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 [...]
Tag Archives | Restaurants
3 Taiwanese Dishes Worth the Trip into Flushing
Getting my friends to come on food adventures in Flushing is like pulling teeth. Most of them live in Manhattan or Brooklyn, and are very proud of the fact. "I don’t do outer boroughs," says one. "I don’t leave the Upper West Side," says another. "Why take the train for Chinese food when you can [...]
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 [...]
Yun Nan Flavour Snack – The only Yunnan Spot in New York?
The last time I ate Yunnan food was over two years ago, back in Beijing. It is not for lack of trying. In the US, Cantonese, Sichuan, and Hunan food are ubiquitous. Northern Chinese, Shanghainese Xinjiang, and Fujianese are making headways into cities. But as far as Yunnan restaurants are concerned, the LA area can [...]
Vegetarian Food Gone Wrong
In light of my upcoming move back to the US, I have been digging through old photos from the past year that have not made it on to the blog. Not surprisingly, almost all are still food related. Like this burger. We found it at a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant last summer in Beijing, near the [...]
Karaage! – Japanese-Chinese Fried Chicken
Now, America isn’t the only country that adores fried Chinese food. In Japan, diners go wild for karaage, Chinese-style fried chicken. According to Maki from Just Hungry, “the word kara refers to China, meaning that this method of preparing chicken originated in Chinese cooking (age means deep-fried)”. Like the Chinese, the Japanese also marinate their [...]
Lan Fong Yuen – More than Great Milk Tea
I have written before about Lan Fong Yuen, the food stall in Hong Kong where pantyhose milk tea was supposedly invented. Sure, it’s crowded, gets a lot of tourists, and makes you wait just to snuggle next to strangers. But I love that they still make their milk tea the old-fashioned way, by straining it [...]
