Take Note of These Egg Tarts

A Chinatown restaurant makes Cantonese-style egg tarts as compelling as any laminated French pastry.

At August Gatherings in Chinatown, the egg tarts are palm-sized and quivering. They come two to an order, their middles wobbling with the uncertainty of just-baked custard, hot and loose and threatening to spill if you crack their shells too soon.

“Very hot,” warns one of the servers, and then another as he sees us looking over these bronzed moons of pas…