Once there was a woman on Mosco Street in Chinatown who made nothing but egg cakes, spheres of dough like a waffle’s dimples turned inside out. Each had a near-crisp shell and chewy guts, with a puff of steam cradled between. There were other vendors, other cakes, but hers were the ones everyone lined up for and, when she retired, mourned.
以前，唐人街的莫斯科街(Mosco Street)上有个女人，她只做鸡蛋糕。与华夫饼的凹痕正好相反，她的鸡蛋糕是一个个圆圆的突起——外壳微脆，里面黏软，中间裹着一股热气。街上的其他摊铺也卖蛋糕，但只有她的摊铺前排着长队。她退休后，大家甚是怀念。
At East Wind Snack Shop, which opened in February in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, the egg cakes — called Hong Kong hot cakes on the menu — arrive not as separate balls but conjoined, like a mutant pancake or Bubble Wrap reimagined as dough. They are just seconds old, peeled out of a cast-iron mold and carried a few feet from the narrow open kitchen. Eat them quickly, while there’s still a pulse of heat, and you’ll know what the egg-cake lady’s faithful knew.
今年2月，东风餐厅(East Wind Snack Shop)在布鲁克林的温莎台(Windsor Terrace)开业。这里菜单上的鸡蛋糕叫香港热香饼(Hong Kong hot cakes)，它不是一个个单独的，而是连在一起，像变了形的薄煎饼，形状类似起泡包装膜。它一做好，就从铸铁模具上被取下来，从狭窄的开放式厨房端到几英尺外的餐桌上。趁着冒热气赶快吃，你就能体会到鸡蛋糕女士忠实信徒们曾经有过的美妙感觉。Chris Cheung, 46, the chef, grew up half in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and half in Chinatown in Manhattan (back then, the only one in New York City), where his grandparents lived and his mother worked as a seamstress. East Wind Snack Shop is a homage to the neighborhood’s bygone working-class coffee houses, run by immigrants who, like Mr. Cheung’s grandparents, came from Taishan, in Guangdong Province. These were often cramped, dingy storefronts with plastic fans stuttering above, strategically hung fly paper and a lot of (happy) yelling between tables. They offered unlimited tea and limited food, the likes of har gow, colossal char siu bao and glossy braided sesame buns.
46岁的大厨克里斯·陈(Chris Cheung)在布鲁克林的本森赫斯特和曼哈顿的唐人街长大（当时纽约市只有一个唐人街），他的祖父母曾住在那里，母亲曾在那里做裁缝。这个街区从前有不少移民开的工薪阶层餐馆，陈的祖父母来自广东省台山市，他们也是这样的老板。那些餐馆大多狭窄肮脏，塑料电扇在头顶突突作响，灭蝇纸巧妙地挂起来，食客们经常大声（高兴地）寒暄。餐馆里无限量供应茶水，食物种类却很有限，就是大叉烧包和光亮的花式芝麻馒头之类的食物。东风餐厅正是向这样的餐馆致敬。
This may be Mr. Cheung’s culinary heritage, but his training was at the higher end: He started out at Nobu and Jean-Georges, then took detours through Ruby Foo’s and, most recently, the short-lived Cherrywood Kitchen. At East Wind, “I’m not trying to elevate the food,” he insisted. Yet here are pot stickers packed with dry-aged beef from DeBragga, the meat emphatically rich. He grinds Niman Ranch pork in-house for dumplings and makes the skins from scratch, thin enough not to impose but still sturdy.
这可能是陈的烹饪传统，不过他接受过更高端的培训：他从“信”餐厅(Nobu)和让-乔治餐厅(Jean-Georges)起步，而后在红宝石傅餐厅(Ruby Foo’s)工作，开餐馆前是在短命的樱桃木厨房(Cherrywood Kitchen)工作。他坚称，在东风餐厅，“我不想改进食物”。不过，这里的锅贴塞的是DeBragga肉店昂贵的风干牛肉。他做饺子用的猪肉来自尼曼农场(Niman Ranch)，他自己绞肉，自己做出薄而结实的饺子皮。From his menus at previous restaurants, Mr. Cheung has reprised sweet-sour ribs, well shellacked and juicy, cut into short batons than can be held with one hand. He devised the foie gras bao years ago as a riposte to the DB Bistro burger, stuffing it with gold leaf and truffles. “I’ve calmed it down,” he said. Now there’s just a dab of pâté, sealed inside a house-made steamed bun of impeccable pallor, fluffy and springy, suggesting sweetness without surrendering to it.
陈借鉴老东家的菜单，在东风餐厅也推出糖醋排骨，它烂熟多汁，切成小段，可用一只手拿着吃。多年前，为了与DB Bistro餐馆的汉堡抗衡，他设计了鹅肝酱包，里面塞满金叶和块菌。“我已经把它变得更温和了，”他说。现在他只往里面塞少量肉酱，包子皮白得无可挑剔，松软有弹性，微甜而不腻。The same bread in less voluptuous form is used for what Mr. Cheung calls a “gwaco,” a version of gua bao with caramelized pork belly not tucked in but laid atop an unsliced bun, as if it were a tortilla. It’s dainty in comparison to its hulking counterparts at the Momofuku restaurants and Baohaus, almost a canapé, but also slightly cheaper and less sweet, with pickles that lean both East and West and trails of crispy garlic, fried shallots, dried mushrooms and sesame seeds.
另一种包子同样松软而不太奢侈，陈称之为“gwaco”，它是一种刈包，焦糖色五花肉不是包在里面，而是放在未切开的包子顶上，类似玉米粉圆饼的做法。与Momofuku旗下的餐馆和“包好吃”包子铺(Baohaus)粗笨的包子相比，它显得更精致，有点像法式吐司(canapé)，不过价格较为便宜，味道也不那么甜，里面加入融合东西方风味的咸菜以及少量爽脆的大蒜、煎圆葱、干菇和芝麻籽。At certain old-school Chinatown restaurants, vegetarian dishes often seem begrudging. Here, Mr. Cheung adds fermented tofu, with its whiff of deep sea, to stir-fried water spinach, long beans and bok choy and to cabbage, to little avail. Better are the tight cigarillo spring rolls, dusted with salt intensified by five-spice and crushed dried mushrooms, among other fine intrusions. I can’t give away more because Mr. Cheung has a running contest in which a diner who names seven of the salt’s ingredients (aside from salt and pepper) gets free dumplings.
在某些老式唐人街餐馆里，素菜通常不太令人满意。陈在炒空心菜、豇豆、白菜和卷心菜时会加入带有一丝深海气息的豆腐乳，不过收效甚微。更好吃的是紧实的小春卷，上面撒着椒盐，椒盐里加有五香粉和碎干菇等细小配料。我不能透露太多，因为陈正在举办一场竞赛，能说出这种椒盐其中7种配料（盐和胡椒除外）的食客能免费得到一份饺子。True to the shop’s name, the shelves are stocked with snacks beloved in East Asia: Yan Yan biscuit sticks, almond-crusted Pocky. Perhaps someday there will be dried cuttlefish, too. For now, the most bracing flavor comes in lemonade steeped with salted plum, sweet, sour and briny, indulgent and chastening at once.
诚如店名，货架上堆满东亚人喜爱的零食，比如Yan Yan饼干棒和杏仁涂层百奇棒(Pocky)。也许将来还会有干墨鱼。目前，最受欢迎的是话梅柠檬水，它又甜又酸又咸，既放纵又收敛。