East Buffet will knock you flat, but not in the good way

Photo by TL

Years ago, when I first went to East Buffet, the place was the shit. My family and I would drive all the way out to Huntington to eat at one of the first Chinese/Asian high-end "super" buffets around, and it was even more exciting when branches began opening closer by in Elmhurst and other areas of Queens. Unfortunately, after a long hiatus I ate at the Flushing location a few months ago with TL, and realized the place is now just simply…shitty. At a mere $7.99 for the weekend lunch (slashed from $15.99 through their seemingly perpetual 50% off promotion) I didn't feel overcharged, but I did feel stuffed to the gills with greasy, mediocre, not-so-fresh food. Maybe it was because we arrived at the tail-end of lunch service, but I remember the place just being better all around.

There are two areas of the buffet where you can really make things worth your while, though. One is the sushi bar, which while not excellent by any means, is decent enough. I'd advise the maki over the nigiri, since we're not talking amazing raw fish here.

Photo by TL

The other area is the Peking Duck station, where a man carves slices of meat and skin directly off the bird, layers them atop fluffy pockets of steamed bread, and then hands the plate back so you can dress the combination with with hoisin sauce, cucumber shreds, and slivered scallions as you please. TL came back to the table bearing six of the lil' babies, since the station was about to close (good man). The duck was fatty and the skin soggy—a mark of good Peking Duck is crisp, lacquered skin with the fat rendered out of it—but even bad Peking Duck tends to be pretty enjoyable. Especially when it's unlimited.

So don't go to East Buffet expecting great food (or even good service). But do go expecting mediocre/average Chinese food in wide array, with some sushi and Peking Duck thrown in. And make sure you ready yourself for passing out immediately afterward, which is exactly what TL and I found ourselves doing after our meal.

Baden Baden: Chickens and Koreans

For TC's birthday last month, we gathered at Baden Baden in K-town for Korean-style chicken and pitchers of beer. It's the kind of place you would never know existed unless you had been expressly told about it. From the street there's no obvious signage, and even when you've arrived to the right building you have to hunt out the entrance, which is an elevator hidden just beyond a small gum-and-cigarette counter that doesn't look like you're supposed to venture past it. Still, once you get in the door, the place opens up into a comfortable bar and restaurant that serves up pretty decent chicken. While this definitely is not BonChon Chicken—the style is completely different—the birds at Baden Baden are crisp-skinned and juicy enough if not super flavorful, and it's served with rich, mellow cloves of creamy fried garlic, sweet and tangy radish pickles, and a scattering of prefab onion rings. The onion rings aren't great, as The Amateur Gourmet points out, but who's not going to still eat them when sloshed on beer and soju?

Eating Asian in Flushing Mall's food court

Flushing Mall isn't a mall in the conventional sense, as in a place filled with popular retail, Auntie Anne's "pretzels," and brand-name clothing. If anything, it's kind of dinky and more like an indoor flea market, with random booths selling knockoff dvds and imported accessories and clothing from Asia. There's a damn cool comb store, where hand-crafted wooden and horn combs boasting well-being properties are on display, but like Roboppy, the main draw for me is their food court.


Flushing Mall's food court features numerous stalls, all of them Asian. There are hand-pulled noodles and handmade dumplings, Taiwanese and Japanese pastries and snacks, shaved ice and bubble tea, and lots of "over rice" offerings. There used to be a conveyor-belt sushi area and shabu-shabu, but when I went with TL before his dentist appointment, both of those seemed to be gone.

It always takes me a while to decide when I'm in there, because everything looks so darn good. But between the two of us we settled on noodles with Taiwanese meat sauce, egg pancake (love those egg pancakes), grilled corn painted with sha-cha sauce, and pork dumplings doused with soy sauce, chili oil, and a heaping pile of raw chopped garlic. Um, because we were aiming for complete love from TL's dentist.


We also ordered two pastries, one filled with shreds of savory turnip and the other filled with a mysterious combination of scallions, lard, and maybe a bit of pork. Both had nice and flaky crusts and great flavor.

So Flushing Mall is a great place to get food, not such a good place to go shopping. But if you're still curious about the place, these two photos, taken by TL in the men's room, should explain everything you need to know:


I mean…what can you do but give love to a place that has specific instructions on where you can and cannot vomit?

At 8th Street Wine Cellar, the bacon dish of my dreams

Before I explain what you're looking at up there—no, it's not an ice-cream sundae—let me just say that it was one of the most friggin' delicious preparations I'd put in my mouth for a long time. Two months later, I still dream about it.

But first things first. The above photo was taken at 8th Street Wine Cellar, where I met up with BH for dinner for a few glasses of wine and an assortment of small plates. I had just gotten a haircut and she had come in carrying two huge picture frames, and so we ended up oohing and ahhing for several minutes before getting down to the business of ordering.

We began with a cheese plate…you all know, of course, how much I love cheese. I don't remember clearly, but I believe there was a morbier, a manchego, and something truffle-flecked, all from Stinky Bklyn. The three cheeses came with slices of currant-and-walnut-studded pumpernickel (probably from Amy's Bread) and I believe a tapenade and some kind of chutney. All were pretty good, but I admit to being partial to the truffled cheese: truffles = luv.

We also picked out a "Tuscan Grilled Cheese," which consisted of mozarella, tomatoes, and pesto pressed between ciabatta. Good ingredients, pretty good sandwich.

BH is no fan of seafood, but I had to order the yellowfin tuna sliders, which just sounded right up my alley (I like little burgers!). These came with a marinated cucumber and red onion salad on the side, which was a refreshing accompaniment. The burgers themselves were okay—the whole thing was going for some kind of "Asian" flavor profile, which in this case meant there was ginger in the tuna and sesame oil with the cucumbers. The patty was slightly dry, but maybe that's just the nature of a burger made with cooked tuna.

And okay, okay, back to the photo at top. That was our order of "bacon and figs," which ended up being several slices of very thick-cut bacon that had been broiled and glazed with sweet balsamic vinegar, paired with dried figs and a good dollop of crème fraîche, and then drizzled with more glaze. Altogether, the combination was downright amazing. Smoky, meaty, and savory skipped hand-in-hand with sweet, creamy, and tangy; we all but licked the plate clean. Both BH and I agreed that fresh figs instead of dried would have really ramped it up even more, but that didn't stop us from immediately contemplating another order once we finished it. Such is the power of figs and bacon.

I ended up heading to TL's place after that, bearing cream puffs from Beard Papa for him and his friends, which I thought I was too full to consume but then somehow did anyway. It's obviously true what they say about a separate stomach for dessert….

Lamazou: A small, homey shop with big taste

While running errands, I passed by Lamazou in Murray Hill. People had been urging me to check out this tiny cheese and sandwich shop for a long time, among them JSK and my brother, so I stopped in to pick up a quickie lunch. There was a bewildering variety of options on the menu, with full and half sizes for each; with the help of the friendly counterman, I went with country pate and cornichons on a ciabatta roll. The sandwich came to a little over six dollars for a half. It seemed small at first, but soon proved itself to be the perfect size as I made my way through the pile of rich pate on chewy, fluffy bread while I walked. I could have used more cornichons; they were a good addition, brightening the whole with their crisp, tart bite, but there weren't many. Next time I'll try one of their numerous combination sandwiches, such as the "Smart Duck," listed on the menu as smoked duck breast paired with brie and cornichons. Anyone have a favorite sandwich to recommend from this place?

Red Mango: Richer, tastier, better

After Tebaya, TL and I stopped for frozen yogurt at Red Mango, which in the fro-yo wars, has emerged winner in my book. Compared to Pinkberry and VeryBerry, Red Mango's tangy offering is more creamy and rich, less watery and icy. The mochi chunks I asked for were pretty much identical to the competition's, but the blueberries that topped TL's order were big and plump. Thumbs up, Red Mango!

Gramercy Tavern: No deal, but an excellent lunch

I'd wanted to go to Gramercy Tavern for lunch after reading about their "secret" lunch deal on VittlesVamp, but when I met with JL, JSK, and BH there, we found ourselves seated in their formal dining room instead of their Tavern room, which is where the deal was offered. So instead of getting a steal at one of the fancier restaurants in town, we ended up ordering from the pricey regular lunch menu.

The meal, at least, was beautifully done. The small olive rolls served as part of the bread selection were delicious and addictive, crusty and studded with large chunks of briny purple olives. I found myself agreeing to a second, and then a third, smearing each with a curl of good butter. And the braised shoulder of lamb I ordered was served nearly falling apart on a bed of bok choy, and the meat was tender and rich and utterly satisfying.

Dessert was good, too; we split the warm chocolate bread pudding with cacao nib ice cream, and alongside it came a plate of delicate petits fours, including tiny buttery rounds with a single plump blueberry sunken in the middle, sugar-coated fruit jellies, and chocolate balls filled with salty peanut butter. At the end, JL declared it one of the nicest lunches he'd had in a long time. I'm definitely going back to check out the Tavern room.

A fish tale

Not only was I going off to graduate school in Colorado, but my young cousin ML was headed for Boston to start her undergraduate education. We had prepared our applications around the same time, bonding while writing out essay after essay and filling out form after form, and each of us had received our admission notices around the same time too. Since we were both leaving soon, the day I got back from the Catskills, my aunt and uncle and my two cousins came over to my parents' house for a celebratory/send-off family meal.

My mom set out two items for us to start with while the rest of the food was being finished at the stove. On the left is a jiu cai bing, thin dough wrapped around a filling of chives, eggs, and bean-noodle threads and then pan-fried—my mom deposited each one onto our plates hot from the pan. The platter on the right is an assortment of cold appetizers, including slices of sweet Chinese sausage, marinated dried tofu, braised beef, and a vinegary cucumber and pepper salad strewn with black sesame seeds.


Then the dishes started rolling into the dining room. Clockwise from top left: chives with squid; vegetarian noodles (prepared by my aunt); meat-stuffed tofu braised with assorted mushrooms; and tail-on shrimp sauteed with garlic and cilantro. My aunt also brought over roasted acorn squash and beets, as well as some thinly sliced raw Chioggia beets marinated in cranberry vinegar, which I couldn't get enough of.

Earlier in the day, my dad had taken me to the Chinese supermarket in order to purchase a live carp. I had cringed when I watched the fish being scaled, but that night, it appeared on the table steamed and insanely delicious covered with a sauce of spicy bean paste cooked with plenty of cilantro, scallions, basil, and garlic. This preparation is called dou-ban yu ("dou-ban" referring to the sauce, and "yu" meaning "fish"), and there was sentiment to this dish, too: my dad explained that years ago he had loved eating dou-ban yu at a certain restaurant in Flushing, but the place had one day closed down, shuttering its dou-ban yu with it. My dad had searched for a long time and never found a good version in any restaurant since…so he decided to take matters into his own hands, and re-create it himself. At dinner that night, my happy dad declared the dou-ban yu a success, with the flavor of the sauce spot-on to the original. The carp's white flesh was sweet and firm, and the dish was extremely xia fan and ended up being the star of the show.

For dessert, there was a towering chocolate cake and a sweet green-bean and barley soup. The cake, from a Chinese bakery, boasted layers of light chocolate sponge instead of buttery, rich cake, and somehow the two desserts went well together.

Afterward my cousins and my brother and I watched the Olympics while our parents sat around the table chatting over tea, typical behaviors for all. With my warm, loving family gathered around the house, it felt like the perfect way to celebrate.