L. O. L BBQ & Bar opens in Great Neck

If you've walked around Chinatown after dark following the plumes of smoke coming from street vendors grilling spicy cumin-scented meats over charcoal, you know Chinese barbecue. 

These carts are staples in downtown Flushing and Elmhurst, Queens, and across China, where friends go to the night market for a rowdy evening of beers and barbecue skewers. Now Lin Jiang wants Long Islanders to experience this addicting street food at her new restaurant, L. O. L BBQ & Bar in Great Neck. 

"Everyone thinks barbecue is Korean barbecue, shish kebab or halal food barbecue," she said. The style at her restaurant is from her hometown of Fuzhou, the capital of China's Fujian province. 

There you choose meats and vegetables by putting them in a basket and the cook grills them up in front of you.

But at L. O. L, which Jiang opened in December with a few friends, the emphasis is on an amazing variety of charcoal-grilled meats. The menu includes more than 50 skewers including Taiwanese sausage, lamb ribs, duck neck, chicken wings and veggies like potato slices and enoki mushrooms. 

Another section features "tin foil dishes" which are spicy stir fries of vermicelli noodles and veggies with meats served in a brothy foil pan. Since this is a bar — with funky cocktails to boot (one is served in a glass that looks like a deer) — you'll also find snacks like popcorn chicken, truffle cheese fries and cold seaweed tofu dishes. The steamed dumplings with Napa cabbage and pork ($13) are generously plump and delicious, with a thinner wrapper than the typical doughy Northern style dumplings. 

If this is all intimidating and you don't know where to start, just get the combo meal ($26.99) with four basic skewers and a quartet of dipping powders and sauces including a darkly sweet soybean paste and a powder of crushed cumin. The meats arrive on a box lined with tinfoil and lit from beneath with candles to keep the skewers warm. The chicken, pork, lamb and beef skewers are not gargantuan, but the meats are juicy and flavorful with a spicy cumin seasoning. Once you manage to widdle them off their steel skewer, plop them into a savory pancake along with a scallion and a bulb of raw garlic for some kick. Oh wait, are those pancakes? They're very puffy.

Jiang said it's actually pretty difficult to get traditional Chinese pancakes at the stores here, so she uses flour tortillas instead. Chinese tacos!

L. O. L BBQ & Bar, 66 Middle Neck Rd., Great Neck, 516-708-1681, instagram.com/lolbbqandbar. Open noon to midnight daily. 

By Andi Berlin

andi.berlin@newsday.comAndiBerlin

Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.