Social media dining trend reveals a deeper local tradition

From Shu Jiao Fu Zhou on Grand Street to Fu Zhou Wei Zhong Wei tucked in the basement of the East Broadway Mall, food influencer videos featuring Fuzhou restaurants in Manhattan’s Chinatown have flourished on TikTok and Instagram, and may well be many New Yorkers’ first introduction to Fuzhou cuisine.

On Sunset Park’s Eighth Avenue, where Fuzhou immigrants have long put down roots, restaurants specializing in Fuzhou delicacies are everywhere you look. And the fish ball, a cornerstone of Fuzhou culinary tradition, is the perfect place to start.

Fish balls have a long history in the Fuzhou region. According to Lin Zheng, chef and owner of Maylin Garden, fishermen along China’s East Sea coast had long practiced the tradition of mincing fresh fish into a paste for eating. Starch from sweet potato, introduced from South America via the Philippines in the late sixteenth century and widely cultivated thereafter, became a key ingredient in the fish ball recipes we know today.

What sets Fuzhou fish balls apart is partly their springy, savory skin, and partly their filling, primarily lean pork, which distinguishes them from the fish balls of southern Fujian and Guangdong.

Clockwise from upper left: eel fish ball from Maylin Garden, potato ball from Maylin Garden, fish ball from Fuzhou Yizhang Fish Ball Inc., and fish ball from Zheng Jin Ji Fuzhou Cuisine. Photos by Ang Zheng

The eel fish balls at Maylin Garden, located on Eighth Avenue and 55th Street, are about the size of a walnut. Their skins are translucent and yield a satisfying chew. That distinctive texture comes down to the ingredients: Maylin sources its eel from the East Sea, a choice Lin Zheng stands behind because, as he puts it, “the currents in the East Sea are strong, so [the eel there] is low in fat, which gives the fish balls their bounce. Other [fish] have too much fat, and the balls just fall apart.”

With more than 30 years in the restaurant business, Lin has steadily expanded the menu over Maylin’s decade-plus of operation. Diners can also find swallow dumplings, boiled dumplings and marinated eel among other Fuzhou staples on offer. One standout is the potato ball. Deceptively similar in appearance to a fish ball, the potato balls are made with a yellow potato-based skin. The starch in the potato lends the exterior a uniquely dense, pillowy texture, making for an interesting contrast with the eel fish ball.

Zheng Jin Ji Fuzhou Cuisine, situated on Eighth Avenue and 50th Street, has been a fixture in Sunset Park for five years. Their fish balls are generously sized with full, hearty fillings, and the skin takes on a light brown color, occasionally flecked with bits of fish skin. The hand-formed shapes vary from ball to ball.

Chef and owner Zheng Guojin left his hometown of Changle, a nearby town of Fuzhou, at age 18, traveling from place to place along the Fuzhou coast to apprentice under different masters. He notes that even within the Fuzhou region, fish ball recipes and flavor profiles differ. In the city, where locals tend to find a strong fish flavor off-putting, the fish content in the balls is proportionally lower; along the coast, including Zheng’s home of Changle and the towns of Lianjiang and Meihua where he trained, umami is prized and the fish content runs higher.

When it comes to sourcing, Zheng uses only fish caught along the American East Coast. “The freshest ingredients always make the best food,” he says. He selects whatever is in season from the waters running from North Carolina down to the Gulf of Mexico off Florida, and from experience has found that the different fish species available along the East Coast yield largely similar results. Beyond fish balls, the restaurant also serves other Fuzhou comfort foods including minced beef soup, fried rice, sesame bread stuffed with bamboo shoots and pork, and iced rice.

The history of Fuzhou Yizhang Fish Ball Inc., on 60th Street, traces back to an apartment kitchen in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Owner Mandy Lin tells me that in those early years, her in-laws had just arrived in New York and were working at a garment factory in Chinatown; to supplement the family income, they began making fish balls at home to sell to the nearby Fuzhou community.

After learning the craft from her in-laws, Mandy moved to Sunset Park more than a decade ago, opening her first fish ball shop at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 60th Street, until a fire broke out in the basement, forcing the family to eventually relocate to their current storefront. Through it all, Mandy has been guided by the belief that “if you’re going to do something, you have to do it seriously.”

Building on the recipe her in-laws passed down, she has spent years refining her technique, steadily elevating the fish balls and developing new dishes along the way, including soup dumplings and braised soups. She also runs a TikTok livestream channel alongside the shop, through which she has shipped their fish balls to customers across the country. The fish balls here are large and generously filled; small air pockets in the skin give them a soft texture, while a delicate broth draws out the subtle fragrance of the filling. Looking ahead, Mandy is exploring the possibility of passing the shop on to the next generation.

From an apartment kitchen beside a Chinatown garment factory, to a storefront on a Sunset Park corner, to her son now standing at the cutting board beside his mother, slowly finding his way into the craft, a bowl of fish balls carries more than just flavor. It carries the story of generation after generation making a home in a foreign land. And on Eighth Avenue, that story is still being written.