The Flushing Mall Food Court

Last weekend during my visit in NYC, my friends Daniella and Anna decided to take me to the Flushing Mall food court. It's funny to think that we made the long trip from Manhattan all the way to Queens just to eat at a mall food court - especially when growing up I had always been under the impression that food court food ranks just barely above hospital food and just below airplane food in palatability. However, this place has had good reviews, and when Daniella told me that they offer Japanese-style ice cream crepes there, I was sold. While common in San Francisco (and obviously in Japan), I've been hard-pressed to find ice cream crepes on the East coast. Very painful, since I've been craving them since the last time I was in SF's J-town over a year ago.

The first thing I got after arriving was a banana-Oreo crepe with coconut ice cream and topped with caramel and whipped cream:

Daniella ordered soup dumplings, because generally soup dumplings are a good choice. Sadly though, these had skin that was way too thick and were not nearly as attractive -nor nearly as yummy as what you would get at Joe's Shangai:

To add insult to injury, they gave her only a small, flimsy plastic spoon to eat them with - which was not even big enough to hold the soup that kept spilling out of ALL of them. Yes - there was lots of soup spillage, even despite the dumpling's overly-thick skins.

For my entree I chose the pork potstickers - 10 pieces for $5 - a great price considering their size, but the potstickers themselves were disappointing. Like with Daniella's soup dumplings, the skin was too thick, and the filling was bland in flavor:

Daniella also got chili dumplings:

Anna ordered seafood noodle soup which ended up being too spicy for her to tolerate. Check out the scary bug-eyes on the shrimps that still had their heads and shells attached:

While I was pretty darn pleased with my ice cream crepe (it's hard to mess up anything that consists of ice cream, whipped cream, and Oreo cookies), overall I was disappointed by the other food offerings in the Flushing Mall food court. Don't get me wrong - for a food court they had a much wider variety and higher quality of food options than most, but this place is definitely not a good replacement for real restaurant cuisine.

Overall rating: 5/10

New World Mall Food Court

4021 Main Street

Flushing, NY 11354-4432