Golden Palace and M & T Restaurant

Today, I went out with some friends to go eat at a couple interesting Flushing restaurants, Golden Palace and M & T Restaurant. They were right around the corner from each other.

At Golden Palace we had Tiger Vegetables, which looked like the garnish to some other dish. But no, it was it's own dish. Cilantro, green peppers, and some hot peppers. Very crunchy and light. We also had an egg with some pickled vegetables, corn cakes (which was like a dry bun made from cornmeal), and loofah dumpling. Probably the best were the Tiger Vegetables and the Corn Cakes. The Loofah Dumpling's taste was a bit one-dimensional, and they were surprisingly heavy given the fact that they were only filled with a mild vegetable.

We went over to M & T, which I think was a bit better. They had a bunch of Qingdao dishes. The dishes we had were very interesting: a cold jelly noodle dishes that was simply beautiful (and quite garlicky), a deep-fried ginseng that would have been a good bar snack but that didn't have enough ginseng taste, and a stir-fry of "fiddleheads", potatoes, mushrooms and celery. I was expecting fiddlehead ferns, which would be odd, since they are very seasonal and I've never encountered them in any restaurant. But, they were some other thing, I have no idea what. The menu here was large and very interesting. I think this one I'd sooner come back to than Golden Palace, but they were both pretty good.

Check out the photos below:

Flushing with Ben and Charles

Artichoke Basille

I dropped by Artichoke Basille's today, for the first time.  Since it opened half a year ago, it's been compared repeatedly with DiFara's.   I tried a Margherita slice, and a Sicilian slice.   This corresponds with what I order at DiFara's, where I usually try and get an ordinary slice and a square slice.   I avoided the eponymous Artichoke slice, which seemed really thick and although I like artichokes, it seemed topped with something more like artichoke dip.  Yuck.

At any rate, the margherita slice is pretty well done, in both senses.  It had a nice thin crust, and had a rich taste as a result of the generous parmesan sprinkled on the pie.  The crust was a bit too blackened.  The Sicilian was pretty much the same.  Rich and a bit overly blackened.  On both, the sauce was tangy and complemented the richness of the cheese very nicely.  All in all, everything was great, and I'll definitely be back here again when I'm in the neighborhood.  This is the best slice I've had in Manhattan.

My friend Ben and I ate at the XiAn stall today, at the basement of the Golden Mall in Flushing.  We had the LianPi, cold noodles with chunks of soaked bread in it.  Very odd, but that's xi'an food for you.  The noodles were slick, slightly spicy, a bit sour, and in general very flavorful.  We also had the cumin & lamb sandwich, which was small but dense.  Like all good street food, it's very simple.  Lamb, cumin, stirfried, sandwhiched between two dense pieces of bread.  Both these things were great.   The menu had many other options, included a few variations on what we ate, such as noodles with the lamb & cumin, just plain stir-fried lamb & cumin, and another meat sandwich.

The stall itself was tiny and cramped, and was too crowded.  We had to eat half the meal standing up before we got seats.

After this, we ate some "sumo dumplings" at a little window on the street, and a curious yellow sticky rice with thick pork and dates.

I love Flushing.  Sometimes I wish I lived there, so I can have food like this as a snack regularly.   But perhaps I'd just endlessly gorge on this stuff, and make myself sick.

Today I stopped by the large, modern looking public library there too, for the first time.  It was three levels, and was almost as good as the mid-Manhattan library.  Better looking, but not quite as much material.