New York City Chinatown Tour Part 3 - Queens Flushing Chinatown

What's up guys I'm on the final leg of my Chinatown New York Chinatown tour I got there with me today and because we're gonna show you guys Flushing and Flushing is massive this is I think the biggest Chinatown in New York City in New York City yeah literally a plane passing overhead literally you could you could throw a ball at the plane that's how close we are to the airport in Flushing. Yeah we're near to we're basically near two airports two major international airports. We're like in the middle of them. This Chinatown is my favorite okay yeah favorite I told you guys this in my previous videos if you want good authentic Chinese food Manhattan is not the place to go gotta come to Flushing. No. In the demographic breakdown I told you guys in the first video Brooklyn is more Cantonese people Manhattan is more Fujianese people and Cantonese people Flushing is more diverse. It's really diverse. Northern Chinese, Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Wenzhounese, Koreans very diverse that's why you got so much different foods here so we're gonna show you guys around and take you to our favorite places to eat. We're starting our trip on 39th Avenue and College Point and we're gonna walk around and Flushing is kind of it's not easy to navigate. And I would say this guys you don't have to start at this point it's kind of a very obscure point you can start in the middle of Flushing if you want but we're gonna take you from this point because we work at Presto usually on daytime and this is the closest intersection and we're gonna take you around from here. Let's go. First stop the best dim sum restaurant in Flushing and maybe all of New York. I think the Brooklyn one is a little better. This is definitely the best one in Flushing Asian Jewel right here. And we made the mistake of actually when we filmed our dim sum video we didn't go here we went to the one down the street called Jade something. Jade Palace. Worst thing ever. Don't go there. Don't go there. This is the best place for dim sum in Flushing. Trust me. This is very authentic Chinese when you go in it's gonna be like a Chinese party in there. And that's always fun and always filled with food. Yeah. Of course Presto. Our favorite hangouts. I'm gonna miss this place the most. This is Prince Street. Very popular streets in Flushing. We are gonna make a left. This is a popular spot. Nanxiang Soup Dumplings. Very popular spot. Michelin rated. But here's the thing. This is not the best soup dumpling in New York City. The best soup dumpling in New York City belongs to Kung Fu Xiaolongbao. Yeah. Kung Fu Soup Dumplings. Kung Fu Xiaolongbao. Best place. I'll tell you guys this. Don't be fooled to come to Nanxiang. Here's why. Anytime me and Mike pass by Nanxiang, there is a line down the block. Because it's in every single tourist guide or whatever. It's not good. Go to Kung Fu. Trust me. It's the definition of a tourist trap. I try to stay away from a la carte hotpot places because I just don't feel like they're worth it. And this place is one of the better a la carte places. But you're gonna be paying a lot to use your hotpot. I think for me to go to a la carte, I need to spend like 70 to 80 dollars. That's why I go to All You Can Eat. But this is one of our favorite places to go after dinner. Prince Tea House. Love this place. We spent countless hours in this location here. Here's what's really good. You sit in there. Yeah. It's kind of an adorable setting, right? It's classy. Yep. It's clean. Yep. It's got tons of homemade desserts. Homemade. They make them themselves. And their teas are very authentic Chinese teas. Yeah. They have all kinds. They have tonkai teas and stuff. You can get Chinese teas but also they have like a lot of bubble tea. They have a lot of drinks. Like dessert drinks. This place is always packed. Always packed. You need a line. And they don't take reservations. No. Of course not. From Prince, we're gonna make a right onto one of the busiest streets in Flushing, Northern Boulevard. If you guys keep going down Northern Boulevard, you're gonna hit basically Korea City. Yep. Everything is Korean. Actually, I didn't know this. There's actually a term for that area. They call it Murray Hill. You know that? I thought Murray Hill was just a particular street. I guess they have a name for it obviously. They go down there. You get all the great Korean grocers, restaurants. Yep. Really awesome. You definitely should. Way bigger than a Koreatown in Manhattan. We're crossing Northern Boulevard. Guys, don't cross the way we're doing it. Use a crosswalk. Don't jaywalk. It's bad. And this street is called Farrington Street. There is one hidden gym on this block and it is awesome. And nobody goes here. Guys, whenever you see these saunas, spas, things like that, don't go inside. I think you'll know why. Just don't. Don't go inside. It's not good. This right here is my favorite restaurant on this block. Very, very underrated restaurant. Nobody knows it's here. But Mingsing BBQ. You know one thing people love to eat is go to these skewer places in Flushing, right? They cook skewers for like $1.50 now. Whatever. Cook them on the street. Yeah. But did you know those skewers are often not raw meat. They cook it ahead of time sometimes because they have so much demand. But if you come here, you can barbecue your own Chinese skewers. And it's on iron rods, which tastes better than bamboo. Oh, definitely. Definitely. We're on Northern Boulevard making a ride on Union Street. This block is gonna connect you to a lot of good eats, people. A lot of good eats. Again, spa, spa, spa, spa. Don't ever go into any of those places. You know, I walk by this place a lot. I've never been inside. But it has a lot of crazy dishes. Check this out. So this is... Oh my gosh. These are bugs. Silkworms. Silkworms, yeah. Silkworms. Wait, what is that? You know what that is? That is a certain part of a cow. No way. Yeah, it is. No way. Yep, yep. It is spicy. Duck head right here. There's a lot of heads there. Yeah, there's a fish head underneath here. Yeah, I'm not I'm not cool with that. I'm not down with that. I feel like the first part of Union Street, right when you turn onto it from Northern Boulevard, it's mainly Korean places. Yeah. So this is like the beginning, what I feel like kind of unofficial mark of beginning of Korean city. This is where you'll find like the Tuleju, like the Korean bakery, Korean cafes. So if you keep going further, is it north or south? That would be north. Northern Boulevard. Yeah. You're gonna get more and more Korean places and that's when you really get into the heart of it. Now we are on 37th Avenue at Union Street. We're gonna make a right. I'm gonna show you guys some good places over here. This is a really famous hotpot place here, Little Lamb. I think this brand is like, it's like one of the most famous hotpot brands I've ever known. But I would not recommend coming here. No. Guys, don't get trapped. Again, tourist traps are abound. Xiaofeiyang, which is little sheep, hotpot, Mongolian sheep. There's tons of them all over the United States. Yeah. This particular one, very expensive. Yes. And the service is very questionable. Very questionable. The quality is good, but we'll show you guys where our favorite hotpot place is. Coming up. Turning left on 138th Street from 37th Avenue, we are going to our favorite bubble tea shop. Make a right on 38th Avenue and you're gonna find the best bubble tea place, in my opinion, in all of New York City. This is by far the best bubble tea you'll find anywhere. And if you walk in, they actually have a sign. It's like, authorized by Mr. Sing Ho Tu, inventor of Taiwan's tapioca milk tea. I don't know that's true. I don't know what that means. I don't know what Mr. Sung is, who he is, but I mean, I believe it. I mean, it's a big plaque, so I believe that. Yeah. My favorite flavor here is osmanthus green tea. That's my favorite flavor. And they have two different types of pearls. They got the small one and the big one. Yeah. White and black. You can't go wrong with any of these right here. Yeah. Walking back up to 138th Street, making a right, and this is Queen's Crossing. Actually, there's a lot of good places here. I personally like Rose Tea House. It's kind of like Prince Tea House. This is Rose Tea House. There is a hot pot buffet here called Spring. I'll tell you this right now, Dan. Yeah. I don't like Spring. No. People were like, go to Spring. We went there. Come on. The soup base is very lacking. I feel like it has like the individual pots that some people like. Yeah. But it doesn't have a lot of flavor. I think what they try to do is they try to combine Chinese hot pot and Japanese shabu-shabu, and I feel like I like them both in their own right, but come on. Don't try to combine them in this case. Not one of my favorites. There's a little food court in here. It has a ramen shop, and it actually has a noodle shop that I kind of like, and I go quite often. I really like this place. This is Lao Jie Old Street, and I come here for beef noodle soup, and they have all sorts of different stuff. Buns, dumplings, gai and pancakes, youtiao, crawlers, a lot of stuff. But I feel like what they do best is beef noodle soup. I really like their beef noodle soup. We are at Paris Baguette. Does everyone know what Paris Baguette is? It's basically a lot of Asian pastries. It's a Korean bakery, yeah. And what's the difference between like an Asian bakery and say like a French bakery is everything's like little cube, and it's like packaged, and you get all these like different flavors. Yeah, you get a lot of different flavors, a lot of matcha stuff. So egg tarts, different takes on crawlers, croissants. Everything's individually packaged. Yeah, strawberry croissant looks good. Green tea pastry. You have the Paris Baguette's own version of the cronut, of course they call croissant doughnuts. And of course no Asian pastry shop will be complete without hot dogs inside pastries. You go to the basement of Queen's Crossing Mall, and you'll find one of the most popular ice cream shops 10 below. This is where you're gonna get, you guys ever see on Facebook, you have the Thai ice cream. They chop it up, scoop it into like different little little rolls. That's what you're gonna get here. We're on Roosevelt Avenue. This is Macy's, and we're headed to one of my most frequented places in Flushing. Right here, New World Mall. And you go into the basement, best Asian food court in New York is down here. And of course my favorite stall in this food court, number 28, The Noodle Place. So we can't really show you guys a lot on this tour, because this place literally cracks down on people that film here. But luckily, Mike and I have made a lot of great videos telling you guys about all the good places down in this mall. It's a must-try. I think it's the best Chinese Asian food court in America. You think so? In America? You might be right. I didn't see it in LA. It was a nice one in Vancouver, but not as nice as this. We are at what we consider our favorite hotpot place in Flushing. This place, tell you why I love it. First of all, all you can eat. Secondly, the quality here is unbeatable for all you can eat. Unbelievable. The meat quality, look, go to a hotpot place, everybody's got vegetables, right? When you look at the meat, see how thin it's sliced, melts in your mouth. The meat here is so thin. You pop it in, five seconds, done. So good. From Roosevelt, we're making a right onto Union Street, and on through my other favorite drink in Flushing, depends on what I'm in the mood for. I always come here, Hao Chi Lai. This used to be a tea house, and I always come here because of one thing, the rose milk tea. Thank you. Thank you. Like I said, this is one of my favorite places to get a drink in Flushing, and these are two of my favorite drinks to get here. One is the rose milk tea, must get, kid you guys know that, must have. And the other is the watermelon mint. So it depends on what you want. You want something milky, delicious, or you want something pretty refreshing and minty. And they make basically the watermelon juice from actual fresh watermelon. Fresh watermelons. And it's always fresh. I saw them blending it up, and then it's just with some mint and tea. It's really good. You know what's the bonus here? What's that? You get to keep these amazing bottles. Yeah! Yo, I have these at my house. Do you? Yeah, I do. I reuse them, wash them good. And check this out guys, there's a real rose in here. Yo, where's my mint? It's in there, it's blended. Oh, you want a whole mint leaf? It's not good. Refreshing and nice, right? Oh my gosh. It's not even that sweet, which is great. I didn't even have to tell them to take down the sweetness. It's my favorite, one of my favorite drinks of all time. Because that's the thing about this place, I like it's not very sweet. This is milky, very rosy. This is one of my favorite things. Don't forget to get this when you come here. What? This is a pterodactyl egg. They make their own tea jello. Nice. And look how beautiful this is. Now Dan, you brought up a good question. Can you take it home? This, if you buy it, this is a large version of the jello. It's yours to keep. No. Yo, I'll make an omelette in here. I don't know man. I'll do it, I'll do it. I don't care. Omelette in there bro. Let's give this a try. Fresh fruit on top. Fresh fruit. Oh my god, it's beautiful right? That's legit. I'm gonna take a guess. It's definitely black tea, it's probably gargillion tea. This is a shot of rose jello. Yeah. Why do they do this? Because I love rose jello. Oh, it's not, it doesn't come with the drink. No. You know what I like? Every single flavor here, I can taste the tea. Yeah, exactly. And that last one, because otherwise you just taste a bunch of sweet water. I'll tell you what, I don't even like jello. I don't like jello. Really? Like, I don't like that. This, I like. I got the authentic tea flavor in this, love it. We're at the corner of 41st Avenue and Union, and I'm gonna show you guys a hidden gem that I guarantee you, it's not even really on Yelp, but I'm gonna show you guys right now. Ling Long Xuan Restaurant. I found this place because I was walking by, I see like this place was packed with Chinese people. So I poked in, I'm like, what's this place all about? Got a menu, took all these guys back with me multiple times. Best northern restaurant I feel like I've ever had in maybe the U.S., in all of U.S. The food is legit, beyond legit. Legit square. But here's the thing guys, it's uh, it's a very, proceed with caution. And we say that because it's not the most inviting place when you walk in. It's very Chinese-y. And we mean, like loud. It was so Chinese-y, we came and we brought our wife and Ben. Yeah. And everyone stopped eating and looked at us, stared at us. Right. And guys, I would say this is the best, not just northern restaurant, it's the best restaurant in Flushing. It's not services, whatever. Yeah. The walls, the atmosphere, whatever. It's just what you eat and what you put in your mouth is so incredible. It's one of the best things you'll ever have. You can't go wrong with basically any dish here. Any dish. But if you do come here, get the roasted fish, get the three mushroom dish, whatever they're called, but that's the Chinese name for it. Get the lapi, the appetizer noodles, we got the jellyfish. That was amazing. But you know what? I think this place, I literally believe, and there's not a lot of places I would say this for, basically everything they cook here is going to be pretty good. Absolutely. Now Dan and I are heading towards Main Street. I hate Main Street. Yeah. I'll tell you this right now. I feel like Main Street, just like Canal Street. Yeah. I keep away from it as much as I can. I mean, look, there's places that are famous and well-known, but honestly, there's so many other places that are off Main Street that I feel are better. And just like, you don't have to deal with thousands of people stepping on you, pushing you, spitting on you. Yeah. One of the most shady, but yet delicious places in Flushing on Main Street, Golden Mall. It's infamous. Yeah. So you have the bun shop on the outside, which I really like. I like getting the celery buns. Very nice. Then you go into the, see this here? That's where you go in. Let's go. This definitely looks like we're entering old China right now. And there's a lot of good food stalls over here. People probably come here mainly for this one, Xi'an Famous Foods. I'll tell you guys this, as I mentioned in many videos, burgers are good, lamb burgers, pork burgers are good, noodles, naan tea. No, not the best. No, you've got to go to, even a handful of noodles. They're not that good. Okay. So too much commercialized, but this is the same owner of a stall 28 in Yuhua Mall. Love her cooking, love her cooking so much. So she has this place that cooks the lamb noodles. You can also get it at the New World Mall. Yeah. This is the first location. The original, guys. Flushing. Oh my gosh, guys. You know what? I'm going to miss all the food, but honestly, it would be really hard to live here every day. It's nice to come visit, eat, drink, play. But seriously, I don't think, look at this. It's so ridiculous. One thing I want to tell you guys, because we're not going to show you guys, it's too far. Yeah. If you keep going down Main Street, what is that? South? Yeah. South of Main Street. South of Main Street. Keep going. You're going to get to our favorite Hunan place. Yeah. Did a video on that, so you guys can check it out. Also, what's over there is a really good soup dumpling place that we mentioned. Kung Fu Xiaolongbao, Kung Fu Soup Dumplings. That is way down Main Street. Best soup dumpling ever. So we did a video on that as well. We're not going to walk all the way down there, but that's where you get those things. When you guys walk along Main Street, what you're going to see is a lot of the street stall kind of food, buns, zongzi, pancakes. Look, they're a dime a dozen. They're not bad, but if you want to pick something and pick something, we're not going to show you those. But when you walk down that, you'll see all of that. On Main Street and 40th Road, if you head down here, you will come to my favorite Shanghai restaurant ever. And before this place, I didn't like Shanghainese food. Yeah. And you would always take me to Shanghainese, try to take me to Shanghainese places. And they weren't that good. Like, they're horrible. They're horrible. Because there just aren't that many good Shanghainese places. Honestly, there aren't. But this place, Shanghai You Garden Dumpling House, changed my life. My view of Shanghainese food. Thank you, bro. Yeah, no problem. Well, I took you guys here. You guys came back as well. So check out my video on that. Although we showed you guys a lot of good places to eat, we're also going to kind of tell you we're not a yeet. We're going to tell you the tourist traps, the hyped up places, because New York is all about hype. Full Run, really popular Northeastern place. Hype. We used to go here because that's the only one we knew. But then we went to the one, the recent one, and even another one, and they were both better. Both videos I did. Crushed it. So this place, always the line, always busy. Here's another place. This place is famous. Do not eat here. White Bear. Oh, dude, dude. This place is, I don't know. How do people find this place? And people think it's amazing. And people think it's amazing. And they wait for it. They're famous for their wontons. Yeah. I should try to do a video for you guys about their wontons. I brought the wontons, sat down with my camera in front of me. I was all excited. Put one in my mouth. I can't film the video. It was not good. Exactly. A lot of people don't know about this place. I really like it. This is 359 Taiwan Beef Noodle Soup. I feel like they have the best beef noodle soup in New York City. Okay. Because I don't feel like their noodle soups are very MSG-ish. This one, I feel like, is one of the best. This is why we go karaoke a lot. So here's the thing about karaoke and fleshing. Best Karaoke is in the New World Mall, actually, at the top floor. It's in the back of a restaurant. Yeah. When you go into Asian karaoke, get your own room. Unlike Western karaoke, it's like in front of everybody. It's in a bar. You get your own room. The amount that you pay for the room, you can subsidize that with the food. Right. So let's say the room cost 200 bucks. Right. That night. Right. Then you can get $200 worth of free food. This is a food court for you guys who don't want to squeeze in with all the traffic at the New World Mall. Yeah. This is the New York food court. I don't mind it. I like it. Dude, I like it a lot. I like it a lot. Well, let's go inside. Oh, that's new. That's a new place. We came in and I just realized my favorite stall shut down. What? Yeah. The one at the corner, I really like their noodles, but they shut down. You know, we've been talking about this. We no longer have a favorite Sichuan restaurant in New York City. We don't. Because our favorite one, well, the chef left. Chef left and it's not good anymore. The food, last two times I went back hoping that maybe he just was gone that day. Way, way horrible. But I found this place. The con is, it's a bit pricey. Yeah. I mean, not ridonkulously more. But it's Manhattan prices. Yes. Yes. In Queens. But we were paying for Manhattan prices anyways because our favorite place wasn't Manhattan. That's true. So this place is a little pricey, but the food is really, really good. And the atmosphere, the interior is beautiful. Right. Well, this place is called Sichuan Mountain House. I wonder if we can give you guys a little look. Let's go. Let's go see. So stat's really nice in there. Really awesome ambiance. Yeah. Bathroom's actually really cool. And actually Yi went in there with your recommendation. She loved it. Loved it. She's picky. Yeah. But that wraps up our tour of Flushing. That's right, guys. And all of our favorite places to eat and play. Basically more to eat because all we do here is eat. That's all we do here, you know, and we've been living here, Mike, for almost 12 years. And I've been living here for about nine years. So we basically, this is our backyard. You know, we live in Queens for all this time. So we really want to share with you guys before we leave all of our favorite spots. And I'm going to miss this place. I wouldn't want to live here because it's too much. Of all the reasons we mentioned previously. Best food. So if you go to New York, let's recap New York, New York Chinatowns one more time. Okay. I feel like if you want good, authentic food, you've got to travel to Queens. You've got to travel to Flushing. Right there. So, so basically New York, New York has the Manhattan Chinatown, which we don't recommend at all. We don't spend time there ever. The whole place is a tourist trap. I feel like people go there for bags, jewelry. What else do you go there for? If you go to, if you like, love dim sum, go to Brooklyn, go to Queens. If you love authentic Chinese food, go to Queens. If you love, what else? Karaoke, go to Brooklyn or Queens. Yeah. What's in Manhattan? And there's one more in Elmhurst, which you did some, we did a lot of videos in Elmhurst, Queens, which is the neighboring town. And they have some really good Chinese food there too. So nothing in Manhattan. That's why we don't venture there often. And when I showed you guys Manhattan places, it wasn't that many to show you. Yeah. But anyway, that's an overview of all the Chinatowns in New York city. Hope you guys liked this series. It's actually took us a long time to film all this because we cover a lot of mileage. Probably walk like three miles. It's crazy. All right. Thank you all so much for watching. Bye. See ya.