New York City: Dec 4: Flushing and the Morgan Library

When I lived in New York and on past trips to the city, I never really left Manhattan. One of the goals for the day was to remedy that by eating my way through Flushing, a Chinese neighborhood in Queens. The other goal for the day was to visit the Morgan Library & Museum. Though in Manhattan, it'd been under renovation for something like the last six years. Supposedly one of the top museums in the city, it's perpetually been on my list of places to visit.

I took many pictures as I worked toward these goals.

After taking New Jersey rail once again to the city, the Long Island railroad brought me directly to Flushing. From the train, I spotted many satellite dishes. I imagine people want to receive channels from their homeland not offered by cable companies.

My main goal in the Flushing was to eat. With that in mind, I generally followed the guidance of a New York Times's article (Let the Meals Begin: Finding Beijing in Flushing) about casual, usually not-sit-down eateries in Flushing. I figured if I tried to see all the joints the article highlights, eating at a couple of them, then I'd end up exploring most of the major parts of Flushing. The article made this plan easy because it provides an interactive map of Flushing, as well as a corresponding printable version. Finally, the best feature of the article: the quality of the reporting. I did countless hours of research on chowhound about Flushing. Virtually all of the recommendations I read were mentioned in the article or the accompanying map. From my research, I added only a small number of places to my good-restaurants-in-Flushing list. (Many of the additions were fancier, sit-down, banquet-type affairs, outside the scope of the article. For the few within the scope of the article, all but one or two opened after the article was written.) In short, the article is a great summary of inexpensive eateries in Flushing that reflects the opinions of a group I trust.

Though I managed through the serendipitous spotting of a sign showing walking tours to see all of Flushing's historic buildings and to see many restaurants and supermarkets, there are many Flushing shops I didn't have time to see. (For details on what I saw and ate, refer to the pictures.) I did see most of the joints mentioned in the Times's article, except for a few in a tiny mall I couldn't find! (I later learned the tiny mall had closed and that I had looked at the correct entrance but there was no longer any sign that a mall had been there.) The fact that I found most of the places I planned to visit is no small feat: while many booths had menus with English translations and sometimes even pictures of the dishes, few booths had English names or even names transliterated into English. Thus, it was difficult to determine if one was in the right place and which booth was which. (This was harder than in India or Singapore.) I can imagine it would frustrate many visitors to Flushing.

The main feeling I got from this exploration of the Flushing food scene is a bit of jealousy that Flushing has incredible numbers of interesting regional food shops, especially from China, that are difficult or well nigh impossible to find elsewhere in the country.

After Flushing, I returned to Manhattan to visit the Morgan Library & Museum. More library than museum, most exhibits focused on books. Soon after entering, I watched the video introduction to the museum. It was bad: a history of the founder Morgan, with little on the museum's highlights.

I enjoyed the building's architecture. Morgan appears to be a true bibliophile. There are multiple rooms of libraries with wall-to-wall bookshelves in multiple levels (and corresponding narrow balconies tracing the bookshelves in the upper levels). The bookshelves, elegantly done in hard wood, house old hardcovers, one, two, or even five centuries old. There's also an ornate, formal study. Connecting these rooms is a rotunda that made me gasp when I entered. It has such vibrant colors and gilding in its ceiling that it looks like new.

As for the exhibits, there was one showing the (only surviving) first edition of Milton's Paradise Lost. I didn't expect to like the exhibit, but there was enough information about the history of the printing and of the book to make it interesting to me.

Another exhibit showed a first edition Gutenberg bible.

Also worth noting was the exhibit on Babar. It was fun to read some of the stories, and cute to see the father's and son's drawings together. (The son continued the series after the father died.) I like the colors in the son's later books. For me the highlight of the exhibit was not anything on the walls but rather a great, entertaining, lovely Babar rug!

I returned to Newark to meet B. When C returned to Newark, we headed to the Ironbound, Newark's Portuguese neighborhood, a short walk from their apartment, for dinner. We ended up at a seafood restaurant which turned out to be decent though unremarkable. Good enough, so to speak.