Fu Ren – Queens, NY

Fu Ren’s Pork Ball Soup

Fu Ren is a pretty excellent northern Chinese restaurant with a little bit of middle eastern influence in the Flushing area.   If you’re in the mood for solid Chinese comfort food, this should be one of the first choices you consider.

Fu Ren’s fancy menu logo

Scallion Pancake

Northern Chinese restaurants almost always have scallion pancakes.  This was a decent version as it was chewy and not incredibly oily.  It’s not something I’d come here for but if I was craving some oniony pancakey goodness, I’d order it here while having some other more delicious dishes.

Beijing sauced shredded pork (That’s the literal translation sorry)

A sweet bean paste based sauce with incredibly tender pork.  It’s so good, I thought I was eating dark meat chicken at first.  This dish comes with a side of tofu skin to wrap the pork.  Most places that have this dish use pancakes, but this is a welcome change making it lighter and great for those hunter gatherer diets.

tofu skin for wrapping

Tofu skin is better than pancakes for this, unless you like feeling super bloated because you already ordered the scallion pancakes.

Water Cooked Beef (water meaning oil)

This dish consists of Chinese style unnaturally tender slices of beef (either done with marinading in sugar water, msg or corn starching or oil poaching and always thinly sliced) in a water oil and chili pepper soup.  It’s not as spicy as it looks as the type of chili’s used is more of a numbing pepper instead of the sharp burning type.  This is a great dish to go with white rice.  I especially like the cabbage but the bean sprouts kind of piss me off.  I’ve never been crazy about bean sprouts.

Pork Ball Soup

This soup is tough to beat on a cold winter day.  It’s a clear savory pork soup.  The soup is pretty simple but still very flavorful.  Noted dishes we did not have this time were any of the lamb dishes.  They are good, but get pretty oily and are heavy.  This restaurant is known for those dishes and also some crazy condensed milk pastry dessert.  Anyhow, this place is highly recommended for being tasty and not overly pricey.  You’ll probably be able to try a good variety if you go with four people or end up like us and order a little too much with two diners.

Fu Ren

Address:  40-09 Prince St Flushing, NY 11354

Phone: (718) 321-1363

Hours: Mon-Sun 11 am – 12 am

Pricing: Med Low, It all depends on how much you order, most the dishes are portioned for ala carte, so each person should only order one dish with an appetizer for each pair.

Food: Northern Chinese

Signature Dish: Muslim Lamb Chops, Cumin Lamb, Sweet Taro dessert, soups, sesame pancakes

Facilities: very spartan, bathroom can be questionable at times

Service: Friendly especially good for the area.