In honor of Chinese New Year, Jeremy and I thought it was fitting to head to Chinatown. We decided to do something a little different this time around. We did a Lanzhou hand-pulled noodle soup crawl. Four restaurants, four bowls of soup, four types of dumplings.
Although hand-pulled noodles are a specialty of Lanzhou, most of the restaurants and noodle pullers are from the Fujian province. Who would have thought? To help with the geography, that's sort of like saying someone from Maine specializes in Cajun cuisine.
Our first stop was the Lam Zhou Hand Made Noodle and Dumpling shop on East Broadway.
JEREMY
The first restaurant was a bit of a dive. There were only a few tables and a counter. Near the kitchen, a waitress was making dumplings. We were the only ones in the restaurant. We heard that the beef brisket soup noodle was good so we ordered that plus a serving of fried dumplings.
The cook came out, took a slab of dough and started stretching the dough. He kept stretching and beating the dough on a marble counter. Somehow he stretched them into fine noodles. A couple of minutes later, our soup arrived.
The soup was really good. The meat was okay but the broth and noodles were very tasty. Shortly after, the pan-fried dumplings arrived. The dumplings were the best I ever had. They had a nice crisp outershell with a juicy meat inside. The dumpling sauce was really good. Lam Zhou Noodle Shop was my favorite of all the restaurants we ate at.
MARCI
I would agree this noodle shop was my favorite. What it lacked in atmosphere (as in none), it made up for in flavorful soup, delicious dumplings and bargain prices. Our total bill for a big bowl of soup and dumplings came to $7.50.
Lam Zhou Handmade Noodle
144 East Broadway
212 566 6933
NYC
a thumbs up from Jeremy is 4 out of 5 stars
JEREMY
Since we had three other restaurants to visit, we took our noodles and dumplings to go and headed to the next place, Super Taste. This was my second favorite place. This time we ordered the hand-pulled noodles in a hot and spicy soup. The soup was good but the noodles and beef were not as good as the first place. The steamed dumplings were good but I prefer them fried.
MARCI
I actually preferred the broth at Super Taste because of its spice. Noodles were made in the kitchen so there wan't as much as a show. The meat was pretty tough. Dumplings were good. Everything was served in plastic -- convenient because we only ate a little and took the rest to go. Ever so slightly nicer in atmosphere, I definitely would recommend this place.
Super Taste Restaurant
26 N. Eldridge Street
212 625-1198
The third place we visited was the least known of the bunch. It seems each place we visited was a little more upscale than the next. This one was called Kuai Le.
JEREMY
The waiter here was the friendliest of all. We decided to try a different soup: the House Special Hand Pull Noodle which consisted of noodles, broth, duck, tripe, beef with a fried egg of top. The soup wasn't that great but it was the first time I ever had tripe (beef stomach lining). Tripe tasted like a new bicycle tire. My mom wouldn't try it. The fried egg on top was tasty. Then we ordered the steamed little juice buns which we thought were going to taste like soup dumplings but it was just little doughy buns.
MARCI
No way would I try the tripe! And even though I am sure the soup was simply beef broth, somehow the knowledge that there was tripe in the soup made me think otherwise. The little juice buns were not what we thought they would be but there were tasty.
Kuai Le
28 Forsyth Street
212 941 7678
By the time we got to our final restaurant, Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodle, we were a little full and a little tired of eating noodles but, itinerant bloggers that we are, we persevered. Tasty is probably the best known and most written about of all the noodle places we visited.
JEREMY
I really didn't like Tasty. The place was very crowded and they put us at a table next to the bathroom. We ordered something different here too, which was probably a mistake. But we wanted to try the seafood noodle soup. It was filled with shrimp, fish ball, squid and mussels. The soup arrived with a big stick of fake crab and two fish balls. It tasted weird. The steamed chicken and vegetables dumplings weren't that good either. I couldn't wait to leave.
MARCI
The biggest of all the restaurants we visited, Tasty had the most extensive menu. Perhaps we should have stuck to the beef soup; the seafood soup was very okay. The dumplings were actually quite tasty. It also was the most expensive of the restaurants we ate at, although still an affordable $12.00 for lunch.
Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodle
One Doyers Street
212 791 1817
Armed with eight take out containers of soup and dumplings, we decided to make one last stop.
JEREMY
We weren't very hungry for dessert so we decided to take things to go from the New Golden Fung Wong Bakery. We ordered a traditional Chinese New Year bean paste dough ball with sesame seeds, a Chinese version of a rice krispie treat, a sesame cookie, some sort of chocolate walnut cookie and an almond cookie. We got home and sampled each. The dough ball was kind of gross. My favorite was the sesame cookie but the almond cookie and chocolate walnut cookies were pretty good too.
MARCI
Definitely the sesame cookie was the winner but the almond cookie reminded me of Sunday nights at China Jade where I grew up.
New Gold Fung Wong Bakery
41 Mott Street
212 267-4037
Would we do another food crawl? I say yes, Jeremy says no. He prefers to sit at one restaurant and sample lots of different things. Regardless, it was a fun-filled afternoon and we had plenty of left overs to serve Jon and guest blogger, Max.
