new favorites: Northereastern dumpling place and update on bakery in Flushing

I've been eyeing this new mall since the grocery store on Roosevelt at Prince street closed. It was bad when the place where Fortune Gourmet used to be became a drug store. Then the grocery store next to it closed..another downer as it was the only one in that area without having to wade through the main street madness.

Things are looking up a little.

Recently, there's the opening of the new bakery, Vanilla Cafe, which is now open til 11 PM at night. After 8 PM, pastries are 20% off. I had an espresso + hot water ( an Americano, but they didn't know the term)and was so glad I don't have to go to dunkin donuts any more. This was aromatic, rich, and full bodied coffee.

Tonight I finally got to try the (in Chinese) Shang1 Dong1 jiao3 zi5 place. It's Shandong dumplings. Delicately made with many flavors, including the usual chive/shrimp/pork, the uniquely northeastern Pork with Suan1 Cai4 (sour cabbage in this case)dumplings, the Pork & Dill dumplings, the vegetarian (no eggs) dumpings, the regular cabbage/celery with pork dumplings...all boiled.

Compared to Tasty Dumplings on Mulberry, this place has really well seasoned dill and pork dumplings...perfect texture and proportions of the fillings to the dough. Everything taste fresh and light. The Pork with Sour Cabbage was especially good. I liked their version better than the full blown Northerastern restaurant just around the corner on Prince.

It's nice that they serve all those flavors fresh, as opposed to Tasty Dumplings which has some flavors in frozen bags only...

10 dumplings for $3, or $3.50.

I will be back!