Xie Bao

Xie Bao is a food-court counter devoted to one luxurious thing: crab roe, a golden Shanghainese delicacy. It is the first stall on the left as you walk into the New York Food Court on Roosevelt Avenue — a basement Robert Sietsema calls his favorite of Flushing's food courts.

Get the crab roe over noodles rather than rice, so the noodles can drink up the sauce — salty, sweet and creamy at once. Then a pot of chicken broth with crab roe and pork skin, or a flaky yellow croaker in noodle soup. It costs more than most food-court lunches, and it should.