Chinatown Express

A must have New York experience is traveling down to Chinatown and going for Dim Sum. You either go there in a hangover coma or leave there in a food coma, but either way you are in for an amazingly unique experience.

I was lucky enough to go to Jing Fong on Elizabeth Street with a co-worker who grew up in Chinatown, he speaks the language and really showed us a great time. You enter Jing Fong on the bottom floor and are immediately directed up an escalator and brought into a HUGE banquet hall. When I mean huge, picture the size of a football field with just tables upon tables ready for tourists, locals whoever. There were only four of us but we sat at a table for 8 and braced ourselves for what was to come. Slowly but surely the dim sum carts started making their way to our table and soon enough we had 10 or more small plates in front of us. Pork buns, shrimp shumai, glass noodles filled with cilantro or chicken or shrimp, spring rolls, sticky rice and more of the like. I was brave enough to try everything that came to our table and thank god for our translator because it's pretty much impossible to communicate with the ladies behind the carts.

Everything was pretty amazing especially the pork buns. They were different than any kind I've seen before. The buns didn't look like little sandwiches and the pork was injected into the dough so it was kind of like a jelly doughnut when you bit into it.

I even was brave enough to try two dim sum standards and I don't think I will ever try them again. Tripe and chicken feet. I have to say, that if the chicken feet didn't look like what they are, they would have been a lot easier to try. The marinate was good, a little spicy but very oily. You don't really bite into them, but rather nibble off the skin. Just not for me but I'm proud of myself for trying.

Tripe was also on the strange side and I will steer clear from it from now on. I have been seeing tripe on menus for quite some time now and I always just assumed it was a kind of fish. Well - I was way wrong. Tripe is basically intestines from various animals. The texture is gross, it's chewy in all the wrong ways and it looks like it came from the insides of an animal straight to your table. I can't imagine how any high-end restaurant can make tripe look edible but some people have to be liking it.

The whole dim sum experience was so exciting and fun. I'm so happy I got to experience it with someone who knew what they were doing and eating. He even took us for some secret Chinese ices that you had to walk through a tunnel to get to.

Beware that we got to Jing Fong at around 1:00 pm on a Friday and the cart ladies were slowing down. I suggest trying to get there much earlier to higher your chances to try all the dishes.