Hot and 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.

This is altogether one of the most enjoyable fish Fork has yet encountered. The specimen is probably locally caught, an estimated one-and-a-half-pound beauty that has been stuffed with typical Northern Chinese spices and herbs — including cilantro, dried chiles, Chinese celery, and maybe a trace of Sichuan peppercorns — and fried, and maybe broiled, too. We’re not really sure of the cooking technique.

Rural Restaurant is one of four Dongbei restaurants in Flushing furnishing the cooking of China’s extreme northeast, near the North Korean border.

The fish is flaky, crunchy, and hyper-delectable, and most of the bones are edible (though not the larger interior ones). The flounder easily satisfied five diners, along with a half-dozen other dishes on a recent Sunday afternoon.

Rural Restaurant
42-85 Main Street
Flushing, Queens
718-353-0086