Three cup chicken and oyster omlette
Taiwanese food is pretty difficult to come by in Manhattan. Out in Flushing, you can find it fairly easily. But in Manhattan's Chinatown, you mostly find Shanghainese (soup buns), Catonese (dim sum), or Fujianese (fuzhou fishballs). There is one place that has it though... and it's called Jobee's.
Before I get into the food and you confuse the pictures with what I'm actually going to tell you... I preface this post by telling you that if you don't like Taiwanese food, don't even bother coming here because this isn't the type of place that's going to convert you. This is the type of place you go if you have a hankering for fond memories of Taiwanese food. My friend Eric the Teacher joined me on this journey, and at first he was
One of the classic Taiwanese dish is three cup chicken or sanbeiji. You make it with a cup of soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil, hence the three cups. You also add some basil in there. I remember eating this all the time as a kid and obviously my mom has the best version in the universe. In case you forgot, my mom can make daifuku. Basic algorithms tell us that her skills, when applied to three cup chicken could probably revolutionize mid-east peace. It's a shame they haven't had any though.
So if mom's version is a ten, Jobee's is like a six. It's good enough to eat, and reminiscent of ones I've had in the past, but just not super amazing. It's probably the best version you'll find on the island of Manhattan. And I'll go back and order it again, but it's lacking in basil flavor and sesame oil flavor. Three cup chicken has to smell like playing Nintendo for the first time. It has to dominate all your senses and make you drool like an idiot. Jobee's version? It needs work.
To add some greens into our diet, we had some watercress. I'm too tired to google this but basically this is a hollowed stemmed vegetable. When I order it, that's actually how I order it. It looks nothing like the pictures of watercress on google. It seems like there's another kind of watercress that's got really thin stems and little round leaves. That ain't the same shit. The vegetables were stir fried with some shallots and Sha cha sauce. It's labeled as BBQ sauce but I think that's just because when they translated the thing, they realized that there's really nothing like it. It's more like a very very tame hot sauce. When you get a jar of it, there's the oil at the top and the paste at the bottom. It's not really anything like BBQ sauce that Americans know and love. Anyway, this tasted great. Stir fried vegies usually are awesome.
And of course, the thing that Eric and I had been waiting for... oyster omelette. This thing of beauty was made with oysters, eggs, corn starch, and some spinach. On top there's some sweet and spicy sauce that came from a jar. To me, this is classic street fare in Taiwan. This is one of those cheap things that I ate as a kid. It's all about the soft texture of the oyster and the crisp egg. It's super sloppy because the corn starch is all goopy and shit. I'm telling you right now, if you didn't eat this as a child, there's almost no chance in hell you're going to like this. But if you did eat it as a child, seeing this for the first time in like, a decade? It'll give you like a porn star boner. This was great. It brought back childhood memories and I could eat this all day. There probably are better version of this in Flushing, but this is good in a pinch.
So far everything is hunky dory, right? So then the woman comes by again and tries to upsell some other stuff. Because the three dishes that Eric and I had? $19 dollars. Pretty ridonkulous therefore I could understand wanting us to spend more. For some reason we also ate a zongzhi. It wasn't that good, but she said it in Taiwanese and for some odd reason that just made me order it even with all this other food in front of me.
Then she brought out a TUPPERWARE. Seriously, no joke. We're sitting there eating, and she comes out with a plastic tupperware and asks us if we know what this pink shit was. Eric and I were perplexed and the thing looked familiar enough, and for some reason Eric nodded and two minutes later that was on our plate. Talk about ghetto fabulous. It was basically a middle aged lady saying, "You know this right? Yea come on, you remember what this is. You want some? Ok, I sell it to you."
I still don't know what it was. But ask yourself this - when was the last time you went to a restaurant, and ordered out of a tupperware take-out container? WHEN?! This kind of stuff only happens in Chinatown, people.
What is it? It's basically a pink mochi, except for one really really important thing. Mochi is DRY. This thing, on the outside, was coated with something oily? Viscous? No idea what it was. On the inside was mung bean filling, which I love. So this wasn't all that bad, and at 75 cents a piece, it's worth risking your life to try.
So I come home and google this Jobee place. See, I eat first, ask questions later, and then read about it in the newspaper. This came up. Nom nom. Salmonella. Yea sure, it was three years ago, but still. Wacky. That's one of the risks of eating in Chinatown. Mom, don't worry. I feel fine.
Should you go to Jobee's? I'll let you decide that yourself, but I will tell you that the food is merely okay. For nostalgia reasons, it gets bumped up in my book, and I'll certainly be back. If you're not craving Taiwanese cuisine, then it almost certainly won't taste as good to you. There's probably Taiwanese food that's way more awesome in Flushing, but that's for another day.
Jobee's
3 Howard St.
New York, NY 10013
212-941-0400
They did well in their last inspection:
http://167.153.150.32/RI/web/detail.do?method=detail&restaurantId=40886866&inspectionDate=20080709
but they seem to be hit or miss. if you look at their other inspections they vary between 8 points and 48 points.
Janice
March 31, 2009 12:19 pm
I eat that watercress all the time. It's so good when stir fried. If you google image "chinese watercress" you'll find the correct pictures.
Heidi
March 31, 2009 12:22 pm
Have you ever been to the one in Elmhurst?
http://www.yelp.com/biz/lins-taiwanese-gourmet-elmhurst
In my limited Taiwanese food experience, they have really good food. =)
Ambitious
March 31, 2009 1:22 pm
I always call the sha cha sauce "Bull's Head" in English. I think if you're Chinese, you know what I'm talking about. haha.
At the grocery store here, they label the chinese watercress as "ong choi". I believe that's the Cantonese name though.
Oh, and I have had that oyster pancake in Taiwan at the night market. It was good, but I think it gave me a stomach ache one night. Guess that's what I get for eating at the night market. At least I didn't get the runs like other people though!
Jack
March 31, 2009 4:44 pm
That mochi thing looks like a Korean rice cake. Yes, it's more dense than mochi and brushed with oil to keep the pieces from sticking together. Usually it's filled with sesame seeds or chestnut paste. I just had some this weekend at my parent's house. Yum... They sell them at Hmart on 32nd St if you ever want to try them, but make sure they're soft when you buy them. When they get old, they become hard.
bionicgrrrl
March 31, 2009 11:21 pm
In Malaysia, that last mochi like thing is called an ang ku kueh. I love them!
Su-Lin
April 1, 2009 6:49 am
@Janice,
There's really no reason for me to believe they're any better or worse than any other Chinatown restaurants. But once you see those scores, it can be scary. haha
@Heidi,
Good call on the 'chinese watercress' thing. A few pictures of the other kind still creeps up. I just hesitate to describe something as watercress because people have an image of watercress already. Chinese broccoli is another one that gets me.
@Ambitious,
Oooh that looks good! I haven't been there though. It takes a while to get to Elmhurst from Brooklyn. One of these days though!
@Jack,
Yea, my friends call it 'ong choi', but I had never heard of that when I was a kid. And you should eat more oyster pancakes! They all over the place in Cali!
@bionicgrrrl,
Hmm... that sounds pretty good. I'll try it from Hmart next time. Sometimes Hmart is hit and miss when I get hot food from there. Wonder what the dessert is gonna be like...
@Su-Lin,
Ahhh! Yes! Thank you for that nugget of information. Those things do have good filling, so I can see the appeal. The oil on the outside was a little freaky though...
Danny
April 1, 2009 9:47 pm
I don't think sa cha jian tastes spicy AT ALL! Is it just me? also, I don't remember oyster omelets in Taiwan having spinach... is my memory failing me?
what were the fillings in your zhongzi?
ang
April 1, 2009 10:57 pm
I remember it always having something green in there, but it was sparse. This place packed it in with the spinach.
In the zhongzi, there was pork, mushroom, and lots of peanuts.
Danny
April 1, 2009 11:21 pm
The last picture you had of the mochi, my mom and aunt make that all the time. Usually they make it with savory filling, so not as common for me to have sweet bean filling. I wonder why the lady pulled it out of the tupperware. At least at my house, we store it in tupperware, and then steam it to make it less dry. Maybe she didn't steam it, so it tasted the way it did. Usually after steaming it, it becomes all nice and soft and warm, very good eats.
If you want to have good Taiwanese food, there are a couple of places in Flushing you should try. There's a couple of good places to get a standard Taiwanese breakfast: warm soy milk (salty and sweet), crullers, and beef jia bing, I can tell you about it if you end up waking up before 2pm on the weekends and are in flushing in time.
Anne
April 2, 2009 12:48 am
I just had a "hankering for fond memories of Taiwanese food" this past weekend and pigged out on a few of the same dishes-oyster omelette, ong choi, and zhong-zi! Love the hollow stem vegetable, which we always called it kong xin chai (I probably just butchered that) in our family.
Caroline
April 9, 2009 2:58 pm
OK I had to come to your blog via Flickr to understand what 3 cup chicken was... your writing is so amusing :-) I loved reading your post, you don't get bored at all!!
MariannaF
April 20, 2009 9:24 am
My friend's aunt owns that place! I'm sad that it rated kind of low on your scale. I'm not Taiwanese but can only say when she first opened up (2001 or 2002?), we ate there ALL THE TIME. Never got sick and always had a good time. Of course, that was when they still did shabu shabu, which I've heard they no longer do... and I can't tell you squat about Taiwanese food... but that sure looks good :)
Yvo
April 24, 2009 2:51 pm
My niece sent me the comments you all made on my restaurant. I am very disappointed. I have tried my best to satisfy my customers and I welcome all my customers with a warm heart. The Mochi which you had made a big joke about, is not on my menu and is not made by me. I still remember where you and your friend sat, table #A3, I just tried to share with you the typical Taiwanese food, I bought the Mochi from a supermarket in Elmhurst with a price a little bit over $2.00 and that is for myself. When you and your friend asked me to recommend some typical Taiwanese food, I thought that you would love to have the special dessert which I love very much. I would never tried to make a few cents from the Mochi or Zongzhi, I just tried my best to serve my customers, and I thought the Mochi and Zongzhi are pretty good. I feed very disappointed about your comments on my service, and made a joke about it.
If you look at the history about my record in the Health Department, maybe you will change your mind. I have passed every inspection except the one in questions. I had sued the Dept of Health for their wrongdoing, and I won the case in State Court, now, the case moved to Federal Court, I am suing Department of Health for the damage. Your Comment will be in the evidence present to the judge. I have lost a lot of money only because I wont compromise myself, do you think that I will push you to buy something to make a few cents?
I also love my mother's cooking, I also believe her cooking should be rated 10.
For the
Theresa Shieh
April 25, 2009 8:28 pm
The greens you call watercress also goes by water spinach. It's pretty popular in Vietnamese cuisine as well, I believe.
Neener
May 2, 2009 1:59 pm