Dear Great New York Noodletown

I am sorry it has taken me so long.

Back in 1994, Ruth Reichl famously reviewed and raved about Great New York Noodletown for The New York Times. “New York Noodletown,” she wrote, “with its bustle and clatter, its shared tables and its chefs wreathed in billows of steam rising from the cauldrons of soup in the front of the restaurant, is as close as you can get to Hong Kong without leaving Manhattan.”

Since then, the restaurant has become one of the most acclaimed kitchens for Cantonese cooking in Chinatown, if not the nation. And yet, before last night, I had never been. I know, I know. You’re ready to leave me! I know there is no excuse. The place has been serving arguably the best Cantonese food in New York City for the past 40 years and I have never been. To Ruth, to all of you, I am so sorry.

How could this have happened? Who can we blame? Hmm..maybe my parents? I am sure it is their fault. Well, let’s not dwell on the past. Let’s save that for our therapists. Instead, let’s focus on the here and now – the day after dinner at Great New York Noodletown. What a glorious day it is. 

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Before we get to the food (which is terrific, unsurprisingly), let me share a little about the “vibe.” I’ll be frank, Noodletown has no atmosphere. It is not low-lit. It is not rustic, spare and lean, or mid-century modern in design. It has, umm, no design. It’s not even design-adjacent. It is decidedly design averse. It is a forty-year-old restaurant marked by a highlight-yellow sign, and a Bowery storefront lit like it’s welcoming ships from the foggy sea. It is bright. Too bright, with overhead chandeliers flooding the room with a terrifyingly fluorescent glow that had me wishing I’d worn under eye concealer and a tad more blush.

At one point, I said to my friend: “It’s so bright in here. Do you think we can ask them to dim the lights a bit?” He laughed and shook his head at me: “NO we cannot.” You could wheel an operating room in here and I think have enough light to do a fairly detailed surgery. 

In any case, when you walk in past the foyer-ATM machine (cash only)!, you check in with the “host” — a waiter who slows down long enough to point you to a free seat—and, depending on the crowd and your party size, may be at a table for four, or at an extra large communal round. There, you will sit shoulder-to-shoulder with other happy souls slurping soup, pulling noodles from bowls, and plucking pieces of delicate salt-baked seafood off white oval platters dotted with green chilis. There are blue-haired old ladies, stoic, solitary bachelors in puffy black jackets, gaggles of chatty girlfriends, families with young kids kicking legs under seats, and shaggy haired college guys doing advanced calculus to split the cash bill. It’s definitely a scene, but perhaps one you’re not accustomed to. 

At the front of the restaurant, behind the cash register where you pay, facing the wide window that looks out onto a darkened Bowery, are rows of hanging poultry—burnished and bronzed ducks and golden, caramel-colored chickens. These are pulled down, bird-by-bird, by a tall, dark-haired man who looks vaguely like a physician in a white coat, with a blue mask pulled snuggly down around his chin (it does not, at any point, cover his mouth).

He yanks down the birds, flattens them to the cutting board, and unceremoniously hacks them into remarkably tidy slices with a series of heavy dull thuds as his machete/cleaver hits the cutting board below the bird. There’s a zen rhythm to the ritual; even though it looks and sounds a bit barbaric—that cleaver is BIG — it somehow feels calming. When he’s through, he looks like he would like a cigarette.

I watched the hatchet work from my table under the operating room lights and drank some tea, pursuing the menu which rests on the table, face up, tucked under a sheet of heavy glass. The menu is massive. Sit down and start to have a look and you will quickly become overwhelmed—dozens of dishes listed under headings like Congee, Noodle Soup, Fried Rice, Wide Noodles in Cantonese Style, Pan-Fried Noodles, Rice Plates, Beef/Pork, Chicken/Duck, Seafood, Vegetables, Soup, and more!

Indeed, if I hadn’t been there with a friend (who was horrified that I’d never been), I think I would have just asked the waiter to send me whatever he thought I should have; there were just too many choices. Follow our lead here or check out Robert Siestma’s Eater piece, and you’ll do just fine. 

My friend ordered for us: two beers (Tsing Tsao is the only flavor here folks), the soy sauce chicken “with a lot of that ginger scallion sauce,” he repeated this phrase several times, the pea shoots, a bowl of wonton soup, and the salt-baked shrimp. If there is a more perfect meal anywhere in Chinatown, or in the world for that matter, I am absolutely interested in hearing about it, but I strongly doubt it exists. 

That wonton soup — a broth that’s practically shiny, it is so clear — arrives bobbing with bits of greens and hand twisted dumplings stuffed until fat with shrimp. The pea shoots—dou miao—are sautéed so they’re just shy of soft, garlicky and emerald green, served in a pile that seems to never get smaller. The leftovers are still with me, in my fridge, waiting to be eaten for lunch. How nice is that? 

The salt-baked shrimp, topped with a flurry of shredded lettuce and green chiles, are cloaked in a batter that’s sort of a marriage between a crackle and a crepe, a crust that gives way with a shattering crunch to impossibly juicy shrimp beneath. Just eat these with your hands, forget the chopsticks.

Not that the salt-baked shrimp were not excellent, but the soy sauce chicken stole my heart. Poached in soy sauce until its skin turns the color of toffee, the flesh is tender, almost velvety, served in neat rows of thin slices with a bowl of ginger-scallion sauce.  

My friend could not contain his enthusiasm for this sauce; he talked about it before we arrived and while we were there, and when it arrived, his eyes lit up; he celebrated its appearance like one might a long lost love, or a child returning home from college. He spooned it on the chicken, on the shrimp, and on the pea shoots. He may have added it to the dumplings in the soup, too. He ate it plain by the spoonful. He asked for refills several times.

Now I understand why. First, it’s really not a sauce, it’s more the texture and concept of chimichurri. It’s gingery and garlicky, but it’s more than that. It sits so long in the oil with minced scallions, that the fire of the root and the sharpness of the garlic are tamed a bit, muted beautifully so the flavors mellow and melt into each other, like watercolors bleeding together on the page. It’s what you will want spooned over everything, and it should be in every home kitchen. Put it on eggs, chicken, fish, steak, a crusty old loaf of bread, what have you. Since last night’s dinner, I’ve googled the recipe for both the chicken and the sauce. If you have any intel on how to recreate this dish, please let me know. 

Now, if it seems strange that we didn’t get noodles at Noodletown, I’d have to agree with you, but the meal we had was just perfect; we were sated and content. We will go back for more (the squid with flowering chives, and the seafood pan-fried noodles both get high marks from other reviewers). Ready to head home for the latest episode of True Detective, we asked for the check which arrived on a small dish with an orange, sliced in sections, served ice cold. It might have been the best orange of my life. I ate the entire thing, quite happily. 

There are many wonderful new restaurants in this great city of ours. Restaurants that will leave you breathless and awed, pampered and coddled. Great New York Noodletown is decidedly NOT that place. But, it is honest and authentic. It serves sensational Cantonese cooking with little finesse or flourish, mostly grunts and occasionally nods. It’s an old chestnut, a New York institution, a relic and a treasure, a stalled moment in time bathed in fluorescent light. I can’t wait to go back.

Great New York Noodletown is located at 28 1/2 Bowery, near Bayard Street, Chinatown, (212) 349-0923.