What New York Chinese Dining Has That Los Angeles Doesn't

What New York Chinese Dining Has That Los Angeles Doesn't - Menuism Dining Blog, March 20, 2017

As a whole, Los Angeles ' Chinese food scene surpassed New York's over 20 years ago and continues to pull away.  However you'll find some things Chinese food wise in New York that don't exist in Los Angeles, including these four restaurants from my recent visit to New York that fall into this profile.

 

The Chinese fine dining establishment:  La Chine.

Situated in the Chinese-owned Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, La Chine is the type of high end, authentic Chinese restaurant on offer in New York, along with places like Fung Tu, Cafe China and Hakkasan. After the demise of Hakkasan Beverly Hills (and perhaps Chi Lin), there are no longer such posh Chinese dining options in Los Angeles. Perhaps Los Angeles is just not much of an expense account town like New York is. Sure it boasts the entertainment industry, but that pales compared to New York which has Wall Street and the investment banks, and large numbers of corporate headquarters.  

To be fair, there are high end Chinese restaurants in Los Angeles like WP24, Mr. Chow and Philippes.  But none of these serve authentic Chinese food.  So where do Los Angeles' rich people go to eat authentic Chinese food?  The same places where you and I eat.  Virtually all of the seafood palaces where you will find $3 dim sum and lunch specials also serve uber-expensive premium menus, such as the $10,000 per table banquet menu at Grand Harbor in Temple City.

Back at La Chine, we passed on the $125 per person tasting menu, but because it was restaurant week, we got a good substitute. We had the Long Island fluke appetizer (nothing special), the wagyu beef tenderloin (the hit of the evening)   the crispy shrimp, (quite tasty), the black cod (just OK).  For dessert we had excellent mango with pomelo tapioca soup (pictured above), and a bland coconut pudding square. 

 

The Chinese speakeasy:  Modern Szechuan

 

Walking near my hotel on 45th St. in Midtown Manhattan I passed a restaurant called Modern Szechuan.  It had all the earmarks of a restaurant catering to local office workers including a $6.99 per pound buffet, What caught my eye was hand written signs touting things like Lanzhou hand pulled noodles and xiaolongbao—certainly not Midtown office worker fare.   Walking into the front part of the restaurant where most of the tables were located, I saw a couple of lo wai (non-Chinese people) eating and a couple more carrying out buffet items.  The menu was largely Americanized Chinese food and all in all this place really didn't look too promising.  But there was a section of the menu with knife cut and hand pulled noodle soups which looked authentic, so I ordered the chicken hand pulled noodles and the Shanghai wonton.  After I placed my order with the manager she directed me past the buffet, to the back of the restaurant to pay for my food and to wait for it.

What a shock. Most of the people eating adjacent to the buffet were old Chinese guys like the old time Chinese bachelors you see in Chinatown.  In Midtown?  And reaching the back part of the restaurant, there was a separate menu of authentic Chinese items posted on the wall (ironically, nothing Sichuan style), and the seating area in the back area was filled mostly with young Chinese families.  Who knew?  It was like a hole in the wall restaurant had been transplanted from Chinatown into the heart of Midtown Manhattan!

The chicken and the noodles were fantastic, as were the Shanghai wontons made of ground beef. We even ordered a second bowl of chicken noodle soup.  And you'd never see a restaurant like this in downtown Los Angeles.  

The Chinese-Malaysian Restaurant, Satay

As I have previously written, Flushing has become my favorite Chinatown because unlike the Chinatowns in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and even most of Manhattan, the sidewalks don't roll up after the dark and there is plenty of activity late into the night.  It wasn't that way when I first visited Flushing Main St. 20 years ago when the area was only partially Chinese, but it certainly has transformed since then.

In my previous trips to Flushing, we'd stay mostly in the vicinity of Main Street and Roosevelt Ave., within walking distance of our hotel. But this time we were driven to a Malaysian restaurant called Satay.  This was not a Malaysian restaurant as your or I would think. Satay specializes in Chinese Malaysian food, that is, food of the ethnic Chinese who live in Malaysia.  The proprietors, staff, and customers all spoke Cantonese, and the menu was in English and Chinese.  

We had a Malaysian Chinese new year’s salad, pictured above,   The Chinese New Year salad included Chinese red envelopes--filled with sesame seeds to top the salad.  The salad was served unmixed, so the diners would use their chopsticks to mix the salad for good luck.  We also ate golden spare ribs with pineapple, okra with green beans and smelt, an odd duck dish, and shrimp in shell cooked like crispy crab. What a fantastic meal!

 

The barbecue roast meats:  Wah Fung #1 Fast Food

 

Last year I visited with influencers/comedians Fung Bros.  last year before they moved back to the West Coast.  We had lunch at Congee Village, where they said the one thing New York did better than Los Angeles was old fashioned Cantonese bbq roast meats.  

In that regard, the grandaddy of them all is Wah Fung #1 Fast Food on Chrystie St. in New York Chinatown.  It has a simple menu of charshu, roast chicken, roast duck, and/or roast pork on a layer of vegetables on top of a mound of white rice.  The standard price for a single item is $3.75. 

Long before Howlin Ray's Nashville Hot Chicken brought snaking long lines in LA Chinatown, there was Wah Fung #1. In over 30 trips to New York City, the lines at Wah Fung kept me away.  Though the wait time is  nowhere close to those at Howlin' Ray's, I'd guess the volume of business at Wah Fung #1 is higher, given the fact that it is takeout-only, and it only takes a minute or so to fill an order.  As a bonus, unlike the scenesters at Howlin Ray's, the line at Wah Fung is mainly composed of Chinese senior citizens.