Daily News from New York, New York • 1723

VV a. Jb it food qhMHiood By WILLIAM GILLEN and PATRICIA M. MACKENZIE LIVELY NEIGHBORHOOD has i sprung up. It's packed with restau-irants and ethnic food shops, and ft 'v S.C tUM rH 0 vf 4- they call it Brooklyn Chinatown. Located along Eighth Ave.

between 52d and 61st this area is nestled in between Sunset Park and Borough Park, with Bay Ridge to its south. On the lampposts along the avenue, orange and blue signs proclaim "8th Avenue Revitalization." You know this is true because parking spaces are difficult to find. For years, this area held onto its Norwegian-American ties, but since 1984, there has been an influx of Chinese from the Canton province. These newcomers took the Brooklyn-bound train from Canal Street and got off at the first outside station. They couldn't read signs or speak English, but they knew that in the surrounding blocks, a sewing job could be found in one of the small garment factories.

For the sake of convenience, they started to move in, and the merchants followed. Come on a weekend and experience all the hustle and bustle. As you come out of the Eighth Ave. subway station, look right and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge can be seen on the horizon. To begin your food adventure, make a left and follow the crowd.

At the corner of 55th St, you will find the Ocean Palace Seafood Restaurant, the biggest Chinese restaurant in the borough. Here, you will see families of three generations sitting at big GRASP AT GOOD LUCK: Winley Supermarket is one of many businesses to spring up in Brooklyn featuring Chinese ethnic foods. Come on a weekend and experience all the hustle and bustle. York, and if you have never sampled Swedish limpa or the currant and raisin-filled julekaker breads, this is the place to try them. The prices are a throwback, too, so you can buy plenty for snacking on the ride home.

Ocean Palace Seafood Restaurant, 5423 Eighth (718) 871-8080. Wee Kee Restaurant, 5414 Eighth (718) 972-4971. Gia Lam Vietnamese Restaurant, 5402 Eighth (718) 854-8818. Supermarket, 5705 Eighth (718)435-3388. Winley Supermarket, 5515 Eighth (718) 851-1015.

D.J. Guy Supermarket, 6022-6102 Eighth (718) 921-0575. Istanbul Helal, 5903 Eighth (718) 436-2724. Two Friends Grocery, 5323 Eighth (718) 853-6053. Olsen's Bakery, 5722 Eighth (718) 439-6673.

(Closed Sundays). (Gillen and MacKenzie publish The NY Food Letter.) salad and rice paper, is another recommended dish. This is our top choice for a restaurant in the neighborhood. The food-shopping along Eighth Ave. will take you all around the globe.

Our favorite Asian market is the Supermarket. It is a double-size storefront and has the freshest-looking fish. They even have tanks of live fish, lobsters and crabs. Everything in the place looks neat and clean, and someone is always energetically mopping the floor. Out front, they recently were selling the biggest grapefruit ($6.99 and up) we have ever seen.

Some of them were the size of bowling balls. They come fresh from Thailand, with stems and leaves still attached. As you enter the Winley Supermarket (see related article, this page) you spot a hanging sign that points left for Asian food and right for American food. Go left to see a good selection of Chinese, Filipino and Thai ingredients. The newest supermarket to open is D.J.

Guy. The big surprise here was a huge bucket of live snapping turtles ($9 each). Behind the checkout they have glass jugs filled with dried scallops for $89 a pound and abalone for $169 a pound. Another ethnic store worth a visit is Istanbul Helal. which carries a number of Middle Eastern specialties.

The owners are from Turkey. Bins of grains lined up in the front window are filled with bulgur, farina, semolina flour and our favorite basmati rice. Two Friends Grocery specializes in Pakistani and Indian products. They carry orange and yellow dal (beans), ghee (clarified butter) in hotel-size mayonnaise jars, curry, spices and pudding mixes from Pakistan. The oldest store in the neighborhood is Olsen's Bakery, which dates back 75 years.

This old-fashioned Norwegian bakery opens in the morning at 5 a m. Start at one end of the oak display case and begin selecting: Linzer tortes, raspberry cups, prune pockets, custard danish, jelly doughnuts, tea biscuits, cookies, pound cake and a chocolate cupcake with white frosting inside. They make the best white bread in New round tables feasting on noodles, seafood and the ever-popular dim sum (served daily until 3 p.m.). If you are hungry, don't worry: The dim sum carts start rolling early. As the carts go around the dining room, they will stop at your table and you simply point to the items that look interesting.

Try the steamed dumplings and pan-fried noodles a plate). Most of the waitresses pushing the carts at Ocean Palace are still learning to speak English. The waiters direct traffic and help translate. Another appealing morning place is the Wee Kee Restaurant, formerly The Atlantic, which bills itself as "Chinese-Norwegian-Ameriean." For years, this diner-style restaurant was our frequent spot for a hearty breakfast of Norwegian-style pancakes. Happily, the new owners have kept waitress Bjerg, and the thin crepe-style pancakes ($2.90) are still coming off the griddle.

It is something to see old-time neighbors eating pancakes alongside Chinese families enjoying big bowls of noodles. If you have never tried Vietnamese food, Gia Lam Restaurant is the place to go. When you enter, you will be greeted warmly by the staff. This popular, 12-table establishment is always busy, and you can expect to wait during peak weekend times. Try the tasty Vietnamese spring rolls (eight for $5) that are filled with ground pork and vermicelli noodles.

The grilled beef with lemon grass served with assorted fresh and pickled vegetables. Down in Sunset Paris, a world-class supermart By LENORE SKENAZY ka's optimistic slogan: "The taste of game has made Joika famous!" Surely you must be joik-ing. Hispanic shoppers at Winley can find elusive goodies like Costa Rican potatoes the size of large olives ($2.19 a bag), as well as the usual rice and beans. Intimidated? Don't be. Just a few freezer doors down from the frozen pork dumplings you'll find familiar-looking boxes of toasted almond Bungalow Bars.

This old-time New York ice cream might seem woefully unexotic even mundane in this context But move to another country and you will miss it as much as any ball of fried Bambi meat And rainforest Stroll Winley's aisles and witness what Marshall McCluhan might have called the global dinner. Frozen empan-ada dough crucial to Argentinian pocket pies sits just a few feet down from frozen lotus buns (4 and a tube of oh-so-Scandinavian smoked cod roe caviar paste Nearby, a can of Hong Kong sarsparilla drink (69?) chills beside a minican of Bud! At $5.99, a can of the Joika fried venison balls isn't cheap, but it does make a wonderful conversation piece. balls, Also worth noting is Joi- Daily News Staff Writer LOOKING FOR roasted seaweed, Puerto Rican pigeon peas or maybe some fried Norweigan venison balls? You've come to the right place: Winley Supermarket If Winley relocated to SoHo, it could claim a "global gourmet sensibility" and charge accordingly. But since it's down in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, it simply serves up far-flung treats, reasonably priced, to customers still pining for the fjords. And rice paddies..