So each time I go home, I cannot resist the dirty siren call of Flushing, Queens, where the streets are stickier and the sauce spicier, where the tiny, steaming kitchens are filled with slurping patrons and the rhythmic slap, slap of hand-pulled noodles.
“Wouldn’t it be great,” I asked my dad, “if you could just eat all day? And never be full? And never get fat?”
“No,” he said. “It would be expensive.”
But that’s the thing – here, a giant bowl of noodles costs you around a fiver and kebabs a mere dollar. You can sample baked goods for even less than that. At my favorite sorta-ghetto clothing shop, Pretty Girl, which sells women’s clothing and accessories at wholesale prices (t-shirts for $3, dresses for $8-15, jackets $10) I picked up a surprisingly ladylike ruffled, floral print shirtdress. I imagined myself walking through Harvard Yard, oversized sunglasses, pneumatic of lip and balancing on 4 inch high espadrilles, coursebooks swaying at my hip. $13. Yes.
So it was off to the Flushing Mall again, which was featured in an earlier post for their shaved ice and takoyaki. I have to say, I enjoyed the shaved ice at JoJo Taipei in Allston more since the ice was more finely grated and my waitress had been kind enough to do an everything-but-the-kitchen sink piling of toppings. This time around, you can see the szechuan dumplings ($3.95) (the Chinese name for them is “red oil dumplings”) with a healthy dose of garlic and dan dan noodles ($3.95) (my mother criticized them as inauthentic – the noodles were flat, not round). Sadly, neither of these were spicy in the leastest. And I even ordered in Chinese, so not sure what the problem was there.
Later, I ran across some adorable cakes, which I obviously had to photograph. I am always a sucker for food shaped like animals. And tiramisu. This version, $3, was had at Yee Mei Fong Bakery. The thick layer of cocoa powder on top made it a bit messy to eat. It was just prepared just as Chinese like their desserts – mostly a light cream, a suggestion of cake, not much else.
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