NYC Christmas

I went down to Queens the weekend before Christmas to see my family. Stayed with my bro & sis in laws, Maka & CVS. CVS is too good of a chef and insisted on cooking for us while we were there. He made smoked chicken wings, and this mezcal-brushed smoky pork chop with a side of spicy BBQ sauce. Dude, so good. I think I like mezcal now.

The stuff on top is a jerusalem artichoke puree. SO GOOD. He uses cream in his dish, but I'd just sub in chicken broth. Because I am so making Albany John make this at home - I wanted to eat a bucket of it. I think it was in a recent edition of Gourmet magazine? Or some kinda food magazine.

I stopped by to see YehYeh, my uncle, and my dad and his lovely lady on my way out through Flushing. I lucked out and found street parking - wahoo! It's becoming so hard to find in Flushing now, and the public lot is always full on the weekends.

We grabbed some yum cha at Grand Restaurant. Taro cake.
Har cheung! We got about 3-4 of these. My YehYeh knows how much I love this dish. My fave dish at yumcha - supple rice noodles, and briny shrimp in a sweet soy sauce.
Some steamed spare ribs & siu mai.
Fried taro with meaty stuffing. Ok, but kind of cold.
And a plate of chow fun (cow). More fresh rice noodles! So good!

Then I wandered around for a while (but it was SO cold). I recognized the characters for Xiao Long Bao at a stall in the Flushing mall (the one that's pretty much all food stalls), but I was too full to order them. 8 for $3, too! Sadness.

I wanted to try White Bear. I'd heard great reviews on other blogs, and all signs on Yelp seemed to indicate that these were some of the best dumplings hands down in Flushing. It's a hole-in-the-wall type restaurant. But slightly larger. There are 3-4 small tables, but it's hard to fit a group of 4 in here. Better for groups of 2-3.

One of their popular dishes is #6 - wontons in chili oil, $4.50. It's not actually spicy, despite all of the chili oil, but my main point issue were the gummy & overcooked skins. I think these had been sitting around too long, because a dude behind the counter was just like "Number 6?" and I was like "yeah" and he was like "here" about 30 seconds later.

I decided I liked my wontons I make at home better. So, at least on the bright side, I won't be lusting over dumplings 200 miles away.