I love meeting people who love to eat, who are happy to try new things, and don’t have a laundry list of things they either don’t eat or categories of food they are avoiding (e.g. gluten-free, dairy-free, blah blah). That’s why for the last three years, when my good friend has held his Upwardly Global Silk Road of Queens food tour as a fundraiser for his non profit organization, I’ve been happy to attend. I love trying new food in the borough I once called home, and I like meeting new people and talking about food with them. Unfortunately this year, we had the smallest turn out, but it just made for a more intimate session together.
At the last stop on the food tour, we ended at Fu Run, this delicious Xinjiang-Chinese style restaurant that we actually went to last year. They are known for their incredible Muslim-style cumin lamb chops, as well as their sticky taro and sweet potato desserts. My friend didn’t originally intend for any repeats as that’s not what he likes to do, but he wanted to end with some unique dessert, and the Chinese bakeries weren’t really going to cut it for a sit-down treatment. The conversations and food were enjoyable throughout our afternoon together, but I was caught off guard when almost everyone on the tour started raving about the tea that was served.
I was raised drinking Chinese tea, and all types — basic oolong, chrysanthemum, green tea of five hundred varieties, Taiwanese oolong. You name it, and I’ve had it. But today’s tea was nothing special. It was just very basic, cheap oolong-in-a-teapot-bag fare, and it was slightly comical to me that my dining mates were all going crazy over the tea.
“What kind of tea is this?” One woman said, glowing. “This is phenomenal tea, and it’s free!”
“You can’t get this kind of tea at a regular grocery store,” another guy said. “When you buy black tea at the store, it never tastes like this!”
“It’s just basic oolong tea,” I responded. “You can get it at an Asian grocery store easily. This oolong is fairly generic. This is the typical tea they serve at any Chinese place.”
They all got excited, and one said he may try to check it out the next time he visits a Chinese grocery store. I get that most people who are not Asian don’t shop at Asian grocery stores; Asians even in Manhattan, unless they live close to Chinatown, rarely will go out of their way to visit Manhattan Chinatown because Manhattan living is all about convenience — going to the bodega down the block from you, the grocery store less than five minutes away, or getting dinner delivery. But what I do wonder is — does a food tour like this actually make you seek out this food that you’re not familiar with once the tour is over? Will you actually visit that Chinese grocery store like you said and buy that oolong tea that you found so interesting? Would you actually come to Flushing on your own and enter a restaurant where they speak only broken English?