Good Chinese Food Outside of Chinatown? Sammy’s Noodle Shop & Grill – West Village
Sammy’s Noodle Shop & Grill
453 6th Avenue
(at 11th Street)
New York, NY
(212) 924-6688
Outside Photo of Sammy's Noodle Shop & Grill
Have you ever had a craving for Chinese food or noodles but didn’t feel like going downtown to Chinatown to get it? I know I do and sometimes, I just don’t have the time or the patience to go over there. Be advised that you must bring a fatter wallet than you normally do because Sammy’s is not only not located in Chinatown, but they also do not charge Chinatown prices. Think about that! Located in the West Village, Sammy’s is the sure quick solution for your my Chinese craving!
Steamed Spare Ribs w/Rice Noodle Rolls
My favorite dim sum dish of all time is this spare ribs/rice noodle rolls! This is also known as Pai Gwut Chern, in Cantonese, and it’s quite common in your local dim sum restaurant or Chinese bakery. On the weekends, my mother would buy me this from the bakery on Avenue U, Century 21 Bakery Cafe and I would feast on this like a wild animal! I personally think it’s great that the Chinese bakery serves hot foods as well as baked goods. I will do a review on the bakery itself another day, but for now let me tell you how tasty this really is!
Spare ribs w/rice noodle rolls
Spare ribs w/rice noodle rolls
There is something so terribly delicious and addictive about this dish. Usually rice noodles are plain unless accompanied by soy sauce, and luckily this was drenched in sweet soy sauce! The rice noodle rolls are soft and a little chewy to eat, and the flavored enhanced spare ribs from the soy sauce are just about the two best combos ever to compliment this dish! It tastes so good when it’s nice and warm and is not advised to eat the next day because the rice noodle gets hard and loses it’s flavor!
Anyways, I am going to finish this dish, but in the meanwhile please tell me what your favorite dim sum dishes are!
- FCG
Dim Sum and Lunch at Asian Flame Restaurant on Avenue U
Asian Flame Restaurant
1321 Avenue U
Corner of E. 13th St
Brooklyn, NY
Asian Flame Restaurant
Like many up and coming Chinese Restaurants popping up on Avenue U, Asian Flame by far is the better choice between the few on this Avenue. Chinese Restaurants generally start from E 18th Street and it pretty much ends right about E 12th/E.13th Street. This restaurant has been around for almost a year now, and from the looks of it from the outside, there’s a similar resemblance to the other Chinese Restaurants. The reason for this similarity is that roasted chicken, duck, and pork are hanging by the front of the restaurant available for the public to see, and as well as Chinese signs plastered outside of the window. Most Chinese patronage usually buy these meats to take it back home for dinner. The way you order them is as follows:
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Sunway Cafe Chinese Diner
39-07 Prince St
(Near 39th Ave, 7 train to Flushing)
Flushing, NY
After watching Simpsons The Movie at the glamorous College Point Movie theatre, the bf, bf’s brother, and I were craving for food. We left at about 10:30 pm and tried to figure out what the hell we were going to eat. No, not Wendy’s or White Castle again. For once, we were all sick of fast food and thought that we needed to sit down tight at a civilized place with plates of real food. Since we were on a tight budget, we decided to head out to Flushing for some cheap ol’ Chinese food. The bf’s younger sweet 16 brother, Alvin, suggested that we go to Sunway. He swears that it’s the best place ever and claims that he’s been there over 20x. It must be dam affordable if he goes there religious. With growling tummies and a loose wallet, the bf and I decided that we should hit this joint and find out.
If you’re in Flushing, you have to be blind not to see this restaurant. It’s smacked right in the middle of Flushing, literally a block away, and it’s right on the corner of Prince and 39th Ave. We got there around 11pm and had to wait on line because there were so many people waiting for a seat! Outrageous! Well, it’s better than it being deserted because then it would get creepy, like in manhattan’s Chinatown.
After about 10 mins, we got seats right under the plasma tv. The baseball game was playing, but not like anyone was paying attention to it. Most of the people here were younger kids that looks really fobby. A pack of young teenage girls were giggling in the back of the restaurant, and a good sprinkle of older fobby guys were sitting in the middle chatting it up like gangsters.
Anyways, after we were seated for like 10 mins, a waitress came to us and asked what we liked to drink. Let me tell you, the best part of the menu are their drinks. I’ve never seen anything more colorful and cocktail-like in my whole entire life. They serve an array of bubble teas and mixed fruity drinks. I opted for the Phoenix Sunrise drink, picture below, because it sounded so kickass. When the drink arrived, I was oh so impressed by the color because it looks like how it sounds and it tasted very sweet, which I love. I can taste mango and orange. Exactly what they put their drink is beyond me. And Alvin got the mango smoothie, which to me didn’t look anything special. The taste wasn’t that great too.
Alright time for the chow part of this blog.
Rice noodles with duck, wonton, and choy sum
Price: $3.75
I wished they gave more rice noodles. Apparently Alvin didn’t finish this bowl due to the dim sum that we ordered, which I will get to. I did have a taste of the duck and wonton and to me, it wasn’t anything special. I grew up eating this stuff, and I figure as long as the taste doesn’t get worse it’s fine by me.
My Rating: 3.5/5
Recommended: Yes especially if you never had this before, or you’re craving for delicious duck and noodles.
Rice noodles with braised beef
Price: $3.75
Again, what’s up with skimping with the dam rice noodles?? I ordered this thinking that this dish can absolutely cannot go wrong, but it did. I’m pissed as hell with the skimping, but to give me the hard ass part of the beef and a few pieces of meat is not cool with me. The broth tasted pretty good, but I’m not feeling this skimping part.
Rating: 2.5/5
Not Recommended
Dim Sum!
Price: $2.25/each
Beef wrapped with Rice Noodles (In Chinese, it’s called Ha Chern)
Malaysian Spongcake
Ha Gow (Shrimp covered with thin rice paper)
Pork Bun
I give them props for having dim sum at this hour. These didn’t taste bad at all. If you are craving for dim sum late night, I’d definitely recommend it.
BBQ Spare Ribs
Price: $5.25
This is the cheapest piece of meat that I’ve ever seen. There’s not a lot of meat and this is the most oily thing that I have ever eaten. I didn’t really like it and wouldn’t recommend anyone ordering this.
Remember, you pay for what you get. The food is decent here and it really gives a quick fix for a staving stomach. The drinks here are absolutely phenomenom. People were ordering it here like crazy. I really recommend that. Alright, I’ll leave you with the health inspection results from the city.
SUNWAY CAFE
39-07 PRINCE STREET, QUEENS 11354
Violation points: 9
Inspection Date: 09/14/2006
Violations were cited in the following area(s) and those requiring immediate action were addressed.
Sanitary Violations
1.) Plumbing not properly installed or maintained; anti-siphonage or backflow prevention device not provided where required; equipment or floor not properly drained; sewage disposal system in disrepair or not functioning properly.
2.) Evidence of flying insects or live flying insects present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas.
Golden Unicorn – Dim sum
Golden Unicorn Restaurant
18 E Broadway
Btw Division & Henry St
New York, NY
Reservations: Not for dim sum. First come first serve. Go inside and walk up to this woman w/a mic behind a podium and grab a number. The wait is not terribly that long even on the weekend. No more than 15 mins.
To start things off, for those of who you don’t know, Dim sum, or your heart’s desire, which is the English translation, (correct me if I’m wrong) where you choose from an array of small baskets of food to your heart’s desire, which is served during breakfast and lunch in China. Within these baskets that are usually wheeled by a dim sum girl with a dim sum cart who pushes her cart along the carpeted floor and yelling out names of the foods she has. Each cart is different. Some might have different dumplings, steamed or fried, others might have sweets, vegetables, and other delights. And of course you eat it with a chopstick and drink it with tea. Ahh…that is how the Chinese eat, relax, and chat with a cup of tea to start off the day.
Enough about history, let’s get on with the story. The only reason why I came out that day was to finally have miss eggrolls to come out to have dim sum with the finechina girl. That and she was craving for this one particular dim sum treat so I had to take her there. I haven’t been to Golden Unicorn in over 10 years, since I was a kid, and I was interested to see if it was the same.
So…
Sorry for the slight blurriness, I was trying to take a quick photo without being noticed, haha. They made massive renovations since the last time I’ve been here. It actually looks pretty good.
As we were seated, the waiter came and asked what kind of tea I wanted. I asked for chrysanthemum (no sugar) for Vicky and Gok Bo (what’s the translation of this?) w/sugar for softrice and nachobitch.
Already we see the dim sum carts come rolling by:
What I thought was cool about this place is that they have english names of the dishes that they have! Look!
This restaurant makes it very tourist friendly, but the dim sum girls still have problems understanding English. So point at the picture or come with a chinese person! Like me for miss eggrolls.
First up on the list,
Steamed green leak dumpling w/shrimp:
Verdict: This one was pretty skimpy because I used to have it deep fried and it was more round-like than dumpling-like. It didn’t taste that spectacular, but it’s good to try.
Recommended: Yes, try it if you’ve never had it.
Shrimp dumpling
Verdict: The shrimp didn’t taste very fresh and I wasn’t expecting it to be. This dish is among one of the most popular dishes.
Recommended: I would recommend it to tourists, straight up.
Shumai
Verdict: This is my first time seeing a shumai like this. It tries to imitate the japanese version, but it sure doesn’t taste like it. I actually prefer this kind of shumai than the old yellow skinned chinese shumai.
Recommended: Yes.
On the left: Chicken Feet
Verdict: Now it sounds gross, but it tastes pretty good. Don’t worry the nails are off and it’s completely edible. The skin is soft and filled with delicious sauce. Everywhere I eat, this usually tastes nearly the same. But I have to say this place is very skimpy when it comes to their food. Btw, when eating, don’t forget to spit out the bones!
Recommended: Yes
Ha Chern or Steam shrimps roll covered in sweet soy sauce
Since Miss Eggroll ate all two plates that we ordered without sharing even one plate with the rest of us, we didn’t know how it tastes like. According to her, the shrimp tastes unfresh and it was missing something. That girl ate just the skin and picked out ALL of the shrimps. People, don’t ever, ever pull a “miss eggroll,” it’s just bad taste. When eating dim sum, you need to have manners and I can’t stress that enough. When you eat, you never take the plate to yourself or at least ask first. This is the same when serving tea. Don’t just serve it to yourself, pour tea to others and they will in return respect you by tapping on the table 3x. Miss Eggroll, you need training in chinese mannerisms 101. =P
Recommended: Yes. This is still one of the most popular dim sum dishes of all time.
Intermission
Cheers!
Crispy Spring Roll w/vegetables
Verdict: This didn’t taste anything special at all, plus again, it’s so skimpy.
Recommended: No.
Fried Taro Cake
Recommended: Yes, it usually has an interesting, delightful taste. It’s very oily btw.
Fried Shrimp Balls wrapped with bacon
Verdict: According to nachobitch and softrice, this is a very very skimpy portion. It’s definitely bigger in Golden Bridge Restaurant on Bowery St. Plus this dish tastes awful. It’s so salty and I can barely taste the shrimp.
Recommended: No.
Seen-jook-gune or vegetables and meat wrapped with fried bean curd
Fried Soft Shell Crab
Verdict: This is the sickest piece of crab I have ever had in my life. The only good part about this was the fried legs of the crab and which I quote from softrice, “It tastes like Popeyes.” And it’s true. One bite onto the shell of the crab and it will give you a mouth full of poison. It is so disgusting. Never never again.
Recommended: Helllll no.
Background: Never ever correct the dim sum girl’s english because they’ll get embarrassed, pissed, and have even lower self esteem than they are currently feeling. mr. softrice could not understand a word the dim sum girl was saying when she was calling out soft shell crab. It was so fast that it sounded like sofe-chell-crab, sofe-chell-crab repeated a zillion times. Then when softrice realizes what she means, he exclaims, “OHHHHH, SOFT SHELL CRAB!” Man, her face blushed quickly and she later wheels away. I know he didn’t intend it to be that way, but please.
This concludes our dim sum. We were definitely full, but was not completely satisfied with the taste.
Here’s my report card for them:
Food: 0.7
Decor: 0.80
Service: 0.89
Speed: 0.89
Price: 0.60
Verdict: 3.88/5
This is one of the cleaner chinatown restaurant according to the NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/rii/index.shtml
GOLDEN UNICORN RESTAURANT
18 EAST BROADWAY, MANHATTAN 10002
Current violation points: 0
Inspection Date: 11/17/2005
No violations were recorded at the time of this inspection.
And btw, take a look at what hung on their wall:
How can this magazine rank this restaurant with one of the finest french restaurants and some of the better know restaurants?? This was in 1996, but still. It’s just unbelievable.
