Okay – You gotta check this out::: Savor Fusion (corner of Main and Maple) – the newest food court for Flushing Queens. This is why it’s awesome – One owner. With an ad in the newspaper, this man assembled a crew serving 8 styles of Asian food in 8 stalls for the food court . This creates more accountability and a cleaner facility overall. It means more cohesiveness and cooperation from the vendors. It makes the quality and value better than the majority of other food court vendors in Flushing. It seems more cafeteria-like, but when you get acquainted, it is possibly more deep and rewarding than your typical food court. Here are the offerings, from front to back:
Shanghainese:
Szechuan:
Taiwanese – Selling Chinese burritos. The signs make it seem like they only do vegetarian, but that’s not the case. I’m not even sure the extent of it, but I’m sure you can get pork in there if you asked.
Tianjing – This stall has extra heavy traffic during breakfast at 7am. By lunchtime, the crowds disperse to the rest of the strip. My highlight for the day was this peanut butter baked bread/cake/cookie ($1). Not sure of the name. It comes in red bean too. It wasn’t too sweet like a dessert, it was like a big and light butterfinger cookie. Would go great with coffee. See it below the tofu in these pictures…
Foreground are fried crullers, which are nice by themselves, but better when dipped in warm soy milk or soup. Behind is a large dough creature. They take a slice out of it, separate the top and bottom, and make a sandwich out of it.
Henan – Some of their highlights include varieties of lamb soup, and fried scallion pancake. There are lots of daily specials on colored cardboard written in magic marker. This, like every stall here is very inexpensive. Because of the abundance of eateries in the area, there is a constant price war with casual vendors like this. It very much sells them short of how great the cooking and variety actually is. On this day, I got lamb brain for $1 here. yup.
Cumin lamb wrap – tastes like a marriage of Spanish, Indian, and Chinese.
I couldn’t believe how fantastic the cumin lamb burger was (below). I knew the insides would be good, I mean, it’s lamb and cumin, c’mon – but the bun had this squishy spring which gave me the impression that this is how they are supposed to do it.
Egg and chive pancake
Spicy vegetable soup (in lamb broth, with pieces of fried lamb and slices of pork)
Taiwanese – The main direction of this stall is Taipei street food. Some of the menu is below, but they have lots of specials of the day – all written on colored paper, and not in English. Make sure to ask what they are so they know that Americans are interested in this stuff too!
The salt and pepper chicken was by far the best I’ve ever had. Here, they use dark meat – that was the difference. It is so soft and crunchy. Also, the rice is too satisfying – my test for a good place. This whole plate below is $5 (minus the bun at top) – that’s crazy. All the prices at this little mall are crazy. I don’t know how they do it.
Pork belly steamed bun (gua bao)
Fujianese – hand-pulled noodles and knife shaved noodles
Heibei – Specializing in dumplings
You might not even know it’s there from the outside. Even at the doorway, it looks like every other overhang in Chinatown. It’s not the dungeon experience or mall glitz, but for consistent, well-priced food with variety at one location, you can come here 100 times and never get bored. And if you get confused, there’s something like a concierge at the front of the business who can be your ambassador for the meal.
What’s next for the owners? A new set of stalls across from the library, and meals to-go at convenience stores. Sounds good to me.
Links:
More in depth textual rundown by Eric Eats Out
You gotta check out this area around Lee Street. It’s like stepping back in time. You’ll find some great traditional Jewish food, but probably the king of the neighborhod is Gottlieb’s. I was happy just to meet with these guys. For $20, you can get noodle kugel, derma, kasha varnishkes, and a lot more that your grandmother maybe made.
We met at the Staten Island Ferry under the ATE of the sign. I’m a big fan of the ferry (partly because it’s free), and am happy to give anyone the excuse to ride across and spend time there.
Instead of innings, I put in the cross streets vendors are known to be. Normally At Bats, Hits, Errors, and Left On, I changed only At Bats to Eats – which essentially just means attempts for both parties – and left hits, left on, and errors to serve new meanings for the food plate purpose. And on the bottom where you generally have pitcher stats, I prompted the user to tell about their highlights and give a tally for what they had.
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