小花园 Yuan Jersey City
Chinese restaurant · Jersey City
537 Washington Blvd, Jersey City, NJ 07310
Highlights
Steamed whole fish, soup dumplings, spicy noodles, rich flavors
Steamed whole fish, soup dumplings, spicy noodles, rich flavors
"I stumbled on a mind-bogglingly good bowl at the new Yuan in Jersey City near Newport; their wan za noodles ($14) are lush, with extra aromatics like chopped scallions and cilantro, plus pickled mustard greens, crushed peanuts, and fermented beans. The spice level is almost incendiary." - Robert Sietsema
"I tried what is basically a Sichuan shredded potatoes dish at Yuan, amplified with pickled chiles and grated black truffles ($15), and I’d never experienced potatoes quite like this before. The new Chinese restaurant sits right above the Newport stop on the PATH train and is already mobbed in the evenings — make a reservation." - Eater Staff
At 537 Washington Boulevard, near the North Garage Driveway, I found a sleek new Chinese restaurant with an outdoor courtyard dotted with potted plants and an interior that holds about 80, where lights hang from the high ceiling like crumpled constellations and a dangling chain-link curtain circumnavigates the room; booths clad in dark woods offered the most comfortable seating while tables jumbled in the center. On my first visit a teenage pianist played Beethoven’s sonatas on a grand piano in the middle of the room; on a later visit she and the piano had vanished. The restaurant’s foremost specialty is whole fish—pick sea bass or croaker—that can be done five different ways; the fish weighs about a pound-and-a-half or slightly more and can easily feed three or four. The “whole fish in foil” ($42) was the most astonishing: a raw fish wrapped en papillote, ferried to the table on a brazier, briefly lit and then ceremoniously unwrapped to reveal a steaming fish in a chunky sea of bright red layered with pickled red chiles. More conventional is the province’s braised fish in Sichuan bean sauce, with multiple types of chiles, Sichuan peppercorns used with a restrained hand, and an intense fermented bean sauce; there is also a whole fish in tofu pudding I did not get to. The vast menu (after three visits I’d only tried about a fifth) includes a pig ear appetizer ($12) as soft as a glove, pig kidney carved into flower-like shapes with a mild minerally flavor, beef tendon with peppers ($28) served in great wobbly chunks flavored with dried and mild fresh chiles, eggplant preparations such as eggplant with minced pepper ($10) and a wok-fried yu xiang eggplant with bean paste, chiles, ginger and black vinegar, a mild Dongbei stir-fry of corn and pine nuts ($13) that tastes buttery, shredded potatoes lightly sautéed with black truffle sauce, and a cold gluten salad of spongy beige cubes in a sweet brown dressing decorated with roasted peanuts and lily shoots. Taken together, these dishes point to Yuan as an exciting addition to Jersey City’s burgeoning Chinese restaurant corridor. - Robert Sietsema
Ankita Vartak
Bessie Hu
Elena Artamonova
Naiya Shah
Crystal Lee
XY L
T Bhattacharjee
AC S
