Lost City Asks "Who Goes to King Yum?"
I made one of the biggest hauls in the history of "Who Goes There?" to get to King Yum in Fresh Meadows. Had to take the F all the way to the Kew Gardens stop and them hop the 46 bus a few miles down Union Turnpike. Took an hour or more. But I'm glad I did it. I've been hearing about this place for years. Wonderful decor inside (see below). But the food is terrible. I wish I could say otherwise. The stuff at the late lamented Jade Mountain, while never great, was better than this. Torpid salty sauces and low-quality ingredients. There's no call for it, particularly at the prices they charge, and given they own the building. It's all profit. So why not up the quality a notch or two. I hope they do. I'd like to see the place stick around. But you can't eat atmosphere.
Who Goes There? King Yum
There's been a lot of talk in food and drink circles this year about the tiki revival. I wonder if any of it has penetrated the thick walls of King Yum, where large tiki masks have stared with glowing eyes, and irony-free umbrella have graced "exotic" drinks for 57 years. If it has, it hasn't caused the Fresh Meadows institution to change a single thing about the way they do business. The old, thin Chinese waiters wear their red jackets. The unreconstructed Cantonese-American dishes come to the table in metal serving dishes, the kind with a silver lid over them—something I haven't seen since the East Village's Jade Mountain closed years back. And you get a fortune cookie at the end.
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