Moving to New York from the suburbs can definitely be quite a shock, especially when it comes to the prices of...just about anything, and especially food! Where I grew up, $10 is the average for a meal at a restaurant but when I moved to NY, I had to adjust that prices to $20+. This is especially hard if you are on a student budget. However, fortunately, you can eat well and cheaply in Chinatown! My two favorite restaurants in Chinatown are Joe's Shanghai (they have one of my favorite dishes - shrimp with walnuts and mayonnaise!...oh and of course, the soup buns) and Excellent Porkchop House. Joe's Shanghai is a good place to go for family-style eating with a big group of friends and you want to share a bunch of dishes. However, Excellent Porkchop House is one of the few places in Manhattan for Taiwanese food - needless to say, it has become my go-to for Chinatown. Also, since you usually just order your own food, it's kind of low maintenance.
My guy friends love the porkchop over rice and all say good things about the chicken leg over rice as well. My brother actually says the chicken is better than the porkchop! It might sound ironic, but I don't think I've ever ordered the porkchop at Excellent Porkchop House. Instead, I get the "gan mein" [soooo good, tastes like cold sesame noodles but better] and the spicy wontons in chili oil ["hong you chao shou"?]. [Ok, so the gan mein is actually listed on the menu as Herbal Soup with lo mein - but the lo mein is what I'm talking about - you can get it as a dish by itself if you ask...although it might help to ask in Mandarin, since we're in Chinatown and all.] When I went the other week, I was feeling a bit under the weather so I just got the fish ball soup which looked kinda boring, so I didn't take a picture of it [although, I definitely recommend the fish ball *noodle* soup ~ their noodles are really fresh and kinda awesome]. Here are the spicy wontons:
I love getting these and dumping the extra sauce on any leftover rice to eat. It's not actually spicy, but just very flavorful. [Side note: I also love these wontons at the Flushing Mall in Queens - at the stall that is at the far right when you are walking into the food court. At that stand, they give a LOT of sauce and minced garlic on top of the wontons. One thing I sometimes wish the Excellent Porkchop House had is the minced garlic topping.]
After lunch with my friend, I walked over to Xi'An Famous Foods on East Broadway under the bridge to pick up some dinner for my brother. They were recently voted Best Noodles for NY magazine's best food of 2010. It is a tiny stall but they are continuously turning out fresh noodles and sandwiches.
My brother told me that their "savory cumin lamb-pulled noodles" tasted like the noodles we had in Guangzhou a few summers ago - which was probably some of the best food I've ever had. We scarfed down that meal in like literally 3 minutes. However, when I tried some of the noodles from Xi'An, it was not that good. The flavor was excellent, like NY magazine describes - you can definitely taste the cumin and I do like the smoky flavor of the lamb. However, I think I prefer thinner noodles than the ones at Xi'An. I'm not sure if Xi'An makes thinner noodles or if I could request that somehow? I guess these thicker noodles are just too chewy for me...and I'm lazy...
This picture isn't that great since I picked up the noodles for take-out. This past week, my brother also picked up the spicy tofu there and I loved it - same flavor as in the noodles, but just with tofu! [Tofu is one of my favorite foods in the world!]
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