Noodle Village – Good Hong Kong Style Food in Chinatown

Noodle Village serves Hong Kong style Cantonese food.  I’m not quite sure how I can describe the difference between Hong Kong style Cantonese food versus Cantonese food in the rest of Guang Dong (the province that Cantonese food comes from) as I haven’t spent a huge amount of time in the rest of Guang Dong, so it’s possible it’s like this everywhere, but from my understanding HK definitely has its’ own style of food.  Many of the dishes that are served at Noodle Village are very emblematic of the types of dishes you find at a lot of casual small restaurants in HK.

The restaurant is reasonably nice and clean, better than most restaurants in Chinatown.  The service was fine.  They also claim that they don’t use any MSG, I don’t know if that is true or not, but I didn’t taste any in my food.

Here’s what we got:

Spicy Fried Fish Ball (La La Yu Dan Chuan): These were fried fish balls on skewers that were covered with a dried shrimp paste, chili oil, diced scallions and bits of fried garlic. I think they may make their own fish balls as they had good flavor and texture and didn’t taste like frozen ones. The shrimp paste was awesome and other condiments really went well with everything. These were really good, similar to the type of thing you get in HK. 8.5/10

Braised Beef Brisket Noodle Soup HK Style (Niu Nan Wang Tang Mian): The broth was light and not salty.  It was pretty decent, but I thought it was a little bit on the bland side; it didn’t have the deeper flavor you get with really good broth.  That said it was better than most of the broths you get in most noodle shops in ctown. The brisket was tender and had good flavor although it was a bit on the fatty side.  It also had tripe which was pretty good as well.  I got it with he fen (thick white rice noodle), which were good as well. Overall, it was pretty decent. 7.5/10

Chinese Broccoli & Yau Choy with Oyster Sauce (Hao You Shuang Cai): This was pretty standard, but good.  The vegetables were perfectly cooked and tasted good with the oyster sauce.  8/10

Pork with Salted Fish Clay Pot Rice (Xian Yu Rou Bing Bao Zai Fan): The claypot they use is a little smaller and wider than normal, but this kind of turned out to be good because there was a lot of the crusty rice at the bottom which I like a lot. The pork patty was pretty decent although it was a little too salty.  The soy sauce they use is okay, but it’s not home-made and was a lot saltier than at good places.  Overall, this was good, it’s not as good as A-Wah was at its peak , but it’s better than A-Wah is currently. 7.75/10

Clay Pot Rice with Sausage, Bacon and Spare Ribs: Same description as the other, but I didn’t like this this one as much as the other one because a lot of the toppings were a little on the dry side. 7/10

Fried Buns with Condensed Milk (Zha Man Tou): These are hard to screw up, I thought they were a little over fried, but they were still tasty. 7.75/10

Overall, it was quite good.  I was pretty happy with the preparation of the food as it was lighter than most food in Chinatown.  I’ll definitely be returning and writing more about it.

Address:
13 Mott St (between Chatham Sq & Mosco Street)
New York, NY 10013
(212) 233-0788