Pete Wells Gives Two Stars to Lake Pavilion in Flushing

Pete "I love Surprises" Wells heads to Lake Pavilion in Flushing for this week's review. He writes that it is "almost certainly New York's snazziest banquet-style Cantonese restaurant located in a former diner." Wells suggests skipping the dim sum carts, and heading straight for the dishes on the printed menu:

Sometimes I pointed at a photo of something I wouldn't have ordered otherwise. This is how I came to try the bizarrely compelling sea scallops in a black pepper sauce that seemed to belong on a TV dinner steak. When nobody was looking, I kept stealing another scallop from inside the circular green hedge of broccoli, convinced that what I was doing was somehow wrong, and not caring.

Menu pictures also helped me give mayonnaise prawns another chance. In other restaurants I'd been left cold, not to mention bewildered, by the combination of fried shrimp, candied walnuts and lemony, MSG-laced mayonnaise. Lake Pavilion adds deep-fried pillows of thickened condensed milk. I am not sure why I loved this particular version. I'm not even sure why the dish exists, but I am glad it does.

Wells also reccomends the crab dishes, the goose webs casserole, the stir-fried lamb chops, and the Peking duck. He gives Lake Pavilion Two stars. Do take a minute to check out Annie Ling's photo gallery accompanying the review.
· A Special Occasion, Seven Days a Week [NYT]
· All Review Coverage [~ENY~]
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Lake Pavilion

60-15 Main St., Flushing, NY