Spoon Goes to China

The fortune cookie that accompanied my meal on the flight read "It could be better, but it's good enough." It was certainly an optimistic view of the awful food they served as we soared over half the world en route from Newark to Beijing. I worried: will I have to adapt this motto as I eat my way around China for the next 10 days? Seven days in, I'm happy to report: bu!

Despite a few missteps, the food I've had in China so far has largely been excellent. Every meal features at least three vegetables, one of which is often baby bok choi. There are flashes of familiarity--something approximating kung pow chicken, the occasional steamed dumpling--but other apparent staples here are completely new to me, like spicy green beans, which have appeared at our tables numerous times, each time better than the last.

Those green beans were a part of a mult-course feast at the beautiful South Beauty in Shanghai, where we noshed on lotus root stuffed with sticky rice, spicy chicken stuffed inside baby pumpkins, shark fin soup, and even a Chinese take on foie gras. We ate with a group of Chinese people I was introduced to through a friend, and laughed our way through the cultural differences between China and the West. Who knew they eat their rice after the meal?

The green beans also showed up yesterday, when we asked our driver to take us to a good local restaurant after trekking up and down the Great Wall at Mutianyu. It was a roadside cafe of sorts, and my friends and I were the only Westerners there. The food was delicious: crispy fried fish, a revelatory eggplant in a tangy brown sauce, spicy chicken with peanuts and of course those green beans. And the meal was punctuated with fireworks! No matter that it was the middle afternoon, and not a holiday. How festive!

Speaking of, it's already Thanksgiving here--and we're getting ready to stage a full-blown American feast over here in Beijing. Should be interesting!--S

The Sum of Its Parts

DIM SUM GO GO
5 East Broadway
New York, NY 10038
Tel 212.732.0797

TWO SPORKS

Dim Sum Go Go may not have the signature clattering carts or raucous atmosphere of a typical New York dim sum restaurant, but it's no less of an authentic experience. It's Chinatown's first nouvelle dim sum joint, with a hip-minimalist dining room, helpful service, and some amazing dumplings. So that's where we headed when my mom--who can make a marinara sauce in her sleep and assists chefs at cooking classes in her free time--told me she wanted to have dim sum for her birthday.

Our waiter led us through the paper menu, helping me tick off two of these and two of that with a stubby little pencil. Within minutes, Mom, Dad, Aunt Ann, Uncle Roly, Fork and I were enjoying Tsingtao beers and watching the staff carry towers of bamboo steamer baskets filled with delicious dim sum to our table. The pork buns landed first, and we all bit in to our own simultaneously, oohs and aahs erupting: the hot, baked buns filled with roasted pork were "a home run," my dad declared.

Next, fried rolls containing shrimp and mango, light and fresh. And then, the dumplings, beautiful little rounds bursting with flavor. The meat offerings included shredded duck with ginger, pork and shrimp mixed together, shrimp and chive (a crowd favorite), seafood dotted with black sesame seeds, and crabmeat wrapped in green spinach dough. On the vegetarian side there were Jade Dumplings, stuffed with asparagus and ginger; and Abbot's Delight, with shredded carrot, jicama and cabbage. We dipped these delicacies in a variety of tasty sauces: wine vinegar-garlic, chili, and ginger-scallion. By this point, we were in full-on dim sum mode. Forget our initial plan to start with dim sum and move to traditional entrees. More dumplings! We stopped momentarily to contemplate how wonderful and non-greasy everything was, and then consulted with our waiter for round two.

This time we sampled little meatballs and pork wrapped in bean curd. Both were excellent. We also tried the pumpkin cake (our waiter's favorite dish), which added a delightfully sweet note to the savory menu; and the chicken and sticky rice in lotus leaf, which wins the evening's Most Dramatic Presentation award. After unwrapping two layers of leaves, we found a rectangle of very sticky rice. Tucked in the middle of the rice: a bundle of richly-flavored roasted chicken.

The dumplings' paper-thin skins meant you ate more filling than doughy exterior, and the fresh flavors and lack of heavy MSG left us feeling sated but not stuffed. So go, go to Dim Sum Go Go!--S

Best in Chow

Grand Sichuan
227 Lexington Ave.
(btw. 33th, 34th Street)
(4,5,6 to 33rd Street)
NY, NY 10016
Tel: 212-679-9770/9771
THREE SPORKS

When I first moved to New York, a fresh-faced young grad in 1989, I made a whopping $13,500 annually as an editorial assistant at Penguin USA. Ah, so much promise, so many hopes and dreams. So little cash.

Like my non-trust-funded peers in publishing, I had little choice other than to subsist on Chinese food, ordering bountiful two-dollar quarts of Lo Mein pretty much every night. Back then my affinity for Chinese cuisine was poverty-driven. I could have eaten shredded newspaper for all I knew. The price was right, the shiny noodles nicely soaked up the booze I devoted most of my disposable income to, and there were often greasy leftovers to salve a painful hangover. It’s fun to reminisce, isn’t it?

Speaking of hangovers, I got one from too much Chinese food. For years I swore off the stuff entirely, emotionally and intestinally scarred from too many forced-feedings at those little neighborhood woks: you know the ones: a cook, a cashier, a freezer and a vat of boiling oil behind three inches of misty, bullet-proof glass adorned with a numbered, pictorial menu. Yes, after months of indulgence, I blew out my palate and fell face down in my pu-pu platter. I opened my fortune cookie that night, and it read: you’re fucked.

After a lengthy period of culinary rehab, however, I was back--and with both a more refined palate and a more adventurous diet than the one forged in the salty crockpots of my youth in Central New York. Thanks also to a, well, a modestly expanded food budget, I rediscovered the gastronomic pleasures of the Orient, from the white-coated waiters and high-end prices of Mr. Chow and Shun Lee Palace, to the dingy authentic Chinatown kitchens. Have the Wor Wonton soup at Hop Kee, or Dim Sum at Chelsea House and you'll know what I mean.

Today, when the question is “ni yao chi wufan ma?” my answer is yao!

That's all for another post. When talking about Chinese food in New York, we’re usually talking delivery. And today, I’m crowning a new champion: Grand Sichuan, in Murray Hill. It’s authentic and nicely spiced dishes add a newfound excitement to what has become the boring old idea of ordering in Chinese food.

For those of you not familiar with Sichuan (or Szechuan) cooking, it is the hot and spicy sister of the milder Cantonese offerings. Originating in the Sichuan Province, located in the hot, humid climes of southern China, Sichuan hallmarks include stir frying and ingredients like the Sichuan mala, or the “numbing pepper,” A fragrant, powerful, almost citrus-like spice, along with things like ginger and bean chili paste. Kung Pao chicken is an example of a popular Sichuan dish.

There are plenty of milder dishes on Sichuan menus as well, but, well, why would you bother? If you’re going to enjoy Sichuan cooking, go for the spice. The flavors offered by Grand Sichuan’s spicy dishes are intoxicating, yet not overbearing. You’ll feel the heat, yes, but not so much as to overcome other elements carefully balanced in these dishes.

We recommend the cellophane noodles with minced pork, thin, clear rice noodles, that take on both the frangrance and hue of the pepper and the flavor of the pork; Beef with snow peas and carrots, the meat pounded to softness and prepared with a dusting of Chinese rice flour that produces a rich gravy; and don’t miss the spare ribs in spicy sauce. Little pork ribs, almost Korean style in how they fall off the bone, served in a hot and peppery sauce with slightly poached celery and cut with soothing fresh cilantro.

From all we’ve seen and heard, dining in at Grand Sichuan leaves something to be desired service-wise. But if you’re dining in at a Chinese restaurant and critiquing the service, you’re missing the point, so just leave your 10-percent tip and get the fuck out of New York, there’s an Applebee’s waiting for you somewhere.

Spoon and me will almost certainly dine in at Grand Sichuan soon, if only to try their version of the authentic Sichuan torture, um, delicacy known as the “hot pot" (pictured above). The hot pot is the most famous and favorite dish in Chongqing. It was first eaten by poor, obviously masochistic boatmen on the Yangtze River and has now become the specialty of an obviously masochistic region. It involves gathering around a small pot of atomic, peppery soup base boiled over a fire (or in nyc, electric burner) into which you dip slices of raw meat, fish, bean curd and vegetables Shabu Shabu style, boiling them in the soup base. You then dip them again into a little bowl of special sauce before eating.

When Anthony Bourdain visited China on his excellent show, No Reservations, he sat around a hot pot with his guides and sweated like he was sitting on nails in a Sauna. Now that’s good TV!--F

East Meets East

Chinese Mirch
120 Lexington Ave (Cross Street: 28th Street)
New York, NY 10016
(212) 532-3663
Directions: 6 train to 28th Street
THREE SPORKS

Just days after Spoon finished running her second New York Marathon, Carlos and his girlfriend Lisa kindly invited us to dinner at Chinese Mirch, an Indian-Chinese fusion joint located in the heart of Curry Hill. Katy, Alex and Robin joined us, comprising a most excellent crowd of fearless spice-loving New Yorkers. When we arrived, the spice had already begun to flow. Carlos and Lisa had arrived first and gotten the meal off to a delectable start with an order of smoked, chili-dusted fried Okra. The pods were served in a paper funnel, like belgian frites, upright in a silver stand. We ordered beers, chomped away on the Okra, and re-ran the highlights of Spoon's Marathon and marveled at her remarkably quick and efficient recovery.

A few months earlier Carlos had invited us and a few friends to his place on the West side and cooked for us a delectable Mexican feast, favorites from his childhood. It was a spicy, delicious meal with Patron tequila flowing throughout and finished with some fresh ice creams from the Chelsea Market and Spoon's own homemade pistachio. We'll try to get Carlos to post the menu and recipes at some point. It was at this dinner that I first heard about Lisa--actually it was my first time meeting Carlos! Like Carlos, Lisa, who resides in cold and rainy (ahem) San Diego is also a scientist. I have few friends who are scientists, and I find I really dig saying "my friend...the scientist." Not to mention that Carlos' work is fascinating. He works with lab rats. Drills their brains, too. Cool.

Dinner at Chinese Mirch was the first chance we had to get to know Lisa, and we liked her immediately. It's a lovely thing when two scientists get together and successfully form this volatile compound called love, truly a bond no supercollider could ever hope to top.

So, away we feasted. Amazingly, no one at the table ordered the same thing, so between appetizers and platters we got to try at least a dozen dishes from Chinese Mirch's extensive, inventive menu. The appetizers were mostly little fried bits of food. Cauliflower, Okra. Corn fritters. Very tasty, although we each got nailed at some point by the miniature, bright-green peppers hidden in the dishes--yow they were hot. It was a quick-hit hot, though, nice and clean; once you downed a little water (and it helped that the waitstaff was very on top of the refill situation), you were back in the game. Standouts among the appetizers included fore-mentioned Okra and the lollipop chicken--wings trimmed like little drumsticks lightly fried and coated in a spicy sauce.

When dining out at spicy restaurants, its always nice to have a doctor along. Good thing for us, Alex is a physician, and was even donned in his emergency room garb as he was scheduled to begin a ten hour shift at Montefiore hospital at 10 pm. Having a doctor at the table made Fork even braver as we feasted. Luckily Alex's skills were not required, but he regaled us with fascinating stories of life NYC's emergency rooms. Mostly, as you might guess, they're full of sick people with no clue how as to get treated. We were astonished to learn however that gunshots were so routine, nearly a nightly occurrence, if not surprised that drug-related incidents were all-too-common.

Dinner came with a flurry of plates, and we passed them round, family style, dining on chili garlic noodles, spicy sauteed garlic prawns, chicken coriander, fluke fillets in hot curry, and thin crispy strips of szechuan lamb. And, of course, many cold beers. Here the choice was clear: go for the Tsing-Tao over the Kingfisher.

The verdict? For us, the spice was perfectly meted out. The fusion of East and, uh, East were nicely blended but also distinguished. The service was good. And the room, while crowded and as generic as any chinese or Indian kitchen (minus the penchant for christmas lights so popular on sixth street) was nevertheless festive. On a scale of 5, Spoon and Fork give Chinese Mirch three Sporks. We definitely recommend Chinese Mirch for fans of the eastern spices.

Do yourself a favor: come early or late. During the peak dinner hours (7-10)the restaurant can get awfully crowded and waits for a table can get up to 45 minutes. And spice lovers are notoriously bad with waiting. Fork throroughly enjoyed watching an altercation between a hefty, bearded older man and a tartily made-up young lady over who was the annointed heir to the next table for two. "No, I didn't give you my name," the gentleman insisted, "but I was here before them."

Nice try, dude. While Fork waited for a young lady to finish with the men's room (she left the seat down, typical) He was amused to watch the rejected table-seeker stand just inside the doorway of the restaurant glaring as the hostess seated the winning young lady and her friend just a few feet from the dispossessed. Enjoy the view!

The next morning, Carlos and Lisa were off to Mexico City to visit Carlos' family. Word later arrived over the transom that they were engaged! Spicy, indeed! Congratulations, Carlos and Lisa.