Posts Tagged “chinatown”

Yesterday was the official grand opening of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, the strip of urban parks that has replaced the elevated route 93 and changed the face of Boston.  I might quibble with the execution or the cost, but I can’t say enough good things about the whole idea of creating this green space in the most built-up part of the city.

The Greenway echoes the Emerald Necklace and provides about ten times the park area of nearby Post Office Square.  The project isn’t done - there are plans for two museums and an Armenian Heritage Park - and it’s not clear that it ever will be, but it’s done enough, and it got a pretty good crowd yesterday.

I was helping out at the Hudson Street Gallery most of the afternoon, so I wasn’t able to see the whole thing, but there were a few performance stages and at least one farmers market, outside of South Station, where I saw my old friends When Pigs Fly Bakery and Shy Brothers Cheese, among others. Closer to the gallery was the Chinatown park, where there were cultural performances all day, including lion dances, noodle-making, several kinds of martial arts, and Cantonese opera.  Click on the maplet at right - to which I’ve added the location of the Hudson Street Gallery near the bottom - for more information about the Greenway and more comprehensive maps.

Further along the Greenway, near the Aquarium, was a fountain of sorts.  It’s a spiral-patterned circle of stone and brick, with water jets that fire in patterns, creating mini-geysers in various patterns.  And inviting passers-by to tempt fate by first running through, and then, oddly, just standing still in the middle.

There’s lots more to explore in the Greenway, but I have to leave you with a final cartographic note.  The grand opening events included some kind of text-message scavenger hunt, and the map for that event included one unusual feature: the thick black line represents the approximate coastline of Boston in 1775, which is itself already much extended from the land profile at the time of European arrival.

Click on the map for more information on the game and the full-size PDF map.  And be sure to enjoy your local urban greenspace, wherever you are.

This weekend I was hanging out at the Hudson Street Gallery in chinatown and popped in to Hing Shing Pastry for a snack.  They were out of their delicious peanut butter buns, but they did have this peculiarly detailed pig-shaped item in an equally pig-shaped plastic container.

At $2.50, it was more expensive than anything I’ve ever bought at Hing Shing short of their moon cakes, so I figured there must be something exotic in there.  Preliminary unboxing revealed that the pig is sitting on top of a plastic tray with a packet of silica gel beneath to keep it fresh.

The detail, from the beady eyes to the pinhole nostrils was quite impressive.  It was hard to cut into it, but nobody was willing to take a bite sight unseen.  The filling appeared to be lotus seed paste, like that found in the traditional moon cakes.

Flavor and texture were maybe not for everyone.  If you like mooncake, you’ll like pig cake.  If not, maybe you should try something else.  For another view of Hing Shing Pastry, check out this photo by Lee Cullivan, also on view - and for sale - at Hudson Street Gallery.

A few weeks ago, I got a call from C, asking me some odd questions about framing and insurance.  It turns out he’s setting up a (temporary?) gallery in some vacant space in a building his family owns in Chinatown.  I’ve blogged once or twice about the Hudson Street Gallery, which had a stealth opening a week or two ago, but finding this clip on flickr reminded me how quickly it all came together.

Well, not quite that quickly, but the fact remains that the official grand opening is this Saturday, September 6, from 12 to 5.  A full-fledged photography gallery with four contemporary shooters and an exhibit of Chinatown historical material.  Check it out at www.hudsonstreetgallery - thanks to Lee for the clip.

Intrepid museum buddy L (who has a shiny new Marketing Analytics blog!) joined me for brunch today in Chinatown and then we popped in at the new Hudson Street Gallery. We visited local favorite China Pearl, arriving just before the 11:00 rush to the among the first seated upstairs. We had a sampling of usual favorites, notably shrimp and vegetable dumplings, and a couple of not so usual dishes, such as the crab claw:

How do you eat these, asked L. To be honest, I’ve never been really sure of the “correct” method, but I do it by holding them by the claw and eating the fried noodle-encrusted crabmeat like a seafood popsicle. I consider myself pretty handy with chopsticks, but the crab claw is beyond my capabilities.

Almost sated, we were looking around for one last morsel when I spied across the room a cart with one of my favorite dim sum items, but one whose name I did not know. It’s a dish of shanghai-style fried breat wrapped with rice noodles and sprinkled with green onions and soy sauce.

The limeduck crack research team has since determined that the name of this dish is Jia Luong or perhaps Zha Liang. Whatever you call it, it’s delicious. It’s a combination of very different textures and flavors, but the net effect is wonderful. After brunch, we picked up some Vietnamese iced coffee (chicory coffee with condensed milk!) and headed over to the Hudson Street Gallery.

I blogged about the Hudson Street Gallery last weekend at the August Moon Festival. Today it was much quieter so we were able to spend some more time with the work. HSG is gearing up for its actual grand opening on September 6 during the Asian Community Development Corporation’s Hudson Street Stories project. It’s an interesting story very similar to the better-known bulldozing of the West End to make way for Government Center. I hope you can all check it out sometime.

After an evening of lengthy and expensive marketing research, there’s really only one place to go: Chinatown. I dragged about half a gaggle of co-workers and some hangers-on to one of my favorite seafood joints, Peach Farm.

This is not the sort of place that has a website, so I’ll just give the address: 4 Tyler Street, although you can find countless reviews online. It’s a half flight of stairs down and past some dingy-looking tanks of fish and crabs. This is one of those places whose Zagat rating for food is about four times its decor rating. The service rating is somewhere up the middle, and that corresponds to my experience. Our table was equipped with a lazy susan and a teapot with the lid attached by a length of plastic cable.

On this occasion they were on top of their game. We ordered scallion pancake and potstickers to warm up and because were were starving. But Peach Farm really shines when you start ordering seafood. We chose the steamed bass from the tank and the salty fried softshell crab. To balance out, we added beef lo mein (they were out of the usual fave dry-fried beef chow fun) and peapod stems with garlic sauce.

They brought over the plastic bucket and showed me a couple of striped bass squirming around in it. They were on the small side so we had both. If you go to Peach Farm and order fish from the tank - and you really must - they will do the classic Chinese thing and let you approve the live fish before cooking them. If you don’t like the look of them, this is your last chance to send them back for an exchange.

Cooked, the fish were served in a soy-ginger sauce with plenty of ginger, and not much else. The flavor of the fish itself was subtle but delicious. Serving it off the bones without flipping it (that’s bad luck) is a trick worth learning. I’m still working on it, but nobody choked.

The soft shell crab arrived in a heap of golden fried morsels with some chiles and scallions scattered about. Hot and fresh, with equal measure of salt and spice, the sweet crab meat was about as good as I’ve ever had, and soft shell crab is wonderfully simple to eat compared to all the cracking and prying involved with tougher exoskeletons.

I usually go for the dry-fried beef chow fun even at this basement of seafood miracles. It’s just that good. But they were out so I switched the order to lo mein just in case one of the guests wasn’t up for the seafood. You never know, sometimes it happens.

Last to arrive were the peapod stems in garlic sauce. A welcome and delicious bunch of roughage, peapod stems have a cut grass kind of smell and a nice taste to match. The garlic sauce was light but assertive. An excellent break from the greasy crab and noodles.

If you find yourself in or near Chinatown - perhaps visiting the Hudson Street Gallery - in need of fresh seafood and a relaxed good time, Peach Farm is an excellent choice. These four dishes are a good place to start, but there’s a lot more to explore there.