Good enough for Bourdain, good enough for me, I thought. Walking from Canal Street, we arrived first at Hop Kee and decided to try it.Īs we descended the steps and entered the restaurant, my eyes landed on a photo of chef and television personality, Anthony Bourdain. After the tour, my friend Joan and I returned to Chinatown. Neither was a stop on our tour but I was curious to find out whether there was more to them than their location. There are two in Manhattan’s Chinatown – Hop Kee at 21 Mott Street and Wo Hop at 17 Mott Street. Overly sweet, overly cooked, overly… not good.I had never heard the term cellar restaurant until Liz of Ahoy New York mentioned it during our walking tour of Little Italy and Chinatown a few weekends ago.Ĭellar restaurants are located in the basement of a building. Yvo says: This place is for tourists or white people or something. Seriously?Īnd my fortune cookie had no fortune! Maybe that’s why I’ve been having a terrible year? They weren’t even that busy when we sat down – but the food was all overcooked.Īnd then to prove the point that we were in the wrong place, they gave us a bowl of fortune cookies to end the meal. The whole table, as we attacked… and were disappointed by pretty much. So bad I couldn’t eat more than a piece or two. Well, no one wanted to take leftovers because while the sauce was good, the fish was way overcooked. The last request I made was a whole fish that we would eat, but not finish, and not take leftovers. The meat was pretty juicy – the one piece I tried – but I thought it wasn’t flavored as well as it could be. My first plate: noodles, which I liberally doused in the red vinegar (yum), some pork, which was only okay, the greens… the squid, which was also only okay – a little overcooked – and the crab, which I only had a little bit once Hungry said they were overcooked. We literally saw it on every single other table, and people enjoying them heartily. Every single table that night ordered this dish. The next dish was chosen by the Beer Boor – salt/pepper pork chops.Īnd one of the dishes that kept popping up every time I did a very cursory search on this place (read: I did not really research): Cantonese style ‘dry’ crabs. Cooked crisp, bright green… but still only so-so. Some random green veggies to give the illusion of health… these were probably the only dish that was exactly as we expected when we ordered it. Then the excess of sauce got the best of the noodles and they turned very soggy. But the sauce was about what I’d wanted, a little on the sweet side with a bit too much corn starch (and therefore gloppy), and the noodles were crisp… at first. Noodles with their length represent longevity… never cut noodles! (Or break spaghetti, I will yell at you.) In any case, these were not quite the noodles I thought I’d ordered – I thought I ordered Cantonese lo mein, the thin egg noodles that are pan fried until crisp, then topped with gravy. My second request for Lunar New Year was noodles. I mean, the dumplings weren’t inedible, but they were fairly boring, flavorless, and oddly textured. I don’t know.ĭepending who you asked, it marginally improved the fried dumplings. Some gloppy sweet, weird, ketchup-y BBQ sauce type thing. This arrived when we ordered fried dumplings, accompanied by: My Lunar New Year demands are simple: first, dumplings. This is about the only time of year I ever really pay attention to the Asian portion of my culture maybe because it’s so food-centric it’s hard to not want to be part of the fun! A few friends and I decided to meet up and attempt to celebrate what we knew… Unfortunately, I randomly Google’d “Cantonese restaurant Chinatown” instead of forcing them to travel to Queens to Cantonese restaurants I know are great. Another Lunar New Year has passed, which means it’s time for me to start writing my Lunar New Year posts… Well, first up is the night before Lunar New Year.
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