Let me begin by saying I had no idea that Brooklyn had its own china town located on 8th Avenue. Kai Feng Fu is an Asian restaurant located on 4801 8th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11220. On our last group tour we visited this restaurant which was definitely a whole in the wall. My classmates, professor and I walked about 14 blocks in search of this restaurant, it seem like a mile. When we finally got there the place was very tiny and I wondered where were we all going to fit, but we were shown to a back entrance where there were more table and chairs. I ordered the chicken and mushroom dumplings, the scallion pan cakes, and the beef pan cake. The dumplings tasted like thick dough with only a little chicken filling, after eating two dumplings, I began opening the others and only eating the inside. I was excited about the eating dumplings before we got to the restaurant, but after tasting it I was not impressed.
I also had the beef pan cake, and was not impressed. I taught they would of fried the the pancake with the beef, instead I was eating a flat bake sliced open where they inserted the beef. The beef was tough and the pancake was to thick. There was some redemption with the scallion pancakes, they were soft and savory with the scallion fried within the pancake giving it that mild onionny flavor. Will try the scallion pancakes again.
For me 8th ave was never really about dumplings or even the best food because the best restaurant food on 8th ave in my opinion is at Gia Lam which is Vietnamese. It was funny how the class reacted to Kai Feng Fu really they make pretty bad dumpling (Steamed or boiled), the place is actually famed for their pot-stickers (Fried in a shallow pan), pancakes, and sweet and sour soup. Really go to 8th ave for me is drop 50 some bucks on tea from the dry good stores that let you smell the teas before you buy it (and taste if you are buying the really high end stuff from Ten Ren Tea), pick up spring rolls from Gia lam because they make the best, pick up tofu that was made just yesterday, and looking for the elusive non-stale salt dried fish.
When we went to Kai Feng Fu i had high hopes for the Vegetable dumplings but they let me down. I didn’t realize you had to specify that you wanted the dumplings fried. The Steamed dumplings didn’t have much flavor and it was mostly dough. I had to peel had of the dough off and eat mostly the filling which wasn’t to exciting either. I was hungry because of the long walk so i ate like 3. I would like to go back to see if fried taste better, but maybe not soon.
Keep up the good work!