Authentic Chinese restaurant Ivory Kitchen opens in Port Washington
Yunnan rice cake is one of the regional specialties at Ivory Kitchen in Port Washington. Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus
The first thing to appreciate about Port Washington’s newest Asian restaurant, Ivory Kitchen, is that it doesn’t serve sushi. The center of town is overserved with sushi — there are six purveyors within two blocks of the Long Island Rail Road station — and Ivory Kitchen’s immediate predecessor was, wait for it, the short-lived Samku Sushi.
The second thing to appreciate about Ivory Kitchen is that it offers a singular and refined take on Chinese food.
Chef Jeff Li, who owns the tiny restaurant with his wife, Cissie Xi, is a veteran of authentic Chinese restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn’s Chinatown. A native of Yunnan province who immigrated to the United States when he was 15, he aims to marry real Chinese cooking with an understanding of his non-Chinese customers’ tastes. Crowd-pleasers such as soup dumplings, scallion pancakes, beef chow fun and fried rice share the succinct menu with less-familiar preparations like smoked duck breast and mapo tofu. The menu also features braised whole fish in hot bean sauce, stir-fried lamb and a dish that has become a new favorite of mine: sauteed lotus root with black beans and green chili.
From Yunnan province, Li has brought Yunnan beef noodle in soup and Yunnan rice cake, a name that undersells the savory stir-fry of rice-cake coins, pea shoots, spinach, Yunnan pickled cabbage, cubed ham, shredded pork and red chilies.
There are also a handful of Japanese dishes such as eel rice bowl and mentaiko pasta (spaghetti in a creamy sauce of spicy pollock roe).
Li shops every morning in Flushing and he will often make a special if he is inspired by a seasonal vegetable. One lunch’s special was a stir-fry of celtuce, a variety of lettuce that is cultivated for its long steam as well as its tender leaves.
The house special hot chicken rice bowl at Ivory Kitchen in Port Washington. Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus
Prices are gentle, with most main dishes well under $20. At lunch, you can enjoy one of six rice bowls with either a soda or two spring rolls.
The restaurant, decorated in soothing shades of ivory and beige, seats about 20 people.
Ivory Kitchen is at 87 Main St., Port Washington; 631-604-7800, ivorykitchen.uorder.io
