It’s the evening and where could be a good place to get fairly traditional Cantonese style Chinese food? Dim Sum Palace! We originally visited the Midtown location pre-pandemic, and it was pretty decent. Recently, they opened another location in Long Island City in a dense new-aged Chinese area. We’ve been missing Cantonese-style restaurants, especially dim sum, in this very close quartered area of over abundant boba places and spicy cuisines. We were able to walk in without reservations around 5:00 PM on a Saturday without issues. This restaurant is located in the former Brooks 1890 bar next to the Long Island City court house on Jackson Ave.
This is an updated entry to Dun Huang. The original East Village location is closed, but they opened another location out in Long Island City. They have several locations spread throughout the city. Dun Huang advertises itself as authentic Northwestern Chinese food. The menu at this location pales in comparison to what we got in the East Village location, so I’ll still share the differences for reference.
Ambiance
The decor at the Long Island City location is pretty no frills. It feels they have two rooms: one “main” dining area and another dining area next to the window.
This is a local restaurant to Long Island City that classifies itself as an Italian Argentine restaurant. The place is super small, but it feels nice and cozy.
The chicken piccata is served with capers in a lemon and butter sauce, served with roasted potatoes. This dish was actually really good. The potatoes had a nice crunch to them.
The lasagna marchigiane has bechamel, bolognese, and parmigiano. The tomato sauce was pretty good. It was sweet with a little sour to it, but I’m not sure if it was homemade or not. I wish the texture was more chunky though, but still it was pretty good.
This bar / restaurant is located on the 6th floor in the Ravel Hotel in Long Island City. The view is fairly nice as you can see Midtown from the east, but it is not stellar since it sits slightly lower than the Queensborough bridge and there are 2 smoke stack obstructions as you look towards the Empire State building.
I’m not a big fan of venturing out to deep Queens. The trains out here are probably not as bad as going into Manhattan, but it sure feels bad. The E trains today were barely running, and the R trains were making local stops going towards Flushing.
However, today was one of those days where we felt like grubbing some all you can eat hot pot. Instead of Chinese style, we heard of this place in Jackson Heights that was Thai style. It was pretty interesting.
Astoria is not really a place known for having typical Shanghainese food. I always think of it as having more latin and mediterranean influences to those respective demographics in the area.
This restaurant though was surprisingly pretty decent for this area.
The drunken chicken I normally don’t find in many restsaurants. Here, it’s not as good as my cousin’s or my mother’s version as it’s WAY too salty, chicken pieces don’t appear cut right, and it doesn’t seem like it was marinated well. Some parts were very soaked, and other parts had next to nothing.
This is a very clean sushi spot close to the Broadway subway station off the yellow N and W line. Instead of going all sushi, I decided to mix it up a little with standard Japanese snacks over straight up sushi cut rolls, sorta.
The sea snails were cooked in a dashi broth, and were pretty tasty. I think my piece wasn’t cleaned entirely properly because there was some grit, but it tasted ok.
I’ve been to this restaurant multiple times in various neighborhoods, but I haven’t documented it till now.
I usually get the spicy tingly beef. It’s pretty good, but to be honest I do like Very Fresh Noodles in the Chelsea Market more. However this place was next to me, so the convenience is much appreciated.
The spicy and sour spinach dumplings are also really good too. I love the vinegary taste wih everything.
The vibe in this place was pretty cool. It reminded me of being in one of those Lord of the Rings tavern.
The poutine was pretty salty, but it was a good match with the beers. I wish the cheese curds were a little warmer and more abundant.
The savage is actually regular hot wings. The hot wings tasted like they were fried first then doused in sauce after. It’s a nice texture combination, and it’s how I prefer my hot wings. The wings themselves didn’t seem to have a lot of flavor outside of the sauce though. There are some french fries that the wings sit on that soak up the sauce and oil.
