.  It was awful.  The broth was like dishwater and even pouring soy sauce in didn't make it palatable.  And the noodles were soggy.

Meanwhile, the bolo bao from Zhen Pin Cafe was equally tasteless.

 

Only the fish paste tofu from Yan Wo Dou Bun was any good.

 

Another one of our NY Chinatown favorites that closed after our last New York trip was Sing Kee Seafood on Bowery.  It's replacement, NB Wing Wong, is highly regarded, receiving mention in Resy's Guide To Manhattan Chinatown.  (Having authored a piece for the corresponding Resy guide for Los Angeles Chinese food, I take the Resy guide seriously.)  Stopping by for jook one morning, the pork with salted egg jook tasted like, well, salt water.

One real highlight was at Green Garden Village, where after ordering a beef cheung fun, they actually prepared it within sight!  Not an extraordinary tasting end product, but I was happy.

The problem with dim sum in Manhattan Chinatown is that most of the major purveyors, like Jing Fong, Golden Unicorn, Nom Wah and Ping's have been around forever and are short on innovation.  Even the most inventive dim sum restaurant, Dim Sum Go Go, has been around almost 20 years.  One newcomer which is not talked about, and draws a large neighborhood crowd is Seng Seafood on East Broadway.  Their fish balls compare favorably with what I'm used to in California.

And I did find a little dim sum innovation at E-Noodle Group, which serves mostly noodle soup but also has a few dim sum items.  This jade har gow looked great and tasted very good, too.

Another new restaurant was New Hong Wong on Bowery.  This was the interesting sounding eel with rice casserole.  Unfortunately the rice was not cooked enough and gave Mrs. Chandavkl extreme indigestion, though the flavor was good.

The beef chow fun was pretty good, but the noodle itself was reminiscent of the old style noodle which is a little less smooth, a little less chewy, and not translucent like the noodles we are used to.

Another new interesting restaurant was 95 Grand Master on Chrystie Street.  We were especially intrigued by the white board special outside listing carp in black bean sauce, so we ordered it for $48.  The owner said that the center section with the stomach was a favorite with all his customers, so we took his advice.  Maybe his client base liked the stomach, but we sure didn't, as it wasn't meaty.

So he offered to replace it with the tail section which was very meaty.  But while the tail was meaty, it wasn't flaky.  It was probably undercooked.  Also not terribly flavorful.

However the Chinese broccoli with lap yuk was pretty good, and 95 Grand Master might have possibilities.

One thing I had no problem with was the Chinatown bakeries.  Tao Hong on Christie St. had the best pineapple top bbq pork bun I had ever eaten, and their egg tarts are the best in New York Chinatown, too.  And incredibly it's probably the cheapest bakery in Chinatown with this bun going for $1.50.  Another amazing thing is that Tao Hong is located in the same building as Wah Fung #1, which probably makes the best mass produced char siu in the United States.  Two gems side by side on the little known Chrystie Street in Little Fuzhou, the non-touristy portion of Manhattan Chinatown east of Bowery.

Also all the sandwiches at all the Chinese bakeries, made with water roux, which makes the various pastries at the Chinese bakeries so smooth and creamy, were great.  Here's the fish sandwich from Bake Culture, the Taiwan based bakery chain on Bowery.

A chicken sandwich from New Kamboat Cafe on Bowery.    Really good baked bbq pork buns and Macao egg tarts, too.

And the best of all, the fish sandwich from Double Crispy, which also had a nice selection of pastries including raisin buns, apple turnovers and lemon buns.

All in all it was a successful trip which enabled me to get back in touch with the food scene in New York Chinatown.  While the food there isn't the greatest, having eaten at about 450 different Chinatown New York restaurants over the years, I've gained a level of comfort eating there which makes up at least in part for the lesser quality.

 

Stark Commentary On The Decline of Cantonese Food

As you may know, King Hua, one of the top tier SGV dim sum restaurants was one of the first pandemic casualties back in 2020. It was one of a succession of dim sum restaurants operating at that location dating back to 1984 and Casa de Oriente, which chose a decidedly un-Chinese name so as to not ruffle feathers in what was then still a largely white area of Alhambra. That space is now occupied by the first US branch of the Chengdu based Sichuan nightclub chain JiangHu Bistro. This really puts an exclamation mark on the shift we’re seeing in the SGV and Chinese communities all over the US away from Cantonese cuisine and to Non-Cantonese Mainland cuisines. As such I wanted to drop by to see how the premises changed from where I enjoyed so many Cantonese meals to one where I discovered myself in a red fog.

Crowds At Bafang Dumpling Are Crazy—But Partly Self-Inflicted

Bafang Dumpling recently opened on the perimeter of the Puente Hills Mall that fronts on Azusa Ave., adjacent to stores such as Starbucks and Krispy Kreme.  It's the biggest dumpling chain in Taiwan and word of its arrival created great excitement, particularly in the Taiwanese American community and leading to a mob scene on opening day.

I dropped by Bafang Dumpling, and while the excitement of the opening has dropped off, it is still quite a madhouse.  However as I learned, the mayhem is at least partially self-inflicted.  Actually I approached the store with trepidation on two separate counts.  First of all, of course, was the fear that the crowds would be unmanageable.  In addition, Bafang was profiled by EaterLA, and the article contained disturbing management comments that consistent with their location in the Puente Hills Mall street frontage, Bafang was trying to crack the general fast casual market, competing with players like Chipotle, and indeed admitting to tweaking their recipes to American tastes.  Horrors! 

However when I arrived, I was relieved that to see that the line went only to the front entrance, and that the shop was besieged by Taiwanese expats, hungry for a taste of Taiwan’s biggest dumpling chain, with nary a potential Chipotle customer in sight.

However things changed after I arrived.  It was nearly a 15 minute wait by the time I got to the front of the line to order, and when I got to my table I saw that the line had grown much longer.  And then it was at least another 15 minutes before my order was ready. This preparation gap makes no sense to me because the entire menu barely exceeds a dozen items. Famous for their potstickers and their dumplings, they only offer two varieties of each, “signature Bafang” and kimchee, which means everybody coming through is going to be ordering primarily these four items.    I did not realize at the time how lucky I was because it turns out it’s not unusual to have to wait an hour in line to order, and then another 30 minutes to get your food, which just deepens the mystery of why it takes so long to prepare your food. So with such a drawn out wait to get your food, it’s no surprise that the line to place your order is so long, and that the length of the wait is not solely due to the demand for the product.

The food itself is very good and the prices are extremely reasonable, which probably explains why so many people endure the wait. The signature Bafang potstickers are sold by the dozen and are excellent. No signs of the food having been adapted to non-Chinese tastes.

The signature Bafang dumplings are also very good, as are the signature Bafang noodles.

A dozen potstickers, a dozen dumplings and the noodles came to $25. I’d surely go back to Bafang if I didn’t have to wait in line.

Wagyu House Is The Most Stunning and Possibly Already The Most Popular Chinese Restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley

Wagyu House by X-Pot opened late last year in the former Golden Valley location on Gale Ave. in Industry and may already be the busiest Chinese restaurant in the entire San Gabriel Valley as evidenced by the hour long waits even on weeknights.  But most people have not heard of this restaurant or know of its existence, probably because it's not aimed at the masses.  It's the upscale offshoot of the Chubby Cattle Hot Pot mini-chain which set up in Las Vegas a few years ago and strangely expanded to Philadelphia and Denver.  This was followed by the upscale X-Pot restaurant opened in the Palazzo in Las Vegas, billed as the largest hotpot restaurant in North America.  The  Las Vegas branch is a real high tech experience that includes interactive lighting on your table and a menu tab that can run $500 or more.  The City of Industry branch (actually referred to as the Los Angeles branch of the chain, since "Industry" just doesn't cut it with the restaurant's upscale profile) isn't as expensive--they even have a $128 lunch combo that feeds two.  And the local branch doesn't have the high tech glitter of Las Vegas.  But apparently, diners who have been to both locations say the food here is better.

Oh.  And the restaurant has its own wagyu farm in Texas.

                                                                                                                                                                          

Close up of the fish paste, made up to look like little fish!          

                                                         

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

                                                                                              

Besides hotpot you can get wagyu on skewers or in other forms.    

                                                                                                         

What We Ate In Honolulu (2022), Part 3

First of all, for those of you who don't remember seeing parts 1 and 2 of this series, this is not the case like the record album "The Smothers Brothers Golden Hits, Volume 2," for which there had been no corresponding Volume 1.  Rather, parts 1 and 2 of What We Ate in Honolulu were titled with specific reference to restaurants we ate at, Senia and Yung Yee Kee, both restaurants where we had an extraordinary number of notable dishes.  So this part 3 will cover all of the other restaurants we ate at during our stay.

Arriving in Honolulu on an early Tuesday afternoon, we headed straight for the food court upstairs from the H Mart in the center of Honolulu.  The primary attraction there was the brick and mortar branch of the ridiculously busy North Shore food truck, Giovanni's Shrimp Truck.  Waiting maybe a minute in a short line here sure beats waiting an hour or more at the North Shore truck.  The garlic shrimp was great, but I do question the sanity of anyone who would drive out to North Shore and then wait in a long line, when you can get the same product in town with no muss or fuss.

Also in the same H Mart food court was a tea and snack shop with the strange name Teasket Toasket, apparently referencing their selling both tea drinks and toast items.  Still, the name was odd on two accounts.  First it was visually strange, but in addition I have to believe that it was a wordplay on the old rhyme which became an Ella Fitzgerald hit over 80 years ago, A Tisket, A Tasket, which I didn't think anybody younger than myself would even be familiar with.

I had the Hawaiian egg bread which was quite good, and also very visual from multiple angles.

The first night's dinner was hastily arranged as the first choice, X O Restaurant had to close down unexpectedly for that evening.  Consequently we ended up at DoraKu at Kaka’akao.  Dinner started with hamachi carpaccio.

Agedashi tofu.

Hamachi sushi.

The always delicious miso butterfish.

Grilled oyster mushrooms.

Hamachi collar.

Mixed nigiri.

 

And lastly, an awful cream corn on the cob which I had to finish off because nobody else would touch it.

It's a good thing that this was our first dinner of the trip because at the time it seemed decent enough, but in hindsight it clearly was a cut below most everything else on the trip.  Yet, both this branch of DoraKu Sushi, and the branch in the Royal Hawaiian Center that we passed a few days later had crowds waiting to get in.

Next breakfast was a reprise visit to Marugame Udon, a block away from our hotel.  This time I had the kitsune udon.   Still so much better than the Los Angeles branch.

 

After lunch on the way back to the hotel we stopped at Ice Monster for a strawberry shaved ice.  But barely more than six months after our last visit, where we enjoyed the same fantastic ice that we had eaten at the Taipei branch back in 2019, something had changed.  The ice somehow had become sort of dry and not as delicious.  Don't know what happened.

 

We finally made it to our original dinner target for the first night, X O Restaurant on Waialae Ave., founded by former employees of Senia Restaurant which I chronicled in a separate article.  No surprise based off its blood lines that X O Restaurant served interesting combinations of flavors and ingredients.  This is their beet-lotus-quinoa salad.

Here's the oxtail truffle xiao long bao.  Surprisingly not as flavorful as one would have expected.

No complaints about the crispy rice topped with foie gras, though.

Seared scallops with crispy kale and brussel sprouts was another great combination.

Adobo fried chicken turned out to be a clunker, though.

 Another interesting dish was Kalua chow farci with sweet potato haupia,

And finally for dessert, brown bunny mochi.

Continuing with the Senia connection, the next day's brunch was at Senia's newly opened affiliate Podmore, in the government district just south of Chinatown.  We first started with the tri-color quinoa salad.

Here's the wonderful Christmas breakfast of salmon, egg, spinach and potatoes.

How about beer battered crispy egg?

And for dessert, the chocolate cheesecake waffle (which wasn't actually listed in the dessert section, but in the entrees).

Dinner at the Koa Luau at Wailea Falls wasn't as good as last year's luau food, though the entertainment here was much more professional.

Last year we visited Piggie Smalls, so this time we visited the Chinatown mothership, The Pig & The Lady.  Since we had already tried the specials last year, it was just simply pho this time.

Actually, more intriguing than the menu was the restroom!

 

With all our lunches and dinners planned in advance by the kids, the only room for improvisation was for breakfast (the hotel had a microwave in the lobby, so food purchased the day before provided broader options) and snacks.   With the scarcity and cost of fresh produce, finding this dish of oyster sauce lettuce at Lam's Kitchen in Honolulu Chinatown was a real treat.

 

Once again I was thwarted in my attempt to buy manapua, the Hawaiian version of the baked bbq pork bun, as the bakeries sell out early.   Had to settle again for a coconut bun, this time from Lee's Bakery & Kitchen on King St., which is another island specialty.

 

And another vegetable dish from Chinatown was the Chinese broccoli with fresh (as opposed to dried) pieces of salty fish, kind of a Chinese equivalent of bacon bits, from Yong's Kitchen.

Paia Fish Marketplace was one restaurant that was chosen due to its proximity to our hotel.  The Sauteed mahi mahi was quite good.

 

But little Jemma was slow to eat her noodles with cheese and butter.

The other repeat from last year was the ramen from Wagaya.  This time it was the garlic ramen that was fabulous.

And the daikon salad was interesting and good.

The last scheduled dinner that we actually got to eat was at Tommy Bahama.  Yes, that Tommy Bahama, entered through the Tommy Bahama store in Waikiki, on the second floor.  The opening dish, the ahi tuna poke, showed that this restaurant was legit.

As was the miso salmon.

As well as the macadamia crusted mahi mahi.

A real surprise was the chicken salad.

And a pretty decent New York steak.

The last choreographed meal we had was at Ramen Ono-Ya on Kapahulu Ave.   Shoyu ramen was good.

As was the tonkatsu black.

 

With a side order of chicken karaage and gyoza.

 

Top meals were also planned for 53 By The Sea and a sushi izakaya restaurant, but Little Jemma wasn't feeling well and those meals had to be cancelled.  The penultimate dinner was cancelled rather late, so our choices near the hotel were limited.   We ended up at the Royal Hawaiian Center food court, which was in the process of closing up.  But I can't complain about the Shanghai angus beef dish from Panda Express, since it gave me a chance to try one of their new items.

The following day's brunch was also right by the hotel at Basalt.  The egg white frittata was so so.

 

But the chicken salad was excellent.

We caught a break when there was hardly a line outside of the Island Village Shave Ice Cart outside of the Royal Hawaiian Center, so we grabbed a Heavenly Lillikoi shave ice.  Better than Matsumoto's on North Shore.

 

The last dinner was rescheduled for Basalt, but we couldn't even make that.  Since I wasn't keen on eating twice at the same restaurant on the same day, that was fine with me, as that gave me a chance to head on over to Tim Ho Wan in the Royal Hawaiian Center.  Mind you, I'm no fan of the US branches of Tim Ho Wan, except for the crispy bbq pork buns, and whose menu is overpriced to boot.  However, compared to many of the meals on our trip, Tim Ho Wan was relatively inexpensive, and it did give me a chance at their pork buns.

 

I did see one intriguing new item on their menu, the black bean lobster cheung fun.  Expensive at $12.50 and unfortunately it was awful.

 

On the other hand, the egg white shrimp egg roll was actually pretty good.

The har gow was equally good, but the chow mein was terrible, indeed several steps below the chow mein we got out of the steam tray the night before at Panda Express.

 

As it turned out, our flight back home was delayed by over an hour, so that gave us one last meal at the airport, fish tacos from Local HNL.  Fairly decent though expensive at $16 for a pair.

Plus a chance for takeout for the flight home from Chowmein Express.  This chow fun was actually a find as it was the old Hawaiian style dry wheat chow fun noodle, as opposed to the fresh rice noodles typically used this days.  This dish is seldom seen on the mainland.

 

All in all, despite missing out on a couple notable planned meals, I had no complaints about our second eating expedition to Hawaii in a little over six months.