The plan for Congee Bowery was to eat things we had never eaten before and in that manner we were very successful.
The first dish that arrived was the jellyfish salad. The jellyfish had somehow been sliced into long thin strips and mixed in with some vegetables that looked very similar to the jellyfish strips. I'm not sure how to relate this to anything else but I thought it was pretty tasty.
The second dish was geoduck clam sashimi. I have no idea what a geoduck (pronounce goo-ey-duck) clam is, nor, like the jellyfish, do I understand how they made it into thin strips. Despite my lack of understanding, this was really good (and rightfully so as we found out later that it cost 65 bucks. oops). A person who appeared to be the manager was enamored by how we had ordered and was very excited that we had ordered the geoduck (we thought we were cool, but he was probably excited by the money we were spending). He came by often to check on us and offer advise. We asked if geoduck clam only came as sashimi and he explained that there were two parts to the clam and the part we were eating was best served as sashimi. The other part, he explained, contained very little sustanence so it was normally fried in batter. He assured us that the sashimi was the way to go. Then, half way through our quest to devour the sashimi, the manager returned with a plate full of something that was definitely deep fried. Turns out that he had had the staff make the other part of the geoduck for us (this is probably normal, but we wanted to feel special). As he said, it wasn't very good and was only slightly tasty due to being deep fried.
Next came the sea cucumber. Sea cucumber is weird. First of all, it looks like a turd (see picture below), and second, I know it wasn't alive but it sure acted like it was. Perhaps the cucumber and I were rivals. I tried to eat it with chopsticks but it proved impossible to pick up as it almost had the consistency of jello. I switched to a fork and cut the sea cucumber into small pieces (take that cucumber) but my attempts to eat it were still in vain. I stabbed each piece with my fork but as I tried to move the fork to my mouth the sea cucumber would dive back onto my plate. My friends didn't have a problem eating theirs so my sea cucumber was obviously a jerk while it was alive and its crap behavior had carried over into the edible food stage of its existance. Since we were white, they had given us plenty of forks so I outsmarted the cucumber by using two forks and piercing the cucumber in different directions, hence trapping it between the two forks. Eating the cucumber suddenly became difficult with my forks pointed in such a manner, but I managed.
I don't really like sea cucumber.
Razor clams were next and these were pretty good. Razor clams are long thin clams for reasons that are completely lost on me. They look a little bit like mushrooms and they taste pretty good. The clams were followed by beef chow fun. We ordered beef chow fun because we wanted to have at least one dish that a normal person would order. The chow fun needed more soy sauce but once this was applied it was quite good.
Our last dish was duck web. We had tried to order duck web at Shanghai Cafe but they were all out (although they may have been lying as they apparently horde all the good food for fellow Chinese people). This time we were successful and I have to say that duck web is weird. It took me a couple minutes to get over how weird it was, but once I did I enjoyed it. Duck web is exactly what you would expect. It's bone wrapped in skin. No meat. If it were a drumstick, someone would have had to suck the chicken right out while leaving the skin intact. Duck web is sweet and, well, skin. It's good if you can get past how weird it is to be eating skin.
207 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
Jellyfish Salad
Geoduck Clam Sashimi
Geoduck clam insides
Sea Cucumber (whole and obviously a jerk)
Sea cucumber (small piece, yet still a jerk)
Razor Clams
Beef chow fun
Duck web
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