"The Gaijin Girl's Guide to Chinatown"

[Pan]

The creator of this site posted to the Japan Forum in this thread, but this is about New York's Chinatown and environs. I invite you all to peruse this interesting site and comment on it, and I invite Pitchblack70 to take part in our discussions of Asian dishes and foodstuffs available in the New York area.

[Fat Guy]

Love the name, and the idea.

[Pan]

Yeah. We have to get her to weigh in on her favorite Chinese restaurant dishes in NY, for one thing. Unless all her favorite Chinese dishes are from shops or street vendors - in which case, we still want to know about them.

[herbacidal]

Is the proper spelling gaijin or gaigin?

I wouldn't know really, except for seeing it as gaijin up until this point.

[Pan]

I've always seen "gaijin." The spelling of the website name should probably be changed.

[Hiroyuki]

As a native Japanese, I'd say the correct spelling (and correct pronunciation) is gaijin. It may be mispronounced when spelled gaigin.

Personnaly, I hate that word, but the Japanese use it quite often, as you may know.

[GaijinGirl]

Yes, I guess I'm going to have to change it to a better spelling.

Honestly, I haven't hit very many restaurants at all. You see, I'm queen of thrifty (that's a nice way of putting it, I think.) (If I didn't guard it so closely, I could also clue people in on where one can get a practically-brand new Jones of NY suit for $24 or less....)

So I'm ripping through all the street vendors - it's a lot cheaper, with the opportunity to get a much wider sampling. Perhaps when I've exhausted those venues (but there's so much, I doubt it's happening soon.) I've been at *one* Vietnamese restaurant on Mulberry, and disliked it - Phiet Huong, maybe? Too much vertebrae, not enough frog...

The two restaurants I CAN recommend highly aren't Chinatown. 1) Manetta's Pizza (best pizza I've ever had!) and 2) Cooking with Jazz (Creole) - both in Queens. Funny, 'cause I'm a Bronx girl...

Okay, so where's the best dim sum!? That's my next crusade, worthy of a separate page on the site, probably...

--Janet

[Pan]

As you might imagine, dim sum has been discussed on this board before. Here are some relevant links:

Dim Sum Sunday brunch in Manhattan

Dim sum breakfast at Grand Harmony

Chinatown: Restaurants & Shops, Walking Tour (sounds right up your alley)

dimsum in Chinatown (older thread, from 2002)

Also, all of these threads apparently refer to dim sum somewhere, as they were search results for "dimsum" on the New York board:

Page of search results

For good measure, here are the Google results for "dim sum" + "New York" (Googling eGullet only), which I won't go through right now, but feel free to skip through them at your leisure:

Results 1 - 55 of about 86 (looks like there's a lot of chaff in those results, though, in view of what you're looking for)

But the short version is that, though I enjoy the big eating halls like Golden Unicorn, Jing Fong, and Harmony Palace, the best dumplings I've had in New York have probably been at Grand Sichuan on 50th and 9th and Yeah Shanghai on Bayard, both full-service restaurants and not dim sum specialists. The best cold dishes I've had, overall, have been at Spicy & Tasty on Prince St. in Flushing.

[GaijinGirl]

FYI: Just corrected the Gaigin/Gaijin misspelling on the website, and therefore the URL is now:

http://pitchblack70.tripod.com/gaijingirl/gaijingirl.html

Thanks,

--Janet (Gaijin girl)

[GaijinGirl]

Wanted to mention that Gaijin Girl just turned one year old - and I absolutely could not have made it into what it's becoming without the help of everyone on Egullet!

At: http://pitchblack70.tripod.com/gaijingirl/gaijingirl.html (Feel free to critique...)

Thanks! --Janet (GG)