![]() The Vietnamese restaurant celebrated its 25th birthday on April 10, and it's easy to see how it's been in business so long in such a fickle industry. So I guess it's not exactly unknown, but it is more of a Houston chef hangout than an obvious choice for a Chinatown feast for the rest of us. When GQ food and wine writer Alan Richman came to Houston, this is where Underbelly chef Chris Shepherd took him for an incredible meal. ![]() On top of that, the atmosphere - think gaudy Chinese wedding with a McDonald's color scheme - is not to be missed. ![]() ![]() No, it's not the best thing for you, but it's certainly authentic. This is the place where I got the sesame soft balls on my list of 100 favorite dishes, and it's where I've tried everything from chicken feet to salt and pepper chicken wings that, like many chicken wings in Chinatown, have clearly visible MSG crystals dotting the crisp browned skin. The chef used to be at Golden Palace, but when he moved to Golden Dim Sum, so did his recipes and many of his customers. Speaking of dim sum, my favorite spot for dim sum (and a whole host of other Chinese delicacies) is Golden Dim Sum. That fella clearly knows what he's doing. All the dim sum is made by the little old man in the back, and for pre-packaged dim sum, it's pretty darn good. On the other side of the supermarket is a dim-sum-to-go counter. In addition to duck and chicken, the barbecue deli inside Welcome Food Center serves barbecued pork that's carved off a large hanging shoulder, belly and loin as you order it. If Long Sing has the best Chinese barbecue in Old Chinatown, Welcome Food Center has some of the best in "new" Chinatown. Like Long Sing, Welcome Food Center is a grocery store with a few different deli areas. The decor leaves a little to be desired (I mean, it's a supermarket), but the deals are not to be missed. Glistening red ducks and chickens are chopped up and served atop a bed of rice with stir-fried broccoli and onions for only $5.50 at lunchtime. The Chinese barbecue here is some of the best in town, and you know it's fresh because you can see the meat hanging on the other side of a glass window. ![]() But because I didn't specify which Chinatown I'd be discussing in the intro to this article, I'm gonna tack Long Sing Supermarket onto the list. It's just east of downtown next to BBVA Compass Stadium in the area that used to be Chinatown before mass waves of immigrants moved to the suburbs out west of the Loop in the 1980s and '90s. Okay, so Long Sing Supermarket isn't in Chinatown as we know it today. Here's where you should be eating in Chinatown that you probably aren't. I've managed to find several places on my own, and with the help of my intrepid foodie friends, we've compiled quite the list of places not to be missed. There is so much to see and do and so many places to eat that it would take years to visit them all.įortunately, I know people who've been hitting up these small joints in Chinatown long before I moved here last July. While roaming Bellaire Boulevard, I'm constantly surprised to see a new hole-in-the-wall restaurant I've never before noticed, the meaning behind its Chinese characters a complete mystery to me. Between shopping for squid fryers at Japanese import store Fit, getting foot reflexology at Lucky Feet and eating my way through hundreds of restaurants, I could pretty much never leave if I didn't have to, you know, go to work and feed my cat and whatnot. ![]()
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