Recently, we’ve been making the rounds and have been revisiting a few restaurants. And here are a few updates.
Chin’s
**** This location of Chin’s has closed
We’ve been having brunch at Chin’s just about every weekend. Looking through my previous posts, I noticed I missed posting on a few of the better dishes at Chin’s.
The Wuxi Sparerib Noodle Soup:
This very tasty slightly sweet soup, with a nice portion of braised spareribs, along with some Shao Bing is probably my favorite…well next to the Five Spice Beef Shao Bing. The nice pork flavor really comes through, and though I still don’t care much for the noodles, I really enjoy the broth and of course the pork.
The Shanghai Chao Nian Gao:
Sliced rice cakes stir fried with pickled vegetables and pork. Perhaps a bit on the salty side, but the rice cake slices are always fried perfectly, and the slices are neither too mushy, nor hard and rubbery. The pickled vegetables and scallions add a nice flavor. I think someone had asked about this dish so I wanted to make sure to post.
Noble Chef – Under New Ownership
Last week we dropped by Noble Chef for our fried rice fix, and didn’t recognize any of the eight people scurrying about.
Upon inquiry we found out from the really nice young man manning the counter that the previous owners had decided to sell the restaurant. I quickly asked the young man if the menu would remain the same, at which point one of the young ladies standing behind the counter gave me a “dirty look”. But I was assured that the menu would remain the same. As this was the first day after the transfer of the restaurant thing were quite chaotic, but we did manage to place and get our orders.
The Shrimp with XO Sauce Fried Rice:
On the good side; there was twice the amount of shrimp. On the bad side…well, not enough XO sauce and not enough garlic or salt, the rice tasted like spicy fried rice. Also, I’m sure that the new chef will have to get adjusted to the wok stove, the rice was mushy and in clumps, I noticed that the chef never turned the heat up while making the fried rice, thus all the wonderful “wok hey”(the elusive essence of the wok) was missing.
The Chiu Chow Fried Rice:
Same story, lot’s of Char Siu, the portion size is about a third smaller. Rice clumpy and slightly mushy.
I’ll give Noble Chef a few months to get things in order and check in again. I’m hoping that I’m not losing one of my favorites.
Emerald
Made another visit to Emerald, and partook of all the usual suspects…pretty much the same as what I had on a previous visit. There were a few items that I hadn’t seen before, like the Xiao Long Bao:
Yes, soup dumplings! Unfortunately the wrappers were really, really thick, and there was no soup! Soup dumplings with no soup? The filling tasted like regular dumpling filling, not Xiao Long Bao.
The “Egg” Siu Mai fared much better. Basically a boiled quail egg lying on a bed of pork and shrimp, in a siu mai wrapper. A nice slightly rich and eggy bit of Dim Sum. My only complaint would be that the siu mai wrapper was welded to the plate, and everything fell apart as we tried, unsuccessfully, to pry the wrapper off the plate. Still we enjoyed a pretty good meal at Emerald.
For addresses and other info, click on the links to the original posts.
Finally, I’d like to thank Cathy. Her wonderful posts, has allowed me to spend a little more time revisiting restaurants. Thanks Cathy!