My dad crossed his arms as yet another Flushing resident shrugged, turned and walked away. “This better be one goddamn good blog,” he said. I pointed to my iPhone: “Google Maps says this way.” He looked skyward, perhaps for the North Star.
We were circling the residential roads off Main Street looking for a Sam Sifton-approved Cantonese restaurant called Imperial Palace. On the way, we asked directions from people who didn’t speak English, lingered at a homicide crime scene, and passed ethnic eateries with signs that displayed spelling on par with Sarah Palin’s diary.
Never mind that Imperial Palace, it turns out, is only a few hundred feet away from the subway. Had we been lab rats in a maze, the experiment would have been condemned as inhumane. My family, you see, is from Manhattan. We are incapable of comprehending the outer boroughs.
How could it be that my relatives, despite living in Manhattan for eighty years, never penetrated Flushing? “Flushing is just a stop on the Long Island Railroad,” my great aunt announced.
But Flushing is also the second-largest Chinatown outside of Asia, and it’s quickly catching up to the original Chinatown in Manhattan. The 7 train voyage to Flushing is thus no longer a pointless, time-consuming excursion. It's a mandatory course for an Ivy League-caliber foodie education. Imperial Palace, according to many, is one of Flushing's most worthwhile assignments.
The restaurant's busy façade of neon, blinking crabs foreshadowed its bustling interior, which was swimming with customers – more densely packed than the live seafood tanks separating the dining area from the kitchen. The tanks are a mainstay of Cantonese cuisine, simulating the waters off Guangdong’s southern coast and reflecting the region’s preference for fresh ingredients over compensatory spices. Across the street, at Hong Kong Supermarket, they dedicate an entire shopping aisle to nothing but fish tanks.
We had already decided to get the Dungeness crabs over sticky rice. It’s the house special and the most enthusiastic recommendation in Sifton’s review. Actually, New York Chowhounders and bloggers like Pete Cherches were raving about the Dungeness – and Imperial Palace, in general – as long ago as 2006. Sifton’s 2009 piece seems less like a trend-setting review than a shout-out to the judgment of New York’s finest e-critics. It’s like Tina Fey writing a 30 Rock script using a bunch of funny phrases she found on urbandictionary.com.
Despite the buzz, the crabs were inconsistent. Some pieces were bland. But my last crab featured the delicate sweetness and ample meat that’s characteristic of Dungeness. The restaurant combines these buttery hunks with sticky rice coated in the savory crab tomale. The dish dominated the action at just about every table in the house.
I foil my grandfather's attempt to eat all the Dungeness before anyone notices
Another standout, at least in terms of taste (before you get it, you should read this), was the shark fin soup. There’s a reason why the Chinese middle class chooses to spend its newly acquired wealth on this expensive soup: the crunchy fin cartilage soaks up the saltiness of the lo foh tong. It’s so good the Chinese government offered it to Henry Kissinger when he visited in the early 1970s to reestablish diplomatic relations.
But what really makes your Flushing adventure complete? Bamboo fungus! Don’t aim your fork at the iridescent science experiment in the back of your refrigerator just yet. This fungus is much better (and edible). The Chinese delicacy is grown from agricultural bi-products like discarded plant husks. After spawning, the fungus is lathered in oyster sauce and mixed with portabella mushrooms. It’s fibrous in texture and exploding with umami compounds. The bamboo fungus was enjoyed by all, but the real funguslinguist at the table was my grandfather, who pretended not to hear requests to pass the dish.
We took a pause from our Imperial feast to notice the line of customers waiting for a table. It was out the door. I checked my watch: 10 pm. We enjoyed the jealous stares of the stragglers as the waiter filled our remaining table space with shrimp with candied walnuts, shrimp with red sauce and vegetables, and mushroom noodles.
Earlier in the night, when we finally found the restaurant, my grandmother had hugged my dad and, in a surprise attack, whispered in his ear, “This is the worst night of my life!” Now, as we finished our last bites, she turned to me and said, “Good suggestion.” In fact, the consensus at our table was that we were satisfied with what we’d had, and, at the same time, we were sure there was more we needed to try. The Manhattaners had come a long way.
