Pan

Does liu da guen have a filling, too?

That looks good!

Yes. Yes. And yes. Since I'm the same person making the recommendations (in reverse chronological order), there's some overlap. If you look through this thread and the other thread linked to from the first "Yes," you'll see that various other members have posted other recommendations. I think all your choices are good except that the pork buns and dumplings may be merely good compared to the other dishes that will probably be great.

Holy jargon, Batman! (No offense.) Yes, on occasion, the server can assist me by telling me where the bathroom is. I guess that's location specific. I suppose there's a cultural difference here; this New Yorker cannot imagine a server sitting down at my table unless they were either coming on to me or a really close friend based on something other than my being a mere regular at a diner or something. But in any case, if they're on their shift, they're usually too busy to hang around much. Otherwise, the whole idea of this just feels violently wrong to me in an establishment other than a strip bar, where not the waitresses but the strippers could be expected to come by the table and perhaps sit down with customers -- for a fee. Waiters/waitresses have a job to do, and that job does not involve sitting at my table, touching me, or, like, showing their tits. So I'm tempted to say: You run what type of establishment? If you get where I'm coming from.

Why never add cayenne pepper?

I don't think touching customers is a New York thing, but I had a West Indian waitress yesterday who called me "Darlin'," (as in "Have you decided on your order, Darlin'?", "How is everything, Darlin'?") and I thought that was very nice.

By far my best meal of the year -- and probably the best meal of my life -- was at the Li Family Restaurant in Beijing. Choosing the second best is difficult. Old Shanghai Moon (in Shanghai) is a good candidate. Other delicious meals were at the late Union Pacific, Lupa, Tanoreen, L'Impero, Bianca, a bunch of times at Spicy & Tasty, starting with this post, and twice at a delicious neighborhood restaurant in Beijing that I frustratingly can't find any information about. It's very difficult for me to rank these meals in some kind of order, but they all belong on this list.

Depends on the country. In a few places I've had business dinners (including Tokyo and Riyadh -- yes, you read that right), it's considered poor manners NOT to have more than one drink at a business dinner. ← What were you drinking at a business dinner in Riyadh? Tea? For those of you who don't know, alcohol is illegal in Saudi Arabia, and as far as I've understood, the ban isn't widely flouted as in the US during Prohibition. Perhaps the analogy with cocaine in the US today may be more apt.

The sherry is a substitute for Shaoxing wine.

Where are those pictures from, Yetty?

Is malaria a big problem in California or other food basket states? I don't think so but I could be wrong.[...] ← No, you're surely not wrong. There probably is no big down side to DDT being prohibited in the US in these times and certainly an up side.

Look in big Chinese supermarkets. I know the huge one on Kissena Blvd. in Flushing sells them. I'll bet you could find them somewhere in the Chinese neighborhood(s) in Brooklyn.

I'm not suggesting that, but others have, and considering how effective it was against malaria, it's not nearly as much of a slam-dunk to prohibit it as many people think. I have a strong suspicion of all sprayed pesticides, myself, and I'd rather coexist with insects if necessary than die fighting them. Plus, DDT is a very blunt weapon, killing the insects useful to the human race as well as our mortal enemies. But I don't know how comforting any of this discussion would be to someone dying of malaria or dengue hemorrhagic fever.

We're talking about the same thing, Dejah. "Kroepoek" is simply the old Dutch-influenced spelling of the Indonesian word "krupuk." I'm not familiar with the shrimp toasts you describe.

I'll address this side issue. Here's one place you can look for information about DDT, DDE, and DDD. Here are some key points: The results of other studies on animals are discussed. What is not mentioned on this page is the number of human lives that were saved by the extermination of anopheles mosquitos. Malaria kills more human beings than any other disease, I believe (with the possible exception of infant diarrheal diseases), and I understand DDT is the only really effective pesticide, or at least the most effective pesticide against them. I'm not a scientist and can't vouch for the accuracy of this article, but here are some points from it: Recently, there have been hopeful signs of an effective vaccine having been developed against malaria, though that won't help for a disease like dengue for which there is no effective prophylaxis or treatment.

I guess for people who don't believe it makes any difference to try to avoid certain kinds of pesticide residues, there's no up side to organic products. For those who do believe that makes a difference, not all of a product's quality is visible and, arguably, some of it is not a tastable or smellable difference, either.

Starting with this post, there is some discussion of what to see and do in Hong Kong in Shanghai and Hong Kong, A girl's gotta eat! Have fun! I found Hong Kong a very beautiful location and fun city when I was there in 1987. Good eating, too.

I don't understand your claim, Herb. Rather, it seems that Persian Jews arrived in the 10th century in Kaifeng. (See this page for some brief information.) Jesuits much later, apparently in the 17th century, discovered the existence of the Jewish community in Kaifeng. (See this 1907 National Geographic article, which is interesting at least as much for what it shows about Western attitudes of the time as anything else.) But I'm not sure we'd want to have a long discussion about things that seem beyond the scope of questions relating to food, at least at first glance. If we could only find a food angle, such as some hypothesis that Persian Jews introduced baozi (Persian pan) to China . . .

Yeah, Katz's surely belongs in this thread. I've never been to the Spanish restaurant you mentioned, though.

Those petits fours were part of your meal, weren't they? So it seems to me you were merely having them for takeout. I don't see the theft in that. The sugar cubes are a gray area, because they're really expected to be either used for coffee or tea or left for other customers. But if taking some off the proferred sugar cubes is the worst thing your mother did, she was pretty ethical. I really don't think any of that is comparable to stealing bar mugs, silverware, etc. The latter is truly and incontrovertibly theft.

Shrimp toasts are traditional in Indonesia, where they're called krupuk, and in Malaysia, fish toasts called keropok are more common (krupuk and keropok are of course the same word with slightly different spellings and pronunciations). hzrt8w, did you notice where the dry shrimp toasts you fry come from? I believe the ones in the big Chinese supermarkets in Flushing (Queens) and Manhattan are in fact imported from Indonesia.

Sour cream is traditional for cold fruit (usually sour cherry) soup in Hungary.

I don't find anything negative about the label "organic," as long as it's honest.

Fat Guy made a great point in the "Hopes and Wishes for the New York Scene in 2005" thread: So why don't we do our part right here? Let's talk about some very longstanding, reliably good restaurants here. I'll start. On one level, there are diners like Teresa's that never really change and are dependable and solid. On another level, there are places like Col Legno, which has been around for something like 14 years and continues to provide satisfying, dependable Tuscan cuisine in relaxing, quiet surroundings. I'll leave it to the rest of you to talk about dependable restaurants at higher levels than that.

How would it work to put a line through the "tip" line on the credit slip and pay the tip in cash?