Tanghulu — skewered fruit coated in hardened simple syrup, sold by street vendors in China, especially in the North — is an increasingly common sight in local Chinatowns. On New York streets they're inevitably cold and stiff, but at this popup event the fresh-made tanghulu were still warm. For mine, each hawthorn fruit had been split to sandwich a wad of sticky rice. The Boston-based tanghulu makers plan to return to Junzi for the Chinese New Year.
Previously: Chinese-American chicken 'n' waffle fries from Junzi's weekend-only after-hours menu. The primary dip for my fries was an aioli, tweaked with Cantonese sweet vinegar, into which fried black bean sauce was blended; a secondary dip, surplus sesame chili sauce laced with pumpkin-spiced chili oil, pooled beneath General Chu's chicken.
The original Junzi, like this location near Columbia University, makes its home in an Ivy League neighborhood; pizza aficionados will make the New Haven connection at once when they come upon the huddled ranks of Foxon Park sodas. Tomato-pork noodles and their thatch of garlic chives might pair well with a cup of Junzi's jasmine, oolong, or gunpowder rose tea, but how ever to know when white birch is so close by?
Junzi Kitchen
2896 Broadway (112th-113th Sts.), Manhattan
(one of several locations)
917-261-2497
www.Junzi.Kitchen
