Won't you take me to...Chinatown?

(The third and final installment of the New York food saga!)

A trip to New York for my family is never complete until we've been to Chinatown. Having grown up in the Midwest, there wasn't much in the way of good ethnic food. There's a time and a place for greasy take-out in pagoda-shaped containers, but for the real stuff, you have to go with experts (not me). Fortunately, my parents have over 100 years of combined experience eating authentic Chinese food. Notable cities with fairly reliable supply (from West-East):

• Vancouver, BC (Canada): my sister and her husband live in Seattle and were driving up with my visiting parents for the weekend. At the border coming home from a rather successful (read: gluttonous) weekend, the Customs officer asked, "And what was your reason for being in Vancouver?" My brother-in-law looked squarely at the officer and said, "Eating restaurant food." And he waved them on.
• San Francisco, CA: home of R&G Lounge, serving the biggest Alaskan king crabs and steamed jumbo prawns you ever saw.
• Chicago, IL: take your pick between downtown Chinatown and suburban gems such as Triple Crown (Oakbrook, IL).
• Toronto, ON (Canada): according Wikipedia, Toronto is more ethnically diverse than New York City, ringing in at 11.4% Chinese. Until recently, Toronto was the only place I could get Shanghainese cuisine, my absolute favorite regional specialty. Unfortunately, I don't really pay attention to restaurant names but rather just eat where my extended family knows the owners and can get a good table without a wait (a good number of establishments in Markham and Richmond Hill).
• New York, NY: the Big Apple is home to more restaurants than I could ever try -- and if you venture far enough down Manhattan to Canal St., you'll find plenty of noodle shops, seafood restaurants, Szechuan, Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and other regional Chinese cuisines.

On this particular trip, we took Nick to a newly recommended spot, Shanghai Asian Cuisine (nobody strained any muscles over that one -- why bother when the food speaks for itself?). Nick had never been to any sort of Chinatown before, so it was funny seeing it through his eyes. Sidewalks were even more crowded (and with even poorer drainage) than uptown. Having grown up served chopped-up chicken reassembled at the table (including the head, if you were in a restaurant), I forgot that seeing whole lacquered ducks hanging in windows can be an unnerving experience. The only moment he looked truly alarmed was walking by a grocery stand when we saw a little blue crab leap out of a basket full of its spiny brethren, fleeing for the street. He whispered to me, "This is the only place I've ever been where getting the food to the market doesn't guarantee it'll stay there." Seeing your dinner (hand-selected by the waiter) nearly walk away while you're inspecting it is par for the course. "That's how you know it's fresh," I whispered back reassuringly.

Shanghai Asian Cuisine had the classics (here's just a small sample of what we ordered) -- I wish I had gotten more photos, but I was a little preoccupied:

• Nian gao: chewy rice cakes pan fried with pork, vegetables, and soy sauce
• Thick, chewy soup noodles in a rich chicken broth (pictured above)
• Something I've never known how to transliterate but often appears on menus as "war tip": pan-seared then steam-finished pork dumplings (gyoza, in Japan)
• Xiaolong bao: the jewel of Shanghai, the soup dumpling -- if you ever wanted to simultaneously burn your mouth and be in heaven, then xiaolong bao are for you. It's the perfect steamed dumpling filled not only with delicious stuffing but also a searing hot ladle of soup prior to being sealed up.

Some of my favorite meals have been elbow-to-elbow with strangers (perhaps sharing your table) in a room smaller than my studio apartment, full of shouting waiters, and a proud "A" (or perhaps proud "B") health inspection grade hanging prominently in the window. This trip my mom, dad and I got our fix, and Nick got (and seemed to thoroughly enjoy) the full New York treatment.