Sheng Wang

CHINA

Descend the five stairs to little Sheng Wang, but do not be discouraged by the less than lovely interior and surroundings. [UPDATE: They've renovated in 2010 and the place is quite shiny now, for better or for worse.] Take a table and prepare to be impressed by the noodle-making show in the kitchen and by the excellent soups.

The music was turned up far too loud and went from Russian techno to British techno to Cantonese pop while we ate dinner. There is not a whole lot of room for questions in English here, but thankfully I pulled along two Cantonese speakers and we had all our answers well and good.

While all the old single Chinese men were slurping hand-pulled noodle soups, I wanted to try the peeled noodles and chose the beef spare rib peel noodles ($4.50, below). The meat flavored the soup to perfection (although I did add some hot sauce), but was a bit tough to rip off the bone and quite fatty. This probably made for the great broth, but made chomping it down difficult. The noodles are strips of dough cut off a larger mass and quickly cooked. They still have the texture of this rough cut, and are delightfully slippery and tough to manage with chopsticks on the first couple attempts.

(noodle detail)

I will definitely be back to sample the hand-pulled noodles [UPDATE: Photo below. The peel noodles are the way to go in this place] and see how they stack up against a crosstown rival.

Hand-pulled noodles

CHINATOWN Manhattan
27 Eldridge Street