在紐約小店品嘗最簡單的臺灣家常菜

我沒有料到經(jīng)過腌制的大頭菜會有魔力。

It was the only ingredient in the omelet on my plate at Mama Lee, a small, plain-spoken Taiwanese restaurant in Bayside, Queens. The eggs had been beaten loosely, so flecks of white still showed, and hustled from the pan when patchy bronze. Inside, they were studded with tender nubs of turnip, yielding with a quiet crunch.

在皇后區(qū)貝賽德面積不大、布置簡單的臺灣餐廳一品香(Mama Lee)里，腌大頭菜，只是那盤名叫菜脯蛋的菜品的食材之一。雞蛋并沒有充分打散，還能看到一塊塊的蛋白，煎到不均勻的赤褐色后迅速出鍋。蛋餅里面裹著脆嫩的大頭菜，吃上去會發(fā)出輕輕的嘎吱聲。

Nothing else had been added, not even salt. “Everything is in the turnip,” said Mei Lee, the restaurant’s eponymous owner. The root’s briny flavor was diffuse, like a tint of rose in sunglasses. It made me think of surfacing after a plunge in the sea, that half-taste, half-scent of salt.

其他什么都沒加，鹽都沒有。“味道都在大頭菜里，”與餐廳英文名同姓的老板李梅(音)說。大頭菜的咸味會散開，就像透過墨鏡看玫瑰的顏色一樣。它讓我想起了跳進海里后鉆出水面時的情形，那種一半來自嗅覺一半來自味覺的咸味。

In Taiwan, you would categorize this dish as xiao chi: small eats. It’s not fancy and not meant to be. And still I wanted to write ode upon ode to it.

在臺灣，你可能會把這道菜歸為小吃。它不精美，原本也沒人打算把它做得精美。但我還是想為它寫一首又一首頌歌。

“This is simple, home-style food,” Ms. Lee insisted. She is a no-nonsense figure in apron and bandanna, comfortingly bossy. Twice, she scolded me gently for ordering too much, concerned for my health.

“就是簡單的家常菜，”李梅堅持說。系著圍裙、裹著頭巾的她說話直截了當(dāng)，有種自在的霸氣。她兩次婉轉(zhuǎn)地指責(zé)我點的東西太多了，擔(dān)心我的健康。

Every meal begins with a generous, free bowl of soup, which, on my visits, was a clear broth made from pork bones that at first tasted of hardly anything and grew deeper with each spoonful.

客人開始吃飯時，會先喝一大碗免費的湯。我?guī)状稳ズ鹊降亩际怯秘i骨熬制的清湯，一開始喝幾乎什么味道都沒有，每喝一勺，湯的味道都會越濃郁。

Eventually nearly every table holds a plate of the enormous meatballs known as lion’s heads, rough spheres of ground pork bound by egg and mottled with ginger and garlic. They are seared briefly, then braised for two hours until they emerge as soft as physically possible without falling apart. At the touch of chopsticks, they calve like glaciers.

最后，幾乎每張桌子上都會擺一盤叫獅子頭的大肉丸。這道菜是用雞蛋將拌有姜和大蒜的豬肉糜粘合在一起，大致做成球狀。先將這些大肉丸煎一小會兒，然后再燉兩個小時，直到它們變得非常軟，同時又不會散開。在筷子的觸碰下，它們像冰川一樣崩解。

According to legend, three-cup chicken earned its name from a 13th-century recipe improvised for a hero’s last meal, with one cup each of sesame oil, soy sauce and Shaoxing wine. Here, a more complex calibration anoints boneless hunks of dark thigh meat, which acquire a seal the color of caramel in the wok and arrive shining, adorned with garlic and swooning leaves of Thai basil.

三杯雞據(jù)傳得名于13世紀(jì)時為一個英雄的最后一餐臨時想出的做法：一杯芝麻油、一杯醬油和一杯紹興黃酒。在這里，標(biāo)準(zhǔn)更復(fù)雜一些，是表面油光閃閃的去骨深色雞腿肉，這要求在制作過程中保證那種焦糖色。上桌時，菜品閃閃發(fā)光，還有大蒜和泰國羅勒葉作裝飾。

Salt-and-pepper chicken is sweeter, the skin more fluffy than crackly. As for the chicken roll, listed under Special Dishes, it has no chicken: The filling is fish paste, ground pork and carrots, infiltrated by five-spice, folded inside bean-curd skin, and fried. This also skews sweet, and comes with ketchup. Its appeal remains a mystery to me, but people at other tables seemed to like it just fine.

鹽酥雞更甜，雞皮松軟多過酥脆。至于列在“特色”一欄下面的雞肉卷，里面根本沒有雞肉：餡料是魚肉泥、豬肉糜和胡蘿卜，撒入五香粉拌勻，然后用豆皮包起來，再下鍋煎。這道菜也偏甜，且要搭配番茄醬。它受歡迎這件事對我來說依然是個謎，但其他桌的客人似乎覺得它還好。

Children bow heads over bowls of lu rou fan: ground pork, tofu and a hard-boiled egg inky from a long braise in soy and Shaoxing wine. Grown-ups want it, too, alongside hotter dishes like strips of flank steak in a swarm of longhorn green peppers, some innocent and bright, others hellbent.

孩子們只顧埋頭吃鹵肉飯：豬肉糜、豆腐和用醬油、黃酒長時間燜煮的鹵蛋。大人也會喜歡，此外還有一些比較辣的菜，比如切條的側(cè)腹牛排搭配一大團尖椒絲，其中有些純良無害，有些則要將你置于死地。

Ms. Lee, whose family has roots in northern China, grew up in South Korea; her husband is a native of Taiwan, where she went to college. For years, she said, “I was a housewife.” Then, in 2013, with her son halfway through high school, she spotted this tiny storefront next to a Taiwanese-American church.

李梅的家人祖籍中國北方，她在韓國長大，丈夫是臺灣人。她在臺灣上的大學(xué)。她說，在很多年里，“我只是個家庭主婦。”然后到2013年她兒子高中讀到一半時，她發(fā)現(xiàn)了這個緊挨著一座臺裔美國人教堂的小店面。

She runs the kitchen with her uncle Jin Tsai Liu, who was a chef at a Shanghainese restaurant in Rego Park. And every night, her husband, who works for a Chinese-language newspaper, stops by to help her clean up. “We close the door and walk home together,” she said.

她和曾在雷戈公園的一家上海餐廳當(dāng)廚師的叔父劉錦齊(音)一起經(jīng)營這家餐廳。每天晚上，供職于一家中文報紙的丈夫會順便過來幫她打掃衛(wèi)生。“我們一起關(guān)門，然后走路回家，”她說。

The dining room is spare but cheerful, with an orange back wall, taped-up Christmas cards and children’s drawings, and photographs of the Alpine village in Austria where the Lees stayed on a farm and milked cows last summer. “We enjoy natural things, not big buildings,” she said.

就餐區(qū)布置得很簡單，但色彩明亮。后墻是橙色的，上面貼著圣誕賀卡和孩子們畫的畫，以及去年夏天在奧地利阿爾比斯山區(qū)的一個村子里拍的照片。當(dāng)時，李梅一家住在一個農(nóng)場里，給奶牛擠奶。“我們喜歡自然的東西，而不是巨大的建筑，”她說。

Restaurant hours are erratic, so call ahead. The staff members take a “rest,” as the sign in the window puts it, from 4 to 5 p.m. On weekends, the food often sells out by 7:30 p.m. If Ms. Lee is not feeling well — “I used to have good health, but this restaurant gives me lots of pressure” — she will take the day off. Last year, she closed the restaurant for four months so she could spend time with her parents in South Korea.

餐廳營業(yè)時間不定，因此需提前致電。就像窗戶上的標(biāo)識牌寫的那樣，下午4點到5點工作人員“休息”。周末時，菜品往往在晚上7點30分之前就賣完了。如果感到身體不適——“我過去身體很好，但這間餐廳讓我壓力很大”——李梅就會關(guān)門。去年，餐廳歇業(yè)四個月，這樣她才有時間在韓國陪父母。

Ms. Lee is not sure if she wants more people to know that her restaurant exists. “I always tell my customers, ‘Eat for yourself,’” she said. “‘Don’t tell anyone.’”

李梅不確定自己想不想讓更多人知道存在這樣一家餐廳。“我總是對顧客說，‘你們自己吃就好了，’”她說。“‘不要告訴任何人。’”