It may well be under different ownership than it was when it was named “Golden Palace”. Or the name change could represent any of the many other reasons for such a change. A couple of years after Golden Palace opened, Fu Run changed its name to Fu Ran (could that be the other dongbei place under another name?) while still maintaining the same menu. Figuring out ownership is almost impossible with these small places anyway & I’m just happy to hear that your cumin lamb was still good.
By the way vinouspleasure, I did mention this place to you at the US Open, but as a potential place for us to go to dinner after the tennis. I was hoping to get back there after a # of years but, unfortunately, we didn’t go.
1 Like
if nothing else, it was good to learn a new portmanteau: Testicargot 
1 Like
Hah true !
Taste of North China I think?
There was another place on Kissena, if not two.
1 Like
Got it. Went there in May, not long after they opened. Good overall …
… but some dishes needed work. Perhaps they’ve worked on them in the months since.
1 Like
I couldn’t see the same kind of veggie selection on the other menus, though, and the various mushroom and potato options at GPG were tempting.
best way to remember a new word is to to use it in a sentence every day for a month
2 Likes
They are a different species of mushrooms from the beech. This article was interesting. https://forums.egullet.org/topic/141717-mushrooms-and-fungi-in-china/
Im speculating that what we ate were rehydrated from the dry but I guess even the fresh tea tree mushrooms are chewy? These look affordable https://www.ebay.com/itm/285308954301
1 Like
Yes, I looked them up too - quite elusive!
Great discussion on mushroom varieties - thank you!
Dave, vinouspleasure & I were having an e-mail discussion about offal & Dave linked to some photos he’d taken at Golden Palace in 2010. Take a look at the one of the outside awning giving the name of the place:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/eatingintranslation/5171335036/
.
YUAN ZAI BING
A newish Manhattan outpost of a restaurant with two Brooklyn branches. Taishan / Toisan provenance was the draw highlighted by @DaveCook.
The menu looks mostly familiar, with a few specialties of the region enhancing it.
We ate yellow eel clay pot rice, 5 spice braised duck, chicken with hairy fig, lotus root stir-fry, pea leaves with broth, and e-fu noodles with crab. Complimentary oranges at the end (which are mysteriously always sweet, unlike the ones at home).
The food for me ranged from very good to fine, but the place being spacious and uncrowded also contributed to a relaxed and enjoyable meal.
The chicken and the duck were my favorites, the chicken perhaps even better than the duck. I could not detect the flavor of hairy fig / peach, it was like a very well done Cantonese white-cut / poached chicken. The duck was more intense with 5-spice and a bit salty from the soy sauce (plain rice would have been a good foil).
The vegetables were fresh and tasty, as they usually are (and as I’ve noticed of late, as or more expensive than the meats).
The noodles and the rice were both slightly disappointing for me – noodles were dry and lacking much in the way of additions, and and the rice was… fine. I am not an eel fan, and fortunately for me (but perhaps not for those who wanted eel), there was not much (any) flavor of eel, just the sauce that was poured over. (The saucing was the same for the 3 types of clay pot rice I hate in Hong Kong recently, but the toppings were in much higher proportion and so flavored the rice intensely — for eg, someone who didn’t like chinese sausage in one pot much couldn’t pick around it, because the whole pot tasted of it, whereas, after the first cautious taste, I had no such problem regarding the eel.)
Always good to eat and chat with this crew, and I’d go back again to sample more of the menu (and to eat more of the chicken and the duck).
2 Likes
100% agreement. I was very impressed with both the duck and the chicken & reasonably unimpressed by the clay pot eel and the noodles.
Not quite a fair comparison, but between the braised duck at Bo Ky and this braised duck, Bo Ky’s wins for me.
I believe you mean …
https://www.flickr.com/photos/eatingintranslation/5170740023/
… but, yes, it was gourmet even then.
I was disappointed enough by the rice that I would sooner try another Chinatown restaurant, such as the recently relocated (and admittedly pricier) August Gatherings.
