{"id":17762,"date":"2022-07-19T07:53:25","date_gmt":"2022-07-19T11:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/?p=17762"},"modified":"2022-07-19T07:53:25","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T11:53:25","slug":"tianjin-baozi-shop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/?p=17762","title":{"rendered":"Tianjin Baozi Shop"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)<\/em>
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The last time I visited Stall Number 27 (a couple of months ago) there was nary a word of English extant: not on the menu, not even the name of the vendor, and certainly not uttered by the folks behind the counter. I had been making the rounds within the New World Mall Food Court, 136-20 Roosevelt Ave, to ferret out some good candidates for my Flushing food tour and I might have passed by, but I was riveted by the maneuvers of the chef. He massaged a clump of dough on his work surface, piled a mammoth heap of meat onto it, folded it into a seriously massive cannonball, and proceeded to drop it onto his work surface repeatedly until it was ready to be rolled out and pressed into shape. I guessed he was constructing one of the examples depicted on a sign gracing the front of the booth.<\/p>\n

I snapped a photo of it, caught the eye of the woman busy behind the counter, and pointed to the picture I had just taken. I nodded at her with questioning, raised eyebrows, she nodded back in the affirmative, and I waited, hoping for the best. The dish arrived in a tin, sliced into wedges and was surely more than I could consume in a single sitting. She held up a finger which I took to mean \u201cwait\u201d, went to the back, and returned with a plastic pint container filled with an unidentified liquid that she added to the bag.<\/p>\n

After some gratifying research at home (admittedly, I have a strange idea of fun), I confirmed that I had just visited the Tianjin Baozi Shop and purchased an order of Beijing Xianghe Meatloaf, a meat pie that unexpectedly comes with complementary Tong Sui (sweet soup). The tong sui was beany, laden with rice, and barely sweet, a good foil for the slightly salty meat patty. I\u2019ve pulled a couple of hunks of the filling out of their pancake cloak so you could see where a lot of repetitive pounding and rolling gets you. (Note that there’s a Tian Jin Dumpling House on Kissena Blvd with a very different menu.)<\/p>\n

Oh, and as I\u2019ve mentioned, this is all part of the process of selecting the best of the best for my ethnojunkets, so not all of the dishes I post show up on the tours, of course.<\/p>\n

Curious about which ones we\u2019ll actually sample? Take a tour and find out!<\/p>\n

To learn more about my food tours, please check out my Ethnojunkets<\/a> page and sign up to join in the fun!
\n 
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was nary a word of English extant: not on the menu, not even the name of the vendor, and certainly not uttered by the folks behind the counter. Read on…. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-17762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-restaurants-food-courts","tag-chinese"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17762"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17767,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17762\/revisions\/17767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}