48 THE QUEENS COURIER • WELCOME TO • MARCH 20, 2014 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.queenscourier.com welcome to flushing s NY Tung Ren Tang 40-34 Main Street Just next door is a Chinese herbal medicine store, where you can purchase anything from Ginseng to candy. Right before you enter the store, however, is a cart where you can buy a whole handful of snacks for about $1. Boiled fi sh balls are skewered and fl oating in enormous pots, next to multicolored ears of corn, eggs boiled with tea leaves, and a $3 combo of pork and rice with vegetables and an egg. Ten bucks can buy you most of the stand, and you wouldn’t need a morsel of food the rest of the day. Tai Pan Bakery 3725 Main Street Last, but not least, is one of Flushing’s most popular bakeries, and a favorite of mine for years. At Tai Pan, you grab a tray and a pair of tongs, then choose your pastries. For $1.85, you can enjoy a fantastic fried fi sh fi let on the warmest, fl uffi est cloud of a bun imaginable, with a dollop of mayo and a sliced cucumber for a little extra crunch. The moon cakes and pastries are all pretty wonderful, but those fi sh buns are out of this world. New World Mall Food Court 4021 Main Street Unlike the Golden Mall, when ride the escalator down to the food court of the New World Mall, everything feels a little more like a Western food court, with more than 30 options to tempt you. But don’t be surprised to fi nd extremely rare specialties here. Be sure to stop by Noodle Village So Good for their crab version. It will take a few minutes as they steam them to order. Around the corner, look for the lobster tanks. Order a whole steamed lobster for only $15, and have it prepared with ginger and scallions, XO sauce, or with basil. At Li’s Lanzhou Stretched Noodles, a whole bowl of chicken noodle soup with scallions and bok choy will only cost $5. Unfortunately, the SnoPo booth decided to rebrand a few months ago, and so there is no shaved ice cream any more. Now called TBaar, it is one of several franchises of a specialty bubble tea shop, which serves drinks with tapioca pearls, fruit jelly and even red beans. But no matter where you eat, make sure you swing by JMart before you leave the mall for Asian specialty items you won’t fi nd in your local supermarket. Golden Mall 41-28 Main Street Don’t walk too swiftly down main street, or you might stroll right past the dusty doors that lead to one of the area’s single most thrilling culinary destinations. This subterranean universe is literally loaded with every kind of food imaginable. I work my way through this man made labyrinth to Xi’An Famous Foods. I begin with the savory cumin lamb burger, and am simply fl abbergasted. The bun is toasted crispy on the outside, and soft inside, packed full of lamb meat that has been stewed for what must have been hours in a thick brown sauce almost like a peppery molasses of cumin, jalapenos, scallions and onions. For only a couple of bucks, too. Just around the corner, the Tianjin Dumpling House is selling 10 kinds of delicious handmade dumplings, 12 for $5. Biang! 41-10 Main Street Further along Main Street, David Shi and Jason Wang — the Xi’an father-son creators of the other locations — have collaborated to open Biang! offering many of the same regional dishes alongside a few new creations, this time in a sleek, narrow dining room with full table service. Biang’s namesake noodles can be served with or without broth. The now legendary pasta ribbons are handstretched throughout the day, like thick edible skipping ropes that smack upon the counter top. They are then adorned with several potential toppings, from tender stewed pork belly to oxtail, hot chili oil, and even slices of seitan. These ribbons are playful, delicious, chewy, and the hand-torn edges grab bits of sauce like tiny pockets of intense fl avor. Adventurous diners will enjoy the spicy and tingly lamb face salad, a spicy mélange of cooked lamb cheeks, tongue, eyeballs, and palate meat served chilled with bean sprouts, cilantro, celery, scallion and cucumber. The textures and fl avors gradually unfold like a fi ery bouquet. And yes, that marblesized orb is an actual eyeball.
QC03202014
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