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I remember when it was somewhat of a rare treat to eat out at restaurants. People used to cook from home and bring paper bag lunches. Some families had moms and grandmas who cooked bomb foods and everyone in the neighborhood knew it.
Kitchens used to smell better because they knew how to cook bomb foods.
Holidays had homemade cookies often made by grandmas who had special recipes that were passed down and made in small batches.
Families used to eat at the table. A lot of us would say prayers or give thanks before starting to eat. Moms would nag to eat your vegetables and not waste food.
People were assigned duties to clean dishes and or to set the table.
What the hell happened?
I eat at Trader Joes and Whole Foods. Everything else looks a bit pricey.
I had some Vietnamese to go food, some noodles and a Vietnamese sammy was $38. So I mostly have groceries and prepare items from home.
It was not long ago that Mexican food scene in NYC was trash as well. LA lacks any Caribbean scene (Puerto Rican, Jamaican, Dominican, Haitian, Trinidadian) and pizza along with Delicatessens are horrible in LA
Also I don't think LA has a vibrant South American scene as Jackson Heights Queens
You have to go to Fairfax Ave. in LA to find authentic Delis
4. Happy Lamb Hot Pot
1737 Rte 27 Edison, NJ 08817
5. Wah Sang Kitchen
159 Dubois Ave Valley Stream, NY 11581
3 of the top 5 on Yelp's list aren't even in any of the 5 NYC boroughs (The top 2 are in Flushing)
And 2 of the top 5 on that list aren't even in NY state, but in New Jersey...
Who hired this guy?
My Valley Stream Friends tell me that Wah Sang is pretty disgusting. I think it's a takeout only joint. Supposedly, it's all Chinese-American-very sweet sauces.
My Valley Stream Friends tell me that Wah Sang is pretty disgusting. I think it's a takeout only joint. Supposedly, it's all Chinese-American-very sweet sauces.
Interesting.
In the context of my post, I was pointing out to someone that the Yelp list for "top 10 Mongolian restaurants in NYC" was a bit questionable.
Truthfully, what people in the US consider to be "Mongolian BBQ" is inaccurate and is based of a Taiwanese businessman's re-branding of Japanese style cooking. Thus, most places considered "Mongolian" food are only "Mongolian" in name only.
Only one place that I've heard of offers truly authentic Mongolian BBQ is in Richmond, CA. And even there you'd have to call several hours in advance to get an order of Mongolian BBQ in the way they serve it in Ulaanbaatar.
All kidding aside, most small-to-mid size cities have a variety of food.
Much of the main variety in NYC is located in Queens (which is unique imo the true variety of what is offered).
But minus parts of Queens, the variety offered in NYC is not substantially much wider than most places, and in fact, it lacks some ethnic cuisines that are much more prevalent in other major metro areas.
I disagree with the variety offered in NYC outside of Queens is not substantially much wider than most places in the US. The diversity of the city not including Queens is also quite high compared to other cities even though Queens is the highest among the boroughs and the stats will bear that out in terms of what's in the census. What's more, NYC does get a fairly large absolute number of immigrants and foreign visitors on the higher end of the socioeconomic spectrum that have a lot of spending power and you see that meted out with good, but pricey restaurants from abroad or from people trained abroad opening up in Manhattan and to some extent Brooklyn.
Aside from the fairly large, diverse spread, there's a large agglomeration effect going on and a large bit of total numbers and density game happening which can support a lot of restaurants. For example, the Thai community in NYC is a minuscule proportion of the total population of NYC, but a minuscule proportion in a city of over 8 million people is still a pretty large community which gives NYC probably the second largest Thai community in the US of tens of thousands which can support a couple of predominantly Thai areas and restaurant rows of sorts as well as what was said before about fancy, but authentic Thai places mostly in Manhattan and they together run a massive gamut of regional styles, price levels, and dining options from more formal dining to more casual street food sorts (though in sitdown restaurants here) to more idiosyncratic things like pretty right on takes of Thai views of sushi and hot pot.
On top of that, the large spread of geographically and culturally adjacent peoples that is also within New York with lots of other Southeast and East Asians in the city means that it pulls in a lot of buying power to support enough importers and domestic producers of vegetables, dried goods, and other ingredients in variety and quality that an otherwise solely Thai community would find difficult to support. Finally, the clientele from those regions also then sometimes patronize these stores since the flavor profile is similar enough or exposure to these cuisines is often pretty high for such that they have others going in. It's of a size large enough that I basically sometimes use the Chinese equivalent of yelp and social media to find southeast Asian restaurants in the city as well as for delivery as for various reasons these Chinese language apps have been able to cut deals to deliver to a pretty wide range of such restaurants including those not found in English-language ones and often for a pretty decent delivery price.
I'll also add one more note about variety. Some of the restaurants noted by SeventhFloor in the original post are quite changed or arguably time capsules of different cuisines as they were in different eras since these things don't stay completely static in their home countries. The variety of that is also somewhat unique to New York City which with its long tradition of being a large immigration hub means that the attrition over time, while paring down a lot of the original numbers of so-and-so cuisine of an era, probably means a decent chance of one or more examples surviving into the present day and that, too, is an interesting sort of variety. Wo Hop is a departure from contemporary Canto food in Hong Kong or the surrounding areas in Guangdong province, and that's still variety in and of itself.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 06-11-2023 at 05:12 PM..
4. Happy Lamb Hot Pot
1737 Rte 27 Edison, NJ 08817
5. Wah Sang Kitchen
159 Dubois Ave Valley Stream, NY 11581
3 of the top 5 on Yelp's list aren't even in any of the 5 NYC boroughs (The top 2 are in Flushing)
And 2 of the top 5 on that list aren't even in NY state, but in New Jersey...
Who hired this guy?
These are bad examples because they're not Mongolian except for the skewer cart in Flushing which I unfortunately haven't seen in a while. Magic Grill is not actually Mongolian. That big circular griddle where they squirt vegetable oil and cut things on is Mongolian BBQ which isn't Mongolian at all, but a Taiwanese invention based on some guy's use of a cool gimmick that was still pretty popular while I was growing up. I have wondered though if anyone's ever tried opening a Mongolian BBQ or Jinguiskan in Mongolia before and how that would go. I was around for when some enterprising Chinese American opened up a Chinese-American restaurant in Shanghai complete with fortune cookies, General Tso's, and the iconic takeout boxes, but that went under pretty quickly.
Happy Lamb is Chinese cuisine from the province of Inner Mongolia (part of China) and its capital city which is overwhelmingly Han Chinese and serves a hot pot style popular in that region including in adjacent provinces that's not specifically Mongolian or arguably at all Mongolian.
Wah Sang is essentially just standard Chinese takeout place catering to American audiences often with a corn starch thickened brown sauce. I don't see any actual Mongolian items on any of the photos or menus. Mongolian cuisine is somewhat interesting, but there's not much of it here with the last Mongolian restaurant here I remember closing several years ago. Somewhat similar would be some of the Central Asian cuisines that NYC has a lot of, and which in my opinion is much better and more varied.
That being said, the Jersey and Nassau County suburbs of NYC do have great options and to some extent include these as being part of what gives NYC such variety of options and generally much greater than that of anywhere else in the US though some individual cuisines might favor other cities/metropolitan areas in the US, the overall quality and diversity that can be easily accessed goes to NYC/Tri-State Area with LA being a fairly strong contender with the two having some regional cuisines that are stronger in one place than the other.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 06-11-2023 at 05:35 PM..
It was not long ago that Mexican food scene in NYC was trash as well. LA lacks any Caribbean scene (Puerto Rican, Jamaican, Dominican, Haitian, Trinidadian) and pizza along with Delicatessens are horrible in LA
Also I don't think LA has a vibrant South American scene as Jackson Heights Queens
Yea, I'd say that Mexican cuisine in NYC has improved really rapidly in variety and availability. There are still a lot of holdover "Mexican" restaurants here that are some weird tex-mex, but there's also a large variety of fairly authentic Mexican cuisine from various regions. I do think the number of tex-mex-ish Mexican restaurants that randomly throw in fried chicken and french fries on the menu run by immigrants usually from Southern China is an interesting sort of store though, and I've definitely been to ones where I thought there was someone in the back cooking who actually knew what they were doing in terms of what works and tastes pretty good, but it's just not actually Mexican cuisine.
LA's leg up on NYC is in Japanese, Korean, Southeast Asian in general, East African, Persian, Armenian, Mexican, and Central American cuisines. Oh, and Mongolian, because it has at least one restaurant. There's also a good lot of interesting experiments or mixing going on there with East Asian / Southeast Asian and Mexican cuisines. It has a better baseline produce quality and lower price points overall. Also, much better and more varied donuts. It matches NYC for the different varieties of Chinese cuisine. For I think everything and everywhere else, it goes to NYC above LA.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 06-11-2023 at 06:56 PM..
Apparently Tad's Steaks closed fairly recently - and I was sad, because I always meant to try it ... sometime.
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