影片
更多
2016-06-18
671 浏览
I've been wanting to go to this Ngau Saam Gun on Wellington, but somehow never made it. Recently I was returning home from Graham St. and I noticed this place, which seemed like it must be by the same people (and it is). Today it was rainy, so it seemed like a good day for noodle soup. Let's just say that on a Saturday at lunch, it's not hard to get seats here.After we were seated, the server asked us if it was our first time (yes) and then went into a detailed description of the menu. We're tal
After we were seated, the server asked us if it was our first time (yes) and then went into a detailed description of the menu. We're talking over-detailed. For example, when he was explaining that the supreme noodles contained beef shoulder, he pointed to his shoulder and said "the shoulder is here." Yeah dude, I know. Though to be fair, pork butt doesn't come from where it sounds like it comes from, so maybe they're just playing it safe. So I went and got the supreme noodles. At $158, they're noticeably more expensive than say the $68 beef ball noodles. Hey, I buy the pricey stuff so you don't have to.
The menu contains a wide variety of soups. First, there's straight-up beef: supreme, selected, and "fresh" in order of decreasing $$$. Then there's beef offal, beef ball, beef tendon, cuttlefish ball, milkfish ball, and on and on. Plus you can get "dried noodle" which I assume is just without soup.
Next you choose your noodle type and your soup base. I got the egg noodle - hard (other option is medium), which the server described as "like Japanese noodle," I take it meaning ramen. For soup base I got black ox bone, which was described as being the most flavoursome.
Finally, at no additional cost, you can add any or all of the following: dried shiso, chinese celery, fried onion, black and white sesame, spring onion, parsley, chili, and jalapeno. Well, kind of, back to this in a moment.
So here's my take on the soup: My noodles were excellent. I love toothsome, flavorful egg noodles, and these were that. I can't really think of a place where I like the soup noodles more. The broth was a tad underwhelming. It was a tiny bit spicy, looked quite dark, but didn't taste very rich. From Yunnan to Gansu to Taiwan, pretty much everywhere has better broth. Here in HK there's better broth to be had.
With regard to the meat, I wasn't feeling my $158 dollars worth. It was fine beef. Not the fatty, gristly questionable cuts and some of HK's downmarket pho places, but really nothing stood out about it. It wasn't super tender, didn't appear to be marinated, and was just pretty unremarkable. I'll admit that my last two meat excursions were (a) the omakase set at Yakiniku Great and (b) two platters of lamb at Dong Lai Shun, so it's gonna take a lot to impress me.
As for the add-ins, I'm not sure the chef even glanced at my order form. I ordered jalapenos, and there weren't any, and I didn't order black and white sesame, and there was some. So while it's nice that you get to pick, it'd be nicer if picking things actually mattered.
Final opinion: I'm a noodle fiend so I'll probably come back, but I'm sticking with the beef ball soup and saving myself 90 smackers.
My wife got the selected beef noodles (tier 2, $118) and the fresh rice noodles. Her opinion was that every element of it was inferior to other soup places around: she agreed with me about the broth, she didn't think the meat was special, and her rice noodles were soggy and tasteless. You can do non-soggy rice noodles in soup: good pho joints do this. I suspect that HK people just like soggy rice noodles, as that would certainly explain their universal distribution in this town. I don't think I'll convince her to come back.
There's a number of add-ons you can get on the side and these beef dumplings were I believe only $10. They were pretty good, perhaps a little bit soggy (a little!) and filled with pretty much just beef, but the beef in the dumplings I thought was better than the stuff in my soup bowl.
The gai lan was also nice and cheap to add on. I like that they don't make you buy a giant pile of it just to have some with your meal like lots of places in town.
Finally, I got a lime tea. It was like a lemon tea, but with lime in it.In the end, the egg noodles were the only thing I thought were special, but they were good noodles. They gave us two cash coupons ($20 each) valid for one month. I believe "cash coupon" means I can use both at once? Like cash? If so, I am going to have a $28 bowl of beef ball noodle soup sometime this month. But I don't think I'll be a regular here.
题外话/补充资料：
For some reason I thought I remembered someone online mentioning that they had a secret door in this restaurant that opened up to a private dining space, but maybe I'm misremembering? I can't find the information now.
(以上食记乃用户个人意见 , 并不代表OpenRice之观点。)
张贴
