My wife picked up a Living Social deal for an eight course Peking duck dinner at Golden Unicorn, which is otherwise famous for its dim sum service. I was pretty impressed overall. But let me babble about a few other things first…

First off, I absolutely love this part of town. East Broadway and the surrounding side streets encircling the Manhattan Bridge still feel like old NYC. Not much has changed, save for a few new buildings poking up here and there. Walking around, you’ll feel like you’ve stepped back in time, possibly even into another country.

This area is the real deal Chinatown, unlike the tourist-laden, knock-off selling, shitty DVD purveying hustle on Canal street. Take a closer look in these parts, or allow a lingering eye to glance into some storefronts, and you’ll spy people working at a ground floor dumpling factory. You’ll see produce, dry goods and health products that most white people have no idea about, and you can’t even read the signs to get more info, because they’re all in Chinese. It has a busy, bustling vibe and I love it.

Okay on to the fucking food. First up was egg drop soup with chicken. This was pretty good, though I did have to add a little bit of hot sauce to punch it up slightly.

Next were two types of dumplings: crystal shrimp and siu mai. Both were excellent. If you swing by this joint for dim sum, these are some of the delights you can enjoy from the carts. Both were packed with ingredients and nicely steamed.

Then the spring rolls came out. They didn’t look like much, but they had great flavor. I was actually surprised, although they were a little bit too greasy on the shell.

Our waitress then brought out the Peking duck. YES!

She cut off a good deal of the crispy skin and more generous portions of meat, and, with that, assembled six steamed buns for us, accompanied by hoisin sauce, scallion and cucumber. They were awesome. Crispy, fatty, juicy… all around excellent.

The rest of the duck was chopped up for us and served on a plate:

The meal kept on trucking along with this ginger beef and broccoli dish. The ginger was fresh and sliced thin. The beef was tender and flavorful. I think it was a mix of flank and rib eye. And the broccoli was steamed in the sauce, so it tasted awesome.

There was also some fried rice with shrimp, roast pork, ham, peas, onion and egg. We were really too full to dig into this too far.

At the end of the meal, some honeydew and orange arrived at the table. A nice, refreshing, smiley-face looking end to the meal.

Excellent deal. Jump on it if you see another Living Social or Groupon offering for this place. And definitely check out their dim sum on the weekend for lunch.

GOLDEN UNICORN
18 E. Broadway
New York, NY 10002