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2016-10-14
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There was a Vietnamese place on this corner since I moved here, I think it was called Pho 26. I went there once and it was OK, but I could never really convince myself to go back. Plenty of pho joints around, some a lot better. So I was excited when something else moved in, and quite intrigued by the concept.To me, 'Buddies Crawfish' sounds like a Cajun restaurant. There you go, I'm an American. But as a matter of fact it's a Chinese place, whose focus is on crawfish. And it's a pretty serious f
To me, 'Buddies Crawfish' sounds like a Cajun restaurant. There you go, I'm an American. But as a matter of fact it's a Chinese place, whose focus is on crawfish. And it's a pretty serious focus: I looked at the dinner menu and there are like a dozen different crawfish dishes, in different styles from different regions of China.
I was trying to figure out how to convince my wife and friends to come, because you need a crowd if you're gonna eat good Chinese food. But then I noticed at lunch that they do Hunan noodle soup. That makes it both easier to convince people and less necessary to do so.
Here's the lunch set menu. There was another set on the back, but I was really only interested in noodle soup when I came. I didn't really know how to pick the noodles, so I went with the Shaoyang handmade thick rice noodles and my wife got the Taiwanese knife-shaved noodles (though keep reading, that's not exactly what happened). I went with the spicy beef, cuz that's how I roll. 'Spicy beef' here is an incomplete translation: this is actually ma la beef, so you're getting both spicy and Sichuan peppercorn. For add-ins I just went with all of them because yolo.
When my soup came, I'm pretty sure I got the Taiwanese knife-cut noodles instead of the Shaoyang noodles, and my wife got the opposite. I know we didn't just have the wrong bowls because mine was definitely the ma la spicy beef and hers was definitely the beef with pickled vegetables, so someone in the back just messed up the order a little. Word to the wise though: the knife-cut noodles are far superior. The Shaoyang noodles are just soft and flavorless. The Taiwanese ones have lots of bounce to them, though they can be a bit messy.My beef was very tasty, with a strong marinated flavor, and a little bit dry and crispy. I was into it. My wife got the beef with pickled vegetables and her beef was in larger chunks and more tender-- she thinks it was brisket (or whatever it is they call 'brisket' here in HK noodle shops). Both are good choices, and perhaps you should choose both. The reason I say that is that the broth is rather bland. It's not as oily as many similar soups (e.g. Emma's) but more seriously it just needs some salt. There's vinegar on the table, but no soy sauce. The choice of meat adds a lot to the broth, in that mine had a distinct Sichuan peppercorn flavor (but not too strong) and my wife's was a little funky from the pickled vegetables (she didn't like it that much, I thought it was fine). Every bit of flavor was necessary though, because otherwise the broth was just hot water.
My soup wasn't particularly spicy. The added fresh chilis were a little hot and over time contributed some small amount to the broth, but the three chili warning on the menu was a little bit overkill. I checked 'garlic' off on the add-ins, but they just put in a bunch of minced fresh garlic, which doesn't contribute to the soup flavor, except insofar as you get a piece of garlic in your spoon, and then it's too garlicky. In my Sichuan hot and sour noodles recipe, the garlic is stir fried in oil to make garlic oil which is added to the soup. That's much more mellow and spreads the flavor around.
So here's my final thoughts: it was a nice bowl of soup. I liked both the meat and the noodles (definitely get the knife-cut noodles). Everything seemed high-quality. The broth was too bland and needed salt and could have used more chili as well. I'll probably go back, but I think I will ask for soy sauce next time.
張貼
