Pan

The xiao long bao are OK but somewhat inconsistent at Yeah, and I haven't gotten them yet at Shanghai Cafe, but they're very popular (I keep seeing them being delivered to one table after another). Shanghai Cafe's clientele is very largely Chinese people, if that means anything to you. For addresses and some other stuff (reasonably reliable hours of operation, phone numbers), menupages.com is a good resource, but don't pay any attention to the anonymous "reviews" of restaurants there. From menupages, the addresses: New Yeah Shanghai Deluxe 65 Bayard St. (between Bowery/Elizabeth and Mott) Shanghai Cafe 100 Mott St. (between Canal & Hester) I'll get back to you with some recommended items later.

Chelsea, 9th avenue, on the NW corner of 24th. It's kind of a desolate block that doesn't have any restaurants but has a surprising amount of foot traffic. Co is located literally across the street from Grand Sichuan International. And they have a wine list: http://slice.seriouseats.com/images/200812...-menu-menu.html ← Thanks, kathryn. There's an entire block of art galleries on 25th St. between 10th and 11th, so if this place is even middlingly good, I think it'll get a lot of business.

The credit crunch is bad for any business except maybe the repo man and bankruptcy lawyers (and, seemingly, CEOs fired from huge financial businesses). It seems a very safe bet that, as Raji says, some longstanding institutions will shutter their doors in the coming year. But I'd never put myself in the position of ignorantly guessing which ones that will happen to.

Kathryn, where is the place, and are they going to be serving wine?

And now I've just finished reading the thread. As usual, a great thread! I will see what other travelogues you've done that I have yet to read. Thanks so much, Peter, and Happy New Year!

Er... are you sure they weren't pulling a foreigner's leg? ← Definitely a joke, and a pretty funny tall tale at that. I never heard that claim in the 70s when I lived in rural Terengganu, and even then, there were way too few elephants for this to work out in real life in Malaysia. Actually, what we did know about were tigers eating durian. They love it! We let our cat lick durian seeds, and was it ever a treat for him!

I definitely appreciate the recommendation, but what do you mean by "more authentic"? I understand that Dim Sum Go Go is new-style Hong Kong style, whereas most other places serve 1980s Hong Kong style.

I definitely hear you on all of this. The thing is, I grew up partly in Malaysia, and when we were in Kuala Lumpur during our stay from 1975-77 (which was mostly in Terengganu), we were regular customers at Dragon Court at the Hotel Merlin - a luxury hotel (now the Hotel Concorde, with its dim sum restaurant of Xing) - which had a big dim sum selection every weekend. All of the Hotel Merlin's restaurants were expensive - even from our standpoint as Americans living on my mother's generous grants (which paid a per diem based on what a diplomat would live on in KL, rather than what we lived on in rural Terengganu, which was way less) plus part of the time, my father's full-time CUNY salary (sabbatical) - except Dragon Court. Nevertheless, it was clearly pricier than most of the restaurants we typically patronized in Malaysia. Service wasn't great, but the food was fantastic and the prices weren't overly high for us. And for that matter, on my return trip to Malaysia in 2003, I went to Xing for a blowout lunch on a weekday (they have plentiful dim sum items every day). It was more luxurious, even arguably pretentious, than the Dragon Court had been (but they walked the walk, by hiring a talented young pipa and zither player to perform beautifully while we ate), but again, because of the exchange rate, a splurge that cost me around $13 in American money. To sum up, it's all a balance between the value of the deliciousness of the food vs. the value of the money, with subtraction for every instance of bullshit in dealing with personnel and addition for good service on top of a lack of bullshit. And in the final analysis, what figure comes after the equals sign depends on how each person rates those values.

weinoo, at Congee Village, I've never had to deal with a host trying to tell me my party can't sit at a table that's available, just because he for whatever reason doesn't feel like letting us sit there (my brother had to "negotiate" with him, and I think we ended up just going by ourselves and sitting there). It's also never happened that they let the phone ring and ring with no answer consistently for a period of 15 minutes or so (when we were trying to call them from the taxi to let them know we were stuck in traffic and would be a bit late - and no, their phone wasn't out of order, evidently). OK, that may have something to do with staffing problems rather than weird pretentiousness, though there seemed to be a bunch of staff camped out at the host's desk when we arrived. Oh, and I've also never experienced loud dance music bleeding out of the downstairs area for most of the meal at Congee Village, not that I can recall. And I think you know I can spell and can drop the freakin [sic]. What do the lunch specials cost on weekdays? I would tend to go to CB only for dim sum items, which would cost me easily twice what I pay at Dim Sum Go Go if not more, correct? Meaning that c. $20 would become c. $45 for lunch, perhaps? Maybe $50? Sorry, not willing to pay that for higher-quality ingredients or even more delicious food. Too expensive. But I'm willing to listen to some details on lunch specials. I could imagine paying $30 or so for a really good lunch every few months. The "Happy Birthday" song is annoying but not pretentious (you hear that at loads of low-end, proletarian places) and the lights at Congee Village indeed don't bother me.

Based on the rest of your post, I think you mean that you prefer Momofuku Saam Bar to Shang.

I agree with weinoo. Chinatown Brasserie is probably still the best, but it's so freakin expensive and has their weird pretentiousness, so I haven't been there in just over a year. Great cocktails, though. Dim Sum Go Go is my standby.

With the curry powder? No, I didn't know that.

Yeah. I was surprised to see that. My family patronized them since I was a little boy, if not before. Do you know what happened? Just too much of a rent hike?

Great. I really appreciate this recommendation and plan on using it.

Oh yeah, I've had that. That's a very good dish. I have a takeout menu right here. What you got was #82, "Sliced fish w. Spicy Sauce Soup." The other dish I mentioned is #100, "Fish & Sour Cabbage in a Little Hot Wok."

I understand that they do, but I haven't had it. Pork belly is just too fatty for my stomach to deal with.

Mooncakes...Chinese food, or what? Where is it? Lreda, the Mercer place - is it the Jean-Georges Vongerichten outpost?

Szechuan Gourmet is definitely better, but I'm still very glad to have a Grand Sichuan as my standby takeout/delivery place. I'm guessing the fish dish was Fish with Sour Cabbage in a Little Hot Wok. Did they put sterno on your table and keep the fish on fire until you (perhaps) asked them to put the fire out? I don't like the sterno and don't need the fire, but I like that dish quite a lot.

Yeah, I think Congee Village is better as a Cantonese restaurant than Yeah is as a Shanghainese restaurant, but it IS a somewhat apples-and-oranges comparison. I actually get good service at Yeah, probably because I've been a regular for many years. Lately, though, I've been liking Shanghai Cafe, on Mott St. between Canal and Hester. Have you tried that place?

Plenty of restaurants deteriorate. I don't know whether this one did, as I haven't gone lately, but there would be nothing strange about this. It happens all the time. ← It's a little stranger to me when the owner(s) is (are) the chef(s), as I believe has always been the case at Devi.

You could try Congee. I've had good experiences there.

Does or doesn't keep up?

And yet Jewel Bako retains its star. I'm not surprised the devi lost its star, though Babbo's loss does surprise me. ← Devi has deteriorated? That would be strange, since Suvir Saran and Hemant Mathur are still co-owners. ← Well, the last time I checked, Colicchio still owns the now starless Craft. And Batali still owns Babbo. ← Do you think Babbo has deteriorated?

I wonder about Babbo. I certainly thought my food was great 3-star food, using the NYT stars (and that should equal at least one Michelin star, I would think), but I've only been there once so far, so I can't say anything about their consistency.

raji, that's not even a funny joke. It wasn't our fault that our service was incredibly slow and the food was mostly merely good, at the prices they were charging.