$2 BIG BUNS Chinatown CHEAP EATS & HIDDEN GEMS in New York!

Hey guys, it's Mike Chen here in Flushing, New York. I haven't really explored this area for a while and it's been a lot of new restaurants popping up. There's some new places I want to check out. Also, some of my all-time favorites have moved to locations that I want to show you guys. But this is all going to be amazing food at very affordable prices. And since it's still a bit early, I'm gonna grab some breakfast and the sponsor of this video, Magic Spoon Cereal. Cinnamon flavor today. This is awesome. I've been talking about Magic Spoon for I think of almost two years now. Before I got this, can't walk down the cereal aisle of a grocery store. Can't do it. Too tempting. And even before they became my sponsor, I was actually looking for a cereal that might actually be good for me that tasted good. Found this water dip. Been eating it ever since. I'll eat this for breakfast or sometimes don't really feel like eating a full dinner. I'll eat this for dinner. 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Or just go to magicspoon.com slash Mikey Chen to save $5 off your order today. And don't forget to add the honey nut to your collection to try it out. Also, if you're from Canada or the UK, Magic Spoon now ships there too. Wow, this brings back memories. Moon Cafe. I used to spend countless hours in there with my friends just working on YouTube videos, editing in there. Got kicked out once for playing charades. True story. First location, Lucky Cafeteria. This is a new Hong Kong cafe-style restaurant. Just opened up in Flushing. And I heard they got an amazing breakfast special. Love Hong Kong-style cafes for breakfast. Combo for $8. Combo 1, you get soy sauce fried noodles, chicken spring rolls, bacon porridge. Or 2, stir-fried noodle with curry. Combo C, macaroni with ham thick egg sandwich. D, luncheon meat and noodle pineapple bun. E, rice vermicelli. And F, tomato and beef macaroni. Okay, this looks awesome. Gotta get radish cake. So gonna go for Combo B, that comes with the stir-fried curry noodles. And D, with a pineapple bun. Traditional Hong Kong milk tea. Oh, that's delicious. Creamy, a little sweet. Extremely milky. That's gonna go good with my radish cake. Check out the combo I got. Combo D is noodles, luncheon meat, fried egg on top. Giant pineapple bun with butter. This is the traditional way to eat this at a Hong Kong cafe with butter. Curry stir-fried rice noodles with ham. Combo B is milk tea, bacon congee, and radish cake. That's a good amount of food. And these are all very traditional style Hong Kong cafe dishes. Because of the British influence in Hong Kong, a lot of these dishes have ingredients like ham, spam, macaroni, pasta. If you go to Hong Kong, you'll see a lot of dishes like this. Beautifully runny egg over instant noodles. And a couple pieces of spam. This combo really, really, this combo really, really simple. Instant noodles, perfectly cooked fried egg. A couple pieces of spam. Pineapple bun, full lobo, giant piece of butter inside. And this is a huge pineapple bun. I wish it was a little more toasty and flaky on the outside. But it's sweet. The bun is airy. So delicious with the butter. Chase down a little bit of milk tea. This is the other combo. Ham curry rice noodles. Oh, I see chili oil. A good amount of curry flavor. Noodles are nice and scrumptious. Especially good when you add the chili oil. Pork congee, a classic southern Chinese breakfast dish. Oh, this is good. Need some white pepper though. Little white pepper in the congee. Pretty much white pepper for me on any type of Asian soups. It makes it better. This combo also came with a radish cake. That's the best thing I had. Everything else I tasted is good. This is the best thing I had in here so far. It's soft and tender. Nicely cooked on the outside. Still little bits of radish strands in here for a different type of texture. Yeah, wow. It's such a good aftertaste. This is delicious. If you've never had a radish cake, extremely, extremely classic and popular dish. And they do it really, really well here. Hong Kong cafe-style breakfast is not meant to be really fancy. It's just meant to be super comforting, satisfying, fulfilling. And for $8, a congee, stir-fried noodle, a turnip cake. That's a pretty darn good deal for breakfast. And I would definitely recommend combo A or B. I got combo B, but you gotta get one with the turnip cake. This is awesome. But yeah, after eating this, I'll be good for a while. Now, let's have breakfast number two. Oh my goodness, it just started raining all of a sudden. I don't think it'll last long though. Right after I said that, it started hailing. Whoa. Weather is so weird in April. This is one of my favorite places for affordable dumplings and buns. Northern Dumpling King. Here, you can get a big meat bun, $2. Mung bean soup, I think maybe $1 or $2. And got myself a tea egg. Two different buns. One, I got dill and the other, celery. This is the celery meat bun. Nice and fluffy, super juicy inside. Dill dumplings right here. This place is a little tricky to sit and navigate. Like some dumpling sauce, a little hot oil, vinegar. This place is about a hole in the wall as you can get. And if you want yummy dumplings and buns, this is a great place to go. Everything is made here. Everything is made fresh. Look at this, a dill dumpling. Look how juicy this baby is. People usually get leek dumpling, but I highly recommend trying dill. Oh, that is so delicious. Chive is great. Love the garlicky flavor from chive. But dill just offers some next level of aroma when you're crunching through the filling. The Chinese words literally is hui xiang, which sounds like letting that aroma hit you again. Which is precisely what happens when you bite into a dill dumpling. Dumplings are getting expensive all around New York City. About 50 cents a dumpling. Probably one of the cheaper ones you can find. And definitely one of the most delicious. Pork, celery bun. One of my favorite places for buns. Ever so fluffy. The inside is just completely soaked by the beautiful juice from the pork and the celery. The mouthfeel is so bouncy and light. Dip this in a little vinegar and chili oil. Heaven. Now I'm going to show you something I always do when it comes to eating buns. Get a tea egg. If you've never had a tea egg before, this is going to be one of the best eggs you ever put in your mouth. It's soaked in soy sauce and a bunch of spices like star anise. So all that fragrance and flavor, it's just marinated inside the egg. Of course, in tea as well. Take your tea egg, take a bite of your bun. Don't forget to cover it in hot oil first. Oh, dill bun. This is so good. Shove the egg into the bun. Crush it so the yolk. Oh, that juice. So the yolk and the egg white and that great flavor goes everywhere. Dunk it into your chili oil and vinegar. Stuff whatever falls out back in. And that will be pretty much the best bite of meat bun you may ever take in your life. Wherever you are, if you can find yourself a good meat bun, you can find yourself a good tea egg, do this. Trust me, it's going to elevate the egg. It's going to elevate that bun. And this will be something you crave pretty much all the time. And when things get a little too savory, chase it down. Mung bean soup. This thing, just pure boiled mung beans. It's a little thick, kind of starchy. But this thing lowers your body temperature in the summer. You can also boil it with some rock sugar. It's healthy. Delicious. Those places right now might just have the best dumplings and flushing. Especially when you take a bite with the egg yolk inside. It's almost too much flavor. Juicy pork aroma from the dill. And then that umami, dill, egg yolk. If you love eating eggs and you never had tea eggs before, you're missing out big time. I actually have a recipe. I'll link it down below for you guys if you want to try it at home. All right, for the most iconic delicious chibi, something that's been around for so long. You got to go to Yummy Dim Sum. I got a lot of stuff for 10 bucks here. Four freshly steamed little buns. These are amazing, by the way. Three dollars. Dip in a little sriracha, a little soy. Supremely juicy, fluffy, airy, meaty, delicious little buns. I remember just coming to New York, coming to this place. They were even cheaper back then. I'm just getting these little buns just popping in my mouth. I'm just feeling like I'm home. Fried dumplings as well for three dollars. Meaty and juicy. This place is really a no-frill place. Come in, grab your food, eat here, or take it away. It's cheap. It's super fast. Chai Pocket. Could do with a little more filling, but still delicious. Chinese scallion pancake, about $1.50. They used to have spicy and numbing fish balls. They just have the regular ones now. Fish balls, about $1.50. Put it inside the scallion pancake. Remember the tea eggs I told you guys about? They have it here for about 75 cents. This thing is marinated very, very well. Put the egg in here as well. Drizzle of sriracha. And you could do whatever you want. I chose fish eggs. You could do a chicken skewer. Wrap it up in a scallion pancake. Make it into a wrap. Hefty, delicious, homemade breakfast wrap for under five bucks. That's such a good tea egg as well. That might be better than the tea egg I just had. Yeah, if you want good, inexpensive Chinese food, this is probably the most iconic place for that. Maybe in all of New York City. This is a place I never really noticed until recently. It's called 8th Shang Food Inc. And they do shaobing, nyurubing, like beef pancake, scallion pancake, baos. And they're known for this. Chiamingguo. It's $5. It's the number one street food in China. Basically a crepe with a crispy interior. But that beef pancake looks good as well. Oh, I can't resist. So I got to give four Tianjin little steamed buns. I got the beef wrap. And of course the chiamingguo. This is gonna be awesome. And talking about inexpensive foods. One of my favorite places in Flushing. Come here for a shrimp rice roll. And I always get this. A rice roll with fish eggs. It's about $1.75. It's gonna fill you up. Last thing I'm picking up. Again, highly recommended. It's been here for a long, long, long time. You can buy Peking duck buns. I think they used to be a dollar. Now it's still only two dollars. They are awesome. Forgot to tell them 30% sugar. Still good. A little sweeter than I like though. 30% I think is just magical with happy lemon. I've been waiting for this for so long. Chiamingguo. It's one of my favorite Chinese street food items. Basically a crepe with an egg on it with scallions. And a crispy, crunchy essence in the middle. The most popular street food in all of China. And this place, in my opinion, one of the best places to get this in all of New York. First of all, $5. The size of this giant eggy crepe. The most important part about this dish is that middle, crunchy interior. This thing needs to be light, extremely crunchy. That's the soul of this dish. Some people, they just put fried dough in here. Not the same. You heard that, right? For this dish to be good, it needs to at least have a crunch as loud as that. And that was pretty darn loud. Also inside, chili sauce. I think a little doubanjiang. Soybean sauce. So this thing is chewy, it's crunchy, it's eggy. Little spicy, full of umami-y. The more yis you have in a dish, the more you want to eat it. And this particular version I got didn't have any yis. Sometimes it comes with ham. That's okay. That's why I got a beef pancake too. So outside, scallion pancake. Inside, slices of beef. Some lettuce. Inside's got a thin layer of beef, ton of lettuce. Scallion pancake's a little dry. Highlight's 100% the beef. They definitely made that in-house. That thing is tender, extremely well marinated. But a lot of times it's not very flavorful. Or not very soft. More too tender-y. This is none of that. That is delicious slices of beef. What if next time I can just tell them like, all beef, no lettuce. Like, maybe next time I can just tell them like, triple the beef and zero the lettuce, maybe? One last thing I got from them. I got this from another place today too. Little steamed buns. So I feel like the price for these around Flushing is just gonna be around three bucks. This is a delicious mini steamed bun. Four for three dollars. If you're just in the mood for a quick snack, for something that is extremely saucy, meaty, and the dough is fluffy and slightly sweet, this will hit any spot you want it to hit. Recommend this with a little hot oil vinegar. Delicious. Four buns, this is about a pound of food. Trust me, four of those, you're not gonna be hungry. And since I don't have any dipping sauce, no hot oil vinegar, I'm gonna combine the little buns with this. Wu Yuan rice noodles and fish eggs. I've been eating here for a long, long time. This was my go-to breakfast spot whenever I was in Flushing. Super inexpensive. This little container, it might not seem like much, it's at least pound and a half, maybe two pounds. Deliciously steamed rice rolls. They smother it with peanut sauce, chilies, some soy. 100% get the version with fish eggs. Little difference in texture, slight crunchier curry fish balls. And the sauce is so good. And they usually give you so much of it. Just use that to dunk my little bun in. Wow, this little steamed bun brings back so much good memories. When I just came to New York, just graduated college, didn't have any money. I was working as a wedding videographer, basically filming Chinese weddings, getting paid about $200 to $400 a week. I was living in Brooklyn in a basement apartment. I think the rent was maybe $500, $600. Illegal Brooklyn basement apartment, by the way, no air conditioning. Whenever I visited Flushing, practically lived off little steamed buns. Again, I think back then it was $1 for four. Such an amazing deal. I'll get a bunch, take it home, freeze them. It's got buns for days. I remember there used to be a line of people waiting to get these little Peking duck buns. Still so amazingly good after all these years. $2. Little scallion cucumber inside these airy little buns with a little hoisin sauce. Duck is delicious. They cut off only pieces with the skin, so every bite you take, you get melty duck skin fat all over your mouth when you take a bite. One thing about New York, rents might be expensive, but there are a ton of quality cheap eats. Also a little tip for you, I don't know if this has recovered since the whole pandemic, but all the Chinatowns are actually connected by a network of small mini buses and vans. So if you ever want to get from one Chinatown to the next, I recommend that. Anyway, fun day today. Thank you guys so much for following along with me. And as always, all the places I went to listed down below for you. Thank you all so much for watching. Until we eat again, see you later.