Review: New Fu Run in Great Neck

Time was you had to travel to Flushing to sample the food of Dongbei, China’s northeasternmost area that used to be called Manchuria. Specifically, you had to visit Fu Run, a modest eatery that specialized in a cuisine that is gutsier and heartier than Cantonese, less incendiary than Sichuan, with lots of cumin, pickled cabbage, potatoes and sweet-sour sauces.

In 2017, Fu Run owner Tina Zhang established New Fu Run, a much swankier establishment, to serve both the travel-averse and the Dongbei-curious. (Fu Run closed in 2020.)

The spotless dining room is elegantly appointed with a modern décor that features both traditional red Chinese lanterns and an opulent crystal chandelier. The glossy menu shows photographs of most of the dishes, and the English-speaking servers are well-informed and helpful. You could enjoy a perfectly pleasant meal of hot and sour soup, shrimp with broccoli and pork fried rice — but what a waste of an opportunity that would be.

Start your meal with country style green bean sheet jelly and know that, this is emphatically not a jelly made with green beans, but rather slippery-chewy “noodles” cut from a sheet of faintly green mung-bean starch. The noodles are surrounded by discrete piles of shredded carrots, cucumber, wood-ear mushrooms and tofu noodles and will be tossed by your server, with a sesame sauce, in the manner of a Caesar salad. Another great cold dish is “tiger vegetable,” a refreshing salad of scallions, cilantro and slivered green peppers. Large-to-huge-format dishes include the sliced fish with sour cabbage soup, brought to your table still a-simmer or, in a meatier vein, stew sour cabbage with pork and vermicelli made of cellophane noodles and punctuated with airy cubes of fried tofu. Another great pork-vegetable dish is the stir-fried Chinese chives with minced pork, challenging to eat with chopsticks, but well worth the trouble. The restaurant’s signature dish is lamb chop with cumin, a rack of lamb ribs that hasn’t been seasoned so much as overwhelmed by cumin.

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