A flushing afternoon in Queens

I've been hearing so much about Flushing, specifically, Chinatown, and in particular, the oh-so-delish-lipsmacking-hot'n'spicy 'liang pi'.

Liang wat?

Yup, hailing from the Chinese province of Shaanxi, liang pi (literally 'cold skin') is a concoction of cold rice noodles, slices of tau pok & bean sprouts drenched in a spicy, tangy, savoury & herby mix. The magic obviously lies in the sauce. Cos, without it, the ingredients are bland & tasteless.  Its -oh-la-la!

So the liang pi kicked off our food crawl this afternoon in Flushing. Followed by the $1 Peking Duck bun - thinly sliced peking duck with slivers of cucumber & spring onions topped with a nice dollop of the sweet, savoury sauce, nestled inside a freshly steamed man tou. And yes $1! Where can you can anything with a dollar these days?! I could seriously eat 10 of those. At once.

xlb (xiao long baos) - little pouches of goodness which, to Andrew, solves all the world's problems. Ok, I'm kidding, but close enough! It is really quite good.

Now, I think I've found my favourite dumplings (thanks to Shaz!) in a random hold-in-the-wall shop called 'White Bear' (bai xiong). How cool is that name? Run by a Chinese couple, the dumplings are churned out in batches of 25, 50, 75 and up to 200. My wanton-making days are over!

This speciality is eaten hot, with chilli oil, lots of cilantro & radish.

To round up the food-marathon, a bubble tea & HK-style toast is a must.

Enjoy!