Tony Johor Kaki Travels for Food · Heritage · Culture · History

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Spicy Village in Chinatown NYC Manhattan New York

The arrival of Chinese immigrants from northern China to New York City has brought with them new flavours and aromas to Manhattan's Chinatown. The food shops of first generation immigrants are usually tiny, bare bones hole-in-the-wall joints serving authentic hometown comfort food at very affordable prices.

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These restaurants are popular with kin folk from the same Chinese region and some have gone mainstream in a City that welcomes and embraces new experiences.

Spicy Village opened only in 2010 and is already well known to NYC foodies.

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Spicy Village is a quintessential hole-in-the-wall shop serving food from Henan province in China's north. Inside, it was narrow with just a few seats arranged in a single roll. The tiny shop was normally packed, so I deliberately come here during off hours.

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My large bowl of hand-pulled noodles with lamb innards in soup for USD6 nett. I like it that the noodles were served in a melamine bowl whereas in almost all other such budget food shops, they are served in disposable plastic bowls.

Spicy Village is known for their hand-pulled noodles among many other dishes.

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I opted for the wide hand-pulled noodles which looked like roughly torn ribbons. It was soft, slightly bouncy, slurpy smooth and a little thick.

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This broth was the best among the hand-pulled noodles soups that I have tried so far. It was medium bodied, well balanced savoury sweet and had the gamey flavour and aroma of lamb.

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Not sure what part of lamb this was. It had the texture of chicken gizzard, dense, bouncy chew, gentle gamey lamb flavour. Fun to eat.

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The narrow strips of lamb stomach were nicely gamey and had a softly chewy texture like spongy seaweed. Fun to eat along with the noodles.

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The home made chili oil and sauce added much to my enjoyment of the noodles. Only mildly spicy with a nice peppery fragrance (but don't take my word for it about spiciness. Coming from Southeast Asia, we eat chili with our food since we were 2 years old.)


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Next time, Spicy Village's pork and beef pancakes, and Spicy Big Tray Chicken.

Restaurant name: Spicy Village
Address: 68 Forsyth Street, NYC New York
Maphttp://bit.ly/SpicyVillage
Hours: 10:00 am – 11:00 pm (Closed on Sunday)

Date visited: 7 Jan 2015


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