A Flushing Chinatown Adventure, Then a Tagliatelle Disaster

This afternoon (LOL I keep writing morning, because it feels like my morning) I headed out to Queens and the sprawling Flushing Chinatown. The neighborhood was originally an outgrowth of the Manhattan Chinatown, then expanded to surpass it in scale (kind of like how Arthur Avenue in the Bronx is now superior to Manhattan’s Little Italy).

I took the 7 line from Manhattan to the last stop at Flushing/Main St. in Queens. More beautiful overground views (and more Spanish subway musicians, though not quite as magical when they aren’t singing romantic ballads against a pink-and-purple sunset backdrop).

Flushing Chinatown has been called the “Chinese Times Square” and the “Chinese Manhattan,” and for good reason — you can buy duck neck, frog legs, tuna eyeball, and sheep penis. It’s also kind of hilarious that there’s a random Popeyes amid all the ethnic stalls and restaurants.

After wandering through the district for a while, I headed to the main block on 40 Rd. This window display caught my eye, and I headed inside Corner 28 for some peking duck bao.

Since each mini bao only costs $1.25, I grabbed a trio. The sauce was the best part, but the buns were also delightfully pillowy.

Then I took the 7 almost the entire length of the line from Flushing to Times Square/42nd Street (it only runs one more stop over to Hudson Yards/34th Street). That’s kind of a neat bucket-list item that happened unintentionally — riding a subway line from end to end.

At work today, I got to edit another A1 Politics piece for Sunday’s paper (a.k.a. 2,000 words of hawk-like scrutiny on my part —or, at least, I like to think so). I’ve gotten to do a surprising amount of politics editing this summer, which has been a delightful adventure, considering I didn’t have much experience in either writing or editing political deep-dives until a few months ago.

Finally, today in unfortunate food disasters: Trash tagliatelle from San Marzano, an NYC Italian pasta restaurant. I usually don’t bother to post a photo of something I eat if it’s meh, but this pasta was so bad I need to warn you against ever eating here.

I ordered the braised sausage tagliatelle with bread, which looks fine, right? Even, dare I say, appetizing?

The bread itself WAS fine, but as for the pasta? I threw most of it in the trash. It’s pretty rare for me not to be able to choke down something, but this was a definite exception.

The tagliatelle tasted like spaghetti, which admittedly I’m not really a fan of anyway, but the main issue was that it needed more sauce, and the texture of the noodles was all wrong — think dry and rubbery. HARD PASS.

Even that sauce-pool squid-and-shrimp dish from Noona Noodles earlier this week was 100x better.

If you’re in NYC, consider yourself warned.