E.M. Restaurant - Chinatown, New York, New York

June 21, 2008


Chicken feet. Jellyfish.

The morning after Steely Dan at the Beacon Theatre (and several bars after that), we agreed to do dim sum in Chinatown for brunch.

I asked our friend from high school (Brian) who lives on the Lower East Side to take us to a real deal place. I'm uninterested where tourists eat in Chinatown. Take me to some place authentic, I said.

So we head to Chinatown and on the outskirts the crowd is racially mixed. As we kept walking, we eventually got to a point where we were the only six non-Asians around. We entered the restaurant and we were the only non-Asians there. We sat down at a round table in a brightly lit room not unlike a banquet room of a modest hotel. Throughout the meal the wait staff was very welcoming while gladly and proudly telling us what every dish was.

We had shrimp shu mai, pork shu mai, a braised leafy green in soy sauce, lamb and turnips (probably boiled), and a scallion pancake (one of the table's favorite dishes) as well as several pork rib dishes. On the whole, there were familiar Chinese flavors involving soy sauce and mixing sweet and salty. Sometimes the food was pretty pungent (fish sauce? oyster sauce? an ingredient with which I'm unfamiliar?), such as the pork shu mai, yet the lamb and turnips was quite bland (other than the disturbing skin attached - and at least one piece with a few hairs unremoved).

Alright. Chicken feet.

If you've never had chicken feet, would you like them? The answer to that question is pretty much the same as the answer to: Do you like the skin on chicken? Because once you eat the skin off of a chicken foot, there's really nothing left but bone and cartilage. Brian said he prefers fried chicken feet to the ones that we had because the skin on fried feet is crispy while the skin on the ones we had was soft. I assume I would agree. The chicken feet were in a brown, salty and sweet sauce, topped with sliced scallions - flavors and appearance that you'd associate with Chinese cuisine.

Jellyfish tasted like cabbage but had one of the worst textures of any food I can think of ever trying. It was described by people at the table as like "a mouthful of chicken cartilage," "eating an ear or nose," and "eating bubble wrap."

What was different from regular Chinese restaurants in the 'burbs was that most of the food was much more modest. To me, there's a real peasant quality to dishes like chicken feet and the lamb and turnips, yet the waiters were in white shirts and black bow ties. The Americanized Chinese restaurants I'm used to seem to serve more expensive cuts of meat - but at higher prices. The six of us shared quite a few small dim sum plates and had tea and water and the bill (pre-tip) was $55. In New York. Where I paid $11 for a 6-pack of Sierra Nevada. Where I paid $15 for a beef brisket sandwich and pickles.

One ingredient that was noticeably absent was anything with duck. Brian said that duck (as well as roast pork) tends to not show up at weekend dim sum brunch but does at other Chinese meals (lunch, dinner).

Was the food amazing? No. Was this a good, affordable, and very interesting brunch in NYC? Absolutely.