Census data, 7,800 Chinese immigrants now live in Northeast Philly, compared with the nearly 1,200 in Center City's landlocked Chinatown. The new version of China Gourmet represents a "Flushing moment" for Northeast Philly, which, despite being home to the city's largest population of native-born Chinese, had previously only hosted a modest strip of small Cantonese eateries on Bustleton Avenue, where Fung first wowed me just more than a year ago with a plate of wok-crisped lobster and crab layered high into a crustacean tower scattered with savory Hong Kong crumbles of gingery pork. >READ MORE: A taste of the Northeast: Immigrants add amazing flavor Garden in Flushing, however, that made me first aware of how New York's Chinese community had found in Queens a more spacious crossroads to grow such critical mass. It was his Gourmet magazine review many years ago of the now-closed K.B. Gold was keenly aware of how Los Angeles' sprawling landscape allowed its communities to thrive in an insular way that is unlike most East Coast cities, where the compressed real estate fosters inevitable cross-cultural pollination. His reviews simultaneously celebrated those worlds and invited outsiders in: "He gave us the keys to a hidden city," Ruth Reichl, his friend and former editor, wrote in her moving tribute to Gold.
It avoided touristic ogling and "bizarre food" trophy hunting in favor of a genuine love for traditional cooking informed by empathy, deep knowledge, and an appreciation for these cuisines in the context of their communities, which are, in turn, woven into the multiculti patchwork of a larger American metropolis. This was especially true of his approach to immigrant restaurants. But it's no exaggeration to say that Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winner who wrote for the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly and many others, has been an inspiration my entire career. This review was well in the works before the death July 21 of America's greatest restaurant critic. But you could say that Jonathan Gold sent me. As busy as it is, China Gourmet is still no easy find, tucked as it is into an obscure strip mall beside the Roosevelt Boulevard, a block south and out of view from busy Cottman Avenue.
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