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Boston Chinatown: A Walk On The Wild Side
What To Eat, Where To Dine, Where To Shop And When To Go.
By William R. Dodson
Boston's historic Chinatown is the third oldest in America, after the Chinatowns in San Francisco and New York. Established around 1900, Boston Chinatown crams dozens of restaurants and shops and hundreds of residences into a few city blocks of turn-of-the-century brownstones. Take a day stroll through one of the most dynamic parts of this energetic city for an unforgettable shopping and culinary adventure.
It's best to check out Chinatown on a weekend, starting in the morning, when you can get the full effect of the crowds going about their daily business. Formal breakfast and brunch in Chinatown are called dim sum. The locals consider the best place in Boston Chinatown for dim sum to be The China Pearl. But get to the multi-level restaurant early: it is over-crowded by 10am on a weekend and stays that way until 2pm. You may find yourself waiting upwards of 45 minutes for a table during peak hours. Another popular place for dim sum is The Empire Garden Restaurant. The Empire Garden Restaurant was originally a movie theater in the grand style of the 1940's. Prepare to have your breath taken away when you enter the high-domed ballroom in which hundreds of hungry families buzz with excitement at scores of tables.
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The hawkers stop by your table
and offer up a variety of
mouth-watering cuisine served on
saucers and in bamboo steamers.
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Wait staff serve dim sum from carts that they push around the restaurant floor. The hawkers stop by your table and offer up a variety of mouth-watering cuisine served on saucers and in bamboo steamers. Try the Peking dumplings (pot-stickers, on the West Coast), the siu mai (pork wrapped in thin rice skins), the shrimp in rice blankets, the sticky rice with diced bar-b-q pork and scrambled egg, or the pork ribs cut small as knuckles and stewed in a soy sauce gravy. Diners wash down the delicious morsels with cup after cup of strong tea served in heavy white porcelain teapots. Desserts include custard pies and spongy cakes and tapioca soup. My favorite is the red bean soup, served hot at the end of the luxurious meal.
Walk off the calories by exploring the numerous curio shops in the neighborhood. You can also explore the Chinese herb shops, which have flu medicines and remedies for chronic ailments that cost a fraction of what you'll find in Western drug stores. It's also fun to peruse the many consumer electronic shops for the latest Canto-pop music CDs and Hong Kong movies on DVD and VCD.
When you're starting to feel a little hungry at mid-day, you should consider eating Vietnamese noodle soup at one of the numerous Vietnamese establishments in the area. The most famous in Boston is Pho Pasteur. They specialize in hearty beef or chicken broths with thin noodles and your choice of meat. Or, if you'd prefer some lighter fare, go where the locals tread when they're feeling peckish: The Eldo Cake House. Try the Chau Siu Bao, steamed rice buns chocked full of bar-b-q pork, or any of the fruit-filled pastries with flaky crusts.
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There are live lobsters, crabs and
turtles to choose from; or pick
through an assortment of fish
laid out on ice. Butchers will scale and
chop the fish any way you request.
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Refreshed, explore one of the numerous Chinese supermarkets. There's the See Sun, the Chung Wah Hong, or if you're up for a walk, the 88 Market (called "bah-bah" by the locals) and Ming's Market. All of the markets have crowds of immigrants that squeeze the breath from you as you push through the aisles of teas and herbs and noodles and spices and sauces. There are live lobsters, crabs and turtles to choose from; or pick through an assortment of fish laid out on ice. Butchers will scale and chop the fish any way you request.
By now it's likely dinnertime, when you should consider just how much you've neglected your stomach. Most of the restaurants in Chinatown are sure bets if you want to eat something flavorful; however, one of the best places to eat is the Ocean Wealth Restaurant. The Ocean Wealth is always crowded, but waits for tables never seem to take more than twenty minutes. If you would like a change of pace, consider the Penang restaurant, for Malaysian food. Penang is also crowded, with waits that can take up to an hour. On the other hand, if you don't have a lot of time and are up to eating elbow-to-elbow with complete strangers, try the food stalls on the third floor of 46 Beach Street. Choose what you want to eat from huge, hand-painted menus that hang over the counter of each booth. Pass your order to the frenetic cooks behind the counter. Within minutes and for less than five dollars you'll have a huge mound of food that will be a challenge to finish eating.
Boston Chinatown is dense with things to do and places to explore. Certainly, it will take you multiple visits to experience all the neighborhood has to offer. You should also consider going to Chinatown during Chinese New Year celebrations in the winter or during the Autumn Moon festival in the late summer. During these special Chinese holidays, Chinatown storekeepers and performers come out onto the sidewalks to sell, to entertain and to inspire. Whenever you choose to visit, though, the only thing you'll ever need to bring to enjoy Boston Chinatown to its fullest is a healthy appetite.
William R. Dodson publishes the Silk Road Communications website (http://www.silkrc.com), a cross-cutural Internet portal. He is also editor of the Crossing Cultures e-newsletter, which discusses the cross-cultural dimensions of events shaping our world. He is currently working on a book about Boston Chinatown entitled, Chinatown Blues: A Portrait of an American Community and its People. He can be reached at wdodson@silkrc.com.
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