Chinatown Bakery Notes

Saturday I was in Chinatown searching out rice cakes made for the Dragon Boat Festival. First stop was Feida Bakery Co. which showed me rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves, one had bean paste inside and the other had pork, egg and other stuff inside. They seemed to match what CrazyC referred to but it wasn't made specifically for the holiday. In fact in all three bakeries, not only was I shown the same product in response to my question, they seemed somewhat unaware of this holiday. At one point, maybe it was the Feida staff, they said there is a parade today perhaps for this festival, as if they were questioning themselves.

What I really want to comment on was the seemingly similar offerings at Feida and Chiu Quon Bakeries. Only Captain had items which were noticeably unique different. What I especially noted was the pork turnover:

Curry turnover on left and BBQ pork turnover on right:


The crust on this turnover was incredibly flaky and full of flavor, I then got my answer from reading the label:



Lard!

I did have a mini-dim sum breakfast in the rear area of Chiu Quon. When you walk into the rear, you have left Chicago and entered China. Almost all the tables were occupied by Chinese men, reading Chinese newspapers, smoking and carrying on lively discussions. Food and tea, lots of tea, were merely incidental to the lively art of conversation and a place to conduct it. It was also a challenge to order food back there as the woman permanently stationed there spoke very little English. If I saw her assemblying a plate for another customer, which looked good to me, I would ask for the same. Sans menu or her ability to understand me, it was the only method left for ordering.

Please note each bakery in Chinatown has a seating area in the rear.

Captain Café & Bakery
2229 South Wentworth Avenue
Chicago 60616
312/225-8883
Daily: 7 AM - ?

CHIU QUON Bakery
2242 South Wentworth Avenue
Chicago, IL 60616
312-225-6608

Feida Bakery Co.
2228 S. Wentworth Avenue
Chicago, IL 60616
Tel: 312/808-1113
7 AM - 9 PM

Cathy,

Maybe they'll sell them when during the dragon boat races later this summer?

It's funny how when you come across something, it keeps on popping up.

Sometime after seeing CrazyC's post on the Chinese Tamales and the Dragon Boat Festival we were at the Brandeis Book sale where among other books I picked up a copy of
Dim Sum: The Delicious Secrets of Home-Cooked Chinese Tea Lunch by Rhoda Yee (Amazon link)ISBN:0394734637


Nice thing about the book in addition to the recipes and pictures, it has the chinese characters for the name as well as the name in English (although no pronounciation guide).
It has a section on festive or festival specific dishes (with the stories associated with the dishes). It listed a recipe and picture for "Chinese Tamales (Joan)".
Saturday morning we decided that Captain Bakery and Café would be nice to visit - if they didn't have the Joan or Zhong (from what I googled; still not sure how to prononce it), the Dou Fu Fah would make trip worthwhile. At 8:30 Captain's inside seating area was packed! On our previous visit, it had maybe five or six people at 8. What a difference a half hour makes. Unless it was the festival.

In addition to the Dou Fu Fah, we asked for "uh, Joan?" and got puzzled looks.
"You looking for a person?"

Anyhow, we pointed to the leaf wrapped item on top of the counter and asked if that was for the dragon boat festival (they do carry sticky rice with chicken filling regularly) and I think the answer was yes. (i.e. I'm not sure if they carry it at other/all times). The placard indicated a filling of pork, chinese sausage (lop cheung), egg yolk, peanuts (another kind that we didn't get had green beans instead), dried shrimp which I remembered as ingredients from the book. We also got the sweet one with red bean paste filling. The sweet kind wasn't very sweet, but was great with some sugar.
The Joan or Joong was very tasty*


*The book mentions that home made versions are much more tasty than ones in Chinatown. Evidence - posted soon after, replete with water chestnuts, mushrooms, seasoned rice. Also mentioned is that few people still make it at home.

Hi,

I had my rice cake for late lunch yesterday. I'd carefully taken pictures to post later, which now I don't have to do!

We must have been tooling around the same time. I had asked them about the Dragon Boat Festival also with no affirmative answer like you received. I see those rice cakes all the time in Chinatown. If you looked at the card describing it, it looked like it was in regular use rather than pulled out just for the occasion. In a few weeks, we can check again to see if those same varieties of rice cakes are still offered. Isn't it much more interesting to know the story behind their specialness?

Was the rear at Captain's entirely men like we experienced across the street? It was clearly a meet, greet and eat social hour.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:We must have been tooling around the same time. I had asked them about the Dragon Boat Festival also with no affirmative answer like you received. I see those rice cakes all the time in Chinatown. If you looked at the card describing it, it looked like it was in regular use rather than pulled out just for the occasion. In a few weeks, we can check again to see if those same varieties of rice cakes are still offered. Isn't it much more interesting to know the story behind their specialness?

Was the rear at Captain's entirely men like we experienced across the street? It was clearly a meet, greet and eat social hour.

The dim sum book had a different story - something about an emperor and knight - but as CrazyC mentioned, involved drowning. The leaf wrapping is to keep the food watertight (for the ghost) and the boats keep the fishes away. The book mentions ti leaves in the recipe.

Captain was packed! The crowd was men - and not particularly young. I don't know if that was just that day or if it happens every weekend.

I believe the story goes that some famous hero died in battle and they buried him by floating his body down a river. Because he was so admired, the people threw these rice packets in the water to prevent the fish from getting to him.