Sitting down at a restaurant to eat one dish and one cuisine is frankly overrated.
It’s boring to only order one entree for yourself and enjoy just a single flavor. As the conventional wisdom goes in China: only kids do multiple choice, adults want it all (小孩子才做选择，成年人全都要)!
Having it all is what it feels like to be at Dragon Fest, the largest Chinese food and culture festival in New York City. Currently in its second year, the festival now spans from June until October, featuring 24 events that bring together food vendors, artists, and cultural organizations across the Chinese community.
This past Sunday, the festival swept across two blocks on Broadway by Union Square. The theme for the weekend was pool party, which meant transforming the New York City street into a beach bar serving mocktails sponsored by Chinese sparkling water brand Chi Forest.
The star of this party was definitely the food, and walking down the street, every stall had something that wowed the senses. I tried a Tianjin style egg crepe, or jianbing (煎饼, jiān bing), where the scallion and egg flavor was unexpectedly elevated by Peking duck folded inside — justifying its price of 18 USD.
A refreshing bowl of shaved ice drenched in strawberry sauce immediately caught my attention under the summer heat. The stall was Dragon Lulu, founded by Ivy Chen, which serves Dragon beard candy (龙须糖 lóng xū táng), a traditional Chinese snack which originates in the Han Dynasty and was previously reserved for kings and queens.
Chen reconnected with this candy from her childhood while attending French confectionary class. As she told me, “When I was making candy for show pieces that French people do, I was like, wait a minute, that’s good for dragon beard candy!”
In the summer months, Chen’s business is serving shaved ice topped with dragon beard candy to beat the candy-melting heat. Right now, Chen is also in the process of developing new flavors that can better capture American taste buds, for example experimenting with dried fruit and coconut flakes. At the Dragon Fest, every food item was a creative play on Chinese flavors.
One big playground is exactly how Biubiu Xu, the founder and organizer of Dragon Fest, sees this celebration of food. The festival draws upon Xu’s expertise in producing pop up events and the network of restaurant owners she connected with through her extensive experience in the media industry. Xu is only having more fun going into the festival’s second year.
“I think it’s a big playground in New York City for me. I can try to do a lot of branding things, do the pool party here, and try a lot of new topics,” Xu told me. “This is my favorite part of doing events in New York City, and we definitely want to try to do more topics in the future.”
In addition to the pool party, this year’s themes have also included Panda Day and Thai Fest, a sister festival that showcases Thai food.
The connections and mutual inspiration between different Asian flavors is another feature of Dragon Fest that Xu wants to highlight. She introduced me to Bella, the owner of Dumpling N’ Dips, who serves siu mai with a Thai punch.
Bella said that dumplings and siu mai are popular street food items in Thailand. Her business aims to bring innovation to traditional dishes. The alluring display of the stall at the festival has brought increased foot traffic into her storefront on the nearby St. Mark’s Place as well.
“Our concept is to make it more special, because we bring a popular dish into dumplings,” Bella explained. “We take pad thai and make it into dumplings, tom yum soup into dumplings, chicken fried rice in dumplings. Everything is in dumplings!”
For New York City foodies, Dragon Fest is an opportunity to discover all sorts of mouthwatering flavors all in one street. Nhi Dang, a 23-year-old food blogger who runs the Instagram account @NoshWithUs, said the creativity and unique flavors of Dragon Fest are different from the street food scene she’s used to in her native Vietnam, which tends to feature more local, familiar flavors.
In comparison, New York City offers an abundance of different cuisines to taste. Dragon Fest not only celebrates the most authentic Chinese bites available around the city, but also the innovation that comes from cross-pollination with other flavors.
“Dragon Fest lets vendors who don’t have a brick and mortar shop to connect with a lot of customers in one day,” said Dang. “I’m glad I got the chance to chat and see some of the vendors that I otherwise wouldn’t have seen around New York City.”
Banner image by Haedi Yue.
