(This venue is closed.) "Sauce face": promise or warning?
Tai Ji features food from Shanghai, not Xi'an, and "sauce face with special noodle" ($4.50) bears no resemblance to the chewy lamb face salad of the Golden Mall's most famous vendor. The proprietress communicated that the meat is pork — it was accompanied by peanuts, water chestnuts, smoked tofu, noodles that were specially tenacious in frustrating my chopsticks, and some welcome, tender greens — but the composition of the brown sauce, let alone the name of the dish, still puzzles me.
This stall would rival Malaysia Special Food as the mall's tiniest business if Tai Ji's owner hadn't arranged with the neighboring video vendor to set up a few tables in one corner. (You can find photos of the setup via this Chowhound thread, which also supplied me with the name of stall 36A.) I positioned myself at the head of a gentle slope, my back to the wall, beneath a video screen playing Mandarin drama; whatever "sauce face" might bring, I was determined to sit uphill.
Tai Ji
41-28 Main St. (inside the Golden Mall), stall 36A, Flushing, Queens
917-698-2949
