The annual mooncake quest 🥮
With a stop in a magical tea shop along the way.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Mooncakes at Nice One Bakery
47 Bayard St, New York, NY 10013
Every year, on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar, when the moon is full and bright, Chinese people celebrate zhong qiu jie, or the Mid-Autumn festival. And every year, I wait until the last possible day, or the last possible hour, really, to go on my mooncake quest. Part of me thinks that perhaps I should go in advance next year. But part of me also knows that what makes obtaining mooncakes so fun and quest-like is the fact that I wait until half an hour before all the bakeries in Chinatown close, the eve of the festival. There is something exciting and magical about dashing from one closed bakery to the next just as the full moon begins to shine in the sky. The secret to obtaining mooncakes is to visit the bakeries where no English is spoken. When you see a shop where there is not a single tourist to be found, the signs are all in Chinese, and the owner will try to get you to buy at least two more of everything – then you are in the right spot.*
*Which may have been the wrong spot, if you keep reading.
Winter melon mini mooncake at Nice One Bakery
47 Bayard St, New York, NY 10013
I thought I was safe in dodging most of the owner’s compliments, buying only one extra mini mooncake at Nice One Bakery – but when I got home I opened the packages I realized that all but one (!!!) were filled with candied winter melon, my least favorite flavor, instead of the mix of lotus seed, nut, and red bean paste cakes I requested. So, I guess, my pro-tip to myself is that next year I need to bring someone who can read with me. Actually, upon further sleuthing, it seems like every mooncake (which comes in the usual plastic tray, silica packet, and plastic wrapper combo) has the same (incorrect) label and ingredients list of “lotus seed mooncake,” which was extremely wrong as none of the mooncakes I received were lotus seed flavor, my favorite flavor. Winter melon is a subpar mooncake flavor on many levels; mostly because it’s far too sweet, and a bit stringy. Even hot tea can’t cut into the sugary-ness. That being said, the mooncakes were nice and moist and fresh-tasting; upon further examination (of the incredible liar label) it seems like they were all made nearby at 280 Grand Street.
Red bean paste mini mooncake at Nice One Bakery
47 Bayard St, New York, NY 10013
Red bean paste is the vanilla of mooncake fillings. It’s not my favorite – I think lotus paste is much smoother, and handles the sweetness better. In terms of red bean, I prefer to eat it in popsicle form, or with butter on milk bread toast. But it’s a good mooncake to judge a joint by. The red bean paste mooncake at Nice One Bakery was solidly OK. I feel like it’s on the leaner, pared down side – if you’ve ever had relatives in Asia bring back the extremely excessive, double-yolk mooncakes shiny with scented oil in the extremely loud metal tins, this is basically the polar opposite of that. I’m usually opposed to the decadent Cantonese mooncakes that are almost greasy, but with this plain filling, the sweetness felt a bit too much, even with tea, without a fatty contrast.
Pineapple mini mooncake at Bake Culture
48 Bowery, New York, NY 10013
Before I found the plentiful case of mini mooncakes at Nice One Bakery, I’d run around to at least three closed bakeries in a 10-block radius. Bake Culture, which is a contemporary, Taiwanese bakery chain, had all but two flavors of mooncakes left. (When I ran in, a blonde tourist grabbed the last two lotus seed mooncakes – looked me dead in the eye and asked – “is this one more authentic?” I should have said no and encouraged her to take two of the green bean pork floss ones instead, but alas, I did not have the heart to con a tourist on the eve of a holiday so I am once again without lotus seed cakes ☹️. ) Both flavors were nontraditional but one of them contained green beans and pork and the other one was tamely pineapple, so I went with the pineapple. Now, you are probably all wondering the same thing: Is this $5.99 newfangled mini mooncake really worth three times as much as the ones at Nice One? The answer is: No. Mostly because I had to interact with a tourist, but also because I’m not a fan of the pineapple filling. Again, it’s too sweet and lean for the crust; whereas pineapple cakes are absolutely wonderful due to the contrast with buttery crust, this one was harder to swallow.
Chrysanthemum flowers at Sun’s Organic Garden
79 Bayard St, New York, NY 10013
Let’s wash down all this mooncake talk with some soothing hot tea. I’ve saved the best entry for last – Sun’s Organic Garden is a delightful place I have not been to in nearly three years, and I was happy to see it’s still open and as full of charm (and tightly packed glass jars of tea of every kind) as it ever was. The whole shop might be just a little bit bigger than my tiny studio, but standing among those rows and rows of glass jars, some full of mysterious substances with long labels, I feel a sense of inner peace, like I’m in a dusty old magic library of teas. Unlike Kaluystans, another magical place that has shelves upon shelves of tea, the teas here are extremely high quality (and I believe all organic). (Not to shit on Kaluystan’s, a place I love, but the charm of Kaluystan’s is the variety, not necessarily the quality nor the price.) There are no bits of sticks or my personal pet peeve, tea dust leftover in the packet here. Everytime I go, I try a few new types of tea (this time, I got an almost savory-smelling pistachio pu-erh), but I always make sure to get an ounce of the plain jane chrysanthemum flower – nothing fancy, but such high quality here that the tea brewed is as bright as liquid sunshine, and as light and herbal.
Don’t forget to look at the moon tonight,
Soph
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