[Sca-cooks] Attention Adamantius

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach kattratt:
>I am coming to NY City hitting Chinatown where should I go for 
>shopping fun, adventure, and finally a Dim Sum Lunch....(Yes that is 
>3 questions)

My preferred dim sum house is The Nice Restaurant on East Broadway; 
it's sort of a big wedding palace with tacky decor on two floors 
(carved gilt dragons with light-up eyes!!! very cool!!!), but they 
serve an excellent dim sum lunch daily from about 9 AM to 2 or 3 PM. 
Ladies go by with the little carts of dishes, and you can also order 
meal-appropriate dishes cooked more or less to order (things like big 
bowls of snails or clams, or noodle dishes) off a menu.

Some prefer a place called Golden Unicorn, which is across East 
Broadway, inside a sort of mall building, and dishes, prices, and 
service are comparable, but GU seems to season everything with sugar. 
My wife claims this is the difference between the cooking of Hong 
Kong and Kwangtung proper (and of course everyone knows that 
Kwangtung is better than Hong Kong ;-)  )

For Chinatown shopping you need to check out Pearl River on Broadway 
(not East or West Broadway, just Broadway) about two blocks north of 
Canal Street -- caveat: I have not been in there since they moved to 
that location, but they always used to be a wonderful Asian 
department store, with everything from groceries to clothes, musical 
instruments, videos in weird formats your VCR and DVD player may or 
may not handle, kitchen utensils and at least one practicing herbal 
doctor and pharmacy on the premises (IOW, he will examine, diagnose 
and prescribe, although we go to him for his over-the-counter stuff 
like po-chai pills, a.k.a. Chinese Pepto-Bismol, white flower oil, 
tiger balm, and iron strike wine (which makes a wonderful liniment 
even if you're not a kung fu student learning the Iron Fist 
technique). If you can go to only one store in Chinatown, that would 
be my recommendation. Also fun are Kam Kuo (mysteriously pronounced 
Gim Gok in my wife's dialect), similar, smaller and closer to the 
center of the touristy part of Chinatown on Mott Street just north of 
the Bowery. You need to visit the Egg Cake Lady in her little stall 
on the corner of Mott and Mosco Streets (you can't miss it; it's the 
corner that isn't a church), one block north of the Bowery. She makes 
little eggy cakes in seasoned iron molds somewhere in between an 
ice-cube tray and a waffle iron, apparently used by her grandfather 
and father before her on that same location. She may have raised her 
prices to something like $2 for a bag of cakes; she's putting her 
sons through college.

For a bit of local history, you might walk off Mott Street onto Pell 
Street (NYC's original, one-block-long Chinatown, from the 1820's and 
30's), and from there, to the bend in Doyers Street (another 
one-block-long street), site of the old Peking Opera House (now, 
fittingly, the site of a post office, allegedly haunted) and where, 
in the 1890's and early 1900's, hired guns from China walked the 
streets in chain mail and steel helmets, bringing the phrase "tong 
war" into mainstream English.

Finally, stand in the middle of Columbus Park (cut down one block 
down Mosco to Mulberry Street, from the Egg Cake Lady's stall) and 
realize you're standing on the site of Freshwater Pond, a.k.a. The 
Collect, later drained to create Paradise Square and the convergence 
of five streets known collectively as The Five Points, known until 
the 1920's as The Toughest Neighborhood In America, and the site 
where "The Gangs of New York" is set.

>Finally we will be staying in Downtown NY City and are looking for 
>an excellent restaurant... I know that you can give excellent 
>suggestions.  Thanks for your help.

I've always had a soft spot for Chanterelle in SoHo, especially now 
that Bouley (at least the restaurant of that name) is gone. Then 
there's Vong or Aja, both owned by Jean-George Vongerichten, sort of 
fusion cuisine. It depends largely on what you like and are willing 
to spend exorbitantly on, and what you can't get locally. Maybe you 
can tell me a little more about what you're interested in. God, I 
remember having disposable income... ;-)

Adamantius