The three of us went to Flushing on Saturday, which marked Lunar New Year Day 2024, or year of the dragon. When we got off the train and up to the street level, it was in the middle of a huge Lunar New Year parade, complete with fire crackers and endless music and manual fire crackers being set off. We ended up going to Jiang Nan for our main meal, where we enjoyed a fancy Peking duck with beautiful and delicate house-made pancakes, as well as an accompanying duck, tofu, and vegetable soup made with the bones of our duck. It was likely one of the most delicious and rich broths we’d ever tasted. Even Pookster gobbled up this soup and kept asking for seconds and thirds. She even gnawed the meat off of several duck leg bones.

What was also notable about our visit to Flushing was that we stumbled upon a very discreet and easy-to-overlook Taiwanese bakery. I poked my head in to see what was there, and unfortunately, a lot of seemingly popular items had already sold out since it was mid-afternoon. But I did pick up a loaf of white bread, a Taiwanese-style taro bao (it doesn’t look like the ones I usually get!), and two Taiwanese style pineapple cakes. All of the things we got were incredible: the taro bao was extremely crunchy with just the right amount of sweetness on the outside. The taro filling was light and also not too sweet, but very creamy. And the pineapple cakes were a stunner: super flaky and buttery on the outside, with a thick, chunky pineapple filling on the inside that was jammy with just the right amount of sweetness. This was as close to the incredible pineapple cakes we got while in Taiwan. I was obsessed. I still cannot believe it’s taken me this long to find this place while in New York! Taiwanese bakeries are a rarity here; I hope this place never closes!