Kung Fu Restaurant

[GeneChing]

First Kung Fu Thai, next Kung Fu Sushi...

Posted on Thursday, 07.15.10
A FORK ON THE ROAD
Life is a cabaret at Kung Fu & Sushi

BY LINDA BLADHOLM
lbb75@bellsouth.net

Nathan Lieberman has gone from snow bird to Peking duck. The restaurateur who spent winters in South Florida as a kid now offers the classic duck dish at Kung Fu Kitchen & Sushi on the beach. The menu combines Chinese favorites, maki rolls and a smattering of Southeast Asian dishes.

The eclectic space in the Catalina hotel lobby has an onyx sushi bar that lights up, magenta ceilings hung with black glass chandeliers and a mural of a samurai sporting headphones. A DJ spins most nights. On Saturday nights there's an interactive burlesque show based on Forbidden City, a '30s club in San Francisco, creating a three-ring circus of fun, food and music.

Lieberman, 31, a native of Philadelphia, grew up in an eccentric Russian-Romanian-American family, and studied real estate finance and film at NYU while working in restaurants. After graduating, he moved to Miami, where his parents had ``retired'' and worked in construction and promoted club events.

Six years ago his dad, Alan Lieberman, bought the Catalina and renovated it himself. Dad designed and built the interior; Nathan hired several sushi chefs and Chef Oa to run the Chinese kitchen.

Starters include chunks of miso-glazed sea bass, octopus salad with avocado and kimchi, and Vietnamese rice papers rolled up in tofu, lettuce and bean sprouts with peanut dipping sauce. General Tsao chicken (stir-fried bits of bird, bell peppers and whole dried red chiles in a sweet spicy sauce) or pepper steak strips tossed with asparagus can be shared by two with shrimp crackers and cubes of fried tofu.

The deep-fried snapper looks whole, but it is filleted skin wrapped around bite-size bits of fish under a top hat of crispy potato ``noodles'' doused in ginger-honey sauce. Tangy pad Thai has shrimp, veggies, omelet strips and peanuts.

The signature roll is the Kung Fu crunch with cream cheese, crabstick and spicy tuna topped with tempura flakes and eel sauce. Scallop dynamite is a house special with chopped bivalves rolled up inside out with red tobiko and spicy mayo. There's also sushi rolled in cucumber instead of rice.

The sushi counter hops until the wee hours with combos from Iron Monkey to Godzilla served with sake bombs.

Vanilla ice cream with lychees makes for a cool ending in this funky-hip spot.

Linda Bladholm's latest book is ``Latin and Caribbean Grocery Stores Demystified.''

Place: Kung Fu Kitchen & Sushi.

Address: 1720 Collins Ave., Miami Beach.

Contact: 305-534-7905.

Hours: 5 p.m.-midnight Sunday-Thursday and until 5 a.m. weekends.

Prices: Appetizers $7-$11, entrees $13-$24, sides $5, rolls $5-$18, sushi pieces $3-$5.

FYI: The Forbidden City dinner show starts at 10 p.m. Saturdays (no cover charge).

[GeneChing]

Remember Kung Fu Bing?

Kung Fu Bing Reveals Itself
By Rebecca Marx, Fri., Jul. 16 2010 @ 10:42AM

Sometime over the past couple of days, Kung Fu Bing shed the window coverings that prevented curious passers-by from measuring its progress. If the nearly completed interior, with its school bus color scheme, is any indication, East Houston Street is going to get its greasy, flaky, MSG-laden Taiwanese flatbread sooner than later.

[GeneChing]

And it's in S.F.! Next time I'm at Fisherman's Wharf (which next to never) I'll give y'all a report.

Flying Ninja

[GeneChing]

Open all that time and none of you got in there for a review for us.

Kung Fu Bing's Future Is Dubious at Best
By Rebecca Marx, Tue., Oct. 19 2010 @ 10:19AM


​It looks like Kung Fu Bing's efforts to spread the gospel of greasy, MSG-laden flatbread to the denizens of East Houston Street have failed: sometime last week, a sign appeared on the doorway advising would-be customers that the store was "temporarily closed for restructuring." And then over the weekend, this "store for sale" sign went up. Given the juxtaposition of the signs and the fact that the phone has been disconnected, it would appear that, after less than three months of business, "restructuring" means "screwed."

[bawang]

hey gene ching wot style kung fu do u do brdether?

[GeneChing]

A Thai restaurant.... figures...

Nov. 05, 2010
RESTAURANT REVIEW: Kung Fu Plaza
Kung Fu Plaza offers authentic dishes including some of the best pad Thai in town
By HEIDI KNAPP RINELLA
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Kung Fu Plaza, 3505 S. Valley View Blvd.; 247-4120 or KungFuPlaza.com
Overall -- B
Food -- B
Atmosphere -- B
Service -- B
Pluses: Well-executed Thai classics.
Minuses: Soggy fried tofu.

Kung Fu Plaza is simply decorated, with Thai accents on the walls and lazy susans on the larger tables, for easy sharing.
JOHN LOCHER/LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Kung Fu Plaza faces Valley View Boulevard, sort of backing on China Town Plaza.

If you've ever eaten in a restaurant in China Town Plaza, you know how much of the clientele is Asian natives. That's always kind of comforting, because it conveys a feeling of authenticity, a validation that the people who are running the place know what they're doing.

Kung Fu Plaza is in China Town Plaza (or at least adjacent to it, facing Valley View Boulevard), and on the evening of our visit, there were a lot of regulars, a whole lot of whom weren't Asian natives. But if that raises questions of quality, consider this: It opened, downtown, in 1973.

I can't even imagine a Thai restaurant in Las Vegas in 1973. Actually, I can't imagine a Thai restaurant in most parts of the country in 1973. Thai food didn't become familiar to most Americans until around the late '80s, and even later in some areas (and still not, in some).

But that's when Kung Fu Plaza was opened, by Thai immigrants, which explains the large component of more-familiar Chinese dishes on its menu -- a component that was even larger in the '70s, according to the restaurant's website. It also explains the name (remember the kung fu frenzy of the early '70s?) and the clientele. A restaurant in business in Las Vegas for 37 years is practically a landmark, and it clearly built the loyalty of locals along the way.

These days, the owners seem to have pretty much returned to their roots, while keeping a lot of Chinese dishes for the loyal. And their pad Thai is among the best in town.

Pad Thai is often called the national dish of Thailand, and it's practically a requirement in Thai restaurants. A dish of stir-fried rice noodles, it has as many variations as there are Thai cooks, with some dry, others almost creamy. This pad Thai ($8.50 for beef, which we had, or $7.75 for chicken, and on up for various seafood versions) was crunchy. It had lots of slices of tender beef and the requisite sauce of eggs and fish sauce and garlic and chile, but mixed in with the noodles was an almost equal amount of bean sprouts, plus quite a few scallion batons. It added up to a nice bit of crunch, providing textural contrasts that were both appealing and unexpected.

Tom Kha Chicken ($9.25) was the classic soup, served in a battered aluminum hot pot with flames shooting out of the chimney, which as you can imagine kept the soup nice and bubbly hot. We had asked for it fairly mild, but it still had a good bit of kick. It also had a good bit of flavor, in large part because dark-meat chicken was used instead of the more commonly found chicken breast, and the flavor of galangal was clearly present.

On the Chinese side, we were intrigued by the Hon Sui Tofu ($9.25), which turned out to be much less successful than the Thai dishes. It sounded good -- fried tofu with barbecued pork and chicken -- and we could've lived with the fact that the pork and chicken were finely minced, since the flavor of the pork, particularly, came through quite strongly. But the tofu cubes were soggy in the extreme and the "sesame-oyster sauce" was without much discernible flavor.

Service throughout was mostly fine, although things got a little crazy when the tour-bus group arrived, which always seems to be a hazard in China Town.

A lot has happened in Las Vegas since 1973, with the city growing exponentially and diversifying greatly. Echoes of the past are still present at Kung Fu Plaza, but it's to the restaurant's credit that it has changed with the times.

Las Vegas Review-Journal restaurant reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at 383-0474 or e-mail her at hrinella@ reviewjournal.com.

[SPJ]

I knew the area quite well.

they have dragon and lion dance every chinese new year.

there are statues for tang san zhan the monk in journey to the west.

--

the restaurant I like is called gou qiao ming xiang over the bridge rice noodle

it is for people from si chuan and yun nan.

--

there are shang hai and si chuan restaurants on the 2nd floor

good area to eat things from differnt parts of china.

--

[GeneChing]

Anyone in Lansing care to give it a try?

Wednesday, March 16,2011
Kung Fu: Offbeat ' but a treat
You´ll get a kick out of these Szechuan sensations
by Joe Torok

On one hand, there´s pig blood curd, pork intestine, or stir fried kidney; on the other, General Tso´s chicken, sweet and sour shrimp or beef with broccoli. While most Midwestern diners pull back curtain B, those who subscribe to the Anthony Bourdain school of adventurous eating would surely opt for the former.

The dichotomy is false, though, for both the exotic and familiar are dished up daily at The Kung Fu Szechuan Cuisine restaurant.

Owner Yan Wan Saunders, former coowner of Hong Kong restaurant on Homer Street, opened her own place last October in the Medawar Jewelers complex, across from Holiday Lanes, on the corner of Clippert Street and Saginaw Road. While the style of Chinese cuisine remains the same, the taste is all its own.

"Just because it´s called Szechuan doesn’t mean the food is the same as other Szechuan restaurants," Saunders says. "The chef is different, so the taste is different."

The restaurant name does not refer to the martial arts style made famous by Bruce Lee. While the pronunciation is the same, the Chinese characters the restaurant uses for the words "kung" and "fu" are not the same. Saunders says her son, a lifelong fan of Bruce Lee, suggested the name, but the idiogram literate will notice the difference. At her restaurant, "kung" means health, Saunders says, writing out the character, and "fu" prosperity.

A weekday lunch buffet runs until 2 p.m., and the fare is familiar to the less adventurous among us: beef and broccoli, fried rice, General Tso´s chicken. It´s little touches, though, that set Kung Fu apart, according to waiter Jeff Cho.

"The shrimp we use for sweet and sour shrimp are huge," Cho says. "Some restaurants buy small to save money, but we decided we wanted good food."

That sweet and sour shrimp and the omnipresent General Tso´s are hits at the lunch buffet, where nearby office workers belly up for a quick lunch. But food that challenges dietary taboos is what makes a trip to the Kung Fu memorable.

The spicy pork intestine ($11.95) is fantastically delectable. Fatty, delicious strips of intestine are battered and quick-fried. Rest assured, the presentation will not turn you off; the strips resemble deep fried strips of onion you might find at a steakhouse. Dried red peppers are diced and mixed with slices of celery, hunks of garlic and little squares of ginger. Part of the joy of this dish is mixing flavors bite by bite: savory garlic and pork with the first bite, the next crunchier and zestier, with ginger, celery and pork.

Cho says the most popular dish among international students is the fei teng Yu ($13.95), also known as the fatong fish or, for the logophobic, simply number 176. It´s oily and spicy, characteristic of many dishes from the Sichuan province. A mouthful of fish falls apart with the slightest pressure, melting into the spice of the redorange broth. Long tendrils of yellowtipped bean sprouts mingle with ginger, garlic and cilantro. Black mushrooms deepen the flavor and broaden the texture, landing somewhere in between the tender chunks of fish and crunchy bits of napa cabbage.

The chicken in a hot wok ($10.95) is spicy, too, though with large pieces of bell pepper and onion, it´s more like a stew than a soup. Served above a Sterno, it continues to bubble throughout the meal.

While the intestines were delicious and the tripe (cow stomach) was good with beef, I drew the line at pig blood curd. I imagined using a straw, but Cho says it´s a lot like a block of tofu — maybe next time, with hot bean sauce ($11.95).

Kung Fu´s dessert is unique: sweet potato is covered in a rice flour, flattened to the size of silver-dollar pancakes, sprinkled with sesame seeds and deep fried — soft, warm and mildly sweet.

If you prefer something fruity for dessert, bubble tea ($3.75) is the way to go.

Bubble tea, for the uninitiated, is an iced, fruit-flavored drink with little pearls of tapioca on the bottom, served with a wide straw.

So whether it´s organ meat or egg rolls, Diet Coke or guava bubble tea, the Kung Fu knows what drives a successful restaurant.

"When you´re hungry," Cho says, " we have to provide."

The Kung Fu Szechuan Cuisine
730 N. Clippert St., Lansing
(517) 333-9993
11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Friday; noon-10 p.m. Saturday; noon-9 p.m. Sunday
TO, D, WiFi, $$

[GeneChing]

Maybe it's mushu misspelled, but I don't care.

Hold the phone. Is that sriracha sauce she's got there? Just mixing that with JIF and you got some tasty tacos, right?

Modified Sat, Mar 19, 2011 06:03 AM
Raleigh girl's tacos fetch $25,000 from Jif
BY ANDREA WEIGL - Staff Writer



RALEIGH -- An 8-year-old North Raleigh girl learned Friday that her Wushu chicken tacos were worth a $25,000 deposit in her college fund.

Margalit Mermelstein, a student at the Montessori School of Raleigh, won Jif's Most Creative Peanut Butter Sandwich Contest after preparing those chicken, squash and asparagus tacos with a peanut butter sauce for a panel of judges.

"I was really surprised. ... It's been really exciting," Margalit said by phone in New York on Friday afternoon a couple hours after the cook-off.
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"It's unreal," said her mother, Felice Bogus. "I ran out of adjectives hours ago."

Upon hearing the news, Bogus said, her daughter didn't squeal or jump up and down. Rather, she smiled broadly and hugged the 10-year-old girl standing next to her who was among the four other finalists. "That child is so self-possessed," the proud Bogus said.

Not only will Margalit win the college scholarship, she will appear on "Today" in April.

Margalit is no stranger to winning cooking contests. She was one of two children to win a blue ribbon at last year's N.C. State Fair cooking contests. That brought her total State Fair ribbons to 10.

She gets those prize-winning cooking skills from her parents. Her mother and father, Bob Mermelstein, have almost filled six shadowboxes with ribbons from the State Fair's cooking contests and won various prizes from several national cooking contests.

And they have prepared her well to follow their path: Margalit already has her own six-inch chef's knife.

[wenshu]

You had me at:

Originally Posted by GeneChing

Hold the phone. Is that sriracha sauce she's got there? Just mixing that with JIF and you got some tasty tacos, right?

Same company, Tuong ot toi (chili garlic sauce) is the product.

This also gets eaten by the spoonful;


Forget JIF.
Tuong ot toi &

[GeneChing]

I just recognized the **** logo.

Thanks for the clarification, wenshu.

[GeneChing]

I'm disappointed that none of the NYC forum members ever tried Kung Fu Bing.

Masala Twist beats Kung Fu Bing.

Masala Twist Replaces Kung Fu Bing at 189 East Houston
6 hours ago

Kung Fu Bing. Let’s talk about it. The kitchy mascot-driven eatery lived a relatively rough-and-tumble existence, from its earliest days on Division Street to the final dwelling at 189 East Houston. The Bing survived here for a record four months before “closing for restructuring” last October. That action was pretty much a ruse, though, since the operation went up for sale just a week later.

Now 189 East Houston is preparing for its latest culinary concept. Another entrant in the local fast food family – an Indian joint called Masala Twist (Masala is a mixture of spices).

The interior utilizes the same furniture and kitchen setup as its predecessor, with the only difference being color scheme and branding. Signage is also on the storefront marquee. However, we’re not too sure it’s the smartest idea to include a neon advertisement announcing the cuisine as “Indian Street Food.”

Masala Twist opens tomorrow and will feature “various types of meat and vegetables served on Indian flatbread, pita and bun. Also, sugar cane juice.”

So, if you’re keeping score at home, this marks the third fast-food joint at 189 East Houston in just over a year.

[GeneChing]

Kungfu master's son to go into food business
The Star/Asia News Network
Fri, Jun 10, 2011

JIMMY Hung, a son of kungfu master Sammo Hung, plans to open a restaurant in Penang, reported China Press.

The artiste visited the island recently to look for a good location for his business investment.

It is learnt the restaurant would be set up in Gurney Drive or Queensbay.

Penang exco Law Choo Kiang said Hung planned to visit the island again in September, together with artistes Van Ness Wu and Nicky Lee.

Gotta stop by, if it comes to pass.

[bawang]

do they serve chicken feet and tears collected from mongol women

[GeneChing]

In reference to Sammo, see Kung Fu Chefs.

In reference to this thread, see Kung Fu Cooking Girls.

in reference to Wushu Chicken Tacos above, I actually heard from Margalit Mermelstein's mother, who emailed me to confirm that it was Wushu, not Mushu. Margalit is a martial artist. Her mom was going to come on here and post (I even gave her the answers to the random question) but I think you all scared her off with your talk of realz fightin' and such.