Golden Unicorn, Chinatown: Food Porn Edition

We have no idea what is on top of that dumpling.  Alien embryo?

Golden Unicorn, Chinatown

What kind of host would Eats Meats West be to our guests, who have proven how ready they are for trying new things, without a stop to Golden Unicorn?  We’ve made no secret of our admiration for dim sum at Golden Unicorn, and sure enough there were no complaints today.  This time, though, J and I were trying to cater to two newbies while still getting all of the requisite dishes (shumai, chow siu bai, shrimp noodles, baked custard buns, and lotus leaf rice) out of the way.  As has become our custom, we tried one new dish almost completely at random.  The waitress called this brown fried ball a “shrimp ball,” though at this point we’ve had at least two other completely different dishes carrying the same description.  Not knowing exactly what you are eating is of course part of the fun, let’s be honest.  I wish I knew what the batter was, though, because I couldn’t say for sure.  It was probably rice flour-based, and the texture reminded me of fried taro.  It was pretty delicious.  After we finalized the check, a man in a suit came around the floor with a large platter of roasted duck.  We thought that it would just be another expensive dish that you never end up ordering, but as it turns out he was making these little duck sandwich/wrap things.  I tried to snap a shot of the table next to us ordering them, but I couldn’t quite get close enough.  There was sliced cucumber and a brown sauce.  Obviously, I didn’t taste it, but the appearance reminded me of some sandwiches we’ve tried at Xie Xie Project and Zuzu Ramen.  After we headed home - food coma fully setting in - our guests chanced upon one of those tiny meat/seafood places you would probably scurry past for fear of contracting SARS. We went in, and it was kind of amazing.  Frog legs, duck tongue, whole rabbits.  You name it, they slaughtered it.  Lots of stuff, like these indeterminate leg bones, were just chilling in the open air, like you would find green bell peppers.  And by “chilling” I’m not referring to the temperature, because obviously these weren’t refrigerated.      

Golden Unicorn, Chinatown

Racking up so many trips to Golden Unicorn, I’m starting to run out of things to say, and that’s a good thing.  Arriving early (circa 10am) is definitely preferable.  That much is now abundantly clear.  Not only where there very few white people at this ungodly hour, but we were seated right away.  The food was noticeably fresher too.  They’ve started inexplicably wrapping the lotus leaf rice in some sort of parchment paper, apparently.  I also don’t remember it coming in sets of three, but I could be wrong.  Not really sure about the parchment, but the contents are still top notch.  We stayed long enough to see the coveted pineapple custard buns go by.  Thank god.  Those things are ridiculous.

Golden Unicorn, Chinatown

We're starting to get a little lazy - complacent if you ask me - with our Dim Sum choices.  Golden Unicorn seems to be standing up to the competition, though, with consistency at the very least.  I should have pointed this out earlier, but if anyone watches Gossip Girl then you might recognize the interior as the setting for a recent episode.  We'll have to branch out and try Chinatown Brasserie or Vegetarian Dim Sum House (yikes!) one of these days.

In any case, the food was spot on, per usual.  My only gripe was with the steamed pork buns, which Funny Nurse calls "pork clouds;" they were a little too gooey and not salty enough.  Maybe it was just my share, and/or maybe it was just a bad day. 

Our one new dish to try was this bun-ish disk of other indeterminate savory bits.  Of course you can't tell what the interior contains from the outside, so we asked the cartstress what was inside.  "Vegetable," she said.  We bit into it and found mushrooms and some form of meat, which was either white meat pork or dark meat chicken.  Both probably.  Either way you swing it, she was neither wrong nor comprehensive in her listing of the ingredients.  Vegetables were indeed included, yet if you were maybe a, I don't know, vegetarian, you might be a little peeved to bite into a hunk of pork (or chicken)!  Hilarious.  I want to work at a Dim Sum house one day, and I'll learn only enough Cantonese to answer questions in the most vague way possible.  "Is this beef or pork?  Or what is this," they'd ask?  I'd pause and then answer declaratively, "not fish."

Later, I learned that Mongolia is in fact a country and not a region of Chinussia.  This came after a discussion of what cultures don't like Chinese food.  Mongolians.

Golden Unicorn, Chinatown

No amount of caps-lock could convey the sigh of relief I felt after indulging in the Dim Sum that is at this point my perfect mix of price, service, and quality.  Sure, Oriental Garden is maybe the best, but it's also absurdly expensive.  Jing Fong and Golden Bridge are large and cheap, but sometimes the carts lack diversity and/or heat.  Jing Star is...well, Jing Star is maybe on the Bowery, or maybe it's Sunrise 27, or maybe it's a mafia front.  Sometimes I can't tell.  Anyway, Golden Unicorn is somewhere in between; at two moderately large floors, it really packs people in, yet it seems to stock the carts on each floor (I could be wrong about this, though) such that everything remains fairly fresh.  No, your eyes aren't deceiving you; those are phoenix claws (aka, chicken feet).  The rule is we try something new every Dim Sum outing, and today we added chicken feet as well as chicken/cilantro (or at least, some sort of Cantonese cilantro) noodles.  Well, to be fair, J didn't eat the chicken feet, but he liked the noodles.  Sadly, I couldn't get a good picture of the chicken/cilantro noodles, but I think you're getting a front and center view of the phoenix claws, which were pretty delicious.  As a total novice, I found the flavor very garlicky and a little sweet.  Of course, there are numerous tiny bones and cartilaginous fragments, but that was to be expected.  Also of note are the pineapple custard buns, which today contained actual pineapple - a first!  The custard was definitely more milky, or at least more white, than usual.  The pork buns, the beef noodles, and the fried shrimp balls were all fine - if nothing to write home about.  Except that, I appear to be writing home about them.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  All in all, not a bad way to spend $50.  Oh, also, we sat across from these Australian women who were...adorable.  I'll file a missed connections entry right away!