More of Flushing

If you type in Flushing in the "search blog" queue, you'll find a few enthusiastic posts about awesome Chinese food we've blogged about.
But there's more. There's a lot more to report.
This past weekend, a few of us (Aramis and Mr. Risotto included) decided to head out to Flushing again and eat our way around town.

Aramis and I got there first, and we were a bit hungry to start with... So we walked around and spotted some little snacks en route to our rendezvous point. We started with a street vendor right under the train station and ordered up some meat buns. 4 for $1.25. I think this was a winner.


We later waltzed into an underground food court and proceeded to order some dumplings.
You sit on these little stools that are designed for kindergartners and you share elbow space with the next table of really loud Asian people, but the food is comforting and extremely cheap. $3 for the box of dumplings... Um, Yah.

After we met up with the rest of the entourage, we went back to the underground food court and sat at a different vendor's stall and ordered up some lamb with cumin burgers, braised goat ribs and spine and rice noodles with cumin. Once again, super cramped and rough service. But we ordered for 5 and the bill came to $30.










Next stop, off to Nanshiang Xiaolongbao.
I like this place a lot. Their XLB are probably the best I've had in the States, but if there was one area of the dish that was questionable, it would be the skin (as Aramis pointed out immediately). Not as soft as "the best", but still elastic enough to not break when picking up. (Your chopstick skills are tested here. If you can pick up a XLB, uncooked tofu, and individual peanuts, you can pick up just about anything else.)
But I'm not that picky. The center is what matters to me the most. Good filling that's not dark brown because they douse it with soy sauce but good pork broth to fill. Leaving your lips a little sticky because of the collagen in the soup. That to me is where the love is.










We finished up here and walked to the Flushing Mall for some bubble tea. But for some reason, I ordered some guotie (potstickers) as well, and they were fantastic. Mind you, we were pretty full at this point and the potstickers still tasted really good.

All in all, this was a successful food crawl around Flushing. The weather wasn't too cold and we spent the whole day talking about food and eating.
Pretty sweet!