Eating In Translation

Nurlan Restaurant

The comfort of SpaghettiOs without the Os: ding-ding laghman, fat Uyghur noodles sliced into spoonable nubbins.

H/T Sam Oppenheim

Nurlan Restaurant
4339 Main St. (Dahlia-Elder Aves.), Flushing, Queens
718-987-9878
www.Nurlan-NY.com

Good news from Golden Mall

Correction: Previously I had written that Flushing's Golden Shopping Mall, in its entirety, would close at the end of July 2019. Subsequently I've learned of good news: The street-level businesses will remain open while the lower level (shown: Tianjin Dumpling House) is renovated over the course of three to four months. When the lower level reopens (alas, without Chengdu Tianfu), the street level will be made over. Ultimately, four new floors will be built atop the current structure.

Golden Shopping Mall
41-28 Main St. (at 41st Rd.), Flushing, Queens

Dae Sung Korean Noodle

Even at the height of summer, kongguksu — a cold soybean-based noodle soup — was not the most-desired dish at our table, though it might have been the most photogenic. The haemul pajun (below, being scissored before serving) was a superb version of this ubiquitous Korean seafood pancake, thicker and less oily than most. On a return visit, we'll tweak our order — one soup fewer, one pajun more — and attempt to decode the well-seasoned pancake batter.

H/T Roger Gans

Dae Sung Korean Noodle (aka Dae Sung Kalguksu)
4514 162nd St. (45th-46th Aves.), Flushing, Queens
718-460-0088
www.Facebook.com/pages/Dae-Sung-Korean-Noodle/2007748856208690

Mia Buns

Not the moon: a black sesame puff, the last of its batch, whose shell might have been puffier if I'd stopped by for breakfast and not before lunch. The dark side and the well-packed, even darker inside appear below.

At bottom: a handwritten sign, in Chinese and English, overlays a reflection of bus doors. Several routes stop immediately outside. Mia's clientele seem to be commuters who have eyes not only for buns but also for congee, noodles, tea eggs, chive pockets, lotus leaf rice, youtiao and soy milk, and the like. I believe the owners hail from Taiwan.

Mia Buns
3609 Main St. (Northern Blvd.-37th Ave.), Flushing, Queens
929-362-2007

Chengdu Tianfu Xiaochi

(This venue has closed.) Sichuan breakfast: Chengdu cold noodles. This beloved food stall shuttered when the lower level of Flushing's Golden Mall closed for renovations. At least a half-dozen mall vendors now operate elsewhere, but, sad to say, according to Joe DiStefano the proprietors of Chengdu Tianfu have no such plans.

(Correction: Previously I had written that Flushing's Golden Mall, in its entirety, would close at the end of July 2019. Subsequently I learned of good news: The street-level businesses will remain open while the lower level is renovated over the course of three to four months. When the lower level reopens (alas, without Chengdu Tianfu), the street level will be made over. Ultimately, four new floors will be built atop the current structure. The preceding paragraph has been edited to reflect this new reporting.)

Note also the arrangement of the wall menu shown below, the most comprehensive version of several different posted bills of fare. The menu items are arranged top-to-bottom and right-to-left, after the fashion of traditional Chinese text.

H/T (from ages ago) Brian S

Chengdu Tianfu Xiaochi (sometimes translated Chengdu Heavenly Snacks or, simply, Chengdu Heaven)
41-28 Main St. (at 41st Rd., inside the Golden Mall, downstairs), Flushing, Queens

Tea egg vendor

Main St. at Sanford Ave., Flushing, Queens

Flower Brook Mifen House

Flower Brook features mifen, thin rice noodles served umpteen ways after the fashion of Guizhou, in southwestern China. But on a brisk day I had a taste for northern-style wheat-based "fried sauce noodles," the menu's literal translation of zhajiangmian. Not the specialty of the house, yet nicely kitted out.

Note also the condiments. One, vermilion and oily, seemed to be Guizhou's classic Lao Gan Ma "spicy chili crisp"; the other, pale and dry, suggested a potpourri that was leading a double life. It's a mystery to me.

Flower Brook Mifen House (aka Huaxi Wang)
41-42A Main St. (41st Rd.-Sanford Ave., a stall in the hallway of Friendship Shopping Plaza), Flushing, Queens
631-530-8888
Also, as its own storefront, at 4435 Kissena Ave. (at Elder Ave.)
516-345-4145
www.Facebook.com/FlowerBrookMifen

200 Gram Noodles

Street vendors in Chongqing, said my server, often serve noodles "200 grams" at a time. Customers call out this order from their seats, he added, pointing to a photo that depicted precarious plastic stools (I remember them well from Vietnam). At this recently arrived Flushing restaurant, "local flavor noodles" evoke the chef's previous home; sturdy tables and chairs are a welcome modification. Also shown: an amuse-bouche of duck foot and necks; condiments; brown sugar jelly.

200 Gram Noodles
36-26 Union St. (37th Ave.-Northern Blvd.), Flushing, Queens
347-732-4419
https://200-Gram-Noodles.business.site

Max and Mina's Ice Cream

A little salty peanut butter ice cream is delicious. More can seem too much; I split my small serving with a palate-freshening cardamom pistachio, held in reserve at the bottom of the cup. More recently: peanut butter pie partnered with blackberry and eggnog, procured by Ethnojunkie.

Max and Mina's (Minn-ahs) Ice Cream
71-26 Main St. (71st Rd.-72nd Ave.), Kew Gardens Hills, Queens
718-793-8629
www.Facebook.com /MaxAndMinas
Open most afternoons and early evenings; closed from late afternoon Friday until Saturday after sunset

You Garden Xiao Long Bao

"Too many desirable dishes, too few hungry tablemates" might be one interpretation of our yin-yang soup: Shanghai chives and chicken chowder. More traditionally, the symbol depicts seeming opposites that — in the second photo, swirled together and much depleted — are in fact interconnected and complementary. Even so, we overordered. See more on Facebook.

You Garden Xiao Long Bao
4107 Bell Blvd. (41st-42nd Aves.), Bayside, Queens
718-229-3388
www.YouGardenXiaoLongBao.com