Mid-Autumn Festival – It’s Time For Mooncakes, A Taste Test of Local Mooncakes (Part 2)

Given that people thought the first post I wrote about mooncakes, which you can see here and the fact that I realized a lot more bakeries in make their own mooncakes than I originally thought, I decided to try a few other bakeries.

I’ll get right into it since I already wrote a lot about mooncakes in the first post.

Koi Palace:

Koi Palace is obviously not in New York, it’s in Daly City, California and it maybe the most of famous Chinese restaurant in the U.S. I happened to be in Napa for a wedding, so I decided to stop by for dim sum (which I’ll be writing about soon since I’ve been there twice this year) and also picked up a mooncake. They had three kinds: purple yam with birds nest, mixed nuts with smoked ham and white lotus. In hindsight, I should’ve bought all three, but I only bought the mixed nuts with smoked ham and white lotus. So this was definitely the best mooncake of the mooncakes I’ve tried in my mooncake tasting this year. The exterior was nice and not overly oily. The filling was nicely moist and the flavoring was quite good. You could really taste the smoked ham, which sounds weird since it’s a dessert, but it went quite well and the mixed nuts gave it a nice texture. Also, the egg yolk was not dry either, which was good. Overall, this was as good as any of the good brands from Asia. I’m not sure if you can get them delivered to you, but these are probably worth it. 8.25/10

This is one of the bakeries that I frequent somewhat regularly and I’ve written about before. I tried their white lotus seed with one egg yolk. The exterior was fine, but I found the filling to be too dry and the egg yolk to be too dry as well. The flavoring was decent, but nothing special. Overall, I found it to be a bit disappointing. 6.75/10

 New Wing Wah Bakery:

This is a popular bakery in Chinatown that is much nicer than most bakeries in Chinatown. I actually haven’t really eaten much from this bakery, but I notice that it’s usually quite busy. They had a big sign advertising their mooncakes (it’s only in Chinese), so I decided stop by. These mooncakes weren’t actually made at the bakery, but I believe they were made exclusively for them by a bakery in China. These were pretty decent, they tasted very similar to Lung Moon’s, but the egg yolk was moister; the filling was nicely sweet with a good white lotus seed flavor. Overall, it was a pretty decent mooncake. 7.75/10

Overall, I don’t the bakeries in New York really stack up against the well known Asian brands, but it’s good to know that you can get at least a decent mooncake at places like Lung Moon and New Wing Wah.

Address:
Koi Palace: 365 Gellert Blvd Daly City, CA 94015; (650) 992-9000; https://www.koipalace.com
Double Crispy Bakery: 230 Grand St (between Elizabeth St & Bowery) New York, NY 10013; (212) 966-6929
New Wing Wah Bakery: 246 Grand St (between Bowery & Chrystie St) New York, NY 10002; (212) 941-1924