Queens meat truck

Occasion: Snack before the US Open (Roddick v. Sock)
Location: food truck at 39th and Prince in Flushing, Queens
Edibles: chicken skewers; chicken hearts; lamb ribs; quail; squid

Musings: This hardworking truck is open from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. All the meats are cooked over a little trench of charcoal. While chicken and beef skewers ($1 each) are undoubtedly this truck's bread and butter, I think what makes it great are exotic items.

Lamb ribs - I've never had these before but I loved them. I'm guessing the guy has a source where he gets them for free because there's not much meat on them, basically just the ribs after the tenderloin's been removed. They're not filling but the spice rub is delicious and the little shreds of meat are really flavorful (as meat near the bone tends to be). For $5 you get an entire rack. Good to share.

The whole quail was also excellent, if a bit cumbersome to eat with your hands while sitting on a park bench. The squid was good, though the sauce was a tad spicy for me.

I'd pass on the chicken hearts - they were fairly rubbery and I've definitely had better.

I recommend that you pick up a roll and a beverage on the way, as the salt tends to add up. There's a little bakery across the street that sells single man tou for the former, and numerous bubble tea places on Main Street for the latter. A cheap, fast and tasty meal.

BBQ Village

Occasion: Yet another meat-a-palooza shenanigan with Yining.
Location: BBQ Village on Northern Blvd in Flushing, Queens (bbqvillage.net)
Edibles: bbq'ed meats galore, all you can eat for $30

Musings: We went during ultra peak hours (i.e. regular weekend dinner) and paid the highest price on their matrix. You can get a better deal for more inconvenient time slots. On weekdays it's $25 per person. And the late night special is hard to beat - after 10pm on weekdays it's $17 per person, and after 11pm on Friday and Saturday, 10pm on Sunday, $20.

The meats all looked fresh and were of a decent quality. Be careful not to overcook the beef - it goes from juicy and tender to tough and chewy in about 30 seconds. Surprisingly, the pork kalbi was our favorite. It stood up to erratic cooking times really well and had the same yummy marinade as the beef.

There's also a selection of cooked dishes, vegetables, soup, rice, and fresh fruit for dessert. I quite enjoyed their braised short ribs and was hard-pressed to stop at just one bowl of rice.

This is a niche restaurant - all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ is not for everyone. If you are usually satisfied with a normal-sized Korean dinner, you might as well stay in Manhattan at the weekend prices. Meat-tooth that I am, even I don't think I'll be shlepping out to Queens just for BBQ Village.

In the end, transportation's the biggest hurdle. The closest LIRR stop is Broadway in Queens. After dinner, you might decide (as we did) to walk to the Flushing Main Street stop, about 20 minutes away. If you're headed back to the city in a rental car after some event, the late night special might be worth considering.

Xi'an Famous Foods, part II

Occasion: More food court explorations with Mom
Location: Xi'an Famous Foods, also in the Flushing Mall food court - 39th Ave off Main St in Flushing, Queens
Edibles: lamb (or possibly goat - it's the same word in Chinese) offal soup; noodles with braised pork and cabbage

Musings: If you're wondering why I'd order such a crazy-sounding soup, let me state for the record that I've had it in Asia and, when done right, it can be awesomely tasty. The key qualifier, however, is "when done right." As it certainly was not, here.

I had one spoonful and that was plenty. All the unpleasant tastes that offal can impart were all there in that one soup - the bitter chemical taste of digestive organs, the iron-blood taste of liver, the general gaminess of lamb. Ugh. My mom had a little more than I did, but eventually even she had to concede that it was just awful. After a few minutes, I actually had to get up and throw it out - even the smell was making me a bit queasy. Epic fail.

The hand-cut noodles with braised pork were better, but also a bit lacking in technique. Some of the noodles were really thin while others were really thick and doughy, and almost all of them were too long to eat in a single bite. The braised pork was yummy, though.

[Note: As unlikely a dish as it is to order in a food court, the steak may be the way to go. A couple sitting nearby had one and it looked great.]

Ay Chung

Occasion: Lunch with my mom
Location: Ay Chung, in the Flushing Mall food court - 39th Ave off Main St in Flushing, Queens
Edibles: cuttlefish soup

Musings: Too hungry to wait patiently for a table at the always-crowded Asian Jewels, we popped across the street to the Flushing Mall food court.

We started with Ay Chung's cuttlefish soup. It's actually pretty good - a cornstarch-thickened bonito broth, lots of cuttlefish dumplings and lots of fresh cilantro. A nice little snack for around $3.

Happy Beef Noodle House

Occasion: Post-US Open (Sharapova def Benesova; Djokovic def Petzschner) snack with Yining
Location: Happy Beef Noodle House on Prince between 38th and 39th Ave in Flushing, Queens
Edibles: noodles with stewed beef and tendon

Musings: Generally speaking, a very good effort and hard to beat for the price. The highlight for me was the stewed beef. My mom couldn't have done it better, and that's saying something. Really flavorful and falling-apart tender.

Some minor critiques: 1) the tendon could have had a bit more bite to it, i.e. not been cooked quite so soft; 2) the noodles aren't as good as Lanzhou - if only they could combine their powers; 3) the broth was a little thin for my taste, though Yining liked it fine.

On the way out, we also discovered an interesting-looking food truck. There was a yummy-looking chop I thought was pork, though their menu only listed lamb chops. A mystery. We were both stuffed and sadly unable to sample the goods. Next time, next time....

The Butcher Block

Location: on 41st, just off Queens Blvd in Sunnyside (close to the 40th St / Lowery stop on the 7 train)

Instead of a turkey, my plan this year was to bake a spiced ham based on a Nigella recipe. The recipe listed a "mild-cured gammon," and called for it to be boiled for 2 to 3 hours before going in the oven. I knew that I could find a fully cooked, spiral-cut ham or a fresh, uncured ham (a.k.a. pork roast), but this recipe seemed to require something in between.

I called Lobel's to confirm. Once I got past the call center to the store itself, a butcher named Paul immediately said, "What you're looking for is an Irish ham. We don't have it, but The Butcher Block will." And indeed they did.

From the name it sounds like they just sell meat but they're actually a grocery / market that stocks all sorts of Irish and British foodstuffs. The guy I spoke to on the phone was very friendly and informative; the butchers were likewise in person. My six-pound ham cost a very reasonable $30. Recipe to follow.

I was particularly tickled by the fact that everyone in the store, from the employees to the customers (except me) had the full-on "they're after me Lucky Charms" Irish accent.

Dintai(?) bakery

Location: I'm not 100% sure about the name, but it's on Main St about a block south of the LIRR station in Flushing

A great little Chinese bakery. You can walk out with a bulging bag of breads and pastries for $5. They're finally re-opened after weeks of renovations! Yay!

Really good man tou (a dense, fine-crumbed white roll of sorts). They last over a week if you toss them in the fridge immediately. I like to bring them back to life by slicing and pan-frying them with a little butter or oil. Though too bland to eat on their own, they're excellent for breakfast slathered with dulce de leche or your jam of choice, or on the side with a big bowl of soup.

I like their sesame sao bing but my mom (who has more a more authentic Taiwanese palate) found them too doughy.

They also make good individual sponge cakes (the tall, reverse-pyramid-shaped ones) and pineapple buns (pictured on the right).

Studio Square

Occasion: Beer garden revelry with Yining's friends
Location: Studio Square on 36th St near 36th Ave in Astoria (studiosquarenyc.com)
Edibles: a few pilfered fries [and two donuts (glazed and old-fashioned) from Dunkin' Donuts, conveniently across the street]

Musings: Sept. 19 - not done yet! This day just might be one for the history books. A meander-and-graze through Flushing, followed by an al fresco lobster feast at sunset, followed by donuts and beer? Doesn't get much better than that.

The beer garden area of Studio Square is huge, and bar is pretty slick and modern compared to the others I've been to. The crowd looked pretty innocuous when we got there but seemed to get a lot younger on average as the night wore on - the number of meathead guys and hoochie women increased exponentially after about 11:00.

Pitchers are $18 and there's a selection of about 20, foreigns and domestics. We drank a lot of the seasonal Oktoberfest offerings (by Sam Adams, Spaten, Hofbräu) and some Blue Moon. They appeared to serve a decent sausage but I was too full to try to bum a taste. For some strange reason, sushi was also on the menu. One of Yining's more reckless friends ordered some and deemed it so-so but edible.

Oh, and one more thing. The bathrooms are all self-contained stalls. While there's nominally one side for ladies and one for men, the attendant will call ladies over to the men's side when their line gets long. Equality in waiting for bathrooms - I like it!

Xi'an Famous Foods

Occasion: Stop #2 on our Flushing food march

Location: just across the aisle from Lanzhou, in the basement food court in the Golden Mall, 41-28 Main St at 41st Rd in Flushing [Note: there's another one - they've gone corporate! - in the Flushing Mall, which is distinctly newer and cleaner]

Edibles: cumin lamb burgers

Musings: This is the burger made famous by Tony Bourdain in his recent "Outer Boroughs" episode of No Reservations. (The shop has proudly laminated a blurry photocopy of a picture of the historic event.) Of course, we had to try it.

This burger didn't taste Chinese at all to me. All the ingredients - the lamb, cumin, peppers and onions - seemed more Middle-Eastern. Still, it was yummy and a steal at $2.50. It's a good reason to share the Lanzhou noodles and save some room. Speaking of noodles, the ones on the Xi'an menu looked pretty stellar too. Maybe next month. Stay tuned.

Lanzhou Handmade Noodles

Occasion: A second Flushing excursion with Yining, Kathy and Kathy's mom
Location: basement food court in the Golden Mall, 41-28 Main St at 41st Rd in Flushing
Edibles: beef broth noodles (one with the thick noodles, one with the hand-pulled thin noodles)

Musings: By "food court," I don't mean like the ones in your average mall, with a Burger King, Panda Express, Sbarro, etc. By "food court," I mean a collection of little dingy family-owned stalls like you'd find in populous Asian cities. Even I felt the compulsion to slather hand sanitizer on every surface. So don't say I didn't warn you. It's worth a trip, though, and it's loads cheaper than airfare to Taipei.

The noodles have so much texture and character.... al dente doesn't begin to describe it. They have a resilience and a fresh doughiness that dried, frozen or even refrigerated pastas can't hope to match. It's fun to order a couple different kinds of noodles and broths to share, even though the noodles themselves are REALLY long and hard to portion out. (You may need to use both hands to clamp the chopsticks tightly enough to break the noodles. And watch out for the recoil.)

There's a little plastic container of suan cai (Chinese sauerkraut) on the table. I mixed two heaping spoonfuls into my noodles - it's my favorite part of this dish - but you probably want to start with a light scattering.

The broth could use some work. Unlike the care they take with the broth in Japanese-style noodle shops, I got the feeling this one involved a handful of bouillon cubes thrown into a pot of boiling water. But for $4.50, they're forgiven.

US Open concessions stand

Occasion: US Open with Nellie and Jim - fourth round action, Caroline Wozniacki v. Svetlana Kuznetsova and Novak Djokovic v. Radek Stepanek

Location: Arthur Ashe stadium, promenade concessions stand

Edibles: Coney Island foot-long hot dog

Musings: I had preemptively stuffed myself at Chipotle beforehand but, around 11:00, the munchies struck and I needed a snack. The hot dog was overpriced, but whatever. It's a sports event. It is what it is. (Incidentally, I think they'd sell twice as much if they lowered their prices by a third.)

What really made me cranky was that they refused to give me an empty cup so that I could get some water from the fountain. I think my $6 hot dog entitles me to a damn paper cup, dudes. (Bottles of water were an exorbitant $4 each and I refused to buy one on principle. Well.... that, and I'm a cheap bastard about these kinds of things. Don't judge.)

Mmmm... shaved ice dessert

After dim sum, we went across the street to poke around in the Flushing Mall. The food court really merited its own separate trip, but we found some room for a shaved ice dessert with the following toppings: stewed taro, stewed mung beans, tapioca balls, ai yu jelly and condensed milk. It was awesome but I would say that this, too, is an Asian dish with a high degree of difficulty. Not for beginners!

Asian Jewels (fka Ocean Jewels)

Occasion: Dim sum with two of my Penn posse, Kathy and Yining
Location: Ocean Jewels Seafood Restaurant on 39th Ave near College Point Blvd in Flushing [2010 update: now called Asian Jewels]
Edibles: the classics - shrimp fun; shu mai; har gao; pork and thousand-year-old egg congee; bbq pork buns; steamed daikon cake; sesame balls with lotus paste filling; mini egg tarts

Musings: Leagues better than anything I've had in Manhattan. All the food was piping hot, well-seasoned and not too greasy (at least, not by Chinese food standards). And it was served by old-school dim sum ladies wheeling carts around, shouting out their offerings in Mandarin and Cantonese. For me, the standout was the congee but I wouldn't recommend it to any neophyte white folks out there.

To make room for other Flushing delicacies, we were fairly restrained in our ordering. The total bill came out to only $25 and we walked out feeling moderately full and extremely satisfied. Don't bother fighting the tourist crowd in Chinatown next time you're in the mood for dim sum - the good stuff's in Flushing.