Eating In Translation

Black walnut fruit

Prospect Park, Brooklyn

Flatbush Coffee Shop

Love the shadow type — not only the beach-resort turquoise-and-mustard of "coffee shop" but also the theatricality of the Lotto sign, rendered in the colors of the New York Mets. That particular lottery program was introduced in 1978, which seems about right for the signage as a whole.

Flatbush Coffee Shop
Surviving signage (temporarily exposed during construction), 575A Flatbush Ave. (Maple-Midwood Sts.), Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn

Wan Jia Fu

(This venue is closed.) This was intended to be a Dongbei lunch at Jiang Li, a restaurant that featured the cuisine of Northeast China and that we knew well. In fact, two members of our party had dined at Jiang Li, on these very premises, just three weeks earlier. When we arrived this day, however, we found that the name had changed, and the menu with it.

In trying to promptly feed our temporarily befuddled table of ten, we may have focused too much on the handheld bill of fare at the expense of the Chinese-only wall menu. From the latter, we did order a creditable order of Shandong pork (shown above), but only later in the meal did we learn that the chef's previous home was in that namesake coastal province — specifically, in Qingdao. (Perhaps that city is having a mini-moment in Flushing. Later in the afternoon I came across another new Qingdao restaurant; it's called Qing Dao Restaurant.) On a return visit I hope to try a greater variety of dishes that evince the light Qingdao touch with fresh seafood, such as squid with parsley and jellyfish with cabbage (shown below).

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Wan Jia Fu
44-18 Kissena Blvd. (Cherry-Elder Aves.), Flushing, Queens
718-321-1262