Even though I am a huge fan of authentic Chinese food, I rarely find myself in Flushing, which is probably where you will find the most authentic Chinese food in the 5 boroughs. But it's far and it's so authentic that many of the restaurants are Chinese speaking only. One of the big food draws here isn't an actual restaurant but the food courts in the basements of their shopping malls (very similar to how it is in Asia). I was torn between the Golden Shopping Mall (this is one that Anthony Bourdain loves) and the New World Mall. After looking at the two malls, the New World Mall was much cleaner and nicer whereas the Golden Shopping Mall was literally one of the dirtiest places I've seen in a while. I mean I would still eat there at some point because it looked like very local and real but for the purposes of my mom's visit, we opted for the cleaner one.
At first glance, the food court is extremely overwhelming. There are probably 20 different stalls offering all sorts of food such as hand-pulled noodles, hot pot, seafood, shaved ice, stir fry, etc. I was in love with all the options and the best thing was that everything was so cheap. I don't think I saw anything that was more than $12. After circling the court twice, my mom, Aarti and I finally settled on the following: New Zealand green mussels in black bean sauce ($7.95), oyster pancake ($4.95), prince mushroom and vegetable "hot pot" ($7.99), beef noodles ($6.95), and for dessert shaved mango ice ($4.95). Unfortunately I don't remember the names of all the different stalls but if you go around and look at the menus you'll be able to find out which ones they were. The green mussels were great, very plump and there was tons of them. I couldn't believe that a whole box of them was less than $9. We ordered the prince mushroom hot pot as our veggie option for Aarti and it was gigantic as well. It was a huge bowl of broth, see-through noodles, sliced mushrooms, tofu and other vegetables. It was a solid and filling dish but it wasn't also mind blowing (although for $8 you can't complain too much about it). As for the beef noodle dish, it was nice and spicy. The beef slices were nice and tender and the noodles were also soft and the whole thing reminded me a lot of the beef noodle dishes I've had in Taiwan before. The biggest disappointment was the oyster pancake. It's a very famous dish in Taiwan and I was excited to try it before my big trip. But there was almost no egg, the oysters were very small and it was kind of a gelatinous mess. I would barely finish the dish. After that dish, I needed to cleanse my palate and the shaved ice was a nice way to do that. Asian cuisine is not very well known for its dessert and there's a good reason for that. But at least this dish was refreshing and sweet. We added red beans to it to give it a bit of heartiness to it. The ice was shaved very very finely that you could barely tell that it was actually ice. It was bound with condense milk and a mango coating and similar to all the other dishes, it was a huge dish that we couldn't finish.
The choices in the food court are so overwhelming that even going with 2 other people wasn't enough. It best to go with at least 4-5 people and really hit up as many different stalls as possible. I was really hoping to be blown away by my food and while I enjoyed it and loved how cheap it was, I wish I had chosen some other options. Anyone want to try again with me?
Photo Credit: Yelp
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