Flushing (New York)

Our 10 Best Chinese Restaurants in NYC, 2013 Edition

The amazing "big tray chicken" at Manhattan's Spicy Village It's been over two years since Fork in the Road appraised the relative merits of the city's Chinese restaurants - things have changed so much in the interim. Northern Chinese fare continues to rule Flushing, Elmhurst has increased the bre ... More >>

Rural Restaurant: No Rice, Still Nice

More great food from China's far northeastern corner

New York's Beijing BBQ Carts Branch Out in a Big Way

An assortment of brochettes from this innovative Chinatown barbecue cart is Dish #22 in our countdown. Welcome to 100 Dishes to Eat Now, the tasty countdown leading up to our "Best of 2012" issue. Tune in each day (weekends too!) for a new dish from the Fork in the Road team. It was only five year ... More >>

Hot & Spicy Whole Flounder at Rural Restaurant, Dish #45

Welcome to 100 Dishes to Eat Now, the tasty countdown leading up to our "Best of 2012" issue. Tune in every day (weekends, too!) for a new dish from the Fork in the Road team.

Trying To Beat the Heat? Check Out Korean Naeng Myun

The soup resembles a miniature floating garden. At Fork in the Road during the last heat spell, we were ransacking our brains to figure out what's the best kind of food for hot weather -- and here we mean sweatingly, swelteringly hot, as it's going to be today. Our most recent stumble-on is a Kore ... More >>

Eating Penis at Minzhongle (NSFW)

The roster of organ meats available at Minzhongle is indeed impressive. In my capacity as scout for the Organ Meat Society, I've stumbled on a broad range of offal and other variety meats. It's easy enough to find liver, tongue, chitterlings, stomach tripe, sweetbreads, and even kidney, but there' ... More >>

Asian Advocacy Group Says State's New District Maps Unfairly Divide Communities

Yesterday, the state -- after a fair amount of delay and confusion -- finally released map proposals for new district lines in New York, based on Census data. We heard from one angry pol yesterday, predictably mad at the political motivations that often drive the process. He's not the only frustra ... More >>

Ask the Critics: Where Can I Try Vegetarian/Halal Korean Food?

Savagecorp / Flickr​Rob Z. Asks: I am fascinated by Korean food due to watching Korean dramas. I have made a dish or two at home but would love to try out an actual restaurant. I don't eat non-halal food but will eat fish and everything else that is not meat. And would love if it is cheap a ... More >>

Beard of Bees: A Stroll Through Flushing's New World Mall

​The Main Street entrance of Flushing's new New World Mall Remember the Old Navy on Main Street at the corner of Main and Roosevelt? Providing the best public restrooms in Flushing and haphazard heaps of even cheaper and bigger clothes than the other Old Navies in town? Well, it's gone, and ... More >>

Ten Fascinating Ethnic Ingredients Chefs Should Get to Know Better

Sprinkled with sesame seeds, marinated jellyfish makes a memorable summer salad​ The last couple of decades have flooded NYC with colorful cuisines many of us never knew existed, and stocked ethnic markets with exotic ingredients that had strange names and fascinating properties. This influx ... More >>

Ride the Wild Wasabi Surf Clams at Yi Lan Halal Restaurant in Flushing

​The dark red clams and rough-cut cukes make a very pretty picture on the plate. The surf clams, meaty and briny, look like those southern Italian chile pepper necklaces, and the cukes are jagged, with a profound crunch provided by the thick kirby skins. But the biggest surprise is the invis ... More >>

Eating the Putz at Flushing's Main Street Imperial Taiwanese Gourmet

A restaurant in a remote corner of the neighborhood showcases home-style dishes

No. 7: Bean Curd in Green Scallion Sauce at Hunan House

​Cubed soft tofu bathed in green sauce -- what could be more elemental? Who doesn't like tofu? Vegans love it. Carnivores love it. The creaminess is incomparable, and it serves as a splendid earth-friendly source of protein, too.

No. 1: Appam With Egg at Bownie

​The lacy parabolic flatbread is beautiful, but what's that egg doing in the bottom? It is said that a feast of 100 dishes must begin with a single bite, and today we get that bite as we inaugurate a new feature. In 100 Days/100 Dishes, Fork in the Road traverses the culinary landscape of th ... More >>

Xi'an Famous Foods's Expansion Plans: New Locations and a Spot in the Frozen Foods Section

Spicy and tingly lamb face for Brooklyn and beyond.​Get ready for spicy and tingly lamb face to go mainstream. Xi'an Famous Foods, the Flushing hand-pulled noodle joint that expanded to Manhattan this past year with two new locations, has even bigger plans. According to the Wall Street Journal ... More >>

The Best Thing I Ate Yesterday

Welcome to The Best Thing I Ate Yesterday, where we endeavor to remember the very best thing we stuffed down our gullets over the past 24 hours. Why? Because the only thing better than enjoying a meal is wallowing in the memory of one savored in the recent past. Today's fond reminiscences ... Robe ... More >>

Tenants in 'Worst Landlords' Building Narrowly Avoid Emergency Evacuation (For Now)

​Tenants at 684 Flushing Avenue, a building owned by Ten Worst Landlord Moishe Indig, got some more bad news yesterday. Citing the landlord's failure to pay his bill, Con Edison cut off all electricity and gas to the entire building, which is in a scrappy section of Bushwick, near Woodhull Med ... More >>

Our 10 Best NYC Chinese Restaurants, 2010 Edition

​The "boiled beef with hot-spicy sauce" is every bit as mouth searing as it looks, but there are plenty of blander options -- such as "special spinach pancake" -- on Lu Xiang Yuan's menu. Like an arcing missile, Chinese cuisine in New York moves so fast, you can barely keep track of it. Thus, ... More >>

My 10 Favorite Queens Restaurants

​The sel momo at Mustang Thakali Kitchen -- much better than Dunkin' Donuts. This countdown is intended to be a bit different from the other "10 Best" lists, specifically reflecting the places I return to again and again in Queens on my own dime, long after I've critiqued them. The food is co ... More >>

Xi'an Famous Foods' St. Marks Location Closed Today, Open Tomorrow

Get your lamb burger tomorrow.​The new location of Flushing favorite Xi'an Famous Foods at the corner of St. Marks Place and First Avenue that we told you about in May is gearing up for its grand opening tomorrow. According to its Facebook page: "The St. Mark's Location will NOT be open this ... More >>

Spring Guide: A Tongue-Torching Tour of Town

Anthony Bourdain Smiles Down at Us from Heaven, and Delicious Noodles Appear at Xi'an Famous Food in Manhattan's Chinatown

​Pictures of the offerings in the window make ordering easy at Xi'an Famous Foods. The advent of northern Chinese fare in Manhattan's Chinatown has been a long-awaited event. First there was a cart at the corner of Forsyth and Division streets dispensing lamb kebabs dusted with a cumin-laced ... More >>

Have You Seen... Flushing Sexual Assailant

​Last Friday around 7 p.m. a young woman entered a building on 31st Road near 23rd Street in Flushing,and was accosted in the elevator by a young man, pictured in this police sketch, who forced her into the stairwell and sexually assaulted and robbed her. He's described as a 18-25 year old His ... More >>

Incredibly Cheap Eats: Bulgogi Sandwich at Sukarak

​Salted away in a U-shaped strip mall in the eastern area of Flushing known as Murray Hill, Sukarak is a Korean snack shop and lunch counter that isn't afraid to fuse Korean and American food, with a little Japanese thrown in for good measure...

Our 10 Best: Food Shops

​ One of travel's greatest pleasures is wandering in food shops frequented by locals--whether it's a supermarket, a cheese shop, or a spice merchant. A busy market is a reprieve from the tourist's whirlwind of restaurant-eating, where you can catch a glimpse of people's everyday food lives. ... More >>

Anyone Know What This Is?

​ I was munching with some friends on a giant heap of dishes at new Shandong restaurant M & T, when the waitress sidled up to me and whispered: "You want to try some seafood from my town of Qingdao. Something we only have there?" How could I resist? The tubes were rubbery, slippery, and slig ... More >>

How Do You Spell G-U-T-B-O-M-B? Taiwanese Shaved Ices at Tasty House 18

​​This Taiwanese shaved ice has been topped with kiwi, melon, and red bean. Mmmmm (click to defrost) Taiwanese bakery and lunchroom Tasty House 18 also offers bubble teas and shaved ices, the latter a summer passion on the former island of Formosa. Your choice of three toppings over wha ... More >>

Our 10 Best: Indian Restaurants

​The glory of Indian food is its infinite variety. Think about it. An enormous region--we're including Pakistan and Bangladesh--with cultures that go back thousands of years, including influences from foreign invaders as diverse as the Mughals, the Portuguese and the English. Food from almost ... More >>

Our Newest Blogger's Top 5 Restaurants

SauceSupreme/flickrPicking my top five restaurants is a bit like herding cats: the list changes constantly, depending on my budget, cravings, and degree of hunger. I have a difficult time keeping track, though I tend to be drawn to anything that features conservative prices, liberal use of spices, a ... More >>

Pix from Southern Spice

Varuthameen deposits a kingfish steak--wearing a chile on its breast like a medal of valor--in a tart tamarind gravy Southern Spice is a new restaurant in southern Flushing that gives us a chance to sample several southern Indian cuisines, though the food mainly comes from Tamil Nadu and Andhra ... More >>

Vegetarian Delights of NYC--Hollow Stem Vegetable at Hunan House

"Sauteed hollow stem vegetable with spicy sauce" at Flushing's Hunan House The jury is still out as to what species "hollow stem vegetable" represents, but the taste is wonderful nonetheless. The light-green vegetable--probably some sort of pond weed--is indeed hollow like a reed, and has ... More >>

Vegetarian Delights of NYC--Noona Vankaya Pulusu

Noona vankaya pulusu at Southern Spice (click to distend) Sometimes a vegetarian dish is so good it slaps you across the face, leaving a tingling on your cheeks and a slight burn in your mouth. Such is the case with the noona vankaya pulusu (it's even fun to say!) at Southern Spice, a new resta ... More >>

The City's Finest Sichuan Is At Bensonhurst's Bamboo Pavilion

No kidding!

Strange Snacks of the World -- Duck lower jaws

I was hanging out in Flushing with my friend Francis Lam, who writes a weekly column for Gourmet.com. We'd been on the usual run to Golden Shopping Mall, Roosevelt Food Court, and the Peking duck window at Corner 28. We'd gotten a scallion pancake under the LIRR, and copped a lamb kebab ("with spic ... More >>

Incredibly Cheap Eats -- Stall 38, Golden Shopping Mall

Flushing Kebabs Crawl Indoors

Northern Chinese Dipping Paradise in Flushing

Hot pot hot spot

Close-Up on Flushing, Queens

The Others

Translating NYC's ethnic politics for Asians and Middle Easterners

Boots of Leather

What rust belt city was it? It wasn't in the rust belt. That's why we left.

Eyeball to Eyeball

A Northern Chinese restaurant in Flushing finally gets our goat

Mongols on Main Street

Chinese restaurant in Flushing fetishizes a woolly creature

Chinese Twist

Elmhurst diner specializes in arcane Korean-Chinese noodles

Hot Chile Love

A card game turns into the restaurant it always wanted to be

Great Gatsby Dumplings

Northern Chinese in the Valley of Ashes

Close Up On: Flushing

Special Part

South Asians Weigh Election Roles

Putting a Subcontinent on the Local Political Map

Organ Recital

Queens For A Day