The large, white caps-lock words on the door at Jiang Diner serve as an easy shorthand for the menu that waits inside: Cumin Flavor. The decals are at a convenient eye level for curious diners peering in from the street.
The restaurant opened in March in the East Village, and serves food from the Xinjiang region in northwestern China. The area is home to a number of ethnic groups, including the Uighur people, a Turkic and largely Muslim population that has long been persecuted by the Chinese government.
The menu here is free of pork and rich in cumin; Tao An, the owner, buys the cumin, along with large amounts of fresh Halal lamb, from a Turkish butcher in Flushing, Queens.
“In Mongolia, you kill the lamb, and then make a barbecue,” Mr. An said. “That’s it!” Because Xinjiang cuisines focuses on grilling and steaming, the quality of each cut of meat can make or break a dish.
CreditWinnie Au for The New York Times
Jiang Diner doesn’t serve barbecued lamb, but it does serve a plate of fried lamb ribs. These are first steamed with ginger and scallion, then deep fried until their thick layers of fat begin to disappear back into the meat. Their outer edges become frilly like spirit fingers, strings of crispy fried meat protecting satiny-soft innards. Freshly ground cumin for dipping comes in a diminutive cut-glass dish, alongside an umami-heavy dollop of fermented spicy broad bean paste, the pair of garnishes daring you to gild the lily.
That lamb-and-cumin combination is a constant throughout the menu, and particularly exciting in dumpling form: An order of plump lamb shumai turns out to more closely resemble xiao long bao than the rice-filled shumai you would find at a dim sum place. But while soup dumplings traditionally get a jolt of flavor from chicken or beef broth, these rely solely on water, mixed with lamb, cumin, ginger and a wisp of sesame oil. Once wrapped up and steamed, their bottoms become heavy with freshly brewed lamb broth; the meat inside is supremely juicy.
As the East Village has become a destination for diners looking to eat regionally specific Chinese food, it has also become a destination for chefs and restaurateurs trying to bring something new to the area. And thanks to the neighborhood’s proximity to New York University, “there are many young people here, and many Chinese people here,” Mr. An said.
He also owns the nearby Hot Kitchen, a Sichuan restaurant, but the proliferation of Sichuan spots in downtown Manhattan has meant tougher competition and difficulty retaining chefs, Mr. An said. Jiang Diner began as a way for him to serve the Xinjiang-style food he loved as a young man growing up in Beijing, and to offer the neighborhood a different option.
Perhaps the best-known Xinjiang dish in New York is big tray chicken, which has drawn attention farther downtown at Spicy Village. There, the dish is loud with Sichuan peppercorns and a brave slick of chile oil, punchy in the extreme.
Here, where it is called big plate chicken, the dish is quieter, made with just a pinch of that numbing pepper and a generous dash of a Turkish spice mix made to flavor meat patties. The stew gains depth from star anise, soy sauce and a dash of sugar, each nugget of meat quick to fall off its accompanying bone.
“Xinjiang food doesn’t use too much peppercorn — just a little bit — but we’ll pick up the garlic and eat it,” said Mr. An, with a laugh. He insists on not letting chiles overpower his dishes, but he isn’t afraid to use them for a bit of flair in the sautéed spicy chicken with bone, where bits sesame-spackled fried chicken are outnumbered by blistered dried chiles, the chunks of meat peeking through a thick canopy of red. The heat is subtle, more a smoky subterranean current than an assault of fire. Each bite carries a sweet suggestion of ginger, and slices of garlic pop up everywhere
Nang, or baked buns, a mainstay in Xinjiang, show up two ways: whole and brushed with spicy bean paste, or cubed and stir-fried. The latter fulfills the front door’s promise: cumin flavor above all else, backed up by red pepper, more a foil for the soft pieces of lamb that lie among it.
When everything else on the table has been demolished — saucy sautéed rice cakes, pillowy hand-cut noodles swimming in tomato sauce — and only bits of stew and sauce remain, the buns become a necessity. Now they can soak up everything, extending the meal for a few more bites.
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