vip in the city

Family feasting

More Chinese New Year feasting. A few suggestions had been bandied about for tonight’s dinner — Flushing’s Ocean Jewels, or perhaps Imperial Palace — but with Dad setting the agenda, it came as no surprise when we ended up at East Manor in Elmhurst. (Oh, he loves his buffet!) Well, at least I knew then that there would be plenty of pescetarian options.

Our last dinner here was Mom’s 60th birthday banquet when I was nearly done in by the concept of the “intercalary month.”

We arrived early to beat the Chinese New Year’s weekend dinner rush — a strategy which worked in our favor: an hour later, and it was an entirely different scene at the restaurant.

Below, seafood for the huoguo, literally: “fire pot” — a popular cold weather dish sometimes referred to as “Chinese fondue,” though the similarity to traditional Swiss fondue is only tangential. Instead of melted cheese and wine, the pot is filled with simmering, savory broth; instead of chunks of bread for dipping, there is an array of raw meats, seafood, vegetables, tofu… pretty much an endless variety of items to be cooked in the hot soup, fished out with wire ladles, and dipped into sauces afterwards. At the end of the meal, the delicious soup base makes for a wonderful finish — usually accompanied, inevitably, by the errant piece of rubbery shrimp, which you’ve neglected to fish out before it’s been boiled beyond recognition.

I’ve always known this mollusk as a “razor clam,” but it’s more properly called the Atlantic jackknife clam:

Oysters to bring in more good things for the new year. (These I ate raw, with a squeeze of lemon juice — is there any better way? )

…and despite all the hoopla over new data on the high mercury levels in tuna sushi, I could not resist:

Flickr preview: The Harlem Globetrotters at Izod Center (February 16, 2008).

Tags: Chinese New Year, East Manor, Elmhurst, hot pot, seafood, sushi

Year of the Rat

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Happy Lunar New Year, family and friends!

Today marked the beginning of Year 4705 by the Chinese calendar — the start of a 15-day celebration that culminates with the Lantern Festival on the night of the first full moon.

The year of the Rat is the first in the sequence of twelve Chinese zodiac animals, familiar to many via those brightly printed paper placemats in Chinese restaurants of yore: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, ram, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. (Once so popular, I can’t recall the last time I saw one.)

The related children’s story goes that the Jade Emperor wanted to designate a dozen animals for the calendar, and announced a race through a river to determine their order. The cat and the rat, being the worst swimmers, devised a plan to cross the river on the back of the naive and agreeable ox. On the day of the race, though, the competitive rat pushed the cat off into the river, and rode the ox’s horn to victory himself, jumping off at the opposite bank to reach the finish line first. (“You dirty rat!”) As a result of the rat’s betrayal, the cat came in dead last — 13th — and did not get a year named in his honor. Swearing vengeance, the cat has chased the rat for all eternity… and has hated water ever since.

We had plans to check out the new year’s festivities going on in Chinatown this afternoon. I could hear the building din on my approach from the subway on Canal. Here, the madness on Mott. Drums! Lions! Second time in a week I was showered in confetti.

Seemed like a fun idea at the time, but in practice… not so much, after a while. “The crazy secret about New York is that many locals can’t stand crowds.” Word. We hastily decamped to the relative calm of Baxter Street a few blocks away, where we opted instead for a lunch of Vietnamese food that thankfully, did not include rats.

Well, not that we know of, anyway.

Tags: Chinatown, Chinese New Year

Super Duper Fat Tuesday

Is it still only Tuesday? So far this week, there’s already been song and dance, thrilling victory and joyous celebration… and tonight, coinciding with Super Duper Tuesday and the traditional excess associated with Mardi Gras, our long-planned, pre-Chinese New Year feast at Chinatown’s Amazing 66.

A dozen friends, new and old, gathered in the restaurant’s lower level. Early in, it was established that we would place ourselves (willingly, happily) in SL’s capable ordering hands, and just eat whatever food was placed before us this evening. So began the parade of deliciousness — off and on the menu. A platter of batter-fried seafood, sauteed pea shoots, pan-fried noodles with seafood, braised E-Fu noodles with black mushroom (for longevity), and this, the first of two restaurant specialties that required advance ordering: Short Rib Beef in a Pumpkin. Yes: that’s short rib beef! In a pumpkin! Was ever there more a delightful combination of words spoken? The dish was brought out to the table in one glorious piece, with chunks of steaming, lightly curry-spiced meat exploding tantalizingly out the top of the hollowed out squash. Our glossy-tressed waiter, brandishing a large chef’s knife, made quick work of the soft, pumpkin flesh before our eyes.

Salad Walnut Prawns — a classic dish made up of the seemingly strange combination of deep-fried jumbo prawns, slathered in a sweet mayonnaise, and laid over a bed of dressed mixed fruits, broccoli and candied walnuts. Tasty, though.

And the second show-stopper of the evening: the House Special Crispy Chicken Stuffed with Sticky Rice. Essentially, a whole chicken, deboned and de-…fleshed(?), crammed with a combination of sausage-studded sticky rice, and then deep-fried and meticulously reassembled into the general shape a chicken, albeit a rather flat one. Head included, of course — to symbolize wholeness and togetherness.

There were more dishes, selected for their symbolic auspiciousness: another chicken, roasted, and topped with preserved vegetables. A whole steamed flounder; the Chinese word for “fish” is a homonym for “abundance”. And an oyster casserole, to bring in “good things” for the coming year.

We ate our fill — or perhaps just beyond — and finished with a round of orange wedges (for wealth) and bowls of red bean tong shui (sweet dessert soup). How a few of us still managed after all that to squeeze in a post-dinner trip to the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory can best be attributed to a new year’s miracle.

Though when it comes to such temptations, I align myself with New York‘s Insatiable Critic Gael Greene, who declares quite rightly: “I shall never trust anyone who doesn’t love ice cream.”

Tags: Amazing 66, Chinatown, Chinese New Year