’北方美食’ in Manhattan Chinatown: Food Review

choi

igaya Mishan, 中国北方美食征服纽约. 纽约时报中文网, Sept 19, 2014
cn.tmagazine.com/food-wine/20140919/t19chinatown/

, which is translated from

Ligaya Mishan, A Mystery of Chinatown; The hunt for Taste of Northern China leads to griddle pancakes and Qishan noodles. New York Times, Sept 17, 2014 (in the Dining section).
www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/dinin ... a-in-chinatown.html

Note:
(a) The restaurant name: “北方美食”--or “Taste of Northern China” in English.

The food review has this to say: “It’s easier to stumble on Taste of Northern China than to find it. The address is 88 East Broadway, but the storefront is around the corner, on Forsyth Street, with a mysterious 106 above the door (a suite number, it turns out). The name Taste of Northern China appears on the menu but not on the sign out front, or at least not in English — the Chinese characters translate roughly as Northern Delicacies, with the not-so-helpful English addendum China Local Cuisine.”

(b) About skewers: “string beans cut into two-inch clips and speared horizontally, evoking vertebrae; beautifully tender little chicken hearts, lean and closer to steak than chicken; nubs of translucent beef tendon, to work the jaw; cauliflower freckled with char; a squid’s snaking arm.”
(i) clip (n): "something that is clipped"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clip
(ii) nub (n)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nub

(c) “Best is the griddle pancake, as it’s called on the menu, a disc of dense yet somehow still fluffy flatbread that suggests an oversize English muffin, dusted (no, that’s too delicate a word — dredged) in more of that salt-cumin-chile mix and thrust on two skewers to stay upright. It is such a pleasure to carry it, like a lollipop, through the streets of Chinatown, taking small bites of the warm, fragrant bread with the sheerest barbecue crust. Someone could serve these at Smorgasburg with artisanal salts and make a killing. ”
(i) cn.nytimes.com translation for “griddle pancake”: 烤馕
(ii) I have not heard of it.
(iii) 馕
zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/馕
(一种起源于波斯的发酵面饼)
(iv) Smorgasburg | A Brooklyn Flea Food Market
www.smorgasburg.com/

The name is an obvious wordplay on smorgasbord.

(d) “A staple of the Uighur community in northwestern Xinjiang Province, the bread appears elsewhere on the menu stuffed with long-braised, half-collapsed pork with flickers of ginger, garlic, cassia, cloves, coriander and star anise — a Chinese burger, or rou jia mo 肉夹馍. It shows up in soup, too, chopped down to the size of mah-jongg tiles and bobbing among translucent mung-bean noodles and thin, pliant strips of lamb.”
(i) flicker (n): “a slight indication : HINT”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flicker
(ii) Cinnamomum cassia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamomum_cassia
(an evergreen tree originating in southern China)
(ii) clove  丁香
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clove
(the aromatic flower buds of a tree Syzygium aromaticum; native to the Maluku Islands in Indonesia)

A “clove” can also be a segment of garlic BULB.

(e) “From Hubei Province, Henan’s southern neighbor, comes re gan mian 热干面, or hot-dry noodles: muscular strands, clingy but not sticky, cooked the night before and doused with sesame oil, then cooked again and tumbled with sesame paste, salted chiles and scallions. This is breakfast in Wuhan, Hubei’s capital, and hot only in temperature, more punchy than spicy. The former occupant of the shallow, stall-like space was Xi’an Famous Foods 西安名吃 [xianfoods.com], now a thriving restaurant chain. A few Xi’an specialties, from Shaanxi Province to the west, are reprised here, including liang pi 凉皮, gluten noodles in sesame paste and rousing vinegar, with the balance tilted toward the tang. Rugged hunks of gluten are tossed in, springy touches among crunchy sprouts, peanuts and cucumber.”

(f) “Qishan noodles 岐山臊子面, also from Shaanxi, are chewy bands in a hot-sour broth, topped by a chile-plowed heap of minced pork, carrot, wood-ear mushrooms and day-lily buds, with the faintest leavening from a crush of fresh parsley. * * * (Note that this dish appears on the paper menu as ‘noodles with ingredients’ and on the photo menu as simply ‘pork noodles.’)”