Is Great Neck the new Flushing? 5 restaurants to try.

Is Great Neck the new Flushing? The stately North Shore community certainly isn't as large as Queens' Chinese food metropolis, but the past couple months have brought a lot of interesting food.

White Bear dumplings, an icon of Flushing since 1989, recently opened a satellite location here that serves its famous #6 spicy chili wontons with those glorious pickled veggies. They're flawless dumplings, worthy of the trip alone. But White Bear is basically a takeout spot, so why not make it a crawl and hit a few other places while you're here?

With the advent of several new restaurants, it's now possible to do a walkable food tour that also includes underrepresented regions of China, like the Hunan and the Yunnan provinces. Other new concepts in the village include a Vietnamese cafe that serves egg coffee and a real-deal banh mi sandwich, with the fatty pork cuts made from scratch. And of course, Great Neck excels in its Jewish cuisine, so you can also pack in some Yemeni malawach flatbread before you quit for the day. 

We've limited this food tour to restaurants that have opened in the past few months. If you attempt the entire thing, you'll have to walk 1.4 miles from start to finish (most of that distance is to and from Cafe Muscat, which is about half-mile away from the others). This tour will give you a taste of everything new and trendy about Great Neck, Long Island's Chinatown. 

Stop #1: Banh mi and egg coffee at Crystal Bloom Cafe 

43 S. Middle Neck Rd., Great Neck

Lillian Wong and Leon Yuen opened this small cafe over the fall, serving Vietnamese coffee drinks that are nearly impossible to find elsewhere. On a recent afternoon they were pushing an iced coffee topped with a loaf of flan.

Devoted foodies will come in search of the egg coffee, an iced delight that's topped with a luscious, thick layer of egg foam. Then move onto the banh mi, which is the biggest and best I've tasted on Long Island. Yuen is particularly proud of the tofu banh mi, but he let slip that the pork variety features fatty strips of pork that are made in-house, as well as a hefty swipe of pork pâté. There are a lot of veggies packed in too so you'll probably want to split this one. More info: 516-439-4321. 

Stop #2: Wontons with hot sauce at White Bear 

6A Bond St., Great Neck Plaza

Gracie Wang is the daughter-in-law of the original White Bear owners, and spent years working at the iconic shop in Flushing before spreading her wings in Great Neck. Here she's got a small menu of dumplings as well as Taiwanese classics from her childhood, like a satisfying braised pork rice bowl.

But most everyone is coming for the #6 wontons with hot sauce ($30 a dozen), which live up to the hype. The boiled wontons are topped with a toasted dry chili sauce that packs a roasty crunch. Little bits of pickled vegetables are scattered over the top, adding a salty funk. They really could be the best dumplings in New York. More info: 516-440-1926. 

Stop #3: Dai-style chicken at Yunnandao Rice Noodles

1 Great Neck Rd., Great Neck

Crossing-the-bridge rice noodles from Yunnan, China, have become a certified trend this year, with three spots now open on Long Island. Yunnandao is the mom-and-pop option, with its colorful folkloric decorations brought from the Southwestern Chinese region, where the Zhang family hails from. For a full meal here, you have to get the caldron of bouncy rice noodles, with a boatload of ingredients thrown in tableside.

But surprisingly, the absolute best thing on the menu turned out to be an appetizer, Dai-style pounded shredded chicken ($11.99), which is served in a mortar and pestle. The spicy shredded chicken is laden with red onions and shredded carrots, and soaked in lime juice, which is not typical for Chinese food. More info: 516-216-5898.

Stop #4: Spicy stir fry at Hunan Tapas

69 Middle Neck Rd., Great Neck Plaza

Lots of places on Long Island have Hunan in the name, but this may be the only restaurant dedicated to the region's spicy cuisine. Owner Chi Zhang grew up in Shanghai but was inspired by his mother's background, cooking her Hunan stir fries alongside Cantonese-American classics. There are a lot of dishes here but the best I've tried is the Hunan-style sour pickled intestines ($23.99). Don't worry, the name sounds more intense than it is, because the innards are sliced thin and sizzled in the wok to a springy texture, and done up with fresh red and green chile peppers. If not offal, get the Hunan-style sautéed beef. More info: 516-482-8866, instagram.com/hunantapas

Stop #5: Muscat malawach at Cafe Muscat

98 Cutter Mill Rd., Great Neck Plaza

Cafe Muscat is practically an institution in Fresh Meadows, Queens, where it's been serving kosher dairy foods since 2006. Owner Alon Assayag now has a market, Muscat Glatt, in Lawrence, and recently opened a third location in Great Neck on the bottom floor of an office building. His menu is an Israeli-style hodgepodge of Middle Eastern, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish foods, which you order off a tablet menu. They're cooking up some beautiful flaky malawach, a Yemeni Jewish flatbread that's also served nearby at Lola (where it's my favorite dish on the menu). The Muscat malawach variety ($23.95) is thicker, like a calzone, and stuffed with salty feta, mozzarella and mushrooms. The fresh tomato salsa on the side is also spectacular. More info: 516-400-8085, cafemuscat.com