Five Long Island men on a quest for great Chinese food

Some men want to climb Mount Everest. Some want to sail solo across the Atlantic. Some men want to eat at every Chinese restaurant on Long Island. These men call themselves The Chinese Quest, and tonight they plan to be at Palace of Wong in Rockville Centre, ringing in the Chinese year of the goat.

During the past two years, the Questers have visited 26 restaurants in Nassau, Suffolk and Queens. The reviews -- along with sundry articles, essays, recipes, polls and constantly updated rankings -- are posted on thechinesequest.com website. Right now, the top spot is occupied by Green Leaf in Port Washington, with a score of 4.09 out of a possible 5. The four other Long Island restaurants in the Top 10 are Moonstone in Great Neck, Red Tiger Dumpling House in Stony Brook, Pearl East in Manhasset and Yao's Diner in Centereach.

The group tries to dine together once a month. The restaurant is decided by the most informal possible consensus: Someone proposes a restaurant and the others agree. A reservation is made, e-invites are issued and, as the day approaches, e-reminders come hard and fast.

A recent evening found The Chinese Quest at Ancient Ginger in St. James, tucked away at a corner table because The Quest can get quite loud.

A waitress named Olivia evidently had drawn the short straw. When she approached the table, Lonnie Goldman waved away the menus and delivered his standard speech: "We're looking for an authentic Chinese meal. Serve us what you would serve your family." A discussion ensued, though it wasn't clear if Goldman was getting his point across. She seemed relieved at his one clear direction. "We'd like to start with two orders of spareribs." (This is also standard procedure.)

Olivia retreated to the kitchen and, as the men snacked on fried noodles, the kibitzing began. "Hey, Michael, pass the Lipitor," said Rob Laser.

Quest meals must have a minium attendance of four. Friends and associates sometimes stretch the number to seven or eight.

But, like the Olympic rings or the Books of Moses, the official members of the Chinese Quest number five:

Lonnie Goldman, 57, an IT project manager from New Hyde Park, is the defacto recording secretary, maintaining the website and generally keeping order.

Michael Grossberg, 50, owns a payroll company in Jericho.

Rob Laser, 56, is a Huntington print broker.

Paul Trause, 58, is a financial adviser in Huntington.

Harun Hassouni, 61, owns a Roslyn-based IT support company.

Before they became the Chinese Quest, the men were all members of the Roslyn Chamber of Commerce.

In 2012, Laser moved from Roslyn to Huntington and asked Trause, a longtime Huntingtonian, what he considered the most crucial question about any new locale. "Where's the good Chinese food?" Trause had no good answer, so the two of them hit Ting on Jericho Turnpike. "Too fusion-y," Laser said. "We wanted real Chinese."

The quest goes on

Next they visited Fortune Wheel in Levittown and fared better, but this was still in the proto-Quest era. On Feb. 28, 2013, three more members of the Chamber, Goldman, Grossberg and Hassouni, joined Trause and Laser for a meal at The Orient in Bethpage. "That was the true beginning of the Chinese Quest," Goldman recalled. "At that dinner we formalized the group and decided to rate the restaurants and start a blog."

Back at Ancient Ginger, the spareribs arrived, and the group declared them good. But the arrival of that most Chinese- American dish, moo goo gai pan, signaled that this was not going to be a very authentic meal. The other dishes continued the theme: chicken-pineapple fried rice; beef with mixed vegetables; chicken with scallops; beef and spinach; chicken with scallops, jumbo shrimp, scallops and Chinese vegetables; fried shrimp with mayonnaise.

Cries rang out: "Again with the chicken breast!" "Enough with the sweet sauces!" "Everything tastes the same!" "But say what you will," Hassouni pointed out, "we finished everything."

Their own standards

In fact, the meal's shortcomings may have had more to do with the men's ability to communicate than with Ancient Ginger's kitchen.

One reason why The Quest rated Green Leaf in Port Washington so highly may be that the owner, Simon Liang, is fluent in English and took upon himself the awesome responsibility of waiting on the Quest's table. They are still talking about the restaurant's signature Green Leaf fried rice. "It was literally green," said Laser breathlessly.

Plates cleared, the men opened their fortune cookies, and Goldman passed out the ballots. Each restaurant is rated according to six criteria: Taste is 50 percent; presentation, aroma, service, creativity and general "appeal" are each worth 10 percent. The latter, Goldman explained, is a combination of "good value, good service, clean bathrooms and a little glitz."

Once everyone had completed their ballots, the Chinese Quest paid the bill and prepared for the evening's final ritual, a trip to the nearest Carvel.