2015 is the Year of the Sheep, and Chinese New Year is Thursday, February 19ththis year. The 16th Annual Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade in New York will take place at 1:00 PM on Saturday, February21, 2015 featuring floats, marching bands, lion and dragon dances galore, Asian musicians, magicians, acrobats and local NYC organizations. If you are heading to Chinatown to celebrate Chinese New Year, here are some suggestions for when you get hungry. As a longtime denizen of Chinatown, for me the real questions not just “where” but “what” to eat. Here’s my list of what’s delicious.
My all-time favorite for Chinese food is Shanghai Café Deluxe at 100 Mott Street. There is always a line, but it moves quickly and it is worth the wait. Everyone comes for delicious Soup Dumplings (No. 1 on the menu—Steamed Tiny Buns with Crabmeat and Pork.”) They are hand-made on the spot and served scaldingly hot. Beware—there is a ritual to eating them. You carefully lift the dumpling with your chopsticks from the bamboo steamer and place it sideways into your soup spoon. Gently bite a tiny hole to allow the steam to escape. If you are attached to the roof of your mouth WAIT for the dumpling to cool then drink the soup from inside the dumpling through the hole you have made, before popping the whole dumpling into your mouth. (If you are not sure how to do it even after this detailed explanation, watch someone else until you get the hang of it. If you don’t you will scald your mouth and ruin your shirt.)
While you are waiting for your dumplings to cool, try the Bean Curd Skin with Preserved Cabbage and Green Bean. The “green beans” are actually edamame, and the tofu skin has been turned into a chewy noodle. It’s fabulous! Also try the rice cakes with pork and preserved cabbage, the squid with salt and pepper, and the absolutely divine snow pea leaves which are sautéed with oil and garlic, and are a crunchier and more delicately flavored vegetable than the ubiquitous sautéed spinach.
Across the street Paris Restaurant sells Green Tea Waffles with various toppings, including condensed milk, for your dessert.
If you want to make the snow pea leaves for yourself at home, you can usually find them at the Hong Kong Supermarket on the corner of Hester and Elizabeth Street. Here you will also find Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Thai specialties such as dried seaweed, coconut milk, kimchi, Pocky sticks and canned water chestnuts along with English goodies from Hong Kong like Ribena (blackcurrant cordial loaded with Vitamin C), Cadbury’s Chocolate, and Ovaltine. Hong Kong Supermarket also has a sushi takeout at the front of the store, where the chefs make the reasonably priced and delicious fresh sushi in front of you. But if you want to sit down and savor your American Dream rolls and fried oyster appetizers, and gorge yourself with the generous Combo meals, walk up to Mikakuat 85 Kenmare Street.
Located at 157 Mott Street just north of Grand St. is Pho Bang Restaurant. I have been going to Pho Bang for wonderful authentic Vietnamese food since I first arrived in New York thirty years ago, and it is never disappointing. Order the Banh Tap, shrimp chips topped with rice lasagna noodle, grilled pork and fried onions. Like the piping hot Spring Rolls, you wrap them in lettuce and mint and dip them into a sweet and spicy sauce before crunching down on a chewy crunchy-spicy combination of textures and flavors. My daughter likes the chicken salad, my son swears by the Pho Ga Nuong soup with grilled chicken on the side to cut up and add to the soup with the bean sprouts and lemon grass, and I opt for either No. 46, Bun Tom Nuong, “Marinated Grilled Shrimp with Shredded Green Leaves and Cucumber on Rice Vermicelli,” or the Clay pot rice casserole.(Cash only.)
For the best Vietnamese lunch of Summer Rolls and Banh Mi sandwiches, venture behind the jewelry store at Banh Mi Saigon on Grand St. between Mott and Mulberry. Here, where everything is made to order, there is also a line, but no-one complains because the new premises are so much more spacious than the previous location in a very narrow storefront on Mott St. And you can peruse the jewelry once you have ordered. (Cash only.)
Traditional Chinese Dim Sum brunch is best at the gorgeous huge Chinese banquet restaurants. My go-to Dim Sum place is Jing Fong on Elizabeth Street just south of Canal. You arrive and get a number from the Maitre D’ downstairs, and then wait in the lobby (or on the street if the lobby is full) with New Yorkers of all types until your number is called. It usually doesn’t take that long although it can seem like an age when you are hungry and smelling the tantalizing aromas of Chinatown on a Sunday morning. While you are waiting for your table send one of your party up to Canal and Mulberry for Hong Kong Cakes (15 pieces for $1) from Ling’s cart. Once your number is called, you will ascend the precipitous escalator to the enormous Jing Fong banquet floor. There you will be seated at a share table (sharing the table not the food as one of my absent-minded guests once did to the alarm of our startled neighbors) and given a tally card and a pot often. The waitresses wheel around carts with different types of pot-stickers and dumplings on them and you point at what you want, they give it to you and mark your card and so the feast begins. I have found it is particularly useful to go with children who show no shame and will happily pursue the waitress with the steamed shrimp dumplings “that Mommy really really likes” to the far corners of the restaurant. (Make sure you send them with the tally card.) Chinatown is one of the few (if only) places in New York City where children are welcomed and loved and tolerated even when they are having tantrums. Just try to comb their hair and bribe them to put something on other than the grimy overalls they have been wearing in the playground for the last six days. The Chinese children are always beautifully dressed and it can be mortifying when you turn to look at your own kids who suddenly seem to resemble the children in Dorothea Lange’s photographs.
After lunch or brunch or dinner at any of these great restaurants, walk down to the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory on Bayard Street, (between Mott and Elizabeth) for a dessert of Red Bean, Lychee, Green Tea, Black Sesame or Chocolate Pandan ice-cream.
If you can’t make it to Chinatown, the Nom Wah Tea Parlor will deliver to anywhere in Manhattan south of 60 St. Located in the charm of old world Chinatown on Doyers Street, the Nom Wah Tea Parlor has been in the Tang family for generations. With its booths and tile floors it feels like a quiet step back in time, and it is also one of the few restaurants in Chinatown that takes plastic.“Chìhao he hao” – Enjoy your meal!
