Fung Tu at night is a faint red glow on a block of almost Chinatown on the Lower East Side. Inside, the booths are puritanical, with stiff backs of dark stained wood, overlooked by mirrors and crimson wallpaper in a study of drifting leaves.
The look suggests a modern cha chaan teng, the kind of old-school Hong Kong coffee shop celebrated in the film “In the Mood for Love,” which Maggie Cheung haunts in a cheongsam with swirled-up hair, slinky and demure at once. And while the menu here is loftier than a cha chaan teng’s roster of Western-ish Chinese comfort food, it too looks from East to West in surprising ways.
In lieu of Chinese red jujubes, there are plump Medjool dates, steeped in soy, star anise and bark cinnamon, smoked over applewood and filled with duck confit, then buttermilk-battered and deep-fried. The layers astound: first salty crunch, then sweet chew, and finally the yielding center of succulent duck, still ticking with heat.
Shrimp paste, served with dainty leaves of Shanghai bok choy, is made with shrimp rubbed with Old Bay spices, as if at a crab boil, and steamed rather than fermented. It still throws a punch, the shrimp’s brininess underscored by tomato paste and the Chinese threesome of ginger, garlic and scallions.
Nubs of beef jerky, from Jung’s on Mulberry Street, are tossed with dill sprigs, dill pollen and peanuts fried in oxtail fat. How is it that this dish never existed before? It is less food than compulsion, bright, grassy and carnal, and entirely plausible as an entrant in the Chinese canon.