e a t e r y R O W

NAN XIANG XIAO LONG BAO

38-12 Prince Street

Flushing, NY 11354

(718) 321-3838

If you've ever been to Canal Street in Manhattan and said "oh my God, this place is a disgusting crowded pisshole," then you aren't alone. Between the throngs of tourists, the guys hawking knock offs, the seemingly incessant reek of decaying fish, the shoulder high piles of rotting garbage, and the necessity of carrying an umbrella to keep off the rain of spit, Chinatown is as close as one can get to living in an active landfill. If it wasn't for its admittedly convenient location, Chinatown would be in the running for the worst neighborhood in the borough. Lucky for us, there are other boroughs and in the one called "Queens" there's a neighborhood called Flushing. Flushing is a more refined Chinatown. Twice the size, half as dirty, and inconvenient enough to keep away all but the most determined tourists.

Getting out of the 7 Train at the last stop is not what you would expect from Queens. The traffic is insane. The buildings are tall and midtown dense. The sidewalks are crowded. Shops and restaurants  fill the blocks three stories high. It doesn't feel like New York so much as photos of the streets of Hong Kong. A few minute walk from that 7 Train is the Nan Xiang Dumpling House, widely hyped as one of the best places to eat Chinese food in the entire city. Pike and I showed up early one recent Monday evening to find them not full but far from empty. We were quickly led to a clean new table in a barren, artless room that had all the charm of a North Korean nursing home cafeteria where we proceeded to try and figure out how much we could order without looking like crazy fat Americans. Still, we were obligated to order as much as possible. This is a blog, after all.

We started our meal off with a piping hot bowl of Sweet Soy Bean Milk. Yup, sweetened soy milk. And you know what? It was good. Very good. Imagine you've just had Frosted Flakes and you've finished all the flakes. Now you've got this bowl of sugary milk that you know you're gonna drink because it's delicious. Now make it five degrees out. Now make that milk hot. That's what this is. Then along came the Scallion Pancake with Sliced Beef and the Sweet Sticky Rice Roll. The scallion pancake was wrapped like a burrito around thinly sliced beef with a hoisin sauce dressing. Pike liked it more than I did by a wide margin. I liked it, but for something that was supposed to be their signature dish, the sauce was too much and wiped out the taste of the pancake. Next time, I'd probably want to get the beefless one. The sweet sticky rice roll is unlike anything I'd had until that point. Imagine, if you will, sticky rice. A tube of sticky rice. Inside of that tube is a piece of fried fish. Now, imagine this rice-fish corn-dog type thing glazed in sugar to the point that you can feel the sugar crystals crunch between your teeth. I can't say it was my dish of the day, but if you think that this is the most amazing dessert-cum-appetizer-cum-sandwich the world has ever seen, then you should get it. But don't tell your dentist.

Up next, the Steamed Pork Buns arrived in a round bamboo steamer tray, stacked atop its companion, the Steamed Crab Meat and Pork Buns. Soup dumplings are what Nan Xiang gets a lot of Yelp shout-outs for and we were gonna dive right in. First, they were delicious, let's just say that. Filled with meat and broth and scallions, they were like little wonton bowls you could fit in the palm of your hand. Don't so that though. They're scalding hot. Not only did they explode with boiling soup, they exploded with flavor. When I go back, this will be on my order every time. But that said, which one? The truth is, we couldn't tell the difference between the plain ol' pork or the tarted up crab-pork. Save a buck and stick to the regular pork. Beneath these guys on the menu was the Pork & Vegetable Wonton Soup, which I believed to be a soup dumpling similar to what we had been having just previously because it wasn't in the "soup" section of the menu. But it's a soup. Well, I like wonton soup, but this was just not good. Pike didn't mind it so much, but he ate so little of it that I have to wonder. The wontons were good, but the broth was awful. Fishy and seaweedy. It tainted the entire experience. Clearly, people like their wonton soup with a hunk of seaweed tossed in, but I am not one of them. I let the wontons dry out so they could be enjoyed and the broth went all but untouched. We also tried the Rice Cake with Pork, Shrimp and Fish. To show you how ignorant I am, I was expecting some sort of dense, cake-like rice dish, perhaps with all the various meats tucked away inside like chocolate chips in a cookie. What it actually is is a stir-fry dish where the cake, made from rice flour, which has the consistency of partially-cooked gummy dough, is sliced up and tossed like gnocchi with all of the dish's other ingredients. It was fantastic. Not what I was expecting (I thought that they got our order wrong for about ten minutes), but fantastic. Also, it's heavy. I took most of it home.

Did Nan Xiang live up to the hype? No. It had a miss or two. I didn't faint at the table. It would have been helpful if the waiter had spoken a tad more English. But it was very good. And dirt cheap. Our whole meal, which was seven dishes, plus soda, plus tax and tip, came to $48. I'd go back in a second. I just wouldn't get the wonton soup again. Or that rice/fish/sugar tube thing. 

Nan Xiang is cash only.

MARKET TABLE

54 Carmine Street

New York, NY 10014

(212) 255-2100

If there's one downside to being a single guy whose friends are less so, it's that it's been a while since I'd gone out someplace trendy. Or hip. Or cool. It's a good thing I know Speeds. She dislikes cooking at home enough to be ready and willing to dine out. We debated where to meet up - it had been months since we'd last hung out - and decided on Market Table in the West Village. I've always liked the West Village, college kids, tourists, and tacky sex toy stores notwithstanding. Go far enough from Sixth Avenue and it can be quite quaint and bucolic. Closer to Sixth Avenue is Market Table, brought to you from the guys behind Little Owl.

The interior is textbook American Bistro. Tea lights, big windows, exposed brick, small menu, doe-eyed waitresses, bookshelves filled with wine, an open kitchen. I was seated in the front dining room, essentially the room next to the one pictured below. Given the weather and my table's proximity to the front door, I was worried about having a burst of arctic fury hit me periodically over the course of the meal. But this never happened, so feel free to sit here without fear. We ate here on a Sunday and the restaurant, while busy, never filled up or got obnoxiously loud. Speeds, who's been here, oh, ten time so far, says that it's louder and busier on other days.

Market Table has a not-small wine list, though I stuck with something from their beer menu. Speeds ordered a glass of wine and, wanting something light, we decided to split an appetizer. The Baby Beets & Goat Cheese Salad. When I was a kid, beets represented the most unholy of foods. I grew up loathing it and it was not until last year, when female forces beyond my control began ordering it with some regularity, that I started having it prepared in ways that didn't make me retch. So, take it from me, a guy who really never cared for beets, that this beet salad is incredible. Made with pistachios and herbs and a tart horseradish cream dressing it was simply great.

For her main course, Speeds ordered another appetizer, the Cavtelli Pork Sugo, a light pasta in an even lighter pork sauce with porcini mushroom and basil, and a dollop of ricotta. It might have been an appetizer, but it given its size, one could understand how it could be mistaken for an entree. The dish was pleasant if unmemorable. It's the kind of thing I might order if I wasn't very hungry to begin with and just wanted something to munch on while I was having a conversation and a glass of wine. Coincidentally, that's exactly what Speeds was doing, so I suppose that it fit the bill nicely. My choice was the two and a half inch thick Berkwood Farms Double Cut Pork Chop with orzo in a tangy red wine reduction, pickled onions (I think it was pickled onion), and escarole. While the pork chop itself was cooked well albeit a hair on the dry side, my complaint really has to do with the sauce. The sauce was so strong that it was all I could taste and the orzo was soaked in it. A mere drizzle would have been sufficient. We also ordered a side of Kale, made with garlic and lemon juice. It was, uh… kale. Y'know? 

For dessert, I ordered a coffee and we split a Berry Peach Cobbler with a scoop of ginger ice cream on top. It looked quite pretty, but again, overpowering flavors trumped. On the instances where I found myself eating a virginally clean bit of cobbler, I enjoyed it. The ice cream was so heavily gingerfied that even a small bit drowned out the taste of everything else. 

MORTON'S GRILLE

233 Park Avenue South

New York, NY 10003

(212) 220-9200

There are plenty of wallet-draining steakhouse chains in the world. Smith & Wollensky, Palm, Fleming's, Del Frisco's, BLT, Ruth's Chris, and of course, my previous post's Capital Grille. These are no Outbacks or Longhorns; there isn't pop music or license plates on the walls, and there's no endless margarita for happy hour. These are primo, expensive joints with a steady clientele of executives and country clubbers. The thing is, in a city like this, with the options that we have, are they worth going to? That was the questions I asked of The Capital Grille, and I was answered with pretty solid "No". But not all chins are the same, so I moved on to Morton's. Actually, Morton's Grille, a more trendy, less stuffy, and slightly less expensive variant of the brand. I still ordered the filet mignon though.

This trip, I went with Dudeman and Shrink. They aren't big steak people and have the inexcusable habit of ordering it medium well. So I made a concerted effort to have them order something non-steak from the relatively varied menu. Stepping inside is a huge square bar that one could easily feel comfortable eating alone at. Or I suppose you could watch a game on the TVs, of which there are numerous. Beyond the bar sits a brand new, almost glistening dining room with an open, steaming hot kitchen. Our waiter, whose name escapes me, was very friendly, very personable, and did not at all behave the way the more aloof, fancypants steakhouse waiters tend to.

At the time, I had been hankering for a bisque or a chowder to start off the meal, so I was more than a little surprised that there wasn't any soup on the menu. Instead, I ordered Bacon & Eggs, the Morton's Grille version of deviled eggs, served with a little bacon on top and over a drizzle of Dijon mustard. It was good. I can't say that I was amazed by them, but I inhaled them inside of five minutes. Dudeman and Shrink ordered the Spicy Thai Mussels to share, mussels in a green curry broth with peanuts, basil, and cilantro. These were impressive. I can honestly say that I would have shied away from ordering the dish, but I was glad that they did. Very rich, almost sweet, and quite spicy. Don't expect mild. At almost the exact time that the appetizers were served, rather than long before, the bread arrived. It's was the sort of sloppy planning that made me worry about the rest of our experience. We should have shooed it away, but our better judgment had taken a bathroom break at that moment and upon the table was placed an entire loaf of onion bread that was literally the size of a bowling ball. Shrink couldn't stop raving about how amazing it was, and yes, we all used it to sponge up the sauce from the mussels, but really it should have come out far earlier.

For my entrée, I ordered the 10 oz. Filet Mignon, medium rare. This was the exact entrée that I ordered on my recent trip with Pike to Capital Grille. I had to compare the two. There was no comparison. It was phenomenal. Indeed, it's hard to describe just how tender it was save to say that if I wanted to, I probably could have cut it with a spoon. Capital Grille's filet mignon might as well have been made out of a brick. Just in case the steak was a letdown in the flavor department, I ordered a sauce on the side - The Bourbon Au Poivre - which was a total mistake. First, it was wholly unnecessary. The steak on its own was perfection incarnate. Second, although the sauce could have been very good, they loaded so much pepper into it that pepper was about all I could taste. Similar overkill went into the side of Asparagus Spears that we got for the table. While the asparagus itself was cooked perfectly, the chefs drizzled this extremely tart balsamic vinegar syrup over it that overpowered everything it came in contact with. I guess you could say that it's the asparagus you order when you hate asparagus.

Nonsteakwise, Dudeman got the Blackened Swordfish served over a veritable mountain of Smoked Gouda Grits. The swordfish was very good. The spices were proportioned to just the right degree. I've had many a blackened fish and more often than not, they go crazy with the spices to the point that it's all that you can taste. Here, not so. Plus you got a decent portion. The same can be said of the grits. Delicious and creamy, but it is super heavy and they gave Dudeman a ton of it. In the end, even with my help, most of the plate went uneaten just due to him feeling so full. Shrink ventured into territory I didn't see coming when she ordered the Cheeky Pot Roast, red wine braised beef cheeks with onion served over buttered egg noodles. She was skeptical about eating cheek, but in the end, loved it, and so did I. I would absolutely recommend this entrée. It's a classic American comfort food dish perfect for the cold weather.

In the end, had the bread come earlier and had I never ordered the sauce or the asparagus, I really wouldn't have had anything to complain about. Sure, the deviled eggs were forgettable, but everything else was delicious and the service was memorably good. It's a wee bit cheaper than the competition, which is nice too, but it's hardly where I'd go to penny pinch.

Two appetizers, three entrees, one side dish, two drinks, tax and tip came to about $210.