(This venue is closed.) I took my medicine, I think.
Toward the tail end of a Flushing food crawl, my friends and I stopped in for a steamed bun or two at Sheng Jian Muslim Little Kitchen. At the entrance to the mini-mall I'd seen the poster above, and as we divvied up our buns, I saw that a man in the frontmost stall was peering down into some large repository and shifting the positions of its contents. He waved me over for a look, and I snapped the first photo below. He also managed to convey that the owner (not present that day) is from Shaanxi province.
When I returned a couple of weeks later, a menu of sorts had been posted (second photo below), and with help from a fellow customer who was practicing her English, I ordered the fifth item. The customer explained that what seemed to be a chicken-goji berry-herb soup ($4.50) was good for "renal" conditions. She added, speaking for herself and on behalf of the owner, that all the value was in the broth and that the grayish chicken meat is not eaten. There was something else in the soup that my tablemate struggled to explain, and that could have been a pitted jujube, softened by long cooking. She said it was fine to eat, and I did, learning nothing by it.
A follow-up inquiry on Chowhound provided the translation "red jujube black chicken soup" (thanks, Joe MacBu) and the assertion that the chicken is tasty (help yourself, bigjeff). For me, the chicken was limp and lacking in flavor. The thin amber broth wasn't complex, either, and it wasn't as concentrated as you might expect, considering that the serving bowl is also the cooking container, and that all the ingredients had been sealed in under foil.
On this visit I was hell-bent on deciphering the soup, but this stall also serves more substantive fare, which is where I'll devote my attention another time.
Shaanxi soup stall
41-40 Main Street (41st Rd.-Sanford Ave.), first stall on the left
718-790-8330
