{Food} Little Tong Noodle Shop NYC

Finally, there is a Rice noodle（米线） place in town! Some of my closest friends know that I grew up eating rice noodles pretty much every morning for breakfast! My taste for Chinese food is heavily influenced by Guang Xi, Yunnan, and Cantonese style, which are driven by fresh/exotic ingredients with bold flavors. I love a good bowl of Gui Lin Rice Noodle and cross-bridge noodle. I swear every time when there was a new opening for Rice noodle, I jumped and went straight to try. Needless to say, I was disappointed. Then we bumped into Chef Simone, a very talented chef who is born in Chengdu and got all the invaluable experience from upscale restaurants here in the States. Together, we want to create a fast casual noodle shop that offers flavorful rice noodle dishes. So, Little Tong Noodle Shop is a product of our passions! It's a Yunnan inspired Rice noodle shop that offers 6 different noodle dishes and a few amazing small bites. Simone traveled in Yunnan and China for 3 months to be inspired by the regional recipe. She really tells stories about her inspiring trip through her dishes.

I need to thank many people for making this project possible. But since I'm leading the marketing and visuals, I would really like to thank my dear friends who helped taking all the website photos @Afra.Lu, and graphic designer @NiuNiu for the logo and menu design!

And yes, I dress up for my blog even when working for my restaurant :P

For the interior, we wanted to have a clean look with a pop of Chinese elements such as porcelain, lucky bone chairs, and vintage Chinese cabins from local collectors. 

As for the food,  my personal favorites are the grandma chicken and the Mala Dan Dan noodle! The broth in the grandma chicken noodle is thick, hearty and complex, but not salty! There are many layers of flavors that goes into the soup; it took 3 days to make the broth from many filtering and mixing. The dan dan noodle has a "surprising" flavor to me, I normally hate mala dan dan noodle because I think it's too greasy, but chef Simone's version is light but full of flavors at the same time. It offers a great mix of ingredients such as the pickled celery and mustard seeds and minced pork mushroom sauce.

 I wouldn't say the food is authentic because it's not exactly like what I used to have in my childhood from China. But even the rice noodle I had in China from my recent visit didn't taste like what I had when I was younger. I think tastes are constantly evolving over time and the term authenticity is very personal. To be fair, the flavor of our dishes are great adaptation of the good old yunnan dishes, but with the modern twist.

I hope to see you in our little shop sometimes! 

It's located in East Village, NYC (177 1st Ave, NYC) If you are interested in knowing more about us, you can visit our website