Amy from Amy Blogs Chow is a little firecracker. For some reason, I thought she was more of a quieter type. I don’t know how I came up with this idea seeing as the background music to her videos is often something uppity like “Mmmmbop.” She’s late to our appointment, but it doesn’t matter to me, I’m in Starbucks typing away. (by the way, the Starbucks in Flushing is probably the most computer-friendly Starbucks out there).
To say that this place was made a bit more famous by Anthony Bourdain’s visit is an understatement. Over the course of our lunch, there were three other groups of people taking pictures of the food here and none of them were of the Flushing demographic.
Of course, I am looking to be absolutely blown away by the food here. Nothing short of that will suffice to live up to my expectations, so it’s going to be tough to live up to that. While that was not the case for the meal in it’s in entirety, it was the case for the noodles.
The noodles are handmade with wheat flour. They are pressed and pulled by hand. No rolling pins, no pasta makers; the entire process is done by hand (in this case, the hands of expert noodle-stress Maria – what a doll she was). The noodles are enough to make the trip out here, but you don’t have to, because there’s one in Chinatown now (link) . Let’s deconstruct.
We got some Drinks (pic) from the fridge. Mine was a sugar cane in water and Amy’s was a lemon soda. She said it was a powdered soda, I agreed it tasted a bit Tangy (I would say, ‘no pun intended,’ but the capitalization makes it a different word all together). I liked Amy’s more, regardless.
Our first course was the Lamb Burger (left). It was delicious. It didn’t taste like Chinese food at all. Jason (member of the family and impresario) came to visit us during our meal, and I asked him if the food had any Uighur (wiki) influence and he admitted it did. I went to a place similar to this in China when I taught English there, and that’s what it reminded me of.
The next item we had was the Cold Noodles (top) – this is their most popular dish. There were about twenty to-go boxes stacked up at the counter leaving in quick succession as take-out customers breezed by – I figured that this must have been what was in the containers. Zachary Cohen asked me if it was as Spicy as Szechuan Gourmet (link) and I had to say that it wasn’t, but it was hella spicy. I don’t believe that heat makes the food, so I don’t know why I just wrote that, but I’m leaving it in. We also had the Pork Noodles (pic) which was a hot (temperature-wise) version of the cold noodles with pork instead of tofu. I liked this the best, but it was damn near impossible to eat with chopsticks, and don’t even think about asking for a fork and knife. I slurped this one down with gusto as Amy took many photographs of me that I forbid her to use.
So, like I said before – I was absolutely impressed by the noodles. You can see in the video that I highlighted the noodle making. Do I usually put any pictures of the food in these videos? That would be a big Noski. Seriously, now that they’re in Chinatown, you have no excuse not to come here.
Here’s our experience on video:
Guest Writer: Amy Cao … Here’s her post
The IRL Arts Foundation and The Wandering Foodie thank Xian Famous Foods for providing this meal.
Xian Famous Foods
41-28 Main St, Basement #36
Flushing, NY 11355
(718) 885-7788
