Fu Shen Restaurant

TAIWAN 🇹🇼

The fastest route from the 8th Avenue N train station to Fu Shen includes a walk past a junk yard at the corner of 61st Street and 7th Avenue which has all manner of, well, junk. Once you get into the restaurant, you might think that the decorators used this nearby source to get things up on the walls as there are bats, paintings of random scenery, a map of Boston, and two cow skulls similar to ones found on the walls of a Williamsburg craft beer bar.

The skulls however fit a more general theme that is also seen on the awning and logo, Fu Shen is advertising itself as a place to eat beef. The Chinese characters might literally translate to "whole bull store" and this gives an idea of what menu items to stick to when ordering. The most popular dishes seem to be large pepper steaks served over beds of spaghetti noodles on sizzling platters, a dish you can find on many street corners throughout Taiwan.

This lunch started with an order of beef baked cake ($3.95, above and below), an awkward translation for something usually just called bing. Let these cool a bit as the fried dough is full of juice and biting in too quickly can be dangerous. The beef is spiced with cumin and delicious, the appetizer makes a great start to any meal even if bing are most commonly eaten as a quick lunch.

The black pepper steak over noodle dish popular in Taiwan can also be eaten in soup form. The sizzling platter usually includes a fried egg, which also makes an appearance in the bowl. This soup is a few dollars more expensive than others, but worth the upgrade to $9.95 as the cuts of beef are top quality and really tasty. The texture of the broth was somehow silky smooth.

The broths of both soups ordered were luscious and shiny, matching the tables and many other surfaces in the restaurant. The spice ratings on the menu should be taken with a grain of salt. These two soups both got a pepper next to their name while one had little spice and one had enough to make eyes water.

The noodle soup with hot & spicy beef ($6.95, below) was the eye-watering version, a really good (and spicy) broth that helped disguise the beef cuts that were not as good as the more expensive bowl. The noodles and other ingredients are all nice though, so a simple, cheap lunch is still very enjoyable.

Sunset Park seems to be growing a larger love for Taiwanese food, as new restaurants and cafes have been opening up regularly in the neighborhood over the past two or three years. The area would be well-served to have some other Chinese regional cuisines pop up and challenge the majority Fujianese restaurants that are everywhere.

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SUNSET PARK Brooklyn

6003 7th Avenue