This shop serves up some pretty nice bowls of noodles and soup. I came in to take some Instagram photos and tried two.
Beef Noodle Soup:
Ultra-tender beef, nice fresh greens and herbs, and well cooked noodles. I don’t know what cut of beef this is, but it seems to be common among Chinese noodle shops.
When it’s cooked slow, stewed and sliced like this, it gets incredibly tender. That stuff that looks like fat or gristle is really soft and deliciously gelatinous.
Mrs. Tang’s Noodles:
This is not a soup style noodle dish. It had a nice spice level to it from the chili paste, and the ground pork was super flavorful. This was my favorite of the two.
Everything here is served to-go style, though there are some countertop seats available. Give this place a shot. I know I’ll be back to try some new menu items. And each item I had was under $10, so it’s a great bargain.
THE RICE NOODLE
190 Bleecker St
New York, NY 10012
Madame Vo is a Vietnamese joint on 10th Street near 2nd Avenue.
My wife and I have been itching to go, since we have been on a quest to find good Vietnamese food in NYC since the early 2000’s. I think we finally found it here, so let me give you the rundown of our meal.
First, Autumn Rolls. These are soft rice wrappers filled with jicama, egg, sausage and shrimp. The brilliant thing about these is that they’re sauced with a brush of hoisin prior to wrapping. Just a little hit of sri racha and you’re all set. They’re delicious.
Next up, the “Madame Pho” soup. This is served with short rib.
Awesome deep, rich beefy flavor. No sauces needed whatsoever. The broth is on point. And the meats are all high quality. It has a variety of cuts like flank, brisket, meatballs, eye round and marrow. But that short rib! So good. And the noodles were cooked perfectly.
The Bun Bo Hue, however, was even better. It’s very hard to find good pho in NYC, but it’s even harder to find good bun bo hue.
So many times, bun bo hue noodles are overcooked and fall apart when you try to pick them up with chopsticks. Here, they are nicely cooked and hold up to pulling and grabbing. The broth has a great pungent richness, bright with herbs and lime, and really deeply satisfying. Just the right amount of heat, too.
Last, the rib eye Bo Luc Lac, or “Shaking/Shaken Beef.”
I’ve often seen this made with lean cuts like sirloin and sometimes filet. This is the first time I’ve seen it made with rib eye, and also the first time I’ve seen it served with an egg.
The result is a nice sticky sweet molasses flavor, with a great sear from the sizzling cast iron skillet. The fat rendered out nicely, making for a delicious sauce sludge through which to drag your rice. I really enjoyed this dish, and it’s a perfect example of what a good chef can do with a choice grade cut of beef when he – in this case, Jimmy – knows how to coax out great flavor. 7/10.
For dessert, we shared a nice avocado shake. While pricey at $8 (avocados are expensive these days), its filling and well made. Not too sweet, and super creamy.
Mr. Taka is easily one of the best bowls of tonkotsu I’ve had in NYC. The thick, rich pork broth manages to be full of porky flavor without going overboard with the salt content or overpowering you with too much garlic. It’s velvety smooth – no off-putting textures, which can sometimes happen with thickened broths.
The meat quality is awesome. Super soft with a good char on the outside of each slab. It falls apart between your chopsticks. So good. I recommend getting an additional slab, since your bowl will only come with one if you don’t.
The noodles are the straight kind, not wavy, and if you order the spicy version you get a soft boiled egg and a normal sized blob of spicy paste that won’t overrun the entire eating experience with heat.
I highly recommend this joint for all your slurping needs. It really is as close to perfect as you’re going to get.
My buddy scored some tickets to this cool Xian Foods noodle pulling class at the New York City Wine & Food Festival, and he was kind enough to bring me along.
Basically, they taught us how to make dough, and then gave us some pre-made dough and all the ingredients to make some delicious tingly beef noodles, which has become so popular at their restaurants. Here is the man behind the brand, along with some wheat flour noodle dough:
And here is a video of me pulling my noodle:
And then some all-important final photos, and behind the scenes action of us taking photos.
Soup dumplings are some of the most amazing things to eat. That burst of thick, viscous deliciousness is like nothing else in the food world. So when two friends of mine hosted an Instagram event at Yaso Tangbao, a dumpling and noodle joint in Brooklyn, I was psyched. First, I captured this footage of the guys making the dumplings. Check it out:
Then, of course, I gorged my face off on this shit. There were three varieties of soup dumpling, the best of which was the spicy (with red powder on top).
These are some of the best I’ve tried. The pouches never ripped or stuck to the paper beneath – and the flavors inside were always robust and packing great depth.
We also tried some other fun stuff:
Along with a shitload of noodle dishes. The one with the meatballs was amazing. Those meatballs are really soft and tender, made with pork.
As far as straight up meat goes, this place also slings some killer ribs.
And while this whole fish dish isn’t on the menu (staff caught it the day before and served it to us special), one awesome thing at this place is a water cooler filled with soy sauce. Yup.
The Tang is a great little noodle bar on 1st Avenue at 7th Street. I was invited here for a PR event showcasing some of their current and forthcoming dishes. Everything I tasted was really fucking good, and, in fact, the noodle quality is probably the best I’ve had in town so far. They’re strong, thick, have a really nice texture and snap to them, and they’re really nicely flavored in all the dishes I tried.
The meats in all of these noodle dishes are outstanding, by the way. One had braised pork belly, one had sliced beef, and the other had ground meats.
Some of the soup noodle bowls are excellent too.
But this place is more than just noodles. One standout item was the sliced beef short rib. These babies are packed with a ton of flavor, and cooked so perfectly. You don’t see short rib presented like this too often, like a real cut of steak on a plate, so I am featuring it here for my steak reviews as well. Short rib can be fatty, and that’s why it is usually either grilled hard with tons of sauce, or braised. But here, it was leaner and notably excellent at medium rare temps, because it was cooked sous vide style for 20 hours. 8/10.
This place is really my speed, especially given this large format pork knuckle/shank dish that will be rolling out on the menu soon. It’s super soft and tender.
I also tried a sesame tofu dish, a salad with soft boiled egg, and some sliced, rolled chicken with chili oil.
This stand at Hudson Eats slings some decent dumplings and noodles.
My wife, a friend and I came here after a crazy chocolate event at ICE to get something a little savory to balance the palate.
We tried an order of their special kung pao chicken dumplings.
These were chock full of good quality chicken, but they were a bit over-sauced and dense. Good flavors though.
The next dumplings we tried were some pan seared pork and chive fuckers.
These were much better. They had great texture and contained the right balance of juices and meat inside. Very nice.
Finally, we tried an order of sour and spicy chicken noodles.
This contained two types of noodles: spaghetti-like clear “glass noodles,” and wide, flat noodles.
I think they could have used a hit of spice to them, but the chicken meat was high quality and the flavors worked. This place is worth a shot if you’re in the area, especially for the pan seared pork dumps.
NORTHERN TIGER
At Hudson Eats
225 Liberty St
New York, NY 10281
I picked up a Groupon deal for about $12 that gave me $40 to spend here at Bann. Pretty solid bargain. My wife and I started with a pair of apps; steamed buns and wings.
The buns contained marinated thinly sliced beef rib eye and spicy daikon. There were pretty good, and I liked the sauce, which was based on spicy bean paste, only a little thinner.
I liked the wings a lot, though I wish the honey chili glaze made them a little spicier. In any case they were hot, crispy, tender and tasty. And that’s ultimately all that fucking matters.
For our entrees we went with a noodle dish and a rice dish. First, the rice dish: steak tartare bibimbap with a raw egg yolk.
This was pretty great, served cold, of course, with a side of spicy bean paste. The greens there are spinach, and there are some other shredded veggies and mushrooms in the bowl as well.
Our noodle dish was very similar to a pork belly lo mein.
It was pretty good, but had I known it would be similar to Chinese food, we probably would have selected something else.
Vietnamese food is a tough nut to crack in NYC. Most of it sucks here, and the few places that people rave about just don’t really do it for me. I’ve been to places where they get one dish right, but fail on others. They have a great sandwich, but the soup in bland. You can literally go to almost any other city in America and find better Vietnamese food than you can in NYC, which baffles the living shit out of me. New York is the best at everything, so why not Vietnamese food? Who knows. The answer eludes me. Maybe the Vietnamese community just isn’t big enough here, or there aren’t enough courageous Vietnamese chefs that are willing to stretch their neck out and take a financial risk in the highly competitive and quick-to-closure NYC restaurant scene.
Goddess Kali: house sake, sparkling wine, chia seeds, hibiscus, lemon and pineapple.
In any case, Bo Caphe isn’t like those lame joints that attempt to offer traditional Vietnamese food and then fail to deliver because there is not one single Vietnamese person on staff who would know how to make the dishes. Bo Caphe is embracing the non-traditional by proudly offering fusion dishes that you can get excited about, like the Bao Burger with taro chips.
The burger had a nice char on the outside, with what seemed like diced onions mixed into the grind. It was juicy, and the steamed bun was the perfect Asian version of a soft and pliable yet strong potato bun. The addition of cilantro and green pepper sauce made it pop. The taro chips were a nice touch as well. They were thin, crisp, well seasoned and only occasionally greasy.
Being a French-Vietnamese fusion restaurant is nothing too outside the box, since binding the two cultures makes sense from a historical/colonial perspective. But Bo Caphe dives a bit further into French territory by offering a few selections that feature cheese, something largely not featured in Vietnamese cuisine, let alone Asian cuisine generally. Both the spring roll menu and bun menu featured cheese. The spring roll item, Vach Kiri, which literally translates to “laughing cow,” is a fried rice paper wrapper that’s filled with cheese and quinoa.
The fried chicken bun had some goat cheese. I enjoyed it, as it added a different texture and flavor combination to compliment the pickled carrots and daikon on top, but I can see how this might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
The braised beef bun, on the other hand, was pretty straight forward and delicious. No cheese that I could taste. And while I was eating this one I remarked that I was surprised the Bao Burger didn’t feature any cheese. Of all places to have it, that seems like the most proper fit for cheese in Asian cuisine.
The noodles here were fantastic. We tried two styles: one was cooked lemongrass beef, and the other was raw diced salmon. The salmon dish was reminiscent of a poke bowl but with noodles and fish sauce for dressing rather than soy-based sauces. It was refreshing and tasty.
The lemongrass beef was my favorite of the two. The beef was really tender and packed with great lemongrass flavor and aromas.
Both noodle dishes were topped with peanuts, shredded carrot and cucumber, fresh mint and a veggie spring roll.
The next two dishes we tried run the gamut from traditional Vietnamese to traditional French. No real fusion here; two dishes in the style of two different countries. The first, of course, is pho.
This aromatic, comforting soup is not bad for NYC pho, but my wife and I are just spoiled by the soups we had up in the mountains of SaPa in Vietnam. Nothing can compare. In any case, if you need a fix, this is not a bad bowl. The noodles are slightly different than the usual flat style (these are square spaghetti shaped, like “alla chitarra”), but the aromas are great and they use cilantro, which is what we saw in Vietnam fairly often. If you dress this bowl up with some hoisin and sriracha, you should be good.
The second dish is a marinated skirt steak with salad.
The steak was largely French-inspired, even down to the mustard seed sauce (which I liked very much). The steak was a bit over-cooked for my liking, but it packed a lot of flavor and was charred nicely on the outside. I’d order it again, for sure. 7/10.
The watercress salad featured some nice ripe avocados, tomatoes and red onions.
The dessert menu has some interesting selections. First was a molten chocolate lava cake with coconut. The lava wasn’t very melty, but the sauce that came with it was delicious. The coconut here was similar to the inside of a mounds chocolate candy bar.
This black sesame ice cream was more like a cream ice of shave ice texture and flavor; light, refreshing, icy rather than creamy. It was delicious, especially with the toasted sesame seeds on top.
This next dessert was an interesting take on the avocado shakes that I love to get from Vietnamese restaurants. This was a chocolate avocado mousse. You could taste equally the avocado and the chocolate, which was a flavor combination that I never thought or expected to like. It was great!
The only down side was that they didn’t have the spicy pineapple, sumac and mint salad dessert item. I was really looking forward to trying that out. Also just FYI: I was invited to this joint as an “influencer” – basically free food in exchange for pics and an honest review. So there it is.
My wife and I popped in here for a Sunday lunch when the line for Jacob’s Pickles was wrapped down Amsterdam and we had absolutely zero desire to wait it out. We’d been to the Harlem Jin location in the past and liked it, so we knew we’d most likely enjoy the UWS location as well.
I was in the mood for cold ramen, since it was pretty hot outside. They offered two styles, but I ended up going with a nice cold salmon and roe soba noodle dish instead.
This shit was delicious, and so beautiful.
Top quality sushi grade salmon, tasty, briny roe (I think it was trout roe as opposed to salmon roe), and fresh microgreens topped the perfectly cooked cold soba noodles. It came with a cup of sauce to either dip or pour on top, as well as a mixed greens side salad.
My wife went with a Kakuni ramen dish, which featured Filipino style braised pork belly and a poached egg.
That’s a huge block of pork belly! The broth was tasty without being too salty, which was nice even on a hot day (I tasted some after it had cooled down a bit). The egg was perfectly poached and the noodles were perfectly cooked.
We also tried some refreshing Japanese cocktails and pork buns.
The pork buns were excellent, with the exception that I dislike scallions that are shredded long ways instead of sliced on the bias. I found myself picking them off the bun.
Note the scallions on my wife’s Kakuni ramen were sliced the way that I prefer.
JIN RAMEN (UWS)
462 Amsterdam Ave
New York, NY 10024
