Excellent Pork Chop House? Yes, actually.

This week we ventured down to my favorite little crooked street in Chinatown to visit our local Taiwanese noodle shop, Excellent Pork Chop House,  on Doyers street. As usual, Ian was there as well as our semi-regular guest-star, Eugene.We've been coming to the Pork Chop House for years and it has consistently been a great place to go for fantastic soup and some really interesting and tasty appetizers. For 5 or 6 bucks, you can have a heaping portion of  noodle soup topped with some slightly sour pickled greens (to counterpoint the salty broth of course). With your soup, you are entitled to your choice of a quarter chicken (leg and thigh) or a pork chop, both are served fried and slathered in omnipresent Five Spice powder, and either variation lives up to the restaurant's namesake adjective-- excellent if you forgot! To be honest, I've hardly had a better piece of fried chicken in New York.  It's moist, the skin is thin yet crispy, and for something that comes straight out of the fryer, it's not too greasy either.

Betcha didn't know you could have fried chicken with your soup!

Let me back up for a moment since this isn't how we started this meal and the appetizers are half the fun. Definitely ask for one of the picture menus they keep up front, they are an invaluable aid and we still ask for them nearly every time we eat here. As usual, to keep things blogworthy, we decided to order a whole boatload of appetizer.All of the small dishes are great along with some of the appetizers we didn't order like garlic cucumbers.

"Scalded Vegetable" with  Five Spice and minced Garlic

You can order half and half- seaweed and marinated bean curd

Delicate and Delicious Sichuan style Spicy Wonton

 The ground rice flour noodles At Excellent Pork Chop House are very tasty but are not made in house.  They come in three shapes and sizes, Mei Fun, essentially an angel hair, "Silver" noodle, which is Spaghetti or Lo Mein sized, and what the menu calls "board" noodles, which should really read "broad" or Chow Fun style. Ian opted for the Mei Fun noodle with pork chop.

Ian happy with Mei Fun

Me happier with Silver noodle

Eugene dumbfounded with rice

Ian loved his soup and thought his pork chop, dusted in a coating of Five Spice powder, was just delicious. For those of you who aren't familiar with five spice powder, as with curry powder, it can contain a wide variety of spices. At Excellent Pork Chop House, the powder has a strong cinnamon taste as well as star anise. If you don't like the taste of Five Spice, you won't like Excellent Pork Chop House. Even the tea and water taste of it.  For inquiring minds that want to know more about five spice, here is a link.

Eugene was slightly disappointed by his braised chicken soup with rice on the side. This dish can also be had in a spare rib variant and with either one can choose a "dry" bowl of noodles to accompany it or rice. I've had this chicken several times and I think it is very good but not quite as good as the regular soup with the fried pork chop or chicken accompaniment.

Braised chicken soup with rice

The signature dish- Five Spice fried pork chop and soup with Mei Fun noodles

This is what the table looked like when all the food had been delivered.

We ate it all!

There are also a number of interesting rice cake stir fry dishes on the menu, a good beef stew (but not as good as Yogi Noodle) and a sour cabbage soup I would like to try one of these days when I'm not too tempted by the dishes I already know and love. With tip, this meal came in at $12 a person, but we could have done it much more cheaply if we didn't overindulge in the appetizers. Definitely visit Excellent Pork Chop House, because it really is!