It's been a while since I posted some food related entries. Instead of giving individual reviews in separate posts, I decided to compile a lot of them into one large post. Here is the Manhattan Chinatown bonanza post featuring highlights of this small Chinese melting pot.
Nam Son
You should know by now how much I love Nam Son. There's really no point in posting a review if I keep telling you it's good every time. Instead I'll show you what other things you can order other than good ol' phở. I can't say they have stellar service, but at least they get the job done. I think their quality is consistent every time I visit so I would attribute their constant customer flow with their good food.
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| Beef pho |
First time visitors should go for their beef pho or beef combo pho. It is their best sellers and so far in all of my visits has never failed me. The beef combo includes beef slices, omosa, brisket and a couple more items.
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| Goi cuon |
The top favorites at nearly any Vietnamese restaurant is the deep fried spring roll, chả giò. However the name spring roll does prove to be confusing as Vietnamese spring roll should refer to the non-fried version called gỏi cuốn. So in order to differentiate this for English speaking customers, restaurants may use the name, summer roll. The summer roll ($4.50) is wrapped with shrimp, lettuce, rice noodles, mint, and scallion and then served with a sweet peanut sauce. I recommend pairing it with sambal oelek or sriracha for lovers of spice.
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| Banh hoi |
When I was with Lils one time, we ordered the bánh hỏi bò lụi ($13.95). This is a dish that is meant to be shared and to get your hands on. All the ingredients are put on a large plate, grilled beef, sliced cucumber, mint leaves, rice noodles, crispy peanuts, pickled carrots, and lettuce for wrapping. We found this more satisfying than bánh xèo ($9.95). It is so fun to eat and wrapping things in lettuce has always been my kind of thing. I almost forgot to mention that you get a dipping sauce too. Don't be afraid to get messy.
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| Bun bo lui |
During another time, I ordered bún bò lụi ($8.25) to satisfy my yet another craving for bun. It is beef slices and sauteed onions over cold noodles and cucumbers.
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| Bun ca ri ga |
If you happen to crave for some curry, you can try bún cà ri gà ($7.95). This is Vietnamese style curry chicken. The one at Nam Son is a non-spicy curry soup lightly sweetened with coconut milk. Your noodles are served separately so that it will not expand in the soup while it is waiting on the counter. Topped with minced cilantro, the soup contains 3 chicken thigh pieces, 2 chicken wing pieces and a few chunks of potato.
Savory Kitchen
Located right next to Nam Son is Savory Kitchen. I always visit here to buy a whole roasted chicken or duck. They have a very small seating area for locals who want to grab a meal. Their business is mostly focused on Chinese rotisserie which I highly recommend. $18 for one whole soy sauce chicken.
I have to warn that you order only Cantonese items. You would be highly disappointed ordering their Shanghainese dumplings! Stick with the traditional stuff like wonton noodle soup and pan fried noodles. They make it real crispy and top it with lots of shrimp and sauce.
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| Seafood pan fried noodles |
Pa Tea
There's bubble tea everywhere you go nowadays. With so much competition, you have to come up with something different than the shop across the street. Pa Tea has exclusively created the Stubby Sized cup. In addition to the medium (16oz) and large (24 oz) cup, you can order the stubby. They were doing a promotion in which all Stubbies (26 oz) ordered would be $4 each which would normally cost $4.75. I went for an oolong milk tea with mini bubbles. You have a choice between mini and regular sized tapioca pearls. I have to say, mini size are definitely fun size! At another time, I tried their black and yellow babo tea. It's the standard milk tea with grass jelly, pudding, and tapioca pearls.
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| A whopping 26 oz. |
Hometown Hot Pot and BBQ
I visited on Hometown on three occasions. First with a party of 20, the second time with a party of 2, and last with a party of 6. If you are with a large party, you have the honor if being seated in either a long rectangular table or a large round party like I was. Anyways, it was really fun seeing so much food on the table at once. During the first outing, all members were going for hot pot. The night was very busy, but somehow everyone's orders was taken properly. The only downside was their shrimp. It didn't taste fresh and neither was their squid which is a shame because I love seafood.
During the second time, there was only 2 of us. Hot pot with 2 people proved to be difficult because my appetite wasn't as big as I thought it would be. It is much more fun with at least 3 people.
My third trip would prove to be most fruitful. We were celebrating a birthday and decided to enjoy both barbecue and hot pot. For $31.99, you get to have a boiling pot of soup and a sizzling grill going on at the same time. This time, I went with an herbal soup base which comprised of scallion, goji berries, red dates, and a type of root. Aaahh. It was a good choice to make. I didn't know how tasty corn could be in hot pot. As per usual, we ordered both seafood and meats for hot pot along with enoki mushroom and watercress. Ingredients for that day included fish tofu, cuttlefish ball, shrimp, lunch meat, udon, ramen, beef stomach and many rounds of mini pork dumplings. The shrimp like previous times was not up to par. For this reason, I highly suggest you stay away from shrimp for future For the barbecue, we ordered trumpet mushroom, brown mushroom, asparagus, mussel, chicken with satay sauce, sliced duck, steak ribs, and another meat that I can't seem to remember. Holy crap, their barbecue is such a treat! That duck was some of the best duck I had ever had. After grilling it, all that fat came oozing out and the skin had become crispy. All their meats were marinated thoroughly and at the right amount. The chicken satay wasn't dry and stringy after barbecuing and who would have known grilled mushrooms and asparagus would taste so damn good.
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| Make your own trio of original sauces |
On the day we went for the lunch, a lot of people were dining there as well in large parties. Many of the servers directed their attention to them instead of our table of six. It proved to be problematic because we couldn't start grilling the next batch of meats unless the grilling plate was changed. We didn't mind that we had to grill the meats ourselves, but you can't expect a couple of us walking straight into the kitchen grabbing clean grilling plates. At one point, all six of us needed a drink refill and soup base replenishment so we all raised our arms in hope of flagging the attention of any of the waitstaff. We were getting angry at this point and were so close to giving them a one star service rating until all of a sudden, a miracle happened. The larger parties had finally left the restaurant and servers were changing shifts. We had a really professional server that finally was able to assist us in the grilling process. I was opened to the wonders of grilled mushrooms. The trumpet mushrooms come thinly sliced, but our server cuts the edges into strips after grilling them slightly. Then he served it with a savory sauce. All of a sudden, earthly mushrooms taste as good as roasted meat. Holy crap those mussels, yo. You see them bubbling in their juices and then topped with garlic sauce. I wish I had another one. That one star service rating became five stars.
XO Taste
Small cafes in Chinatown have often disappointed me. The prices may be cheap, but the food quality is bad. You know that the food served is straight out of a packet and then reheated. My worst memories associated with such cafes were in middle school and high school. It's no mystery that these cafes survive because students make up most of their clientele. You have very little pocket money and you want to eat out. So after I graduated from these small cafes, I moved on to other eateries. Eventually I find out that Chinatown doesn't really have a lot of spectacular places to dine. I nearly gave up until I chanced upon XO Taste with Lils. A co-worker and a former colleague highly recommended this spot.
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| Deep fried crueller ice roll |
Little did we know, this new spot will earn respect from the both of us. As of this post, we have visited it twice. There were some hits and misses. A quick glance at their menu will show you that they provide a lot of traditional Cantonese dishes with some of Hong Kong origin like the baked rice and pasta dishes. To keep up with the current food trends, XO Taste also serves bubble tea and Japanese gyoza. During our first visit, we ordered the deep fried crueller wrapped in steamed rice roll ($4.95), baked rice casserole with seafood and pork ($8.95), Peking-style pork ($11.95), and soy sauce noodles ($8.95). We got super full from all these foods and had to take some of it home.
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| Peking-style pork |
Both of us agreed that the rice rolls was our favorite out of the four dishes. The crispy crueller is best eaten fresh so I recommend you gobble this dish up first before it gets soggy. The sauce that came with it is a sweet hoisin sauce. It adds to the dish a bit, but I feel it's optional. Rather I would very much prefer that they accompany the dish with more soy sauce. The soy sauce noodles, the classic Cantonese fried noodle dish, was not the crispy kind that we had anticipated, but it was still tasty nonetheless. The Peking-style pork chop was met with mixed reviews as did the baked casserole dish. The sweet and sour sauce went really nice with the pork chop at first, but after a few bites I realized that the meat itself was very light in seasoning. It was then that I figured out that the chefs blanch their meats here rather than deep frying it. They also don't marinate it as well. For this reason, the meat is sliced thinner so that it cooks thoroughly.
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| Rice casserole with seafood and pork chop |
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| Seafood congee |
During our second visit, we did have in mind what to order. Lils wanted congee and I wanted more steamed rice sheets. So we agreed on a seafood congee ($5.50), steamed rice roll combo ($7.95), and stir fried beef slices with rice sheets ($11.95), another classic Cantonese dish. The congee had some sliced fish cake, fried crueller pieces, a little bit of squid if I remember correctly and a crab stick on the very bottom. So that's where the umami was coming from. They kept the stir fried rice sheet dish up to standards.
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| Stir fried beef with rice sheets |
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| Rice roll combo |
The least favorite dish this tome was the steamed rice roll combo. I wanted the combo to see how the other rice rolls would taste like. The combo included the deep fried crueller rice roll, the shrimp rice roll, the beef rice roll, and the char siu rice roll. Other than the deep fried crueller being our favorite, the rest of the rolls were our least favorite because they were too light in flavor. The shrimp was on the small side and wasn't too fresh. There was little shrimp flavor to begin with. The beef rice roll was not the traditional roll where they used beef hash. Here in XO Taste, they take blanched beef slices and roll it up. Points off for inauthentic taste. Lastly the char siu was not up to Chinese barbecue standards.
After this visit, both Lils and I found the answer to why many of the clientele were old grandmas and grandpas. Foods here are done in partly home style cooking featuring less oil and less sodium. Prices here are reasonable to their portions and for both visits, we had very good service.
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Places Visited
Nam Son
245 Grand St #1, New York, NY 10002
Savory Kitchen
237 Grand St, New York, NY 10002
Pa Tea
135 Mott St, New York, NY 10013
Hometown Hot Pot and BBQ
194 Grand St, New York, NY 10013
XO Taste
41 Elizabeth St, New York, NY 10013
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