Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Excellent Pork Chop House? Yes, actually.

This week we ventured down to my favorite little crooked street in Chinatown to visit our local Taiwanese noodle shop, Excellent Pork Chop House,  on Doyers street. As usual, Ian was there as well as our semi-regular guest-star, Eugene.We've been coming to the Pork Chop House for years and it has consistently been a great place to go for fantastic soup and some really interesting and tasty appetizers. For 5 or 6 bucks, you can have a heaping portion of  noodle soup topped with some slightly sour pickled greens (to counterpoint the salty broth of course). With your soup, you are entitled to your choice of a quarter chicken (leg and thigh) or a pork chop, both are served fried and slathered in omnipresent Five Spice powder, and either variation lives up to the restaurant's namesake adjective-- excellent if you forgot! To be honest, I've hardly had a better piece of fried chicken in New York.  It's moist, the skin is thin yet crispy, and for something that comes straight out of the fryer, it's not too greasy either.

Betcha didn't know you could have fried chicken with your soup!



Let me back up for a moment since this isn't how we started this meal and the appetizers are half the fun. Definitely ask for one of the picture menus they keep up front, they are an invaluable aid and we still ask for them nearly every time we eat here. As usual, to keep things blogworthy, we decided to order a whole boatload of appetizer.All of the small dishes are great along with some of the appetizers we didn't order like garlic cucumbers.

"Scalded Vegetable" with  Five Spice and minced Garlic

You can order half and half- seaweed and marinated bean curd
Delicate and Delicious Sichuan style Spicy Wonton

 The ground rice flour noodles At Excellent Pork Chop House are very tasty but are not made in house.  They come in three shapes and sizes, Mei Fun, essentially an angel hair, "Silver" noodle, which is Spaghetti or Lo Mein sized, and what the menu calls "board" noodles, which should really read "broad" or Chow Fun style. Ian opted for the Mei Fun noodle with pork chop.

Ian happy with Mei Fun


Me happier with Silver noodle

Eugene dumbfounded with rice

Ian loved his soup and thought his pork chop, dusted in a coating of Five Spice powder, was just delicious. For those of you who aren't familiar with five spice powder, as with curry powder, it can contain a wide variety of spices. At Excellent Pork Chop House, the powder has a strong cinnamon taste as well as star anise. If you don't like the taste of Five Spice, you won't like Excellent Pork Chop House. Even the tea and water taste of it.  For inquiring minds that want to know more about five spice, here is a link.

Eugene was slightly disappointed by his braised chicken soup with rice on the side. This dish can also be had in a spare rib variant and with either one can choose a "dry" bowl of noodles to accompany it or rice. I've had this chicken several times and I think it is very good but not quite as good as the regular soup with the fried pork chop or chicken accompaniment.

Braised chicken soup with rice
The signature dish- Five Spice fried pork chop and soup with Mei Fun noodles

This is what the table looked like when all the food had been delivered.

We ate it all!
There are also a number of interesting rice cake stir fry dishes on the menu, a good beef stew (but not as good as Yogi Noodle) and a sour cabbage soup I would like to try one of these days when I'm not too tempted by the dishes I already know and love. With tip, this meal came in at $12 a person, but we could have done it much more cheaply if we didn't overindulge in the appetizers. Definitely visit Excellent Pork Chop House, because it really is!

Friday, August 19, 2011

Nam Son: The Good, the Bland, and the Fugly

The Good     There are many good thing about the Pho from Nam Son at 245 Grand Street in Chinatown. The meat used in the Pho Tai doesn't seem to be carved off of some frozen block of roast beef purchased at Western Meats. In fact, it's probably the best Eye of Round I have had in any of New York's many Pho joints. It's juicy and tender and doesn't arrive overcooked in the soup. The rice noodles are good too- they are firm and aren't overdone into a gloppy porridge. Properly cooked noodles are easy to cradle with your chopsticks, while overdone ones are often slimy and tend to slip back into the gelatinous mire.

No slippage

A perfect pink
It's difficult to top Nam Son for the meat and the noodles, they seem to do these better than just about everybody else serving Pho in New York. Still, however important these two staples are, there is a third element in the holy trinity of Pho ingredients: The BROTH, which brings us to  
The Bland  On the day we chose to eat at Nam Son, our dreams of Pho grandeur were dashed against the rocks of a lackluster broth. One may say it was even watery, which is generally not a good word to use when speaking of broths.We've probably been to Nam Son over 20 times, and to be fair, we have had much better broth than we had on our last visit. I'm not sure what it was like in the kitchen that day, but I do know that  Nam Son is constantly dishing out Pho, and water is constantly being added to a stock pot concentrated with the flavor of beef bones. A lunch rush can throw the delicate balance of flavors into disarray, especially if the pot isn't given sufficient time to "digest" the added water. Nam Son was busy the day we visited, as it often is, so to this we will chock up the bland stock, which was notably missing a good dash of salt and perilously deficient in star anise.

On another note, it's always nice to receive a heaping plate of vegetables to add to your Pho, but alas here we were disappointed too. No culantro or cilantro and no lime- but the biggest insult was they actually gave us lemons..

What, no lime? Surely you jest!

Limes are important. No one has written a song about eating up a coconut full of lemons. Nobody is dispensing unwanted, pithy advise about what to do when life gives you LIMES. True, there is a disease called Lymes, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the fruit. I don't want a LEMON in my PHO. You just can't create the right tangy/salty balance with a lemon. You can't tell me you are serious about your Pho when you bring me a plate with a lemon on it. I'll end this rant here; suffice is to say that every time I receive a lemony vegetable plate with my Pho I die a little....

Ian, deeply hurt and limeless

The Fugly Although we always enjoy dining at Nam Son, recently we made a discovery that was downright fugly.  The price of a bowl of Pho at Nam Son, averaging about $5.50, is generally in-line with what the rest of the Vietnamese restaurants are charging- unless you want the big bowl. For experienced Pho eaters like myself, this isn't even a choice, I always order the larger portion primarily for one very simple reason.... you get MORE. Also, sometimes its a little tough to work with a smaller bowl, I believe the Germans called this "Lebensraum", or "living space". Although I don't need to invade the Czech Republic, or even annex Austria, I do need my "Pholebensraum". Most restaurants will charge only a dollar and sometimes two for this privilege, but at Nam Son they actually charge DOUBLE for this. That means the price of my bowl of delicious Pho is creeping into Ramen territory.  Nam Son, when your broth is Good , your bowl of Pho is unmatched in Manhattan, but when it's watery and Bland like it was on our last visit, and when the price for a big bowl is four dollars more than it should be, AND you give us lemons, well, that's just Fugly.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Is the best Pho in New York actually in New Jersey?

Pho is just about my favorite thing in the world when done well. Indeed, I have often theorized that if the Buddhists have it right about reincarnation, I may very well come back as a steaming hot bowl of Pho. There is even some karmic justice to the idea. In this spirit, last week on my way to the Jersey Shore, I decided to stop off in Atlantic City in order to satisfy my degenerate gambling addiction, but also to satisfy another addiction by enjoying a delicious bowl of Pho at Pho Sydney at 2323 Atlantic Avenue. I was accompanied by Miss Charice Silverman, who I decided to initiate into the way of Pho for the very first time.

I don't wish to discuss the Asian gambling gene, but those of you who have spent any time in a casino know.... Asians love a little betting action. This has a beneficial side effect for foodies- whether in Vegas or Atlantic City, there is usually decent Asian food to be found. Almost every casino in Atlantic City has an Asian restaurant, and some even have Hong Kong style noodle bars. There are also at least three Vietnamese restaurants, and Pho Sydney is without question the best of them.

As usual, we aren't going to give demerits for ambiance. There is a large TV sitting on the bar, and the decoration is questionable although the diner style booths were comfortable.

Everyday is XMAS at Pho Sydney
We started out with some summer rolls- because it was hot and it was summer. Pho usually only takes about 5 minutes to come out and is filling enough, but I'm a glutton so I usually want something the moment I sit down, at least that's my expectation in most Vietnamese restaurants. The summer rolls were good if not slightly bland, they filled us up and helped us pass the time while waiting for our soup, but they weren't bursting with flavor and the peanut sauce was a little thin.

Summer Rolls-- good enough

So, let us get to the meat of things. When it comes to ordering Pho, I will invariably order the Pho Tai, which means the beef "Eye of Round" (think Roast Beef) that is sliced thin and served raw and cooks within seconds in the hot beef broth. There are many meat options that I usually pass on, including cartilage, brisket, meatballs, and other sorted and sundry animal parts, but Tai seems to work best for me although sometimes I will add the brisket if I know its especially good. Chicken Pho, or Pho Ga, can be especially delicious if cooked properly with a chicken broth but it is hard to find and many restaurants will cheat and offer some variation of beef Pho with some BBQ chicken on the side, in which cased it should be skipped. I'm excited to say that my friend and fellow newbie blogger Bryan Bui at http://phokingserious.blogspot.com/ will be having a homemade chicken Pho party sometime in the near future, so stay tuned for that post. The Pho should be served with a heaping plate of vegetables to add to it, which usually includes bean sprouts, Thai basil, a wedge of two of lime (although lazy restaurants will sneak in lemons), Cilantro (but not always), Culantro (the long leaves in the pic below),  jalapenos, and sometimes mint.

Fresh veggies to add to Pho
Pho for the very first time

Pho love
I've been to Vietnam before. One day while I was there, I ate Pho for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner. I'm not even kidding - that is how much I like Pho. Even now, I'm tempted to abandon writing this blog and go get another bowl of Pho. At the age of eighty three, my grandchildren will probably find me seated at the kitchen table with me head planted face down in a bowl of Pho.... hopefully only recently deceased.

To sip on the broth at Pho Sydney is like being transported to Vietnam - side note-  Vietnam combat vets may wish to avoid this experience. The fragrance of star anise, the depth of the beef flavor, the umami finish, all are present. The broth is clear and light and once I squeezed a lime into it was slightly tangy too. Pho Sydney has the best Pho stock I have tried West of Vietnam, and that includes well known Vietnamese enclaves around Orlando, LA, and Dallas where I have had Pho more than a few times. The broth alone at Pho Sydney makes it worth the 120 mile trip from NYC to Atlantic city, which is fortunate, because the rest of the ingredients were of a lesser grade. The rice noodles were too soft, the meat in the soup was good but far from the best I have had. If one were to add the noodles and meat from Nam Son on Grand street (post coming soonish), this soup would be without peer. Still, the broth is that good, and Pho Sydney is the only place I've found so far that has the richness of flavor I would expect from a truly good bowl of Pho. At $7 for a big bowl, I'll keep coming back, and at that price, I can even afford it when I lose all my money at the poker table at the Tropicana.