PLANET CHOCKO – art/music/movies/beyond

Lions, Dragons, & Spice

February 21st, 2016 by Mr. C

(Norman Chin’s Southern Praying Mantis school)

(a view down Bayard Street)

Things almost seem to be back to normal for me especially when I can attend a Super Saturday celebration in Chinatown’s NYC usually scheduled on the 2nd Saturday after the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year festivities. I haven’t been able to make the Saturday jams the last couple of years, but I think I’m back like furious George now! Super Saturday is a 50+ year old tradition in Chinatown, NYC set in place to celebrate Chinese New Year and the parading around of Lion dance troupes,Kung Fu Schools,community organizations, & the likes to local businesses to welcome in the New Year! – this Super Saturday was organized & created by the 5th Precinct of the NYPD in the 1960s to set a day aside for the Lion street dances! Main streets are closed off for traffic in Chinatown like Mott, Mulberry, Bayard, Pell, & Grand Streets. It used to be a lot more hectic & unpredictable when fireworks were allowed during the lunar new year celebrations but those pre Giuliani times are nothing but distant memories now.

Our day’s lunar new year celebration continued as we called upon the spice gods at the Mala Project, a newish Sichuan Chinese Restaurant on 1st ave just a few storefronts away from the defunct Kim’s Underground record/cd/dvd store. Mala Project specializes in the dry hot pot scene and we got a pretty nice dosage of the Mala! (mouth numbing,tingly spice). We started off our lunar new year eating adventures with the 5 spice sliced beef and the Liangfen of Happy Tears – both cold appetizers! I thought the 5 spiced sliced beef was ok. Not the best rendition I had because the meat seemed too lean for my tastes and a little light on the 5 spice flavor. The 5 spiced beef that I would have preferred would have been more fattier – have more of a gelatin like consistency from the refrigeration process. Though, I must say, the sliced beef still was a nice compliment to cut the spiciness, cut the tears of the Liangfen of Happy Tears. The grass jelly gelatin (liangfen) cut into udon noodle like strips mixed with the spicy sauce was excellent! Loved how the liangfen was cold and then the sauce heated you up real quick! The spice level from 1-5 of the Liangfen of Happy Tears was about a 3.9 out of 5. The main event – what we really came here for was the dry hot pot. You basically pick your proteins,vegetables,carbs from an array of choices and then choose your spice level and bam – your hot pot comes stir fried with hot peppers and the familiar numbing,tingling, & spicy flavors (called mala) of what is the Sichuan flavor profile! For our Hot pot we chose soup filled beef balls, sliced lamb, beef tendons, chinese cabbage, lotus root, rice cake, & konjac noodle! It proved to be a great combination. I’m happy to get my rice cakes (in 1 form or another) in for the new year and what better way than this dry hot pot. The rice cakes acted like a sponge to absorb the sichuan spice! We chose the level 3 out of 4 spicy and yeah, it was the perfect spice for us. I think the 4th level of spice would of blown my top off! We’ll have to come back to make a further analysis and final verdict but the 1st visit definitely made us want to go back to try more!

Mala Project
122 1st Avenue, New York, NY 10009

(New Years Monkey Zine/Comic to greet us at the Mala project)