Yesterday I went to Jade Asian in Flushing, Queens, and had some of the first Chinese-tasting Chinese food I have eaten in my three years in New York City. It unleashed a torrent of childhood memories: some of them I worked out after the meal by shopping for Stephen Chow DVDs in the Hong Kong Mall, others I processed by buying chili bean paste, dried shitake mushrooms and Ovaltine cookies, and the remainder I will share with you here.

(Before I get utterly caught up in myself, I will note that the bill, for four, came to $37.50, and that I would recommend the trip to the end of the 7 train–conceptually interchangeable with the ends of the earth, for most New Yorkers–without hesitation.)

1. When I was a very little girl–little enough to be carried around Hong Kong in my mother’s arms, but not so little that I didn’t have a relatively rich food vocabulary–I had a game I liked to play in elevators or on subway trains, the more crowded the better. I would squeeze a certain part of my mother’s anatomy and announce, with a mixture of pride and glee, to all assembled: “Cha Xiu Bao! Cha Xiu Bao!” This was the name of my then-favourite dimsum variety, steamed pork buns. The fluffy dough, pictured, encases a sweet, red filling of chopped roast pork, not unlike mincemeat back when it really contained boiled beef. (The now-defunct beef isn’t some aberration of the Middle Ages long since purged, by the way - just this morning, flipping through Delights and Prejudices, I saw a carnivore recipe for mincemeat from as modern a personality as Mr James Beard.)

2. The Chinese dimsum chef is apparently not averse to incorporating a little local flavour now and again. While tradition rules at Jade Asian, and it was rare that I saw anything on the roaming dimsum carts that I didn’t recognise, the deep-fried shrimp balls at left–each wrapped in an entire rasher of bacon, and served with mayonnaise for dipping–will see a hundred diners to quadruple-bypass surgeries before they ever see the shores of Hong Kong. Bacon-wrapped anything is as Chinese as Aunt Jemima.

(Reaching for a section of beef cheung fun, steamed rice flour sheets rolled around various fillings and covered in sesame seeds and soy sauce.)

3. This was the first time I had had dimsum since 2004. For years, dimsum to me meant noise and clamour, the insufferable company of certain members of our extended family, those disgusting steamed meatballs with coriander, and my grandmother’s unending insistence that I eat more, more, more–culminating, on one memorable occasion, in my vomiting it all up the minute we got home. Today, of course, I choose my own company, I veto any dishes I don’t like, and any nausea is the result of my own greed.

4. I’ve been known to eat chicken feet, a.k.a. “phoenix talons”, as Chinese restaurateurs prefer to term them. I’m not crazy about them (it’s an awful lot of gnawing for a very little bit of cartilage), but they’re ok. So I was amused to see a waitress approach our table with a plate piled high with boiled claws, only to do an about-face when she saw our party of four was 87.5% white. Clearly, the rubbery delicacies would be lost on our bacon-numbed palates (see above). Admittedly, I betrayed my own prejudices when I decided, without consulting them, that my friends wouldn’t appreciate the satay tripe I was craving.

Best dishes: Shrimp cheung fun (steamed rice flour roll, covered in soy sauce), deep-fried taro balls (crispy ovoid croquettes, stuffed with pork and shitake mushrooms), steamed lotus paste buns (fluffy bread balls stuffed with a sort of Chinese praline)

To avoid: Rice congee (the porridge was watery and skimpy on the filling), shrimp balls wrapped in bacon (the reasons are self-evident, or ought to be), giant seafood dumpling in soup (gristly, greasy and mostly pork - not the delicacy I grew up with)

Jade Asian
136-28 39th Ave
Flushing, NY 11354
(718) 762-8821

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