° Chinese Fare: Hong Kong to Shanghai

In a city with no fewer than five Chinatowns, Chinese fare is New York’s most varied. Every culinary region in China has its representatives in New York, from Chaozhou-style shrimp balls and Hangzhou soya duck to Hong Kong dim sum and Chengdu mapo tofu. New Yorkers follow their appetites to New York Noodle Town, in Manhattan’s Chinatown, for roast duck in noodle soup, or to Ping’s in Elmhurst, Queens, for Dungenness crabs.

The lines are long out in front of Joe’s Shanghai on Manhattan Chinatown’s narrow Pell Street. Inside, the hurried staff shuttle stacks of bamboo steamers to hungry diners. At the table, steamer lids are lifted to reveal steaming xiao long bao, or Shanghai soup dumplings, filled with pork and crab and a rich, fatty broth, served with a dip of dark vinegar and julienned ginger. A slice into one of the dumplings releases the intensely flavored “soup” inside. These are the dumplings that spurred the recent proliferation of Shanghai restaurants, like Shanghai Tang, New Green Bo, Goody’s, and Shanghai Cuisine.

Shanghai restaurants have been around for a long time (New York’s first is said to have opened in 1949), and there has always been a cult of the soup dumpling, says restaurant consultant Ed Schoenfeld, who has played a prominent role in opening many a Chinese restaurant in New York (most recently Our Place Shanghai Tea Garden). But that cult would see its membership explode when Joe Si and Peter Lam opened the first Joe’s Shanghai in Flushing, Queens, in 1995. Capitalizing on the success of their soup dumplings, they have since opened Joe’s Shanghai restaurants in three additional locations.

Meanwhile, restaurants such as Grand Sichuan, Wu Liang Ye, and Golden Monkey have revived diners’ taste for spicy Sichuan specialties. Hong Kong-style palaces-Jing Fong, Silver Palace, Golden Unicorn-are venues for nine-course banquets or morning and weekend dim sum. The cooks at Big Wong carve barbecued char siu pork for customers crowded at the front counter and the tanks of fresh fish in the windows of Oriental Garden promise meals of soft-shell crabs, prawns, razor clams, and sea bass. Fujianese restaurants and markets have sprouted along East Broadway, in New York’s Chinatown and east of Sara Delano Roosevelt Park off Grand Street.

Still, whether you’re dining at a Sichuan, Cantonese, or Fujianese restaurant, don’t be surprised by a little infusion of Shanghai-a sign hanging in the window that reads, “We have soup dumplings.”

° Korean Fare: Kalbi on Every Corner

It’s 2 a.m. in Sam Ship Iga, in midtown Manhattan’s Koreatown, and late-night dinners spoon into big bowls of sul long tang, a milky soup with rice noddles and beef, flavored with long-simmered oxtails and served with coarse salt and lots of finely chopped scallions. The soup is especially tasty at Gam Mee Ok, one of several Koreatown restaurants that stay open around the clock for late-shift workers or for the young crowds that frequent Koreatown’s nightclubs. Two doors down at Kum Gang San, tabletop grills sizzle with bulgogi (marinated slices of steak) and kalbi (marinated short ribs). But as morning draws near and a night of revelry threatens to take its toll, orders mount for haejang guk, a moderately spicy soup with beef, bean sprouts, and cabbage that is said to be a hangover preventative.

Late at night or early in the afternoon, Koreatown is always a source of satisfaction for cravings that range from pajon (scallion pancakes) and nak-ji bokkum (octopus stir-fried with vegetables and noodles) to bibimbap (rice, meat, vegetables, and egg served in a hot stone bowl and mixed with kochujang chili paste). Cho Dang Gol makes its own tofu and serves it in casseroles, in soups, or with noodles, while Hangawi offers elegant vegetarian fare. Mandoo Bar specializes in mandoo, dumplings filled with meat and vegetables. And North Korean restaurant Okryukwan offers the specialties of Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital-big dumplings and neng myun, cold buckwheat noodles in beef broth.

Beyond Koreatown, a growing number of restaurants have spurred a movement to better acquaint the uninitiated with Korean food. “Korean food is incredible, a very sophisticated cuisine, but underexposed to the average New York diner,” says Brad Kelley, owner of the trendy Thai restaurant Kin Khao and Daily Chow, which features a pan-Asian menu that includes Korean cuisine in the former location of Bop (now closed), his highly praised all-Korean eatery.

That underexposure is being remedied as new Korean restaurants have opened in New York’s various neighborhoods with increasing frequency: Clay in Nolita, Do Hwa in the West Village, Woo Lae Oak in Soho, Jin Dal Lae on the Upper West Side. “I don’t see why there isn’t kalbi on every corner,” says Ruth Reichl, former New York Times restaurant critic and now editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine. “I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more Korean food.”

° Japanese Fare: Of Katsu and Kaiseki

In a second-floor soba restaurant in the heart of Soho, trained experts turn buckwheat flour into skeins of fresh noodles. The cooks at Honmura An continue a Japanese tradition that dates back to the early 17th century, rolling out buckwheat dough and slicing it by hand to produce strands of perfect soba. The soba is served hot or cold with homemade broth, plain or topped with slices of duck or giant prawns flown in from Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market.

Whether soba, tonkatsu, yakitori, or sushi, Japanese menus often focus on one or two dishes that are prepared with a deeply honed expertise. In Japan, there are restaurants singly dedicated to such specialities as unagi (grilled eel), tempura, or oden (vegetables, eggs, fish cake, and other delicacies simmered in broth). In New York, the same custom of such focused attention is more loosely practiced but still characteristic of very good Japanese restaurants. Shabu-shabu, thinly sliced beef quickly immersed in boiling water in a pot at the table and then dipped in ponzu or gomadare sauce, is the particular province of restaurants like Shabu-Tatsu and Lan. At Katsuhama, the focus is on katsu, breaded, deep-fried cutlets of pork or chicken. The aka-chochin red paper lantern in front of Yakitori Taisho advertises its yakitori, skewers of flavorful grilled meat and vegetables. Otafuku (named after the puffy, happy-faced Japanese masks that adorn the timbers framing the restaurant’s doorway) serves only takoyaki, tasty griddled balls of batter with chopped octopus, and okonomiyaki, “your choice” pancake filled with whatever you like-beef, pork, shrimp, or squid, with cabbage, scallions, and egg.

Although the distinctions between Tokyo cuisine (Tokyo ryori) and Kyoto cuisine (Kyoto ryori) are largely unproclaimed in New York, restaurants such as Sugiyama and Nadaman Hakubai produce elaborate, formal kaiseki meals, a refined Kyoto tradition intended to appeal to all the senses. Kaiseki meals are served in several courses on lacquerware and ceramics chosen to suit each dish. The chef orchestrates the meal, using only the freshest ingredients and only what is in season. Each succeeding taste serves as a counterpoint to the last: sweet followed by sour, a simmered course followed by a fried course, one surprise after the next. Only the merest seasonings are used, in the Kyoto manner. One of kaiseki chef Nao Sugiyama’s meals might include apricot suspended in aspic, sashimi tinged with gold leaf, scallops grilled on a hot stone right at the table. “Umami ga arimasu”-meaning, roughly: “Here is the height of tastiness.”