Old man curry noodle

This is  not a politically correct blog. Sometimes we come up with our own special names for the restaurants we frequent like Cong Ly at 124 Hester Street. Our name for Cong Ly is "Curry Alzheimer Noodle joint". Let me explain before you judge me. This Vietnamese restaurant is run by an older gentleman, a very nice Chinese/Viet as you can probably tell from the picture below.

NICE MAN on left. The gentleman on the right is somewhat dubious.

Like father like son? You be the judge.

He is a very nice man and tremendously proud of his food, especially his curry noodles. However, no one at Cong Ly is very good at getting an order right, they are "forgetful" you might say. To take my incorrectness to an even greater level, the rest of the people that work at Cong Ly are F.O.B, or Fresh Off the Boat. To get an order filled correctly, you must repeat, you must cajole, you must will them to understand. If these Jedi mind tricks don't work, and half them time they won't, you may find you aren't getting exactly what you ordered. Sound like a lot of trouble? Well, it's worth it.

Cong Ly does a number of things well like cold rice noodles dishes called Bun with your choice of expertly grilled Viet style barbecued meats and/or spring rolls layered on top. Summer rolls are good and Pho is decent enough although I would only ever order that if I REALLY wasn't in the mood for the piece de resistance at Cong Ly, the curry chicken soup with a coconut base. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Usually we start off with an order of summer rolls because we are hungry and they come very quickly, although in the colder months we will sometimes opt for Cha Giao, spring rolls stuffed with meat that you can wrap in lettuce and dip in a bowl of fish sauce.

Summer roll, the peanut dipping sauce is hidden but very good

I love my food spicy so I usually layer on some jalapenos or some of their homemade hot pepper sauce which consists of tiny red and green peppers floating in distilled vinegar. Usually you need to request the hot peppers, and there is only one bowl of the homemade sauce floating around the restaurant, so you may even need to "borrow" them from another patron. Then we dig in. I like to order my curry chicken noodle with thin egg noodles, the same type you might find in a bowl of Cantonese style soup with roast pork or duck. Ian is fond of the broken rice they serve and skips the noodles.

Heavenly curry gurgling in my belly

Ian cheats with broken rice

The curry hits all the right notes. It's savory without being overpowering, it's not too thick like a Thai curry and it's not too watery like a West Indian one. It's simply delicious without being too spicy, although I tend to turn up the heat by throwing in some fresh jalapenos. The dish is served with dark meat bone-in chicken which usually consists of a leg and a thigh that have been stewing in the curry for hours. They are good and filling and are accompanied by a good chunk of taro which complements the sauce well and dissolves nicely in your mouth. The egg noodles, which I tend to think of as more of a Chinese noodle , really sop up the curry sauce and have the perfect "mouth" feel- not chewy, not limp, but fun to bite into. Certainly they aren't made fresh, but they are nonetheless very good. You may opt for another type of noodle but my advice is stick with the egg noodle- I've tried the rice noodles and they just aren't as good in this type of soup..To top it all off, the soup can be had for the lovely, lowly price of $5.

Have I mentioned that we don't really choose our noodle joints for ambiance....or cleanliness? Cong Ly does have a bathroom, you need to go through the kitchen to get there. I must have eaten at Cong Ly at least 100 times but I've only used the commode once....it was an emergency.  There are things back there that I just don't want to see. The clients are a mix of locals and people that meander in while waiting for one of the many discount inter-city buses that are clustered around the shop, sometimes giving the place a real bus stop vibe. Still, I don't mean to paint such a dour picture, we love it here, the restaurant gets a lot of light, and it's always pretty busy although you won't have to wait for a table..

One of our earlier restaurant reviews at the beloved Lam Zhou Hand Pulled noodle house  mentioned that Lam Zhou only had a C rating from the City Board of Health. Sounds bad but wait, Cong Ly is the proud owner of a "Grade Pending" sign gloriously displayed in the front window. It's been there a while. I'm not sure exactly what "Grade Pending" means, but I suspect that Cong Ly just didn't pass the first inspection and that the city inspectors will be coming back......and we don't care. It's that good.