Chinatown – Writing With My Mouth Full

Famous Sichuan

10 Pell Street between Bowery and Doyers
212/233.3888
$30 for two, without drinks, with tip
♥ ♥

My craving for spicy Sichuan food still hasn’t abated. In less than a week, I’ve traveled to Flushing, Queens for Spicy & Tasty and met another friend in midtown to eat at Szechuan Gourmet. It’s so hot in New York City right now, I can only crave spicy food to cool me down. With Sichuan peppercorns, the spice is not in the front of your mouth but at the end of each bite. The roof of your mouth numbs a little bit and you break into a small sweat. You ever wonder why countries with hot weather eat a lot of spicy food? It’s all about that sweat. Sichuan kind of spicy is deliriously satisfying.

I wouldn’t have noticed Famous Sichuan if the line wasn’t so long to get in Joe’s Shanghai. Unlike Joe’s, there’s no queue outside milling around the black garbage bags on the sidewalk. We walked in across the street because it was a sure bet that we would start to eat in five minutes and pay our bill by the time our number at Joe’s Shanghai got called.

I ordered my usual set: Dan Dan noodles, smoked tofu with celery and string beans with minced pork. While the two vegetable dishes are not traditionally spicy at all, the Dan Dan noodles is my go-to Sichuan dish. All of them together make a good meal for less than $30 without the crowd and the wait time.

Fuleen Seafood Restaurant

11 Division Street between Catherine and Market
212/941.6888â€Ž
$35 for two, without drinks, with tip
♥ ♥

We were in Chinatown, in our usual nursing home mood, craving soup and vegetables when I upped the ante: Should we try something new? I don’t know, man. As far as I’m concerned, everything past Bowery is cat territory. We cracked up but we crossed the street anyway. We walked by Fuleen and it was packed. With Chinese people! It must be good right? Chinese people eating Chinese food? So we walked in.

We skipped the menu and asked our elderly waiter about the pot the Chinese family next to us was devouring. Fish head stew with leeks and ginger, he said. Fish head! We’ll get that!
Trying something new, even for us, is difficult because we already know what we like in a Chinese restaurant and we never want to end up with sweet and spicy chicken with broccoli. Unless we’re with someone who speaks Chinese, we count on our usual fare: xiao long bao and fish steamed with chives from Joe’s Shanghai or dan dan noodles and smoked tofu with celery from Grand Sichuan.

The fish head was a lot of work but the flavor was all there. Every bit of meat we managed to suck and prod out was our reward for persevering. The leeks gave the dish balance and kept the ginger from being too overpowering. With a little bit of white rice and pea shoot leaves on the side, we were full and satisfied. Our waiter recognized our efforts by serving us complementary winter melon soup and a sweet jelly dessert at the end of our meal.

Crossing Bowery paid off after all. Now we wonder what else is up on the horizon.

Bacaro

136 Division Street between Ludlow and Orchard
212/941.5060
$50 each for five, with two bottles of wine, with tip
â™¥

I used to know someone who lived on Madison Street in the deep recesses of Chinatown five years ago, but I haven’t been back in the area since then. Before that, Good World on Orchard was the place to be among dot-comers. For the last four years, I’ve been working in and around SoHo and have grown to love Frank DeCarlo and John LaFemina’s Peasant on Elizabeth Street. Its downstairs space is one of the places I end up in when I don’t have a reservation nor a dinner plan.

When Bacaro started appearing in food blogs as DeCarlo’s latest project after splitting from LaFemina, I kept a note in my head to make it back to Division Street when I get the chance. That opportunity came a little earlier last week when five of us wanted to eat from small plates and share bottles of wine but had nowhere to go. I had to lend my cab driver my iPhone to show him where Division Street is located because he said he had never heard of it. I was dropped off in the corner of a very quiet and deserted street. If it weren’t for the few smoking outside, I would have thought my Google map was wrong.

At 7pm, the four in our party were at the bar waiting for a table. We witnessed as other groups were seated as soon as they came in. It became worrisome that once another group showed up, we’d have to leave to find another restaurant, unless we wanted to wait for another hour. The bartender was nice enough to seat just the four of us–he made a smaller group move to a smaller table near the door just to accommodate us–and let us order food and wine while we waited for our fifth.

We started with duck prosciutto and some pear slices. Salty and tougher than the prosciutto I’m used to, the pears were still a good match. The braised duck leg that was served when our party was complete fared better, although it was still on the salty side. I assumed the octopus would come in vinaigrette just like they have them in Peasant, but they were fried in batter like calamares, which I’m not a fan of. It was amusing to find lemon peels and yellow bell pepper covered in batter, too, but I just thought the dish didn’t belong with the rest of our food. I also thought the meatballs were going to be gigantic like they have them at Ã¡pizz, John LaFemina’s second venture but without DeCarlo, but they were so small I could have eaten twenty more of them. The polenta salad was the most interesting because it was topped with a small chunk of cod. At Bacaro, everything I thought was a salad did not come with any leaves. The cod whet our appetites and prepared us for the gnocchi cooked in brown butter with mushrooms and the pasta with anchovy sauce–one warm and hearty, the other difficult to split among five.

Bahn Mi, Vietnamese Sandwiches

A Vietnamese sandwich, or bÃ¡nh mÃ¬, has minced pork, potted meat, salami, carrots, cucumbers and cilantro. They are served in a slightly toasted French baguette with a special sauce that brings all the fillings together. Skip on the mayonnaise and order an iced Vietnamese coffee while you wait. There are also the neo-bÃ¡nh mÃ¬s like vermicelli glass noodles, beef fillets, chicken and even tofu. Most of the stores carry other Vietnamese snacks and your best bet would be the summer rolls or the rice cakes. SÃ¡u Voi Corp also sells Vietnamese CDs and DVDs for some soundtrack while you eat. (I’ve updated this post since 2004 with the latest bÃ¡nh mÃ¬ stores.)

I’ve listed my favorites below and they all get â™¥ â™¥

Viet-Nam BÃ¡nh MÃ¬ So 1
369 Broome Street off Mott
212/219-8341
Updated, 2008: Renamed Saigon

SÃ¡u Voi Corp
101-105 Corner of Lafayette and Walker Street
212/226.8184

Paris Bakery
113 Mott Street between Canal and Hester
212/226.7221

Ã ChÃ¢u Deli
82A Mulberry between Canal and Bayard
212/766.3332

New Malaysia

46-48 in the Chinatown Arcade between Canal and Bayard
212/964.0284
about $25 for two, without drinks, without tip
♥ ♥

Don’t let the hard-to-pronounce items on the menu stop you from ordering food from New Malaysia. For my first visit, I ordered the more traditional nasi lemak and the roti canai just to be on the safe side. After those two dishes, I knew I had to come back with a bigger stomach. When Anna’s Malaysian friend told me that New York has the best Malaysian food, I raised an eyebrow. I don’t know many Malaysian restaurants in the city except for the so-so Jaya on Baxter and the Indo-Malay Nyonya and Penang franchises, so I was willing to try New Malaysia as soon as I could.

I was more adventurous during my second visit and I ordered the asam laksa, a spicy and sour soup with lemongrass broth and crushed sardines. If it weren’t so salty, it would be my new anti-cold soup of choice. Too bad it doesn’t come in a smaller bowl. The kang kung belacan is stewed in shrimp and anchovy paste, much like how Filipinos cook the swamp vegetable (spelled kang kong). It seems a little steep for $8 a plate but we cleaned it off even with four other dishes.