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 pastry with greedy eyes. So we wait. My daughter and I bide our time with shrimp dumplings and nibbles of honeyed barbecue pork because there’s nothing worse than a singe to the tongue, stripping taste buds of their faculty, ruinous to pleasure. 

In Hong Kong, where I ate my first ever egg tart, these little pastries are not quite dessert, nor are they entirely savory. They’re a bit of both, which makes them an ideal order for dim sum, the afternoon meal made up of snacks to eat with a pot of tea. The only rule in dim sum, as far as I’m concerned, is variety. But more than assembling all the food groups for a balanced meal, the key to successful dim sum is an array of sensations — salty, crispy, soft, and sweet.

In Hong Kong, where I go every year to visit my family, good egg tarts are never too far away. It’s like that saying here in New York where the best pizza is the closest pizza. Or in Paris, where the best baguette is the closest baguette. Almost every one of the many Cantonese bakeries in Hong Kong, even the touristy ones like Tai Cheong in Central, make excellent egg tarts. 

In New York, however, egg tarts are a little harder to suss out. Some of the most popular destinations have closed in recent years. New Flushing Bakery in Queens closed last year as its owners went into retirement. Lung Moon in Manhattan closed in 2020. You can still get good egg tarts in the city’s various Chinatowns, of course, but let me tell you why August Gatherings is worthy of your attention.