Welcoming The Year Of The Rooster At Panda Express’s Chinese New Year Party At The MOFAD

Panda Express marks the Year of the Rooster with a campaign dedicated to sharing the delight of Chinese New Year and educating guests about the rich traditions and history of the holiday.

In advance for the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year on Saturday, Jan. 28, Panda Express - America’s favorite Chinese kitchen - teamed up with the Museum of Food and Drinks in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, invited guests to celebrate the holiday.

The event featured all the fan favorite menu items from Panda Express, such as broccoli beef, honey walnut shrimp, chow mein, and spring roll. The event also highlighted Firecracker Chicken Breast, a festive dish symbolizing the fireworks believed to ward off bad luck in Chinese culture.

In addition to the passed hors d’oeuvres and food stations, guests enjoyed chef demo from Panda Express’ director of culinary innovation and got to sample the food as it was prepared in front of them.

And what’s Chinese food if it wasn’t accompanied by fortune cookie? There was even a Fortune Cookie machine up and running as guests watched the cookies being made. They also had full access to MOFAD’s Chow exhibit, which explores the history of American Chinese food.

To cap off the night on a sweet note, guests indulged in make-your-own Fortune Cookie sundae bar featuring creamy haagen dazs ice cream and various toppings.

Kings Co Imperial In Williamsburg Delivers Delicious Homemade Dumplings And Chinese Dishes

Nestled in a hip neighborhood in East Williamsburg, Kings Co Imperial serves Modern Chinese cuisine with regional influence.

Soup Dumplings

The Soup Dumplings at Kings Co Imperial are so popular that it’s not even on the menu. You have to be “in-the-know” to order these limited quantity (only 30 servings each night!) menu item. The chewy dumpling skins are filled with juicy soup and pork meat.

Dan Dan Mian

The chewy egg noodles are mixed in spicy chili oil and topped with scallions, minced pork, ground peanuts, and Sichuan pepper. If you are a fan of spicy dishes, you will certainly love the Dan Dan Mian.

Crispy White Radish Cake

The radish cake, made with white radish, Lap Chong sausage, and rock shrimp, has perfectly crispy exterior. The cakes are topped with sweet soy glaze sauce and scallions.

Tea Smoked Mu Shu Duck

Served with warm homemade pancakes, the Tea-Smoked Mu Shu duck includes julienne vegetables like red pepper, onions, carrots, and scallions along with tofu, mushroom, and savory duck.                        

From Appetizer To Entree To Dessert, Here Are Every Shareable Items To Enjoy At Mr. Chow

Enjoy an authentic, family-style Chinese dinner at the iconic Mr. Chow, which boasts 7 locations around the world from NYC to Las Vegas to London. Mr. Chow recently unveiled three of its famed sauces - Fiery, Hoisin and Chile - that the fans of Mr. Chow can purchase and cook at home.

APPETIZER

1. Fresh Clams with Rice Cake 

Delicate yet plump baby clams in shells are sauteed with bite-sized slices of chewy glutinous rice cakes and Shepherd’s Purse greens in thick oyster sauce. The perfect dish to entice your appetite!

2. Shanghai Little Dragon

Place the piece of the soup dumpling on a spoon, poke a little hole, and let the juice seep out. Inside the delicate skin of the dumplings, you will find hearty broth and meat that warms your soul.

3. Pot Stickers

As delicious as they are beautiful, these pan-fried pot stickers - either filled with meat or vegetables - have perfectly crispy exterior with chewy interior. On top of the pot stickers are crunchy chips that taste like potato.

ENTREE

4. Dressed Dungeness Crab

Lump Dungeness crab meat taken off the shell are gently folded into a cloud of egg whites in this unique, fluffy dish. Mixed in with thick, gravy-like white sauce, eating this dish feels like floating on a bed of cloud.

5. Gamblers Duck

Tender and crispy duck is served with steamed pancakes, plum sauce, and julienne cucumber and scallion. The duck has beautifully crispy skin with juicy meat. This DIY dish is fun to prepare and even more delicious to eat.

DESSERT

6. Chocolate Lava Cake

Every chocolate lover’s dream, this dessert has everything to satisfy your sweet cravings. The warm, moist chocolate cake is filled with indulgent fudge that flows out like lava. The cake is topped with a scoop of rich vanilla ice cream that you can enjoy with the chocolate swirl on the plate.

Restaurant Review: From Presentation To Flavor, Hakkasan Delivers Delicious Dining Experience

Hakkasan Group

Dining at Hakkasan in Manhattan’s Theater District is more than just an experience - it’s an exquisite culinary journey through the restaurant’s innovative dishes that showcase traditional Cantonese cuisine with a modern twist. This year, I got to partake in Hakkasan’s celebration of the Year of the Monkey by attending its Chinese New Year dinner, which featured a limited edition menu created by International Executive Chef Ho Chee Boon.

Double Boiled Fresh Ginseng and Chicken Soup

Designed with the hope of bringing joy, luck, and prosperity to the diners, the elaborate pre fixe dinner began with a bowl of Double Boiled Fresh Ginseng and Chicken Soup. The soup was an excellent start to the meal as the flavorful broth enriched with ginseng, tender chicken breasts, bamboo pith, and wolfberry warmed my soul.

Diced Wagyu Beef & Pine Nut Golden Cup

The next course of “Small Eat” included Diced Wagyu Beef & Pine Nut Golden Cupand a selection of Hakkasan’s signature Steamed Dim Sum Platter. The finely diced, juicy wagyu beef and pine nuts were piled on top of lightly fried, crispy cup. Beyond the complexity of flavor and texture in the dish, I was impressed with the beautiful plating that highlighted natural colors of pomegranate seeds, micro greens, and flower petals.

Steamed Dim Sum Platter

There were four different varieties of dim sum in the Steamed Dim Sum Platter. My favorite was the Scallop Shumai. Wrapped inside chewy dumpling skin was a plump piece of shrimp and scallop with a scoop of caviar roe on top. The only disappointment in the platter was the Duck & Yam Bean Dumpling; the gravy-like, thick sauce on top of the dim sum, as well as the combination of mushy yam and salty duck, was not pleasing to the mouth.

Pipa Duck and Roasted Chilean Sea Bass

The shareable “Main” course featured a generous portion of four dishes and fried rice. My favorite was a tie between the Pipa Duck and the Roasted Chilean Sea Bass. The Pipa Duck had beautifully crispy, golden skin with juicy, albeit fatty, meat. The hoisin sauce at the bottom added pleasantly sweet end note. The Chilean sea bass, glazed with Chinese honey, was so succulent that it just melted in my mouth. I particularly enjoyed the tempura battered mushroom on top of the sea bass.

Wok-Fry Lobster, Hericium Mushrooms, and Scallop & Crab Fried Rice

Other dishes in the “Main” course included Wok-Fry Lobster in spicy truffle sauce with asparagus, mushroom, and carrots, and the vegetarian Hericium Mushrooms stir fried with lotus root, asparagus, and lily bulb in black pepper sauce. The Scallop & Crab Meat fried rice was the perfect accompaniment to the generally salty main entrees.

Golden Halo

To sweeten the palate, the dinner concluded with Golden Halo, an intricate dessert of soy caramel, cubed banana with edible gold flakes, chocolate truffle, and candied peanuts. Oh, and don’t forget about the dust of gold on the plate! At the end of the dinner, I also got to write my wish on a gold ribbon to hang in the restaurant and received a farewell gift of Year of the Monkey gold coin as a sign of good fortune. I have a feeling 2016 will be a prosperous year after this delicious Chinese New Year meal at Hakkasan!

Authentic, Home-Style Chinese Cuisine At Fang Restaurant In San Francisco

Forget typical Chinese American entrees like General Tso’s chicken, Mongolian beef, or sweet and sour pork when you dine at Fang Restaurant. This eponymous, family-owned and operated restaurant highlights authentic yet experimental Chinese cuisine sourced from seasonal, local ingredients.

White River Soup

An interesting fusion of complexity and delicacy, the hearty White River Soup includes a whole fried fish simmered with aromatics, tofu puff, pork wontons, vermiciili, julienne scallions, and ginger. All the ingredients in the dish bring out the rich, intense flavors to the creamy, white broth. I would have personally preferred the fish to be steamed rather than fried. The big, chunky pieces of wontons have the perfectly chewy skin with juicy meat inside.

Fang’s Crispy Honey Chili Shortribs

One of Fang’s signature dish is the Crispy Honey Chili Shortrib. Served as a skewer, the tender, fall-off-the-bone shortrib is lightly fried on the outside with sprinkles of black sesame seeds and cilantro. Both the spicy chili oil and the sweet soy sauce accentuate the flavor of the dish.

Five Spice Whitefish

While the identify of the mysterious “whitefish” used in the Five Spice Whitefish remains a mystery (halibut? tilapia? cod?), this delectable dish of moist fish filet with caramelized red onions and spinach is a must. The tender fish seasoned with salt and pepper goes well with the vegetables, which provides a nice mix to the texture. dish heightens your senses with The dish is a bit salty so be sure to get a bowl of white rice on the side to balance out the palate.

Crabmeat Soup Dumplings at Joe's Shanghai in Midtown NYC

While spending the summer in New York City, my roommate and I ventured into the city quite often to sample its diverse ethnic cuisine. One of my favorite places was Joe's Shanghai, a popular Chinese restaurant that has opened a total of three chains throughout NYC since opening its door in Chinatown.

Joe's Shanghai is popular for its soup dumplings. For light lunch, we decided to share a serving of crab meat soup dumplings. We were considering going to the original, Chinatown location, but since we were already in midtown, we decided to go to the closer location on 56th St. and also to save taxi fare.

I sort of wished we had gone to the original location because I don't think the dumplings tasted as good. Further, we only got 6 dumplings, as opposed to 8, and paid more for it at midtown than at the Chinatown location!

Eating soup dumpling is an acquired skill. You first have to bite into the outer layer to make a small hole so that you don't burn your mouth. Once the juice seeps out on to the spoon, you can drink it and bite into the crab meat interior.

The peel was a bit thicker than I would have liked. I thought the crabmeat dumpling had nice seafood flavor, though I would have appreciate richer taste.

The dumplings weren't super greasy. I wonder the proportion of meat vs crabmeat vs shit...Haha

Perfectly Braised Eggplants and Slimy Chilean Bass at Taiwan Cafe in Boston

There was one Chinese restaurant in Davis, California, that my family and I used to frequent. I would always get its lunch special of General Chicken (fried chicken "balls" marinated in sweet & spicy sauce) and chow mein or fried rice with eggroll and today's soup. After realizing how greasy and MSG-loaded Chinese food is, however, I tried to avoid it as much as I can. I actually haven't been to a single Chinese restaurant since I came to college, but my cravings won over and I decided to go to Taiwan Cafe in Chinatown for early dinner on Sunday.

According to my friend, the place was closed for a while for renovation and recently had its re-grand opening. That would explain the confettis, ribbons, and ballons in the restaurant. The first dish we ordered was Home-Style Braised Eggplant with Basil ($9.95).

I would order this dish over and over again. The eggplant was cooked just enough that it wasn't too mushy or tough. The eggplants were lightly sauteed and mixed in slightly spicy and sweet sauce. The basil added a layer of savory yet bittersweet flavor to the dish.

I have never ordered a fish entree at a Chinese restaurant because the skeptic in me doubts what they serve is what is actually on the menu. Because my companion was wanting to try the bass, we decided to order the Steamed Chilean Bass with Ginger & Scallions ($18.95).

The filet was cut open, served flat on a wide plate. It was marinated in soy-teriyaki sauce with julienne-styled scallions on top. The fish tasted very tender and soft, although I didn't like the bits of bones throughout the filet. I also wished the chef had taken the scale because it was disgusting to look at! It certainly made me squeamish.

New York City's Chinatown Adventure

To continue the theme of ridiculously cheap food in New York City (See post on takoyaki Japanese snacks), my friend and I decided to go to the quintessential place for all things cheap: Chinatown. This was meant to be a culinary adventure through Chinatown, so instead of settling on one eatery/restaurant, we decided to hit a couple spots that are known for their Chinese delicacies.

The first spot we visited was Prosperity Dumpling, a tiny hole in the wall famous for its dumplings (as the name suggests). Most people had dumplings to-go because the place was tiny. There were about eight stools with a tiny table sticking out against the wall. My friend ordered Chives and Pork Fried Dumplings (5 for $1). The dumplings looked too greasy so I didn't try them.

She also ordered Chives and Pork Boiled Dumplings (10 for $2). The skin of the dumplings were a bit too thick, and I am not sure if the content inside was actually pork.

We split the Vegetable and Shrimp Dumplings (10 for $3.50), which were slightly more expensive. These dumplings may look small, but they are packed tightly so I got full really quickly.

The vegetable and shrimp dumplings surprisingly had a big shrimp inside. These weren't as juicy as the pork dumplings, but I much preferred them nonetheless.

I would say the ratio between the chive and the shrimp was 1:1. Quite impressed! I would definitely order this again. Also $3.50 for a filling meal in NYC is such a bargain.



After the dumpling appetizer from Prosperity, we walked a couple blocks to Joe's Shanghai, which is famous for its xiaolongbao, or soup dumplings. There was a long line of people waiting outside, so it took about 45 minutes to get a table for four. Joe's Shanghai has already established some fame in the city, having been recognized by New York Times Restaurant Guide, Gourmet Magazine, and Zagat Survey. Without hesitation, we ordered two orders of Pork Steamed Buns (8 for $4.95), which were served in a wooden bamboo steamer over a bed of cabbage.





This was actually my first time trying proper xiaolongbaos. The key to eating these are to place them on a soup spoon and make a small hole with your teeth to suck out the juices, and then eat the skin with the meat inside. You have to be careful not to burn your tongue. The dumplings were juicy and savory.

In addition to the soup dumplings, we ordered Fried Rice Cake with Beef ($7.95). I wasn't sure what to expect when I ordered this dish, but it was very similar to the Korean glutinous rice cake and beef in slightly sweet soy sauce, sauteed with cabbages, onions, and spinach.

I would definitely order this dish again. In fact, I preferred the rice cake to the soup dumplings, the latter of which the restaurant is famous for. The rice cakes were chewy, while the beef was tender. My friends and I were quite stuffed after Joe's Shanghai that we decided to skip our third stop, a noodle place. Until next time!

From Chicken to Noodle: Wang Be Sung Again

For the sake of increasing diversity in my blog, I tend not to visit the same restaurant and post about it. Yet there is one and only Chinese restaurant that my family goes to in Korea: Wang Be Sung. We modified our order from last time so I don't feel too repetitive.

Since my brother joined us this time around, we also ordered a big dish called "Gganpoongi," or fried chicken wings in spicy chili sauce. Unfortunately, one of my New Year's Resolutions was to avoid fried food, so I didn't eat the chicken, but I have tried it before last summer.

About 20 pieces of chicken legs are fried, tossed in slightly sweet and spicy chili sauce with chopped vegetables (carrots, bell pepper, onion, and scallions), and served on a huge plate.

You can tell that the chicken was fried right before being served. Underneath the crispy surface is moist, juicy meat.

It's impossible to take a bite of this chicken without saying, "ho, ho" from the heat.

Usually fried food tastes the best when eaten right from the fryer, but this chicken is tasty even when cold.

As we were enjoying the "appetizer," the waitress brought the noodles. Jjampong, or spicy seafood noodle, had so many different types of mushroom, greens, and seafood piled on top. We had to let it cool before diving into the dish.

Judging from the oil floating on top, I am guessing that they added a spoonful of chili oil to the broth for the extra spiciness. I didn't try the broth because it looked too red.

I only had the noodle and the mushroom, which didn't entire soak up all the spices. Still, the noodle was a bit salty from too much pepper seasoning, but it needed a hint of salt.

The noodle had a very chewy texture.

Next came jjajangmyun, or noodle in black paste sauce. Like I blogged about last time, Wang Be Sung has the best jjangmyun because they don't put pork, cook with less oil, and has abundant vegetables and shrimp.

The sauce and the noodle came out separately so the diner can control how much sauce to pour. We put the whole thing.

Again the noodle was equally as chewy as the one in jjampong without the chili oil smothered on the surface. When I was little, I used to taste the noodle before it was mixed to judge the quality of the restaurant based on the noodle. Wang Be Sung's is supreme!