Yangtze River, Flushing

[Fat Guy]

I had an outstanding meal at Yangtze River on 40th Road in Flushing today. I can't remember a Chinese meal with such a high percentage (100% actually) of excellent dishes -- especially remarkable given seat-of-the-pants ordering and no foreknowledge of anything.

I stupidly assumed, upon hearing the name, that it was going to be a seafood place. It isn't. I mean, they have seafood, but it's not a tank place (it's a rather small restaurant) and the menu is generalized Shanghai (and a lot of noodle dishes). The first ordering cue came when we walked in: you enter through a vestibule/hallway that overlooks a kitchen area. A couple of women were hand-making buns and dumplings in plain view, so we applied our formidable gourmet intellects to the situation and, after much pondering and abstract discussion, started by ordering several varieties of . . . buns and dumplings, all of which were first-rate. The pork-and-crab soup dumplings/buns (most restaurants call them buns but dumpling seems more accurate) had an unusually robust broth, the skins were very thin and non-doughy, and the filling was unusually coherent and non-soggy. The pan-fried pork buns were also great, again the skins/dough had none of that gooeyness to them that often ruin this product and the pork filling was juicy and laced with a lot of scallions. Standard pan-fried dumplings were the least remarkable, but only by comparison to the other dumplings on the table -- they'd rank very high relative to other restaurants.

There are a few choices of scallion pancakes. They have the regular flat ones you'd typically see at a New York Chinese restaurant, but they also have a couple based on the sesame-scallion-pancake concept that I've been seeing more of lately: they're a yeast-risen circle of dough, the size of a small pizza (cut and served in wedges after cooking), that has I think been folded over itself many times, puffed and shallow-fried in a wok, about an inch and a half thick, with a bready interior layered with scallions, and a crusty exterior dotted with sesame seeds. You can also get this item filled with beef slices. We had the plain-puffy, which we (I'm sure improperly and to the horror of the 100% Asian-other-than-us clientele) used as a surrogate for rice throughout the meal, snacking on it, making little sandwiches, etc.

There are several "rice cake" dishes. By rice cake they mean a kind of oval rice-flour noodles that look like bias-cut slices of scallops. We had the "deluxe," which is the ten-ingredients-lo-mein version of the dish, with shrimp, pork, and all sorts of other stuff. I really enjoyed the texture of these rice-cake things. This was only the second or third time I'd had these, and I'm definitely going to start ordering them whenever I see them on a menu.

For the less adventurous eaters in the party (my friend's two kids) we ordered shredded beef with yellow leeks, which turned out to be a great dish. The beef was of abnormally high quality and the yellow leeks (I'm not sure what vegetable these actually are -- I'll have to look in a Chinese market) really made the dish.

There was something that on the menu was described as "braised pork in casserole" but which turned out to be the most wonderful, massive, light, moist, crusty ground-pork meatballs -- four almost-tennis-ball-size ones that had likely been braised in the crock they were served in, half-submerged in a rich gravy.

Finally, "fresh fresh eel" (yes it said fresh twice, perhaps once to indicate freshness and the other time to indicate fresh water, we theorized -- no there wasn't anybody there capable of answering any detailed English-language questions) with black bean sauce. I'm used to seeing eel that has been prepared by killing the eel, then basically peeling it, and then cutting the flesh into strips for cooking. Here, they seem to have simply killed the eel, cleaned it of its most offensive innards but left it structurally intact, and cooked it whole. After cooking, they simply chopped it -- cross-section-wise -- into chunks and left it assembled. So it was like they brought out this big fat foot-long (maybe longer) chopped snake (yes with the head on) smothered in black bean sauce. It was great. The pieces were a little difficult to eat because they had the cartilage or bones or whatever it is that eels have, so you had to work around that. But the meat was terrific -- you got much more of a hit of eel flavor and texture than in the eel-strips preparations I've mostly had. And the black bean sauce was a breed apart, with a funky (good funky) fermented taste that I assume represents what black bean sauce is supposed to be like. My friend was so enthusiastic about this dish (note this was the last dish served and we had already had our first lunch at Ben's Best deli and it was just me and him eating all this food, plus two kids who barely contributed to the effort) that after we made it through the whole body he made the effort to extract all the accessible meat from the head as well, a move that drew nods of approval and perhaps at least somewhat redeemed us in the eyes of the staff and our fellow customers.

Yangtze River

135-21 40th Road

Flushing (Queens), NY

718-353-8500

[Jason Perlow]

You liked it better than China 46 in Jersey? I have a hard time imagining theres a place in flushing that even comes close to what we got, especially at C46's price level. I'm biased, and quite frankly, I don't want to schlep out there to find out either.

The beef with yellow leeks is a chicken with yellow leeks at C46... Cecil refers to it as "fancy chow mein". His version also comes with fresh bamboo heart -- I like it a lot.

Was this place cheap or expensive?

[Fat Guy]

Price: All of the above-mentioned food plus a couple of sodas was $68 (check total, with tax but not tip), which includes $19 for the eel dish.

In re China 46: They're two different styles of restaurant. This place is much more homestyle and less imperial-court-ish than China 46. I doubt they have the resources, and perhaps they don't even have the knowledge, to make half of the China 46 menu. In addition, there weren't enough items-in-common between my one meal at this place and my one meal at China 46 to make a direct comparison possible. I preferred these soup buns to the less flavorful ones at China 46, but these were crab-and-pork whereas as I recall the China 46 ones I tried were pork only. I liked this rice-cake dish better than the one we had at China 46 but this one had pork, shrimp, and lots of other stuff, so again it's not directly comparable. Two different species of scallion pancakes, etc. But the two points in favor of this place are 1) what I said at the outset of my first post: "I can't remember a Chinese meal with such a high percentage (100% actually) of excellent dishes." And 2) very high quality of ingredients overall (which I felt was a weak link in several China 46 dishes; don't have a big menu if your larder can't support it). But again, it's not like we were eating soft-shell crabs or giant shrimp or any of the kinds of things where ingredient differentiation becomes the dealbreaker. I guess it gets to the point of the China 46 regulars being so into the restaurant that they've been palatized towards it, and so familiar with ordering that they create a barrier to entry for any other Shanghai restaurant. I don't have that kind of investment in China 46. I loved the meal we had, where about 50% of the items were excellent and best-of-breed, and China 46 has a really serious/ambitious kitchen, but I loved this simpler place too and had a substantially better hit percentage on the upside. There's also an expectations issue: I visited China 46 after hearing for something like a year that it's the best Shanghai restaurant in the universe, and that people in Shanghai should be ashamed of themselves the Shanghai food in New Jersey is so much better. And it was excellent but I was surprised by some of the failures and the ingredients issue. This new place, I had heard nothing about, I had no real expectations, we were just going out to Flushing and trying the next untested Chinese restaurant on a long list of untested restaurants, and it turned out to be a big surprise.

[Jason Perlow]

We ordered wrong at China 46 the time you came. Had you been for Andy's meal, or the time we went there at Chinese New Year, or for the 1st eG dinner, I think you would have felt a bit different -- especially quality of ingredients wise.

China 46 actually has 2 kinds of soup dumplings, the ones we had at your dinner were pork, however they also have the crab/pork ones as well.

The pancakes at this Flushing place sound interesting. Aw shit, now I gotta try the place now. I hate schlepping to Flushing.

[dumpling]

Fat Guy-I remember that restaurant and their dumpling/buns. Extremely flavorful. I'm very fond of a couple of places near me in New Jersey but I still love exploring elsewhere-that's part of the adventure, and Flushing has some great places. There was one place I went once, can probably find again, but don't remember the address. It was a bakery that had the most enormous pork bun; they called it a "big head bun" because with maybe a little exaggeration it was that big. It was amazing.

There's also a place I think it's called East River that had this great pai gwot fan-spareribs over rice dish served in an individual sized little ceramic cup thing. I drove in a couple of times just for that;come to think of it just remembering it again is making me think I have to go back and check if it's still there.

[Nick]

Fat Guy's review makes me want to eat there. Too bad it's so far away.

[Bux]

There are a few choices of scallion pancakes. They have the regular flat ones you'd typically see at a New York Chinese restaurant, but they also have a couple based on the sesame-scallion-pancake concept that I've been seeing more of lately: they're a yeast-risen circle of dough, the size of a small pizza (cut and served in wedges after cooking), that has I think been folded over itself many times, puffed and shallow-fried in a wok, about an inch and a half thick, with a bready interior layered with scallions, and a crusty exterior dotted with sesame seeds. You can also get this item filled with beef slices. We had the plain-puffy, which we (I'm sure improperly and to the horror of the 100% Asian-other-than-us clientele) used as a surrogate for rice throughout the meal, snacking on it, making little sandwiches, etc.

Scallion pancake is not one of the things I frequently order, so I have only a passing knowledge about them. Spotting a beef/scallion pancake on restaurant menu one afternoon, I ordered it. What I got was pretty much a sandwich of sliced beef with lettuce and hosisin sauce between scallion pancakes -- or at least that's what it seemed to be to me. I was more intrigued than thrilled by it. I wondered if it was a traditional dish or one that paid hommage to the all American sandwich.

[Fat Guy]

These seem to be getting more common around town. I think it's a Hong Kong street food, but I haven't been able to find anyone from Hong Kong to confirm or deny it. If you go to the dumpling place on Eldridge, right near the other dumpling place on Allen, they have those puffy panckakes and they fill the wedges with slices of braised beef, some sort of pickled carrots, scallions, and a piquant sauce.

[Bux]

I think I've seen those at the dumpling place on Mulberry across from the park as well, but I didn't get a close look at them. I was rather disappointed here by the rather lackluster way in which my dumplings were prepared the last time I was there. This is not to say that the final cooking and presentation are the high point at any of the three places with which I have some familiarity. I believe two of them are related, but I forget which two. The other one is on Mosco Street and has no place to sit and eat. The one on Mulberry seems to have the largest menu, at least in theory. A lot of the stuff is crossed out.

[menton1]

FG, Fluching seems to be THE Chinatown of New York these days. Most of the authentic cooking is there.

I stumbled on a place last winter called Dumpling Garden and just recently went back. Except for the menu translations, they barely speak any English. The Hot & Sour Soup is different and better than any I've tasted. A bunch of interesting, mostly vegetarian appetizers, we chose mushrooms and wheat dough.

The dumplings are 12 for anywhere between $3.50 and $5. Steamed or fried. We prefer steamed. One of the most interesting was the Lamb and Calabaza, which turns out to be Pumpkin or yellow squash. Good thing we didn't get the Omosa, which it turns out is some kind of stomach entrails. A gem of a place, immaculately clean, you can eat off the floor. Worth the schlep, I did it from Jersey.

Dumpling Garden

Corner 40th Road & College Point Blvd.

Flushing.

[ZenFoodist]

When Yangzte has razor clams in black bean sauce as a special you should jump at them. One of my family's faves for years....

[Fat Guy]

When Yangzte has razor clams in black bean sauce as a special you should jump at them.  One of my family's faves for years....

You have a lot of experience with this place? Tell us more. My order was essentially random. I'd love to have the Rosetta Stone for the Yangtze River menu, because I'm definitely going back.

[ZenFoodist]

You seem to have done very well for yourselves (just re-read your initial post...little confused, btw, about why you'd go to Ben's especially if you mean the one in the Bay Terrace shopping center)

The soup buns are superior. We always start with quite a few racks....enough so that we can all have eight each, at least. Sometimes I go for twelve. I adore those things!

All seafood dishes are superb. We tend to order a few whole fish when we go with large parties. The sea bass is our favorite. A few weeks ago we had monk fish which was outstanding. The spicy brown sauce with a shower of scallions is our standard, but the chili sauce is excellent as well.

Their water spinach, watercress, or "hollow vegetable" are always cooked perfectly without sloppy, heavy-handed oil excess. (I'm content to order a vast amount of buns and a few heaping plates of vegetables and call it lunch) All their produce is first-rate.

The spicy shredded beef is totally incendiary and fantastic.

The handpulled lo mein noodles are excellent especially if you request them sauteed with seasonal greens and garlic as we do...no meat.

The rice cakes, as you perfectlly described, are one of our mainstays. I like them with shredded pork and preserved turnip. I tend to buy huge bags of them in the frozen section of our local Korean markets, Han Yang or Han Ah Reum, and throw them into soups of any ethnicity. Koreans call then dduk and they are identical to the ones you have in Chinese places. They are a great change from tortellini or kreplach etc. in soup. I love them sauteed with scalliions and Korean Gochuchang paste for a quick pick-me up.

Those lion's head pork balls are to die for. I'm glad you tried them. I just love this place. We've honestly never had a bad meal.

Yangzte is only one of many phenomenal places wedged in between those couple of blocks. You owe it to yourself to take that 7 train out here more often :)

Lisa

[Fat Guy]

Thanks, Lisa. I now feel I'm armed to the teeth with information, ready for my next visit -- which I think will be pretty soon if I have anything to say about it.

It sounds as though you have a lot of experience in the 'hood. Maybe you'll start some threads on your other favorite places out there. I always feel bombarded with undifferentiated information. I mean, if you look at just that one block of 40th Road, it's like something out of a children's book: restaurants and shops crammed together and stacked four high with complete disregard for normal Newtonian constraints of height and volume.

Ben's: I'm talking about Ben's Best Gourmet Kosher Deli & Restaurant, 96-40 Queens Blvd., Rego Park, NY, (718) 897-1700. Ed Levine did a massive rundown of pastrami places in the New York Times awhile back and said this was his favorite in the city. So I felt it was worth checking out, and it was very good, even though his extreme high regard for it is untenable. Here's the thread on that: http://forums.egullet.org/show.php/act/ST/f/4/t/20329

[mjc]

I'm going to go to this place tomorrow for lunch with a bunch of friends. From this thread it looks like you guys reccomend:

pork-and-crab soup dumplings/buns

pan-fried pork buns were also great

sesame-scallion-pancake

deluxe rice cakes

shredded beef with yellow leeks

braised pork in casserole/lions head meatballs

fresh fresh eel

razor clams in black bean sauce

whole fish

spicy shredded beef

handpulled lo mein noodles sauteed with seasonal greens and garlic

is there anything else you reccomend?

thanks, I'll report back on how we liked it.

[Fat Guy]

That's pretty much the list of what I'm planning to order the next time I go. Be sure to get the scallion pancake with the beef in it, not the plain one, though.

[mjc]

Six of us went to Yang Tze River on Friday for lunch. We got there about 1:30 and were the only people there, but by 2 it was pretty full. Two of the friends I brought with me speak Mandarin, so we let them order, but there were still some problems with getting what I wanted. ( I’ve noticed that people in my generation (other than myself) have a big problem with asking for what they want in a restaurant, if it requires talking to the waiter, asking a question, asking for something not on the menu, or sending something back, etc.)

Anyway we ended up with:

Crab and Pork Soup Buns: These were excellent, everyone enjoined them. The broth inside was indeed excellent. I went with one of the same friends to China 46 the previous week and had these too. We both agreed that they were about the same. I would give Yang tze a slight edge for taste and China 46 a point for appearance.

Pan fried Pork Dumplings: These were also very good

Scallion/sesame pancakes with beef: These were excellent. It was like a sandwich of sweet beef with scallions and cilantro.

Vegetable noodles shanghai style: This is what we ended up with instead of lo mein sautéed with garlic and greens. It was a good dish with bok choy and some other vegetables.

Spicy shredded beef: This was my favorite dish. It was filled with peppers and It looked like it was going to be too spicy, but it ended up being a perfect balance.

Lion’s Head Meatballs: These were good, but didn’t really impress anyone.

Clams with basil: This dish was the result of poor communication, but I noticed it was present on several other tables. No one liked it at my table though. The sauce was good, but the clams were quite poor.

Braised water eel in brown sauce: For some reason the waiter was against us ordering the Fresh Fresh Eel, so we got this instead. It was Eel in brown sauce with one thousand cloves of garlic. The Eel was very good, but the sauce was a little to sweet for me.

Overall I say that we all thought this restaurant was good (and cheap—lunch was 60 bucks with tip for the 6 of us). Although none of us were really impressed enough that we want to drive right back. I would like to try it again, and try to some of the other things suggested though.

I also wanted to mention that at our trip to China 46 the week before we ordered a bunch of things which the waiter rejected and replaced with what he thought would be better choices and he chose very well. The two of us had:

the soup buns,

a special of pork belly and tofu in a brown sauce which we both really liked

lobster shangaii style, which was a lobster that was cut up in piece and served in a brown sauce with edame. We both really liked this as well, but it was a little to sweet for my taste.

Rice cakes sautéed with pork. The waiter said this would go well with the lobster and I’m not sure if it really did, but it was a great dish.

We are definitely interested in driving back to China 46 again.