Living far away from family this year, I didn’t celebrate the first week of Chinese New Year by going out for dim sum or another festive meal. I talked to my parents in China via cell phone, made some Sichuan wontons, and called it good. I took solace in the fact that 1) I’ve eaten [...]
Tag Archives | Manhattan
Mantao Chinese Sandwiches
These days, you can get almost anything off a food truck. Progressive-sounding ice cream, Asian hot dogs, cow feet, you name it. However, as I’ve lamented before, what New York really needs is a banh mi truck. Say you are really craving a banh mi, but happen to be lunching outside Chinatown or the East [...]
Kunjip in Koreatown
I don’t really know why I don’t go to Koreatown more often, other than the fact that many of the restaurants there can get pretty pricey. But for months I had been craving bibimbap, which has been an obsession since my trip to Korea two years ago. I especially love the crackling sound of the [...]
Grand Sichuan Redux
Maybe this post should be subtitled "How I feel about Grand Sichuan after living in China and teaching Sichuan cooking for a living." While I had never in love with the Grand Sichuan chainlet around New York, it had always been a dependable source of cheap, tasty, and spicy food. It was also a [...]
Why is Chinese food in San Francisco so disappointing? Also, thank you, Xi’an Famous Foods
This $4 plate of liang pi noodles (“cold skin noodles”) single-handedly made up for all the bad Chinese food I have eaten in the past eight months. First, a tangent. I spent eight months living and working in San Francisco. Apologies in advance to those in the Bay Area, but really, it seemed impossible to [...]
Moo Goo Gai Panini
Hankering for a sandwich while in the East Village last week, I stopped at Marco Polo Café out of sheer curiosity. The tiny shop on St. Mark’s bills itself as "Asian-Italian New Cuisine." The menu, on the other hand, reveals its Asian influence to be entirely Chinese. So, in the spirit of this blog, what [...]
