For $95 per person, you get a whole lot of history and trivia about Chinatown Manhattan and New York City (what Chinese dish was invented in Manhattan? That sort of thing). Oh, and you get to eat at five different places.
Chinatown Manhattan
I won’t give away all the places on the food tour, but it was definitely worth it. We went with Ultimate Food Tours.
Steamed buns.
Our group had ten people and the tour took three hours. Along the way, our guide shared lore, etiquette (how to eat a soup dumpling properly!), and stories about the Chinese in America.
Soup dumplings.
The guide was awesome and he left without waiting for a tip!
Comfort food is, thankfully, different in every place one calls home.
The Finns love their “karjalanpiirakka” or rice pudding filled rye pasties. I think of them as small lifeboats of yum. “Karjala” is a part of Finland and “piirakka” is “pie/pasty/dumpling.” The result is a mild buttery eggy rye taste.
Like all comfort foods, there is a different recipe for every grandma and the preparation and eating rituals lead to stories filled with nostalgia and memory.
If you have a Finn who can share their recipe with you, then go with that. Otherwise, look it up online. If you want to watch a video version of this article, please go to my YouTube channel.
This Finnish dish may not be exciting but I love it. I love the chewy rye, the buttery egg, and the creamy rice pudding. But it also reminds me of my childhood, and nothing is as delicious as food that reminds you of the comfort of a happy place.
In a nod to Chinese/Asian new year (February 10, 2024), this article is about a Chinatown. The largest Chinatown is in Flushing, Queens, New York.
A sign in the dim sum house.
We went to eat good Chinese food and we went to Flushing to find it. It is a mere Subway ride (take the 7 from Midtown — also, you can pay by credit card at the Subway turnstile! No need for a ticket.) and get off at the Flushing-Main Street stop. Just down the street to Roosevelt and Prince streets, you will feel and hear the Chinatown atmosphere. Actually, the minute we got above ground, we heard people talking loudly in Mandarin Chinese. The smells made us realize that we were near some dumplings.
After doing some research, we decided (also because it was all last minute) to make our own food tour. There is a new mall called Tangram at the modern fancy end and then “hole in the wall” types of places like the famous White Bear. We headed for White Bear. The dumplings were good but can be had at other places for equal quality. The sauce was not spicy. Also, I felt a bit sad for the staff as they did not seem happy to have gained such fame.
White Bear is only take away. Dumplings with spicy sauce from White Bear.
We were only there for a short while and only had so many stomachs to fill so we ONLY managed to eat at four places in as many hours. After White Bear, we headed to a dim sum place called Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao (as seen in the first photo at the top of the article). This place had the legit dumplings included their famous soup dumplings (xiao long bao).
Bamboo steamers.Multicolor dumplings are a modern take.
Luckily we got there before noon (yes, we already had the dumplings above before noon) so we only had to wait a few minutes for a table. This restaurant offered warm fresh soy milk which is apparently an authentic thing to have for breakfast. Warm soy milk and a cruller (deep fried dough).
Warm fresh soy milk and crullers is breakfast.The famous soup dumplings.
The soup dumplings were excellent although a touch too big for the spoon so there was no room on the spoon for the soup that ran out of the dumplings when poked with a chop stick. In some places in the world, the soup dumpling is so big that it is served with a straw. This is a gimmick. It is an amateur move to try and put the whole dumpling in one’s mouth. This is steamed dumpling and if you bite into it whole, it will explode like a magma filled volcano. I poked my dumpling over a bowl and drank the soup from there. There is a soy and ginger sauce for the soup dumpling but I loved the dumpling as it was. Inside was a lovely pork meatball juicy with soup.
Even here at Nan Xiang, there was some concession to being in the US. There were colorful dumplings made to please the eye, vegetarian dumplings, the scallion pancake made too sweet, and the cucumber salad not smashed (apparently the way I like Chinese cucumber salad is too garlicky — which is not authentic).
Notice our order ticket taped to our table?
As we ordered dishes, our ticket was taped to our table. Once we stopped ordering and had paid, we were told, gently, to leave, as there were long lines of people waiting for our table. So we left. But then went on to have dessert soup. I wrote about that in my article about my spirit starch. After a walk around Tangram mall, we went and had Peking Duck at Jiang Nan. Read about that in my article about that. It had gold leaf on it.
We ended our self made food tour of Mandarin Chinatown Flushing and headed back to Midtown New York. I do not think we ate anymore that day.
Oh, I tell a lie. We had boba tea. Which is a meal in of itself. More on that in another article.
The world’s spices at the spice shop in the fruit and vegetable market.
Where to find the world’s products in Bogota? Recently, I went to Codabas, a market in the northern part of Bogota. It’s up on Carrera 7 # 180. Codabas has a central building with fruit stalls surrounded by a parking lot of shops.
Inside the central building is a spice shop with every spice you didn’t know that you couldn’t find in Bogota. Cardamom. Chili mix. Fresh honey. Salt from the moon. Okay, I jest.
Clean fruit and veg.
Some of the shops around the parking area include an Italian shop (they sell wine for less than 15,000 COP = $8 which is fairly cheap for Bogota) and other Italian items.
Frozen shumai dumplings.
I was thrilled by the “Arabic” sandwich shop where I bought pita bread. (All of it. I also bought hummus. But, mostly, I was excited to find flat bread like I’ve found in the middle east.)
Baba ganoush, hummus, labnah, and pita bread.
Across from there is a Peruvian store but it was a bit pricey.
Arabic cafe.
There were several fish shops which sold lots of frozen Asian seafood, like clams from Vietnam, and Asian foods (like frozen shumai dumplings). Plus, they sold a good brand (from Canada) of pickled herring. And squid ink. Just in case you were making squid ink pasta.
Pickled herring and squid ink.
I will go back to explore some more but personally for vegetables (and especially for chiles and napa cabbage) I like the less sterile feel of Paloquemao a little bit better. Also, the Carulla on Calle 84 actually caters to the expats and carries many imported products.
