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| - In a nutshell: decent food, fast service, a little expensive compared to similar restaurants uptown
From an Asian standpoint, this is your typical chinese diner joint; your mindset is to get some comfort food, have it fast and have it hot. Some of the staples are the congee, the noodles and rice and usually a side order.
Our orders:
- Singapore stir fry turnip cake
This is a twist to the traditional version which you usually get during dim sum or street food. In addition to just steamed (to actually cook the turnip cake), a southern Asian way is to flash fry with peppers, garlic and little bits of pork meat. The result, you still get a mushy turnip texture in the middle but you get a browned little crispy exterior - it's like the Chinese version of tater tots.
- Sweet and Sour (Xiamen/Amoy) vermicelli
A Chinese staple, this dish is one of the many variations to making vermicelli epic. Xiamen is a southwest costal city so you're definitely expecting some type of seafood component in there. We chinese love chicken/pork so expect that in there too. Some of the vegetable content includes green onions, garlic and preserved cabbage (taste like a mild flavored sauerkraut). This is all cooked in a high flame wok with soy sauce and sugar(that's the unique part of this dish) with of course vermicelli. A good Amoy vermicelli should be 1) well distributed sweetness 2) savory ingredients 3) I like my vermicelli not too dry aka have some sauce to coat the noodles 4) piping hot
IMO:
- food was hot. Can't say how important it is for this stuff to be hot at the table. It's like eating cold pizza if it's not hot-ugh
- + on the turnip cake. They didn't overpower it with peppers, did not taste burntness, well prepared
- vermicelli was average. I liked that it was hot (yes, I know I said it already), noodles were a little dry but the sweetness of the preserves cabbage saved it a little bit
- place was clean, service was fast (I went around 5:30-6)
- probably it was midtown, prices were jacked up 1-2 dollars compared to uptown.
- overall, you're going to a diner and this place delivered what a Chinese diner needs to be.
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