Flushing never fails

Flushing is full of so many delicious things that I can't stand it sometimes.

Take the ground-level booth of Corner 28 restaurant, for instance. They gained a lot of popularity for their dollar Peking Duck sandwiches, but now they're also selling what they advertise as "rice wrap" and "made to order steam rice roll."

Whatever it is, when you tell the woman your choice of beef, pork, roast pork, or baby shrimp, she spreads some out onto a metal tray, pours a thin slurry of rice flour and water over it, and pops the whole thing into a steamer. A minute later, she pulls out the tray to reveal a sheet of soft, bouncy rice noodle embedded with whatever protein you chose (pork, above). Using a spatula, she scrapes this sheet off of the tray and into a small styrofoam container, where it's ready to be better than the best dim sum treat you've ever had. The noodle is perfectly textured and the pork lends awesome flavor. It might not have even needed the container of soy sauce it came with, but I poured it on anyway and regretted my decision not one bit. For one full container, I paid a mere $1.50.

And then there's the cumin-spiked lamb sandwich from the basement of Golden Shopping Mall, which I picked up at X'ian Famous Foods and ate on the train. Sure, the filling was way too salty, and the lamb bits too heavy on the gristle, but where else, for $2.50, can you get such a hefty, unique, flavor-packed sandwich?

Even cold, the giant, floppy egg pancake from one of the stands next to Mayflower Cafe and Bakery was tasty, and it was no more than a dollar or so. I wish I had better directions for where to get this one, but that's how Flushing is to me: a place where you wander around, coming across unexpected pockets of deliciousness, and eating your finds in full enjoyment of the moment. I wouldn't have it any other way.