Wonton soup with duck-egg noodles.
Picture: Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet
The wontons that Maxi Lau-O’Keefe’s serves at Maxi’s Noodle are enormous in each approach: They’re a number of instances larger than the everyday bite-size Hong Kong wonton. They’re full of extra shrimp than pork, giving them a heavy luxurious quotient. They arrive bobbing in a steaming pork-and-fish broth that anybody can, and may, order supplemented with duck-egg noodles. They usually’ve bought a big devoted following of followers like Chinese language-cooking authority Grace Younger, who as soon as referred to as these wontons her “all-time favourite.”
Getting them, till now, has required a visit to one in every of Lau-O’Keefe’s two Queens eating places. In 2019, she launched Maxi’s as a pop-up out of her aunt’s restaurant, Kissena Cafe. Critiques have been glowing and by the tip of the 12 months, she’d opened an precise store in Flushing, taking out a home-equity mortgage to safe the financing. “I wasn’t pondering,” she says, however the timing was nice … till, a number of months later, when it wasn’t. The store made it by way of the pandemic, nonetheless, and now it’s thriving. She opened her second store close by, and each are shut sufficient to the Nassau County border to attract a weekend crowd from the Lengthy Island suburbs the place Lau-O’Keefe grew up.
Flushing had all the time been Chinatown for her household, but when they wished Cantonese meals, or to have a good time at a dim sum restaurant, they might go to Manhattan, and all through her growth, Lau-O’Keefe has all the time wished to open one thing there — however had hassle locking down a location.
She and her dad scouted gradual eating places, asking on visits whether or not anybody wished to promote their lease. The operators of an area at 68 Mott Road referred to as Tipsy Shanghai did. And subsequent week, Lau-O’Keefe will open it as Maxi’s Noodle 3. It’s slim and has room for almost 30 seats. It gained’t look a lot totally different from the unique Maxi’s, with the identical black, purple, and grey shade scheme, and the menu can be roughly the identical however for 2 notable additions: a plant-based broth and mushroom topping. The brand new gadgets are a concession to the vegetarians who couldn’t eat something on Lau-O’Keefe’s all-meat menu. “I used to be getting lots of shit about that,” she says.
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