Taste of Chinatown

In the search for terrific Chinese, ABrooklynLife decided to start in Manhattan's Chinatown with the neighborhood's biannual Taste of Chinatown. I've been to other neighborhood's "tastes," but Chinatown's quantify more as mini-meals than mere tastes. I don't know that I've ever eaten so much food so cheaply in Manhattan. Most plates were $1 and special ones were $2. (Click photos below for larger images.)

We started at Singapore Cafe (69 Mott Street) with fabulous noodles ($1) and four fish balls ($1). I'd go back here in a heartbeat for the noodles, which were flavorful and not too greasy. Though fish balls aren't my favorite, D. claims they were quite tasty.

Having our appetite nicely whetted, we walked down just a few storefronts to Shanghai Garden (63 Mott Street), where we had what qualifies as the best pork dumplings I can remember wrapping my lips around. These babies were juicy, tangy and so, so fresh. That pesky Saturday morning hangover was starting to abate nicely.

Continuing with the power of pork, we waltzed to Mandarin Court (61 Mott Street) where we had a sweet pork bun ($1). I'm more of a fan of the steamed variety, but this wasn't half bad. From there we hopped to Green Tea Cafe (41 Mott Street) for a palate-cleansing black bubble tea with milk ($1) and a nice smile from the friendly ladies doling out the goodies.

We wondered what $2 would bring and found chicken with ginger at Lucky 11 (11 Mott Street). Though normally chicken on the bone annoys me, this was so moist, I forgave the dish its annoyance of separating the tender morsels from the bone. What I enjoyed most about this dish was the pungent slices of ginger floating in the sauce.

I was excited to try Buddha Bodai Vegetarian (5 Mott Street), as I'd heard amazing things about its ability to mimic meat--down to making vegetarian fish with bones. Sadly, the tastes weren't quite that complicated, but we did enjoy a plate of fried snails ($1) otherwise known as fried mushrooms. No real resemblance to snails, but not bad for fried mushrooms. The restaurant was out of its green tea balls, which looked divine as the dude in front of me walked away with his.

As we walked up the east side of Mott, we hit up Sweet-N-Tart (20 Mott Street) for some delicious bean curd purses "with treasures." The thin sheet of bean curd made a nice wrapping for the steamed chopped vegetables inside, and it almost felt healthy.

Our plans to sample some of the famous Peking Duck House's duck were thwarted by the 50 or so people who had lined up in front of us. All I can say is that it must be good if it's worth a half-hour wait.

Feeling our bellies expanding beyond their reasonable limits, we turned off Mott onto Pell Street, where we saw a wholly new creature: the lotus leaf rice ($1) at May May Bakery (35 Pell Street). Always up for a challenge, we threw our $1 onto the table and unwrapped this creature. Inside, glutinous sticky rice surrounded pork, Chinese sausage, and dried egg yolk (?). The fragrance from the leaf was the best part, but what's Chinatown without a little experimentation.

We nabbed some vegetarian shark fin soup ($1) at Vegetarian Dim Sum House (24 Pell Street) now fully in the spirit of experimentation. I'm sure the vegetarians reading this will be disappointed, but the mild soup was rather boring compared to the exciting meat flavors we'd been sampling all day. I believe that mushroom was standing in for sharkfin in this dish, as well.

Fearing for our ability to walk back to the subway, we ended the culinary tour with something sweet at Nom Wah Tea Parlor (13 Doyers Street). Enter the moon cake ($1), a very heavy sweet cake that tasted like it had banana in it (I'm surprised my taste buds were still functioning at this point). We managed to finish half of it before giving up and going home.