Auntie Guan's Kitchen

"The Dongbei cuisine of China’s northeastern province — and that of northern China, including Shandong and Tianjin — is presented in more complete form at Auntie Guan’s than Manhattan has seen before. Consider the “green bean sheet jelly,” a smorgasbord of salad ingredients surrounding a heap of clear mung bean noodles; and pork with pickled cabbage, a casserole that seems almost German with pork chunks and sauerkraut-like fermented cabbage." - Robert Sietsema

"Auntie Guan’s Kitchen offers a unique dish of stewed goose, prominently featured on the menu, cooked in two different styles: Plan A with potato, corn, and mung-bean vermicelli, and Plan B with pickled cabbage and vermicelli. The goose is tender and flavorful, resembling stewed beef, and is served in a metal vessel. The restaurant specializes in Dongbei cuisine from northeastern China, with a menu that nods to European influences." - Robert Sietsema

"This restaurant on the northern frontier of Greenwich Village represents the engaging food of northern China, specifically the provinces in the northeast called Dongbei. That means glass mung bean noodles sometimes served cold and flavored with wasabi, pork stews with shredded cabbage that’s something like sauerkraut, cumin-scented lamb, and some of the plumpest dumplings in town with a broad variety of stuffings." - Robert Sietsema

"Auntie Guan’s specializes in northern Chinese cooking, especially from the provinces of Dongbei, long ago known as Manchuria, which border North Korea. There are cold dishes and hot dishes, depending on what the day is like, and a larger menu of dumplings than you’ve probably seen before. Depart the bus on 6th Avenue (a/k/a Avenue of the Americas) for a walk south to Washington Square and back, a round-trip distance of about a mile along 6th Avenue, which takes you past the architecturally distinguished Jefferson Market Library, a former courthouse, and its lovely backyard garden." - Robert Sietsema

"Last December, well before the pandemic, a Greenwich Village restaurant called Lucky Lee's closed, after less than a year in business. Its opening had been followed by deserved public outrage over its marketing campaign—Lucky Lee’s proprietor, an influencer-type nutritionist, claimed that the restaurant’s Chinese food was different from the rest in that it was 'clean' and 'healthified.'" - Hannah Goldfield