Biang!

When my mom came to visit me and Ken over Labor Day, we wanted to take her out to a fun dinner in Flushing. I’m not too familiar with sit down restaurants in Flushing but I wanted to check out Biang!, the new restaurant from the owners of Xi’an Famous Foods. We drove out to Flushing and decided to eat there (easier than figuring out which banquet hall has good food). The decor is very similar to a David Cheng-style restaurant – in fact, it doesn’t feel like you’re in Flushing when you’re in the restaurant, more like Williamsburg or the East Village!

The three of us were all very hungry so we decided to just let my mom order whatever looked good on the menu. The problem with going out to eat with my mom is that I always let her take care of the ordering (and occasionally at Chinese restaurants, she’ll ask them to make something special that not on the menu so when I go back myself, I have no idea what to order!) Luckily, we stuck to the menu and ordered a ton of food. We started with dumplings with lots of vinegar, soy sauce and sesame oil:

Not mind blowing, more like dumplings that are purchased from the grocery store that you can make at home. Luckily, next was N1, the noodles with wheat gluten that I love from the regular Xi’an Famous Food stall:

The food comes out pretty much at the same time, so we were presented with a ton of dishes at the same time. Next was the vegetables with more vinegar and soy sauce:

A simple preparation, but flavored with lots and lots of vinegar. One of my favorite dishes of the evening was the lotus root:

It was a simple preparation – just with a little sesame oil and salt, but the lotus root had a nice crunch to it and it was much lighter than anything else we had that evening. We also ordered the quail:

Some lamb skewers that I thought were a little too fatty:

And a savory version of very delicate tofu with hot sauce and vinegar:

The vinegar taste was a little too much for my mom and Ken so I was able to enjoy the entire bowl by myself. It had a very interesting sour taste – definitely reminded me of food I had when I visited Xi’an a million years ago. Ken ordered the pork toast topped with quail eggs:

And we ordered the lamb with the hand pulled noodles:

After we finished all of those dishes, we ended up ordering another lamb with hand pulled noodles (just for good measure!) The name of the restaurant is one of the most difficult characters in Chinese and is actually a combination of many characters; when we arrived, my mom asked what the meaning was and the owner explained that it was the sound of the dough hitting the table. Biang! is a good spot in Flushing – definitely worth another visit!