Happy Chinese New Year! Instead of trying to maneuver the masses in Chinatown, we decided to go to Congee Village, which is in the LES. We had been there before for Will's birthday and had enjoyed the food. Even though it's a bit out of the way from Chinatown, it was still pretty crowded. Luckily, we were seated in about 15-20 minutes and sat in the room to the left and squeezed all the way in the corner. The menu is definitely a bit overwhelming but they do a really good job of taking pictures of the food and having english translations.
We ordered pea shoot tops, some sort of pork patty with fish sauce, sizzling beef plate, tofu and eggplant, and flounder. I had tried to speak to the waitress in mandarin but they mostly speak Cantonese there and she wouldn't really work with me. I had wanted to order a whole steamed fish but she told me that all they had was a 3 lb sea bass, which seemed too big for 3 people. She said they had a flounder "with meat", which I didn't understand. But when it came out, they had basically cut all the fish meat out, fried the rest of the fish, and sauteed the fish with veggies and put it on the fried fish body. It was pretty good but I would have still liked a whole fish. Everything was pretty tasty. Pea shoot tops are always great, how can you not like garlic sauteed veggies? The sizzling beef platter was cooked well with great seasoning. The tofu and eggplant came on a weird sterno lit dish and the tofu was the soft version but deep fried on the outside. The eggplant was cooked to the point it was mushy but i like it that way b/c otherwise it's too tough to eat. Dan and Will picked the pork patties based on the photo in the menu and they looked exactly like they did in the menu. I had never had these before and they basically tasted like a sausage patty with some fish sauce in it. I was pretty full but not stuffed to the point of pain. The best part of eating chinese food, family style is that it all cost $20/pp!
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