Have you ever been a victim of settling for late night grease (processed or unprocessed) to satisfy your late night stomach grumblings? If you happened to be stumbling around in Flushing, Queens, we have the solution.
On the corner of 39th Avenue and Prince Street, there are 2.5 restaurants adjacent to one another each having their own cult of followers, yet they are not in competition of customers. Rather, they seem to feed off of each other.
A far east variation of an American waffle house, Corner 66 restaurant would be fittingly named the pork chop house for its popular fried pork chop dish ($6.75) which is served over white rice layered with a blanket of minced beef stew along with traditional Taiwanese condiments, a hard boiled egg boiled in tea and sour cabbage.
Corner 66 is opened to 4am, seven days a week, and has upstairs and downstairs seating. Most patrons order the pork chop over rice, but whether the fried chicken leg rice dish ($6.75) is superior to the pork has always been a pre-meal debate. If you choose to deviate from the two popular rice dishes, all orders are served in rapid manner and to the freshest and most savory standards.
Diagonally across the street is Sunway, a Hong Kong style tea-house that serves colorful bubble tea into the darkest hours of the night.
Sunway is brightly lit with LCD televisions and prides itself on its extensive menu designed to satisfy all three meals and then some. The menu has the likes of spring rolls, chicken wings, noodle and rice dishes, and even lobster can be ordered at the market price. My recommendation is the shrimp and watercress dumpling noodle soup ($4.75), a bowl of skinny egg noodles in a light soup broth that are accompanied by al dente dumplings stuffed with a blend of bulging shrimp and chopped watercress.
Both of these establishments have their own fair share of intrigue, but the half sized restaurant that I find the most appealing is the nameless skewer stand.
A hot dog sized cart operated by a mother, father, and son, turns out countless skewers of barbequed chicken, beef, and squid kebobs, all for $1 each. You can see the smoke arise from the pint sized food truck all the way from Main Street where all the buses operate. Although the demographic of the servers and the customers are predominantly Chinese, the black and white text menu to the side of the car is in English, however, this is no ordinary beef and chicken stick menu.
The exotic, yet affordable menu, includes quail, fish balls, and pigeon. I have not been fortunate enough to try Queens pigeon and compare it to Manhattan pigeon since it is long gone by 4:30 am, but it will definitely be in my next report of the food truck.
It is not abnormal to see waitresses stepping out of Corner 66 for a smoke and conversing with the woman behind the grill over a chicken or beef stick, or the grill woman going on break and eating congee take out from Sunway.
It may seem that these three restaurants are unaware of the current state of our economic climate, but past 10:00pm, they own the night, filling the hearts and stomachs of the hungry and the hasty.
