Instagram Post 1/11/2019

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The more I post about this place, the more I want to return, if only to have another go at establishing a communications link with the folks at Farmers Restaurant, 1692 86th St, Brooklyn. Everything we tasted at this eatery in Bensonhurst’s Chinatown (yes, that’s a thing) was wonderful and I’m keen to sample some different dishes next time despite the language barrier. It’s worth noting that verbal exchanges aside, the take-out menu differs from the online menu which differs from the heavily redacted in-house menu – not to mention any specials of the day. I like a challenge.

Here’s Crab with Sticky Rice from the Chef’s Specialties section of the take-out menu. This kind of dish looks deceptively simple, but it’s not always easy to get it right; working with sticky rice requires some finesse and the chef had plenty.

This one is for friends who accuse me of never posting photos of vegetables (let alone ordering them 😉): water spinach, aka water convolvulus, aka water morning glory plus a frustrating litany of increasingly misleading names, served here with garlic sauce (another vegetable!) – tasty, green, and good for you. Right? It grows in water and its hollow stems are the clue to positive ID; they provide the buoyancy that keeps the leaves afloat. I’m not entirely sure if this was on any of the menus!

Looking forward to going back!
 
 

Instagram Post 1/9/2019

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More from Farmers Restaurant, 1692 86th St, Brooklyn, in Bensonhurst’s budding Chinatown where the food was delicious and the language barrier insurmountable. I’m certain about the first dish shown here, Crab and Fish Maw Soup. Fish maw is swim bladder, dried and then reconstituted for soup; if you frequent Chinese markets, it’s easy to find in transparent cellophane or plastic packages. It has little flavor of its own, but is quick to take on that of other ingredients. See second photo for a closer look.

Apologies if you are troubled by the sight of disembodied birds’ heads but there’s a carefully placed specimen on our serving of tasty Crispy Fried Pigeon.

Despite the communications difficulties, I’d definitely return to Farmers Restaurant; it was a meal to remember.
 
 

Instagram Post 1/7/2019

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Another visit to Super HK Food Court, 37-11 Main St, Flushing, in the basement of Super HK Supermarket, this time to Stall 21. I didn’t catch the English translation of the name (if it was even there to be caught), but the Chinese characters are 客來勤 (Ke Lai Qin) literally: Customers Come Frequent. That last character can also mean diligent or hard-working; either way, the name is surely aspirational.

[1] This is Fried Fish Belly, not to be confused with fish maw (swim bladder). I’ve had fish belly elsewhere, particularly in some dim sum parlors where I suspect the bellies were from smaller fish since they were significantly more tender than these. Their unanticipated texture is a little difficult to describe – they’re soft but resilient and chewy, not really crunchy (peanuts are crunchy), not really crispy (chips are crispy), but you can easily hear the sound of your tablemates chomping down on them. A tasty dish, but the texture will be challenging for some.

[2] Braised eggplant, a classic crowd pleaser; they did a good job with this one as well.

Stay tuned for more from the depths of Super HK Food Court….
 
 

Instagram Post 1/1/2019

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Every now and then, I pull up a photo of something that was absolutely delicious but that I failed to post about. There was always a good reason for my ostensible lack of diligence and in this case it was a language barrier. Here’s what I can tell you: it was one of the excellent dishes we enjoyed at Farmers Restaurant, 1692 86th St, Brooklyn, in Bensonhurst’s nascent Chinatown, and I’m fairly certain it corresponded to what the menu identified as Sautéed King of Fry with Summer Fruit, a pretty literal translation of 夏果小炒王 (Xia Guo Xiaochao Wang). A Cantonese dish, it combined sweetly fresh seafood, green beans, scallions, macadamia nuts and, I suspect, XO sauce and it was wonderful. In researching, I’ve seen a couple of dubious references to it or something like it in dusty corners of the interwebs but there’s not much else I can tell you since I couldn’t elicit much firsthand information. Still, everything we ate was positively droolworthy and yes, it warrants a return visit.
 
 

Instagram Post 12/28/2018

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Soup dumplings, Xiao Long Bao, XLB, 小笼包, call them what you will, are universally prized regardless of the appellation. Literally “little basket bun” because they are steamed and served in a little basket often made of bamboo, the wrapper encloses a tasty meatball (usually pork), sometimes with the addition of crabmeat and/or crab roe, swimming in a rich broth (usually pork).

Fans champion just the right skins (a little elasticity, not too thick but not so thin that it breaks upon dislodgment from the steamer), just the right filling (flavorful, proper consistency, and moist unto itself), just the right soup (savory and porky, not playing second fiddle to the meat), and just the right ratio of soup to filling. In short, sort of like Goldilocks’ appraisal of Baby Bear’s personal effects: “juuuuuust right.” Shown here are three representatives:

[1] The Bao, 13 St Marks Place in the East Village, sister of Flushing’s Kung Fu Xiao Long Bao
[2] Joe’s Shanghai, 9 Pell Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown
[3] Diverse Dim Sum, Stall 12 in the New York Food Court, 133-35 Roosevelt Ave, Flushing
[4] A peek inside an example from Joe’s

My original intention was to do a roundup of favorites but there are already enough of those bouncing around the interwebs (along with innumerable treatises on the “right” way to eat them), that I decided that rather than proclaiming a subjective winner (spoiler: there isn’t just one), I’d like to hear from you! Where are the best XLBs in your opinion?

Perhaps a crawl is in the offing!