Let My People Go — To Cho-Sen Village

Where’s a Jew to go for Chinese food on Passover?  When in Great Neck, there’s really only one place to consider.  “Cho-Sen Village” at 505 Middle Neck Road, Great Neck, NY 11023.  Kashruth Supervision by Vaad Harabonim of Queens no less!  Kosher Chinese food.  With a CAPITAL “K”!  Cho-Sen Village is the sister restaurant of “Cho-Sen Island” in Lawrence, which we had a reviewed about a year ago.

May you be Cho-Sen for GOOD FORTUNE… and good food!

On this, the fifth night of Passover, Jews throughout the land, or at least Great Neck, descended upon “Cho-Sen Village” like they were giving the food away.  Far from it (check the prices below!).  Perhaps they were just tired of preparing their own seders, or ran out of friends and family’s houses to visit.  So, what else is a Jew to do?  Eat Chinese food of course!

This evening, Mee V. Stoogas and I, Mee Magnum, having an hour to kill decided to out for dinner, and what else are we going to eat, but Chinese food too, of course!  Cho-Sen Village’s website said they were open for Pesach.  When we got there, having secured one of the very many parking spots right in front of the restaurant, we were having our doubts that they were actually open.  But, they were.  (Hey, if you read something on the Internet, as in it says they’re open, then you know it MUST be true!)  Though we were perhaps only the third table to be filled, by the time our entrees were served, the ENTIRE restaurant was packed!  I can only imaging the business that they must do on Christmas!!

A special Passover Menu was all that was available this week, along of course, with a box of Matzo on every table.  Whether their regular menu prices are comparable (we hope not) to their special Passover menu remains to be found out at a subsequent time.

We ordered two complete dinners.  The meal started off with the two appetizers we ordered, BBQ Chicken Wings and Drum Sticks.  I must say, I really liked the BBQ Chicken Wings, and I would have eaten an entire bucket of them.  But, I couldn’t afford it, and neither could Mee V. Stoogas.  Those three tiny wings pictures below were $7.00 – They were quite tasty though!  The Drum sticks were unlike any other drumsticks I have ever seen.  These must have been dwarf chickens!  The chicken tasted boiled (like you were expecting it to be prepared any other way??).  The breading (of course it wasn’t breading…. this being Passover and all) was actually quite crispy and tasty.  Our meal was off to a good start!

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Next course up, we chose a bowl Matzoh Ball Soup.

What more can I say, it tasted like Matzoh Ball Soup!

Mee, loving matzoh as much as I do, couldn’t leave the matzoh ball alone, I just had to crumble even more pieces of matzoh in to the soup.  

By now we were getting kind of full (do you know what too much matzoh does to your gastrointestinal system?  Oy, don’t ask!  You’ll find out over the next few days!!

But, entrees were still to be served.  We ordered General Tzo’s Chicken (spelling is correct), which looked a whole lot like sweet and sour chicken.  But, we both agreed, it was VERY tasty.   We also got an order of Veal with Garlic Sauce.  I really really liked this dish and was totally surprised by the kick it had.  Close your eyes, and you might have felt you were dining at a Szechuan Chinese restaurant.

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Each dish was served with one side.  There were only two options, so we chose one of each.  French fries.  Yes, you read that correctly!  FRENCH FRIES.  The other side dish was House Special Farfel.  I had no idea what that was.  Thank  you Mee V. Stoogas for schooling me on Jewish food, I got to enjoy it for the first time.  Hey, there’s matzoh in it.  What’s not to like??

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As if we hadn’t eaten enough, there was dessert to be had with our complete dinner.  Ice Cream, which I ordered… and I really should have realized, this wasn’t going to be real ice cream.  Tom Carvel, should he still be alive, wouldn’t lose any sleep over this ice cream!  Two spoon fulls, and I was toast (unleavened, of course!).  The other dessert, a pastry, we just asked for them to pack up along with our left overs.  I looked at it when I got home… they shouldn’t have bothered.  But, as we have well documented in the past, not only don’t Chinese do dessert well, but oy, on Passover, don’t ask!  Of, yes.. of course there was coffee and tea as part of our COMPLETE dinner.  Again, not thinking straight, and getting a funny look when I questioned where the cream was… umm, it was in the little packets… no matter how MANY packets I put in the coffee, it just wasn’t changing color.  Two sips, settled the check, and we were out of there!

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Would the Chinese Quest come back?  Well, we’ve been to Cho-Sen Island, so Cho-Sen Village is likely going to get an official review.  Would I personally eat there again?  I’d be curious to see what their regular menu prices are like!

Here’s the entire Cho-Sen Village Passover Menu:

May you be Cho-sen for a happy, healthy life!

Humbly submitted for your consumption,

—Mee Magnum  (“Chop!  Chop!”)

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