NEW YORK CORNER
By John Mariani

China Fun
1221 2nd Avenue (at 64th St.)
212-752-0810
chinafun-ny.com

 

    The one thing defenders of President Richard Nixon all give him credit for was “opening up China” in 1972, but I’ll toss in another: That opening resulted in the export of  chefs from Hunan and Sichuan provinces to NYC kitchens near the U.N. building, bringing with them styles of Chinese cuisine previously unknown in this country. 
       Before long, dishes like General Tsao’s chicken, cold sesame noodles, and honeyed ham were appearing in restaurants with names like Hunam, Uncle Tai’s Hunan Yuan, Uncle Peng’s and Szechwan East, almost overnight eclipsing the old stand-by Chinese (or Chinese-American) dishes like chop suey, egg foo yung, chow mein, and moo shu pork.  Before long every strip shopping center in America had a restaurant with a name like Hunan Balcony, Dragon Flower or Sichuan Garden.

    More recently, at least in NYC’s Chinatown, there has been something of a shift to Cantonese and Shanghai-style cooking, but, overall, Chinese restaurants lost the cachet they had in the 1970s and 1980s.  So, for a delectable history lesson in all these styles, I recommend a trip to China Fun on Second Avenue at 64th Street, where, since 1991, Dorothea and Felix Wu, together with Chef Wing Fone Chan, have been stir-frying, roasting  and steaming hundreds of dishes that reflect Chinese food New York style. Indeed, like so many other Chinese restaurants these days, they’ve even added sushi and Japanese dishes—scores of them—to the menu.

    Of course, the law of diminishing returns sets in when a kitchen is asked to maintain consistency with a menu so large, ranging from dim sum and sweet & sour chicken to nine soups, steamed “Spa Cuisine” items, Cantonese barbecue, Peking duck and 18 “Chef’s Specials” every day and night.  With the “Lunch Special” you get a choice of 30 different dishes with soup or an egg roll, and rice, and nothing cost more than $10.

It is easy enough to chuckle about this throwback “whatever-you-want-we’ll make” approach, except that my party of four found China Fun a nostalgic trip to a time when “going for Chinese” was still considered exciting and dishes with names like “Shaking Beef” and “Happy Family” were as much a part of the exotic adventure as was the prospect of finding a paper umbrella in your way-too-sweet mai tai (which you will at China Fun).

    It was really an opportunity for my friends and me to see just how well old-fashioned Chinese dishes held up, and we were delighted to find how many—at least at China Fun—really do.

  The dining room is wide, pillared, and the tables have white cloths and paper on them.  A lone sea bass swam in a gurgling tank to the rear, with lobsters in another.  Service was very cordial and, just as I expected, delivery of the food was fast and furious, with many dishes arrayed around our large circular table and others on an adjacent table.

    We ordered an array of dim sum: for the four of us two orders ($7.75 each) of mixed dumplings—vegetable, pork, chicken, and beef—eight in each order, both fried and steamed. The dough was a little thick but the flavors inside were distinct and very good.  We tried two noodle dishes, broad chow mei fun ($11.25) in a light brown, properly sticky sauce (below), and Singapore noodles ($12.50) lightly (a bit too lightly) flavored with curry.

    One of the best of the main dishes was a staple of Hunan kitchens, shredded pork with garlic ($15.95), which had plenty of both (all portions at China Fun are very generous).  We just had to order that guilty pleasure Gen. Tsao’s chicken ($15.95)—whose origins have been much debated over the years—and lapped it up in all its glistening, crispy, sweet and salty glory, the morsels meaty, the chile heat just intense enough.  Lobster with ginger (market price) was excellent, with sweet meat inside cracked shells, assertively spiced and clearly made for eating with your fingers.

    The only minor disappointment was a sea bass mounded with a julienne of scallions, perhaps because its delicacy paled by comparison to other dishes already consumed.  The dish’s ample sauce was good and the flesh nicely cooked, but it needed more spark.  I did wonder, afterwards, why that lone bass was still bobbing in its tank after we’d ordered and devoured our fish on a plate.

    Well, we didn’t order dessert, but you know we were not going to refuse that most Chinese-American of silly items—the fortune cookie, whose sentiments seem to have kept up with the times.

    In a sense, so has China Fun, where the evolution of Chinese cuisine in NYC is so broadly displayed to such good effect.  True, I didn’t order chow mein or chop suey and shall leave those to history.  But for a happy evening and consistently good food of so many kinds, China Fun is a well-named place to be treasured.

 

Open daily for lunch and dinner

 

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR

WHAT I'M
DRINKING NOW
By John Mariani

    January is gone, February looms.  It's been a month of good winter wine.

 

      Ponzi Vineyards Pinot Noir Reserve 2013 ($40)—I have a love-like relationship with Ponzi’s wines: Some, like this Reserve Pinot Noir I love a lot, others I’m surprised are not better. (What I don’t like is that they print their back labels with gray 12-point type on a black background, requiring a magnifying glass to read it.)  With 13.6% alcohol, a Pinot Noir like this proves that Oregon can make a delicious Willamette Valley example without boosting the brawn and ripeness through the roof.  It’s telling to read their notes on the vintage: “The season started with a warm spring bringing an early bud break. From that point the growing season remained warm and dry. . . . All went as planned until the last week in September when the tail end of a Japanese typhoon dropped close to 6 inches of rain on the valley and completely saturated the vineyards. . . . We had some ideas on how to handle it; using helicopters to dry the vines, multiple picking passes, extensive sorting before de-stemming and very careful winemaking, among other methods. October saved us with three long weeks of dry, breezy days allowing the fruit left on the vines to reach optimum flavor without any dilution from rain.” American ingenuity at its vinous best!

 

Palmer & Co. Brut Reserve ($50)—Complaining about the high prices of Champagne is unlikely to change them, but for a very fine example at just $50, Palmer is a producer with more than 200 growers in Montagne des Reims where plenty of good bubbly that does not get proper recognition.  Palmer is beginning to and at this price point it should gain momentum. The wine has heft, a proper degree of minerality and faint, pleasing sweetness, and can easily be enjoyed as either an apéritif or with any seafood dish I can think of.

 

Château Larrivet Haut-Brion 2012 ($25)—This sturdy Bordeaux from Pessac-Léognan is not associated with the First Growth Haut Brion.  The property has been owned by the Gevosan family for twenty years now, its vineyards principally planted with Merlot (55%) along with Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.  Aged in new French oak, the wine would seem to require more time to develop, but right now its balance is just fine for drinking at the moment, its softness due to the amount of Merlot, so the Cabs enhance rather than overpower the principal varietal. At $25 it blunts the argument that good Bordeaux must cost at least twice that to make an impression.

 

 

 

 

Augustiner Chorherrenstift Neustift Abazzia di Novacella Alto Adige Valle Isarco Kerner 2013 ($19)—Quite possibly the most difficult wine name to order from a list, this is one of the few Kerners that come into the U.S. market, and, given its delicious and unusual varietal character, it’s hard to see why we don’t get more of them, although most Kerner is made in Germany, where it originated as a cross-breed kind of Riesling. This one is from an 850-year-old abbey in the Italian Alps.  Its 13.8% alcohol gives it just enough weight to provide elegance to the freshness of the fruit and acidity. I’d as soon drink this with cold salmon or chicken as with trout au bleu or vitello tonnato.

 

Tomero Malbec 2014 ($17)—When all the bankrolled celebrity estates go into dithyrambs about their microclimates, soil composition, and personal wine making philosophies, it’s wonderful just to taste an honest wine whose only appellation is “Uco Valley, Argentina” and still expresses the simple pleasures of the varietal at a price that makes it well worth buying by the case.  The fruit is prominent but it’s tamed by slight tannins.

 

Kitma Gerovassiliou Avaton 2012 ($47)—Here you have a good example of how Greek red wines have evolved over the last quarter century—Kitma Gerovassiliou was founded in 1981 near Thessaloniki, and today they plant a slew of varietals including Limnio (50%), Mavrotragano (25%), and Mavroudi (20%) that go into this small production (10,000 bottles) wine with a smoky undertone and formidable tannins.  If Homer’s “wine-dark sea” were as deep red as Avaton, it would clash with Greece’s blue-green waters.  The wine has a long life ahead of it, and with lamb it is a perfect choice.  “Avaton” means "inaccessible" or "impossible to reach," because the owner wanted to make “a super premium Greek wine using only indigenous Greek grape varietals [at a] time when . . . super premium Greek wines were using international varietals,” because such a level of quality was thought to be impossible to reach. No longer.

 

Smith & Hook Cabernet Sauvignon Central Coast 2013 ($25 or less)—Neither a fruit bomb nor an alcohol blockbuster, this 100% Cab still shows some Central Coast brawn, caused in part by the dry warmth of the vintage season.  Therefore, you get dark fruit flavors that are tamed by the acids from grapes gathered cooler Arroyo Secco vineyards.  There are few 100% Cabs being made any more in California, and S&H is one of the best, with 14.8% alcohol. Even more amazing is that I’ve seen its $25 price tag reduced in stores to $20, which is one reason it so often sells out.

 

Binomio Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Riserva 2010 ($50)—So few names help distinguish Montepulciano d’Abruzzo wines and so much plonk is produced in the region, so it’s always a delight when you find one like Binomio, a ten year-old winery partnered with La Valentina and Inama,  that expresses the best of the varietal in a riserva that moderates its tendency towards grapey sweetness and harsh tannins.  The pressed wine is transferred into new and second-use French barriques, with refining taking about 15-18 months; a selection of the best barriques is made then the wine is racked and goes though a light filtration, thereby keeping much of its essence.

 

Boroli Barolo 2011 ($40)—There now seems more Barolo out there in the market than ever—more than 500 producers--all with the prestigious DOCG ranking. But while many well-aged single estate examples have skyrocketed in price, Boroli shows its terroir and power and elegance with just 14% alcohol.  It has fine structure and complexity and might be kept for another few years, but I was happy to drink it along with a hearty winter beef stew on a snowy evening when wines like this seem to cuddle up to food.  Achille Boroli is just 38 years old and is passionate about Piedmont terroir, and I think the best is yet to come.

 

 

Wente Vineyards Eric’s Chardonnay 2014 ($25)—Wente makes a great deal of wine and a great number of bottlings--they’ve been in California since 1883, under five generations—but this Small Lot bottling, at 13.5% alcohol, shows just how wonderful Livermore Valley Chardonnay can be when not subjected to oak but only to four months in stainless steel. You don’t get that often cloying oakiness or wearying alcohol; instead you get the true taste of the grape that is so much more amenable to so many more foods.

 

 

Tenute Cisa Asinari dei Marchesi di Gresy Barbera d’Asti 2013 ($18)—More and more with Italian food I find myself reaching for a Barbera d’Asti, not just as a safe and dependable choice but as a wine that expresses everything the Barbera varietal should be—not too bold, not too dark, with plenty of fruit but no plumminess.  Marchesi di Gresy’s family dates back to 1797 (they also make a splendid Barbaresco) and works from four estates; the Barbera d’Asti’s grapes come from Alto Monferrato, and leaving the grapes on their skins for ten days gives the wine a richness you don’t expect at this modest price level.  Enjoy this with winter pastas with wild mushrooms, game dishes, and rotisserie chicken.